foiled again. thanks, paul.

the rainbow! see it?

well, i have been having a good time here in niagara falls. i spent all day yesterday walking around the falls and the parks around here. it was really amazing and beautiful. in the sun the mist creates a constant rainbow and it is pretty. i enjoyed it immensely. i spent the night around the corner from a casino. it was wierd because i have been sleeping by bright lights the past couple nights, not because i want to but thats where i end up. the street around the corner from the casino was the darkest i had seen since new mexico, i think.

and the idea of that is odd, a block away there are tons of lights and the brightness is overwhelming, here complete darkness. i prefer it that way, but i think it is a visual for the way capitalism works.

anyway, today i was prepared to go to canada. the first time i tries with steve in 1997 or so we were denied at the border because of the spikes on our jackets. the border patrol considered them weapons and offered for us to take off the spikes to get through. we declined and drove away screaming fuck canada.

the next time i tried was in 2004, again with steve. but also with my friend adam burger and a person called matt pist. it was shortly after the rnc in new york, i was still ailing from a debilitating spider bite. i could barely walk. we drove north through vermont with the intention of crossing the border and driving down into detroit on the way to my parents house where i would leave the tour.

i imagine it was quite a sight, us trying to cross. of course our car was detained and we were questioned and the car was searched. eventually we were denied because matt had an arrest in the recent past and canada doesnt allow folks with arrest records within the past ten years to cross. defeated we turned around. and, of course, we were stopped on the us side and searched again.

next, the only time i have actually been free to walk about in canada was in 2006. emily and i were driving with some of our touring riotfolk friends. we went with them to bellingham for a house show and then decided that we would break away and visit vancouver for a couple of days. we have a friend there. given my history of getting into canada i didnt hold out the greatest hope of getting through, but i did think we could do it.

amazingly we were allowed entry, without even having to pull over or get searched or anything. he just looked at our documents and said enjoy your visit. we went on through and everything was fine. we enjoyed our stay there and when we came back across, same business. handed over our papers and scooted right on through. no hassle.

so, this time, i had some degree of hope. i was nervous as hell, but i figured i could make it across. it was 12:16 when i got in the car to cross. i paid the toll, no problem. waited in the line to canadian customs and talked with emily on the phone. i figured it would be the last time we could talk on the phone for awhile, so i wanted to be able too. when it came to my turn, we hung up and i pulled on up.

i handed over my papers and then was questioned. how long will i be here (2-3 weeks), how much money do i have (about $1600), do i have an itinerary (follow the 401), etc. she was nice and gave me a yellow slip of paper and asked me to pull to the side. thats fine, i though they would just want to see the back of my truck or something. the guy when i pulled over directed me inside to the immigration line. i talked to someone there, and he asked similar questions to what the lady at the crossing gate did. i gave similar answers, i didnt think that i would be turned away, i figured it was just a formality.

well, after sitting awhile, the guy had run me through the system. his findings: 1. i have had an arrest within the past ten years that restricts my entrance 2. he didnt think that i had sufficient funds to sustain a trip of my length 3. he didnt think that i was going to come back.

i will never get to look from the other side.

i was astonished. he took me outside and directed me to the lane that took me back to us customs. he gave me a sheet of paper to hand to the gate guard there. i sat in the line of cars, i watched as a crew (about 10) border patrol officers descended on a car near mine (still in line) because he was taking pictures from his car. i didnt hear what they said but the guy looked pretty scared after the fact. soon, it was my turn to go through customs. of course, i got the hard ass.

he asked me why i had been denied entry to canada and he used a mean voice. eventually he asked me to turn off my car and give him the keys. then my car was surrounded by border patrol agents. yay! i was asked to get out of the car, and put my hands on the car, and spread 'em. i was searched, they took my leatherman. then i was led inside and i heard one of the agents say ("i pegged that one as soon as i saw it" meaning my truck.) i was deposited inside while i saw an agent driving my truck over to an area to be searched.

another agent, a mean looking small guy asked me the same questions again. he scoffed at my charge for resisting arrest. as if i had resisting him, he looked like he wanted nothing more than to throw me on the ground and cuff me/stomp on my face. i just sat there. i mean, there wasnt anything in the truck that they would find suspicious, they could easily see that i lived in there, but i couldnt be bringing something across the border, since i didnt even make it through canadian customs.

