I arrived at Roger's Campground around 3:00 p.m. Saturday. I set up my tent and then went looking for other Porcupines. I soon met a couple and over the next few hours several more showed up. There was a lot of putting faces to email addresses. For the last couple years many Porcs chatting via email to grow the FSP from an idea to about 4100 members about ready to pick one of ten states to become the free state.
Talking and drinking were the focus on the first night. Late night brought out the playing cards for an always to be friendly game of President (aka: Asshole). Several of us sat around a picnic table in the screened in Taj-Mahal. Keith from Baltimore and I scratched our heads long enough to remember the rules for the game. As it happens many times when playing cards with Hardy the rules favored me for the first round. I was elected President and Keith was VP. I slipped to VP the next round, but remained VP until the end of the game. Dave (aka: Jester) from Pittsburgh declared me to be an evil dictator who liked creating Draconian rules. Dave though was happy with his beer and was a comedian the whole week. Other players in the game were Amanda a pilot with a broken down van from MA, Rich from NH, James from Nashua and his wife. We learned, well mostly Jester learned, that power corrupts.
It rained a little overnight and was cold on Sunday. Sunday was the day for talks. Speakers talked on how great NH would be for the choice of the "Free State". I left after lunch to return to Westford, VT to aunt Marilyn's house for birthday pie for Ethan and myself. After dinner and pie, I dallied around a little while longer and then decided to make the two hour return trip to NH. Sunday night was similar to the previous night and I retired to my tent as dawn was breaking.
Late Monday morning Bonnie arrived at the campground. Bonnie was the first person that at the event that I had previously met. I met her at my first national Libertarian convention in DC in 1998. She is the webmaster of the NYLP site and I was webmaster of the VT site. Our paths have crossed a handful of times over the years. In the afternoon, I went hiking with George from NH up a nearby mountain. About 10 ten minutes from the top the rain started, at the top the thunder started, we awed over the view, and ooo'd over the parts of the view we could imagine being covered in the distance by the storm. On returning to the campgrounds leftovers were served from the previous night's festivities that I had missed while I has having my own festivities. More beverages, talk, and things were shared this night around an campfire.
Tuesday, Bonnie and I decided to take the Cog Railroad up Mt. Washington. Riding the cog railroad was a very bumpy ride and soot from the coal fired steam engine floated in the windows. The ride was beautiful. We stood at the train while it was climbing the steepest 28 degree pitch on the Jacob's Ladder section of the track. It was 90 degrees at the bottom of the mountain, but the top was a refreshing 65 degrees. There was a small patch of snow on a distant mountain that people still hiked to ski down. We hiked around the top for the 20 minutes we had free to explore. The trip down displayed a view of an large valley without houses and roads with high mountains which is very rare east of the Mississippi River. We stopped at a swimming hole a few minutes from the cog rail. Teenagers were jumping off the ledges into cold deep pools. We watched for a time before heading to town to buy supplies for the night. Wine, yumm.
A few of us where looking forward to flying with Amanda in a small rental plane. Jester Dave was very interested flying. Bonnie had to go to Seattle on Saturday. Swish, bamm, boom, the flight over NH turned into a flight to Seattle, IF we could talk Amanda into it.
Wednesday was a relaxing day of meeting and greeting a couple new porcupines. We relaxed a couple hours in and by the pool. While we did use some sunscreen the sunburn still kick in later in the evening. By five Wednesday afternoon our chances didn't look good for the plane trip. Bonnie and I made a decision to pack up and drive to Burlington. From Burlington she could buy a commercial flight to Seattle or we could drive and be two hours closer to our destination. I wanted to go to Burlington because Jimmy was visiting from Oregon. Also, I was hoping to visit him in a few weeks when I took my road trip west. We met Jimmy and Dave at Three Needs in Burlington. We arrived first to be greeted by Tom, Mike, Ed, and another friend of Tom's. It was Ed's bachelor party of sorts. We had a drink with Tom and gang and then Dave and Jimmy walked in the door. After Three Needs we grabbed some food at Country Kart. The food hit the spot because Bonnie and I ate nothing earlier in the day except the beer we just had. We tented in Dave's backyard.
