What Next?

Here comes another big one, sorry it's been so long, but i have been really busy. Well, maybe busy isn't exactly the right word, but very occupied. I realized the other day that there have now been somewhere around a dozen 72 hour or so periods where I haven't even seen a building, which I think is kind of cool. I guess I should start back at String Summit, because I never really gave a good account of what happened from there anyway. So all weekend I spent running around with Alex, Haley, and a good bunch of Colorado family. Horning's Hideout is awesome, and I think the high point of the weekend might have been at the end of "No Expectations" on saturday night when a space station flew overhead and we all turned down the lights and stared at it together. You can hear it all on Archive.org, check it out. It was, as expected, a completely magical experience, and I urge anyone that can to go and participate sometime. As they always do, Monday morning came far too quickly, and I said "goodbyes" to everyone and headed down to the recycling barn to go make myself useful. A few crazy days and nights later, after I had fallin in and out of love in 48 hours, I ended up in Diego Fuego's van headed north. Diego, or Doug for short, and his girlfriend Lacy were heading back up to the ranch where they lived so that Lacy could gather her things and move back to Portland to continue on her path towards her p.h.d. The plan at that time was to head up to the farm with them for a few days and bale hay to hopefully make some cash and some good square meals. Then I was going to head back to Portland with them and go see my new friend Linda. When we got to the farm, I met Brian, or just B, and his nephew Mason, who was visiting for a few weeks from So Cal, along with Mary and Bob, the proprietors of the Hoh Humm bed and breakfast ranch. I got some great pictures of the summit and the ranch, but sadly, my camera was stolen out of the van somewhere in Montana, and I lost them all. On that note, I would love it if people started submitting pictures of the places mentioned, or of yourselves, its time to start making this more of an interactive experience. I currently need pictures of: the 8th annual Northwest String Summit, the Hoh Humm ranch, Polebridge and Glacier National Park, and Lolo Hot Springs and the Darkstar Orchestra show that took place there. Anyway, I hung out at the ranch where I learned all kinds of cool things, and we discovered the Darkstar show. Doug and B each had not much going on, and needed an adventure, so invited me to join them on a road trip to go see Darkstar Orchestra at Lolo Hot Springs, 45 miles southwest of Missoula, MT; and meet some of their friends up at Polebridge, which is the little pirate town at the mouth of west Glacier. I immediately agreed, and we set about getting ready for the journey. We spent a week fixing the van, taking care of things around the ranch, and turning a Llama into jerky for the journey (it was an extra male, and llama herds don't operate well with too many males when in captivity as they all fight for dominance). We still headed back down to Portland for a few days, and I got to go spend them with Linda, the queen of the Ganja Fairies. Linda is an amazing, beautiful woman that has a really cool piece of land southeast of Portland. She most definitely has fairies that live on her property with her, and that sounds kind of silly until you see the place... but we also have the same birthday, which is really cool. It got up to 109 while we were hanging out, which I hear is close to record setting temperatures for Portland. After several fun days with Linda, I met back up with Doug, and we headed back up to the ranch to get B and the jerky. As it turns out, the ranch is about 40 miles south of Forks, WA, which I guess is the setting for those stupid vampire books that everyone seems to be reading. I only say they are stupid because I haven't read them, but Forks is capitalizing on the fad in a huge way, and there is even a store there called "Searching Twilight" or something dumb like that. Fucking vampire kids... So we grabbed the last of the supplies and headed east again. We blasted through the night, and made it from the northwest coast of Washington to Glacier Natl. Park in 15 hours, and hung out at Polebridge, riverboarding and playing volleyball for a week. We stayed with the Ramone family, who are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and made a different group of friends every night with the tourist flow through traffic from Glacier. The plan was to show up to Lolo early and get ourselves on volunteer crew rather than pay for tickets. This was the 12th festival that Doug did this for so far this summer, and it is really easy if you don't mind working. We left Glacier and made it to some state campgrounds called Lee Creek a mile or so west of Lolo. The