this wasnt the outcome i was hoping for, and i was just sitting there, unhappy. after a relatively short while, a female agent came back inside and just dropped my keys in my lap and walked away. i continued to sit there, then the rest of the agents came in and just walked by me. the little guy kind of sneered at me again. then someone i hadnt seen yet gave me back my passport and leatherman tool. i was free to go.

i went outside and someone told me where to exit. i went and parked on the us side and then got out of the truck. it was 1:14, almost a full hour since i turned my thoughts into actions. then i came to write this. crazy.

my first road trip

so, something that i do to keep this writing to be a bit fresh, not just the monotonous. i slept in my truck, woke up and wasted away another day. is, i write out future title to expound on, quips or stories that i can inject as the time comes. well, such is the time.

i have mentioned sporadically my first road trip, it took place in the summer of 1998 with my then girlfriend, melissa medrano. at some point i would like to talk about her also, because i still think about her to this day. the last time i heard anything from her was in 2000, she sent me a terse typed letter that basically said she didnt want to ever talk to me again. i have tried to find her almost everytime i visit the place i grew up. unsuccessfully. anyway.

we were adventurous, or at least stupid. this was after we graduated from high school and i guess we didnt have anything to do. i remember having a job then, but perhaps i had recently quit it, i know my days were free. and my nights, and melissa and i spent much of our time together then. one night, i think we were at the all night coffee shop that we frequented, we came to the conclusion that we should take a trip. and not waste any time.

i relayed this aspect of trip before, it was around 3 in the morning when i woke up my dad and stepmom and informed them that we were going to cleveland. my parents werent into the idea and i was threatened with being kicked out should i embark on the journey. adventure knows no bounds, and with an eye to the future we left despite the warning. we took her car and drove all night to cleveland. then we decided to push on to buffalo, where i currently am.

it was very sweet, we were young and innocent, just looking for adventure. i remember us walking around the town of niagara falls aimlessly looking for the rush of falling water we could hear, but we never found them. we used a payphone to call our parents and i was reminded of the loss of my home status, effective immediately upon my return. i dont know what her parents said but it probably was similarly stern.

regardless, or in spite of this, we made the decision to push on and we spent the night at a truck stop in new york sleeping in the back of her car. i remember the idea of the adventure then. it was awesome, there was nothing that could stop us (except the fact that we had no idea what we were doing and very little to no money). we went to new york city after that.

eventually i would move to just outside of new york city, and although i resided there for 9 months, and have spent nearly two extra months in various visits since, the only time i caught a glimpse of the statue of liberty was on this first trip. from some toll bridge, i saw it and i was probably in some kind of awe because i was seeing things that i maybe thought i would only ever read about. i never had any idea that i would be able to adventure at will in my coming years.

we didnt spend much time in nyc, as i recall. but we were on this trip for over a week and i ont remember how we spent all of the time. the route was pretty simple, we used expressways from chicago to cleveland to buffalo through the heart of ny to the city and then on a southerly route through ny and pa back to chicago. at some point we discussed pushing further south to washington dc, but decided that we couldnt manage with the funds we had.

the youthful joy and adventure that washed over me then is something that i constantly try to manifest. and i have certainly been able to a number of times in the ensuing years. i feel older now and it is harder to replicate that joy, but there are certain times that it washes over me. the most frequent and patterned time is when i am jumping into the back of my truck at night to sleep. that little secret that i am back there and no one knows is something so invigorating, there is so much adventure just jumping into a tiny tin box on some random street in some random town. knowing that regardless of almost anything that happens outside i will just be in there, a silent witness to the world.

(i think i had more that i was going to write into this, but i am going to stop now. maybe i will rehash it again in the future...becasue i know i have already written some about this.)

where the buffalo roam.

well, now i am in buffalo. in ithaca i was waiting on a piece of mail to come to me, it was rther important, the registration tags for my truck. it was the second attempt at getting them from portland to me, and this time it was a success. i was pretty excited to receive them. i left ithaca the next day. on the day that i got the tags, monday, i also participated in a loaves and fishes (sic) meal.

the cascadilla creek!

loaves and fishes is a christian hot-meal program, often offered at churches for low income and homeless folks. well, i am getting ahead of myself. when i first got foodstamps, it was a big deal. i had this thing called pride, and i thought that it would be huge dent in it if i requested and received government aid. this was before i figured out that it was the tax dollars that i was contributing that were eventually paid out in these disbursements, but the first time i was nervous and scared and didnt want to do it.

