dream!
the flip side of reality
sunday, july 1, 2007
..
too little, too late
saturday, june 30, 2007
bike touring alaska
Wendy and I are traveling by bicycle up the coast of Alaska. It's really beautiful, full of tree-shaded roads and rocky coastline and little bridges and ferries.
We arrive at a small town that's very sleepy, at the south end of a little inlet. We want to cross the inlet to the sister town on the other side of the water, but the one man we speak to tells us the ferry is closed for the night and we'll have to wait until morning. As it is still light, we wish to press on and by examination of a map I find a spot where we may be able to hitch a small ride across. Even better, when we get there, there is a thin spit of dry (or only slightly muddy) land that connects the two landmasses.
We arrive across the way up a quaint country road; it's a small but lively town that never sees tourists and it's remote enough that we are a bit of a novelty among its surprisingly young agricultural inhabitants. We have a seat at the one restaurant, which turns out to be the only nighttime hangout in town.
A girl hands me a little business card-sized piece of plastic; it's squishy and has my name overmolded in orange and neon green. It's her attempt at tourist trade; she wants me to buy it, but I smell the rouse and say I'm not interested. She seems to lose her strategy and the nice person in her comes out and she tells me with a smile to keep it anyway.
He boyfriend joins her and they sit down with us to be hospitable and chatty. We decide that we want to cover a lot of ground tonight, skip the next rugged part of coast and catch a ride up to the northern point of Alaska (Pt. Barrow, right?). They tell us there is a bus leaving soon and wer may be able to get bikes on it. Sure enough, it arrives a few blocks away and I rush over there to negotiate with the driver.
He is cute and jolly (everyone is SO NICE here, must be memories of Canada) and at first tells me he could squeeze in a few more passengers but there is no room for bikes on this bus. I then point out the two large yellow bike racks on the back--can't we use those? There is also a flatbed with framing all around it that we could strap them to. I tell him I'm a sailor so my knots are good, and he agrees.
The ride is 30 hours, he tells me, and there is an open room near the back where people have laid out their sleeping bags to reserve a spot to lay down when it gets night. I am surprised that there are still some blank spaces (up on a platform) and I decide to just lay out there now. Momentarily it is Pat traveling with me and he lays out too, his giant hairy feet sticking out from under his bag.
But really it is a train and as I go back to explore, there are a series of dorm rooms with bunks and still some space... but then, and here is the jackpot-- a huge room with just two empty beds in it! I can't believe our fortune and Wendy and I take up residence there. We decide if someone really does want to share it, we won't e greedy, and we'll let them in. But nobody does.
A friend of mine is in a crowded dorm next door and I climb up top (waking a few in the process) to hand him some sort of note.
Hmm, if we had known we would make it this far north, we could have planned to visit Matt, Wendy's brother, who lives in Koyuk!
friday, june 29, 2007
$660
I'm traveling in a school bus with a few others. Colleen and Charles are there, must be a work function. But Then I'm in a hotel with the Alley Cats and when it comes time to check out, the woman at reception wants me to pay $660, and they don't take credit cards! Geez, such an expensive hotel. Oh well, we must be getting paid well for this gig. I resign to paying, but still don't know how I'll do it. Aha- it turns out that it's an error; the room is really going to be considerably less, but she still needs me to square up the $660 before rectifying for a discount.
Danika has moved into a house with a nice yard and solar panels. She just happens to have an old boat trailer her dad gave her, and so it's the perfect spot for the Supernova. This boat is alternatively an airplane, showing some signs of wear on the wooden wings. I worry a little bit about dropping out of the sky, but it'll probably be okay.
I call a solar installer about those panels and they ask me about 1) Borrego Solar (who I guess originally set them up, I should have really called them instead, but didn't think of it), 2) Cubic, where I used to work, and then 3) PowerLight/SunPower, although he is surprisingly completely uninterested in the fact that I actually work for a big installer.
thursday, june 28, 2007
sex at the border?
I'm helping to fix a machine at work; it's a big computer that makes little sounds but won't go, kind of like the computer here on my desk that I stayed up late trying to troubleshoot.
When I'm done Wendy and I drive the Geo through Mexico back north to the US border. When we get to the front of the queue, the woman at the station leaves to take a break. we don't know if we are supposed to wait there or go back and get in another line. Another employee suggests we just drive on through but we're not sure if that person is legit or toying with us. we do have a pile of fruit that someone is likely to care about.
We go into the little cafe/building and a few people are ordering burgers from a tiny short-order kitchen. standing room only in there. The woman we were lined up to talk to has left very quickly--gone home for the day. Eventually we go back to the car and drive off. Loosest border in the USA!
Somehow Maribelle from work saw us there (she also worked at the border station, or perhaps she was the one who went home) and she teases us that we probably had sex at the station while we were waiting for the agent that didn't come.
Later I see another part of Mexico, a more beautiful historic area, with a giant round horizontal stone Aztec or Mayan sun circle, an acre huge.
Jenya has an amazing new computer and monitor. It folds out onto the desk flat, like a newspaper. One large middle panel with a giant monitor (maybe 25") and then a panel on either side with 16" screens, one vertical and one horizontal, plus all the controls. While Reuben and I check it out, I ask him what it's like to carry that thing around. Heaviest laptop he's ever had, he says.
wednesday, june 27, 2007
whoa there
bicycle tripping... heading out to an island here or there. The snooze button on the real-world clock radio feels like a brake handle.
And because of that very snoozing the rest of my morning dreaming is apparently lost.
tuesday, june 26, 2007
no time to work with all this partying
PowerLight (actually now SunPower Systems) throws yet another big party, this one in addition to the goodbye brand name party I missed last Friday. We're all lead down to a giant hall near the water somewhere, and as we approach there's an amazing sky show, like thousands of small balloons rushing from a single spot in a current above our heads. Tom has turned the entire hall into a giant installation work. Some of it is cheesy (just the SunPower logo done up in an imitation style, this could be coming from San Jose influence), but some of it is quite clever and offbeat. Something happens out on the water and when one person (it's Graham from Cubic!) has to leave early, it accidentally spawns a wave of almost everyone leaving early, until just Tom and I remain. (they all have work to get back to; I don't have much piled up yet since I've been on vacation) But there are still more installations on the way out that hold the attention of several. In one spot three hardcore pornos are being screened next to each other in some artful way. Yessir, maybe as a fuck you to conservative corporate walking-on-eggshells-so-as-not-to-offend-anyone culture. the porn is very weird; looks like people having sex with some sort of homemade person?
I totally miss the one meeting I have planned for today, and when I return at midnight those poor guys are still hacking away at it. I feel a bit guilty when I finally move to join the meeting and they have wrapped it up for the night.
Heather Meyers (how the heck is she in my head?) shows up and gives me a lingering great-to-see-you hug that clicks Wendy over into a mildly suspicious frame of mind.
monday, june 25, 2007
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