campground host here is hereby nominated for biggest douchbag in the universe, by me, officially. After we made sure to double check with him that we were camped legitimately and for the appropriate fee, he still woke us up the next morning demanding that we pay up, or he was "callin the cops." So, groggy, and freshly woken up, we asked what the problem was, and he explained that he had no record of us paying him, and that this was a crime, blah blah blah, and that we owed him $10 immediately. After having already put the $5 our national parks pass said we owed into the box, we gave the dude a 20 and apologized sincerely for any misunderstanding, and went back to bed. About an hour later, the jackass shows back up with Ranger McFriendly, whom he had called and told that we refused to pay. When we stumbled back out of the tent again and tried to sort things out, the old bastard had the nerve to stand there for twenty minutes and say that he had no receipt of us ever paying, and he didn't know anything about our money. Finally, after all three of us refused to budge, and the ranger started seriously losing interest, he grumbled something about thinking that we were making a donation to the park, he would go run and grab a receipt, blah blah blah. If you drive by here and see the grumpy old bastard that works as the campground host for Lee Creek, pee on his door or something. Nothing seriously harmful, just teach the old fuck a lesson, or maybe just drive up and give him a hug out of the blue, I think maybe that would be better actually. Again, sorry for tangenting out (made up word, I know) but the Ranger there told us about some hot springs up the way with free camping that we would probably like a lot more, so we headed west on route 12, and ended up at Weir Creek. A small parking lot at the end of a guard rail near milemarker 142 are the only trailhead, but there are a dozen or so primo campsites and a few very nice rustic pools starting about a half mile up the trail. The first one is about 105 degrees and sits 7 comfortably. We hung out here for about a week eating fish that Doug caught and a big back of bacon we had got for 5 dollars. We had bacon in I think 6 meals in a row there. Delicious. After the springs, we rolled over to Lolo four days before show time, and got hired right away. Lolo hot springs is a very very cool little place, with two large cemented in pools, one hot, one warm, a bar with a great pool table and jukebox, and then across the street, room for at least 1000 people to camp. Up behind the bar is a 12 hole, backyard frisbee golf course that is a lot of fun to play. One of the friends I made hit two holes in one, including a double eagle on this par four. It was awesome. The whole resort is located in a little bowl where the valley opens up for about a quarter mile to make the perfect little bowl of rock around the river. The sound was amazing, and despite the rain that never really seemed to let up until monday, Darkstar threw down and rocked the house for two nights. It was really cool getting to see the entire festival happen, from putting up the first fence to tearing everything down on sunday morning. Those guys are having another party the 21 and 22 with Jessica Kilroy and Railroad Earth. If you can make it, you should, it will blow your mind how cool this place is. This is where the Hoh River crew had to split up, unfortunately, and B had to head back to take care of some very serious family shit that came up, and me having to start heading south towards Burning Man. I was planning on going to Grand Targhee Bluegrass, but I think an extra week in Colorado is going to be a little bit better for my headspace right now, especially with the Burn fast approaching. Right now I am hanging with Eric, or Matthias, in Billings, MT, with Jennifer and her beautiful family. We are partying down at a railroad earth show here tomorrow night, then I am heading to Denver and CB on Thursday. The last few weeks have been a wild crazy ride, and a continuing affirmation that I am on that path that I need to be on. I have seen and felt things that can not possibly be conveyed in writing, and have reached some very interesting conclusions on life. Again, conclusions might not be the right word, because they are only observations that I'm sure will change and grow constantly throughout my life with me, but some "seriously heavy shit" nontheless. I apologize too that this entry is so sporadic, i'm just kind of barfing stuff up that still hasn't been completly digested, but I had to get something out. Again, sorry about the pictures, but I'll be getting stuff up. Thank you to everyone that has helped me along on my journey, with everything from a hot meal to a kind word or a smile, and especially for all the great rides. Thank you to everyone for listing and exploring the world with me. I love you all.
G. J. Supertramp...