i dont recall precisely why i did, but once i got through the process, it wasnt that big of a deal. i think my hangup was the idea of food stamps, special money (looked canadian) that you would have to carry and use. now it is all done via electronic balance transfers. food stamps cards, much more discreet and easy to use. eventually i would also get on unemployment, which wasnt so much of a dent because i had already gone through social services once. when i went through to get on them both again, there was no sense of pride or that i shouldnt recieve these things.

anyway, i felt that same sense of potential damage to my pride at the idea of going to a soup kitchen. nevermind that for years i helped maintain one in portland (food not bombs, yo). but there was a distinct difference in my idea of life then, when i was preparing meals and helping serve them i felt above the people that i was serving to. it wasnt conscious or anything that i was trying to bring out, quite the opposite, it was just a middle class sense of affluence that undoubtedly came out in me. i felt superior, and i didnt like it.

i have gotten that sense of superiority at many of the food not bombs meals i have eaten, it is generally easy to tell who prepared the meal and who is there to partake in it. again, i dont think that it is something that anyone is trying to portray, unfortunately it is natural. so, when i was debating going to this loaves and fishes in ithaca, i was expecting that same superiority look, except this time not from people i could identify with, but from christians (eek)!

the reason why i am getting into this now is because my food stamps are most likely not going to be awarded me next month, due to my travels. they have caught on. i hope unemployment doesnt similarly catch on. becasue of this development i am going to have to fill in from somewhere the $200/month that i am currently spending on food from that card. i certainly wont be able to supplement it from my income, so the idea is to be more aware of free meals wherever i am and take advantage of them. less eating all around, and much more focus on the free meals in the community.

anyway, i went to the church that it was being served at and i milled about outside. i kept trying to convince myself to go in, and eventually i did. i was surprised at what i saw. overwhelmingly, it was homeless folks. there were a number of older people that are on fixed incomes and need these meals to survive, and all of the same punk kids that would go to food not bombs were also in line for a meal. the line was long and i felt out of place, i mean i have a cell phone. i felt like people were staring at me and saying that i dont belong. but, most likely they were just focused on eating their food and hanging out with their friends.

as usual with things that i am originally nervous about things turn out just fine. the servers were very nice ladies of varying ages and proffered no looks of superiority or shame. they were just accepting. perhaps they were in the shadow of the lords love. but i am not going to specualte on that. i was also surprised to find that most of the food they served was vegan/vegetarian. it wasnt announced as such but they had a chicken black bean soup, tofu stir fry, rice, steamed greens, salad, watermelon, and breads. and apparently they always have one vegetarian dish.

jesse bastard.

i sat at a table with some folks and listened to the conversations around me and a layer of pride complex washed off of me, and i felt a bit more in touch and like a real person. there isnt any shame in seeking assistance for living, most of the people are just like you. so, i am going to continue to try to find these things and keep up with them.

jesse and i got together after he was done with school and we went out for a drink, then he went home and stayed out reading. we met up later at his place we watched a movie and just enjoyed each others company for the last few hour that i would be there. it was nice hanging out with him, it felt almost like i was back in portland with my friends. except i was in ithaca. i left the next morning after taking a shower and cleaning up all of my stuff.

it was nice to be back out on the road, i wasnt planning on going very far, but there is a very noticeable difference when i am driving away and on to some new place rather than driving around town. it makes me smile very much, so much. i went north on 96 and eventually came to taughanooka (or something like that) falls. awesome. it didnt look like multnomah falls, but it reminded me of that place, it was beautiful. i walked around the lookout point and wanted to take the trail down to the falls but i had to drive quite a ways to the trailhead and the trail was very long to them, i opted against it and continued on towards waterloo.

taughannock falls!

now, we all know that the united states defeated naploean during the french american war in 1863, but how many people knew that waterloo was in upstate new york?

anyway. waterloo wasnt very exciting, i just walked around the main street area and then took off towards canandaigua. i have no idea how to pronounce that name, but it wa a largish looking place and i was trying to meet someone there. i explored the city on my own for quite awhile, walking around and reading at frequent intervals. it seemed like a nice little community tucked away, but these communities all have been tarting have new signs. the signs make life a bit difficult for me, they say "no parking on all roads between 2-5am" which means i cannot park and sleep in front of someones house.

so i drove to the next town looking for a place to sleep, but i didnt find anything. eventually i parked in a large parking lot and slept there. it wasnt the best place, and not very exciting for my first night back in the truck, but everything worked out. the next day i pushed off. i wasnt planning on going straight to buffalo, but thats what happened, it wasnt very far and the towns in between that i had pegged as possible places to overnight never materialized as real places.