Flights were expensive so we decided to make the road trip to Seattle. We had exactly 48 hours to drive 3250 miles. We left Thursday at 8:30 a.m. and had to be in Seattle on Saturday at 8:00 a.m. We needed to find a place to park Bonnie's Jeep. We couldn't leave it at Dave's for a couple weeks so the backup plan was to leave it at my aunt's house in Shelburne. It had to be nonstop to make it and even that required us to break the speed limits occasionally. The plan was route 90 from Albany to Seattle. The first day of driving was fast. We made good time to Chicago, but after a week of partying and limited sleep we couldn't pull the non-stop trip that we had hoped for so the first night we slept for three hours. We were now three hours behind. Bonnie pointed out that we forgot to include the time zones in our calculations, SWEET we are still on schedule. Beautiful small white farms dotted the landscape in Minnesota & Wisconsin. In South Dakota we spotted the badlands south of I-90, the Corn Palace and of course thousands of billboards for Wall Drug starting the state line until we passed Wall. We stopped in Mitchell for gas, but never saw the Corn Palace.
You might think 48 hours coast to coast would be a big feat to accomplish, but that isn't the best part. Try driving 3250 miles in a car that is stick-shift with one driver who doesn't know how to drive a stick. Bonnie learned fast and is almost a pro now at shifting, but the first few tolls delayed us a few minutes while Bonnie learned about friction points, clutch, and gas. She made up for the lost time by going over 115 mph on the straightaways.
The sun setting over the Grand Tetons was amazingly beautiful. Bonnie made short work of Montana and Idaho driving about 10 hours. I finished up the drive into Seattle driving through some beautiful valleys and crossing the Columbia River east of Seattle. We drove about 10 minutes out of the way because we thought we could head for Tacoma to get to the airport. If we stayed on I-90 and we would have pulled into the Radison Hotel at exactly 8:00 a.m., but arriving at 8:10 after driving 3250 miles and 48 hours isn't shabby. We hi-fived each other for a job well done.
To be continued...
Here is the second installment of Bonnie's & Hardy's NH to WA trip - "The Turn Around"
Bonnie walked into the Libertarian National Committee meeting during the moment of silence excited to apply all of the Robert's Rules of Order she learned on the car ride west. I, on the other hand, checked into a room and relaxed after the 48 hour cross country flight out of NH.
After settling into the room, I went in search of a SprintPCS store to drop off a payment for Bonnie while she was in the meeting, and I also found a power adaptor for my Palm Vx which beeped about low batteries the whole trip west.
I went down to join Bonnie in the meeting, but they went into executive session so I couldn't go in. Several people who were not LNC members waited in the hall until they were allowed back in. Introductions were done. Two Washington State Libertarians were here to learn how business was done at the national level. A husband and wife from VA were also here to participate. Executive session finished, but it was now lunch time. Everyone did something different for lunch. Bonnie and I went with Sean and some others back to their room. We compared travel stories -- three of them drove out from NC to attend the event. Sean shared home cooked chicken and other goodies brought from home. The afternoon session was filled with exciting debate about whether or not to raise dues, what role the LNC should have compared to the chair and executive director. The meeting recessed until the following morning.
Saturday night we took a trip into Seattle to visit a friend of Bonnie's named Dominic. Dominic is one of the main organizers of the Seattle Hemp Fest. The Seattle Hemp Fest is the largest hemp fest in the world. Over 125,000 people attend it over several days. Woody Harrelson was a surprise guest last year, and he is returning this year as a headliner. Sunday was the Gay Pride Parade. Dominic and his friends were making plans for the partying that was going to happen all day Sunday. For dinner we ate some amazingly yummy Thai at the Blue Canal. The Tom Kha Gai soup was especially good.
Sunday, we were back in the meeting. More meeting stuff happened. After the meeting was happy hour. We had about 2 hours to burn up until happy hour started in Geoff Neale's (the Chair) room. We had time so we drove about 30 minutes to Rick Holland's house. Rick hosted us Sunday night so we pitched the tent in the backyard and played some pool. We returned to the conference center for drinks. Luckily they had snacks, too, because I hadn't eaten much earlier in the day. I thought the party was far more exciting and productive than the actual meeting. I met the Executive Director, Joe Seehusen. The highlight of the evening was Mike Rosetti. Mike spent lots of time defending his right to travel from the incorporated States. He has beaten all of the charges against him for not having a drivers license and such, but he spent a lot of time in jail before the judges got around to throwing out his cases. As the evening progressed, we discussed coming up with a new word to brand which would describe freedom or liberty and also creating a multi-million selling libertarian computer game.
