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The Poker Run
Where you are going is always where you are. The destination is always the getting there. So at the end of all my journeys it is 45 degrees and gray. I am sitting all alone at a red light on an empty stretch of Pacific Coast Highway. There is not a cop in sight so [...]
Continue reading...Burnout Wednesday
1. September 2009
As long as I was in the greater Rapid City – Gillette metropolitan area I figured I might as well ride over to the Devils Tower and pay my respects. It only took me about fifty miles out of my way. Then it turns out, to make a long story short, Devils Tower does not [...]
Continue reading...Laughlin Glory Days
12. May 2009
I rank irony first among virtues. I worship a sardonic God. I am not just typing. I am testifying. I saw Him once. I thought I was dead. He smirked at me, reached out his hand and tossed me back. Just like that. I have been laughing ever since. I laugh at the plague of [...]
Continue reading...Wild, Wild West
4. May 2009
Look at me now, not a care, ignorant as Adam, speeding down the Mojave Valley Highway in our traditional garb. My head is bare. I am stripped to the waist. I have on a pair of dirty Wranglers with a little, tiny knife hole in the left thigh; a big, brass belt buckle that proclaims [...]
Continue reading...Escape From El Lay
30. April 2009
The beach used to be where the poor people lived. And, even though the new houses here have become more expensive than Beverly Hills the beach is where some of us poor people still do live. It is possible to stagger out of the waves, cross the broad strand and face a trophy chopper displayed, [...]
Continue reading...Vung Tau
9. April 2009
So, I run into the impossible traffic jam that the California Highway Patrol has created on the 405. Somebody or another has abandoned a Tercel in the south bound carpool lane. Probably they ran out of gas. Maybe they stole the car and then they ran out of gas. Maybe the thieves are walking to [...]
Continue reading...Neptune’s Net
10. March 2009
Get on Interstate 10 anywhere-Jacksonville, El Paso, Berdoo. Ride west until you reach the end. I get on at the San Diego Freeway. All the way north from the South Bay the traffic has been stop and go. Cars accelerate as quickly as possible to sixty, change lanes in a desperate attempt to escape, then [...]
Continue reading...Bombay Beach
2. March 2009
There is a war in northern Mexico. Right now you should pretend it ain’t so. Mexico is not a “failed state.” Old Mexico is no more failed than Iraq, Afghanistan or the United States. Hell, only about six thousand people died in this alleged war last year. The United States is only going to give [...]
Continue reading...Leonard’s Mountain
7. January 2009
I’m going about seventy miles an hour, a hundred feet a second, when I hit a white wall. It has been patchy fog all the way from the coast but now, suddenly, it is dangerous. And approximately, poetically, this is about how I expect to die. First I will be invisible and then I will [...]
Continue reading...Historic Route 66
17. November 2008
Don’t call it Route 66. Call it “Historic Route 66.” That is what it says on thousands of signs like tombstones in hundreds of lingering little towns. Route 66 died right after Vietnam. Or, if you prefer, you can call it the “Mother Road.” You know like, “meet me at the corner of Mother Road [...]
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27. April 2010
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