when i found myself here in buffalo, it was like a war zone. i came in from the east on highway 20 and then into the city on broadway. it leads straight into the city heart. i knew that buffalo had fallen on hard times, but that eastern bloc of the city was absolutely devastated. the building were all boarded up and a few of them were collapsing upon themselves, but people milled about as if this is how life always is. i drove slowly taking it all in, and eventually i found the city center. it wasnt as bad down there, but it still seemed like a hopelessly crumbling city.

aside from that, i loved the buildings, the architecture. it was a rainy day, yesterday, and i spent some time walking around looking for a coffee shop or something similar where i could sit and read, but i didnt find anything of the sort, so when the rain came down hard i retired to my bed and read back there. it only lasted a little bit and it was still early in the day. i decided to go up by the college, there are coffee shops up there. as i was driving around i came upon a castle.

this is a castle.ho-hum, it looked as if it is apartments now, but it is still a castle in the middle of the city. how awesome! driving around more i eventually got my bearings and found the path toward the college and along the way the city started changing, started looking definitively middle class with nicer homes, still a little run down, but this is the buffalo that i wanted to move to. i saw an awesome little brick commercial building with apartments on top for sale. it was only $105,000 and it was on a main street. that is also the buffalo i wanted to move to.

i found the college town and it was more what i was used to. i walked up and around there, went to the co-op, read my book more. visited the little book store and just enjoyed my time there. i guess i should note here that i also found a puch of rolling tobacco. i am reading this book about che guevara and they are talking about how much he like cuban cigars, and i am trying to eat less so i decided that i would give it a shot. what better hunger supressant that poison?

i had found cigarettes earlier on the trip and couldnt make it through one, they were american spirit blues or blacks, i cant remember which. this was bali shag, my tobacco of choice when i quit smoking. i rolled one up (my favorite pastime) and gave it a go. it was easier than the american spirit of months ago, but i spent about three hours smoking the little cigarette. i am going to hang onto the tobacco and see if it can help me. drugs can be used to a persons benefit so long as you can control the use of them, right? and you are using them with a clear mind and purpose, right? or maybe i am just a hypocrite.

i am going to spend a few more days in buffalo, see what its like and then attempt my border crossing.

what a long strange trip, only six more months to go!

ah, ithaca. i have been here in ithaca for a couple of days now. it is nice. i took a couple of days to get here from bradford. i left there and went north into new york. and it was nice to get out of pennsylvania. i like it there and it is beautiful, but i was ready to be in ny. but, once i got there i just drove east along the border, highway 417. i stopped in wellsville and made a path towards a city called horseheads.

honestly, i only made that my destination because of the name of the city. it was at the northend of a little metropolitan area on the map, it looked like a good place to set up camp. but, quickly, i found out otherwise. first there wasnt any clear downtown area that i could go to walk around at, and that is what i wanted. so i drove around looking for it and ended up in corning, ny. there exists a museum of glass. i walked over to it and around the museum but i didnt want to pay to get in so i just got back into the truck and decided to give horseheads another try. this time i would go at it from the expressway and hopefully find the area i was looking for.

and i found a little downtown area, but before i saw that i saw the sign. the equivalent of "no dogs allowed." the sign said that there was no parking on any city street between 2am and 6am. which means that i would have to find a parking lot to sleep in or risk being towed/messed with by cops. i wasnt into that idea and it was still pretty early. so i decided to drive to the southend of that metro area. to the city of elmira. and that was a jackpot.

elmira is a sleepy little town with a nice little downtown walking area and a college. apparently it is also the place where mark twain is buried. i think it is also where he is from, but i dont know. there were some signs for his gravesite and i followed them but just got lost. how exciting can a gravesite be anyway?

i got over the idea of gravesites being really interesting when i was fifteen. i went to europe as part of a class trip, and i was a long hair hippie at the time. not so much in my demeanor but my dress and my look. i was a bit more rebellious than i think of hippies. i was part of a group of 15 people i think, me and 14 girls. i was certainly awkward and this was an awakening period for me becoming my own person. i think the alcohol helped. anyway, i wont go into that too much right now. but, one of my goals at the time was to see the grave of jim morrison.

i wasnt really allowed to go anywhere on my own and the pere lachaise cemetary wasnt a place that was on the guided tours list, so i asked my teacher if i could go and she said yes, but she would chaperone me. no one else wanted to go so it was awkward. but she was one of the better teachers that i have ever had. she was my spanish teacher and we were in france. go figure. anyway, we went to the gravesite and it was as i had seen in pictures it was awe inspiring for me at the time. i took an entire role of film of the gravesite.

when i got back stateside i stacked all of my film on the kitchen table, and the dog got at them and chewed up only one roll. that was the roll of the gravesite and i was furious. i dont know why that anecdote means that i am over visiting gravesites, writing it out it seems that i just have a mental blockage towards them. a great pain that i dont want to face again.

at any rate, grave yards dont have much draw for me. i have thought that i should explore them more on this trip, but i havent followed that up. when i was leaving elmira i drove around looking for the gravesite, but still unsuccessful, i just moved on.

the river at elmira

elmira had a nice little downtown area that i walked around. they had an awesome river with a bridge and just a trickle, but kids playing in it, the image was just very perfect. it was in the dying sun blah blah blah. i sat on a concrete ledge overlooking the river and just read there for awhile, it was nice. then i walked through downtown reading periodically. i made a halfassed attempt to get to the roof of a building and then went and found a place to sleep. i slept outside the taxi place just near a train track. it was nice to have the rolling trains to fall asleep and wake up too. i like that sound. not necessarily the engine, but the rumbling as the cars go by. whatever.

in the morning i went to the little farmers market that they had set up and walked around that, but there wasnt much action i think it was on wednesday or thursday. who has a farmers market in the morning on those days? after that i jumped on state highway 13 and headed north to ithaca. i am still always nervous to see people on this trip. i wasnt really nervous at all to visit my family and this meeting was as close to that as possible. i wavered only a smidgeon to call my friend jesse bastard. and we got in touch and met up at a bar to celebrate our lives.

it was really nice. we went throughout ithaca to about four different bars, drinking beers and shots and some mixed drinks. we called it a night after spending a couple hours at a bar talking with the bartender and a patron. i am not even sure what it was all about but jesse kept up a conversation with the patron and the bartender kept up conversation with me. it was just a really good night. we went back to his house, probably around midnight and watched some twilight zone (my first time) and had some more beers. then we blew up an air mattress and i got to sleep!

the air mattress isnt a very good one, it deflates after two hours or so, but i am asleep by then and it is just a bit awkward. but i sleep okay on it. jesse attends cornell law school and has spent most of the time sending out resumes, trying to find a job in this desperate market. it seems like a pretty boring/mind numbing/frustrating task. but he is diligent. for the future. when he takes breaks we have spent our time together going around the town, visiting restaurants, walking around the parks, and today we visited the farmers market.

i have been filling my time walking around town, doing laundry, and reading. they have a nice library here and a commons area that is like a pedestrian block. it is nice. yesterday i met some of jesses neighbors. they have a little punk house which is nice, he and i were upstairs in his apartment and i started hearing music from outside. it was loud and it was good. it was the sweet sounds of a band that i like very much, blackbird raum. i assumed that it was the band outside playing because there were clearly a person playing the accordion. however, it was just the neighbors who love the band.

i went outside and watched them play a song. there was a spot where the accordion plays quiet and a lady sings "and it wont be the witches that are burning this time" very loudly, and then everyone joins in. i joined in when everyone was supposed to. to let them know that i didnt just like the music, but that i knew it. i asked them if they were the band and they informed me that they were just fans. it was nice to meet people. thats something i havent been doing enough of. they were going to a peach festival, and the way she said it seemed like an offer, but i am not that bold.

this was in bradford, pa. but i put it here.

so i just spent my time walking around downtown. ithaca also has an awesome food co-op. it has a main store (which i found first) and a satelite store downtown (which bastard showed me later). i spent some time outside the main store, enjoying some of their food and reading. i like this town. and right now is a real good time to be here, early fall. the morning are cold and the afternoons are warm. i think that it would be really impossible to enjoy it here when there is two feet of snow on the ground. snow is not something that i agree with.

i am still waiting for my tags to come to me here in the mail, hopefully they come tomorrow and i will then leave on tuesday or wednesday. i know i talk about it often, but for whatever reason time is really catching up with me. for the months before now i thought that i would have all the time in the world, that i would be in florida by november. now i am hoping to be in richmond by november. and that doesnt even seem likely. it is crazy to think about. my plan to go from here back to buffalo and then northeast through canada and south from there. my plan has always been to visit maine, and that will happen. i had always thought that i would be in maine right about now, but i spent too much time in pgh and in indiana. not that i regret those times, but just havent been managing my time as well as i should.

or maybe i am and i just being over critical. overall, i am looking forward to toronto.