Monday morning was spent connected to the net. Catching up on email, bills, and the like. We left Rick's to finish our western trip; our goal was Long Beach. Although the bill was paid for Bonnie's phone, it still wasn't working. I drove while Bonnie talked with Sprint about fixing her phone. Customer service almost had it fixed when we lost the cell signal. We drove a while longer until we had a strong signal again and I pulled over. It took Bonnie about 3 seconds to discover a treasure trove of blackberries on the side of the road. We picked berries, Bonnie was on hold, and after about an hour the phone was back in order and we were headed for the Pacific Ocean.
Being on the coast meant oysters and seafood. We were getting hungry and looked for a place to eat. We were still about 30 minutes from the ocean and I suggested we find a nice place to eat overlooking the ocean. Bonnie liked that idea. The LightShip Restaurant was on the second floor. They sat us at a window with a gorgeous sunset just starting over the Pacific. After dinner we set out for Fort Canby campground which was also on the ocean. Fort Canby was Lewis and Clark's turn around spot after their cross country trip in the early 1800s*; fittingly it was also our turn around spot. We'll be heading east in the morning. We setup the tent, plugged the laptop into the site's outlet, locked the laptop in the front trunk, grabbed a blanket, and headed for the ocean. Tiny driftwood lodges dotted the beach. We ducked into the first vacant lodge which was about six by six feet. We watched the sun finish setting. Around 1:30 a.m. we woke up and returned to camp.
The following day we packed the tent and went north for a short sight seeing trip. We stopped at a thrift store so Bonnie could buy clothes...[Neither of us were prepared for a long trip west. I was packed for a few days in NH. Bonnie had travelled to NH for a night from the Coney Island Mermaid Parade where her group participated as the Mermaid Militia equipped with a half dozen super soaker assault water guns. Another aside, one night at the campground in NH Keith, Bonnie and I initiated force by attacking a neighboring Porcupine's campsite with the water guns. The defenders drafted children to defend them, but we didn't show any mercy. All of us kids enjoyed the water fight.] After the thrift shop, we found a spot on the beach in front of a log to spread the blanket. We spent a couple hours snacking and playing in the water. It was time to move on. We had a interesting choice to make. We choose to drive south on the Ocean Beach Public Highway. The OBPH was 20+ miles of beach that people drove their vehicles on. We drove along the surf on the hard pack for about ten miles. We passed the first off ramp to the beach and passed it hoping to travel by beach for a bit longer. The next off ramp was mostly soft sand and it was unlikely the car could make it through it. Going south was out of the question because now the beach was full of sunbathers. Our only option was to turn around and go back to the previous off ramp which was built up so that there was a hard pack road from the hard pack sand to the asphalt. On the drive back to Seattle an American Bald Eagle soared across the road about 50 feet above us.
Tuesday night we attended a meeting that Dominic told us about for the Seattle Hemp Fest core group of organizers and volunteers. Both Bonnie and I have helped organize similar events on our respective states so it was a very interesting experience watching this group of 30 people hold a meeting for their event. They had the most efficient meeting I've ever been to. They also served some yummy chocolate pound cake during the break for one of the volunteer's birthday. We had sushi for dinner. I had a bad reaction to something I ate earlier in the day which resulted in dinner being re-served in the front seat of the car. Bonnie drove us south toward Portland. We found a Best Value motel in Long View for the night.
Wednesday, house cleaning staff woke us up at 10:59 so we packed everything quickly and checked out. I drove south to Portland where we were meeting my friend Gary at Power Media, Inc. PMI used to distribute my Newton OS software for me. Gary gave us a tour of his offices and we had went out for Italian food for lunch with his wife. Bonnie picked up some brochures for Portland and we decided to tour the Japanese Garden. There was a large sand/rock garden, lots of little waterways, moss, bamboo, statutes, and benches. We made use of all of the benches and it took us about two hours to tour the whole garden.
After the Japanese Garden we walked to the Rose Garden. Portland has public tennis courts with roses growing on the outside of all of the courts fences. One court had a golden retriever with a mouth full of tennis balls. The garden itself had millions of flowers. No worries, we stopped and smelled many of the roses. The tea roses had the best smell. It was about 6:00 so we started the trip south east toward Jimmy's house in Bend. A twisty-turny scenic road out lead us out of Portland. The drive to Bend was beautiful. Fast roads, mountain lakes, tall trees, and sunsets over the mountain ranges were passed on the way to Bend. Jimmy met us downtown Bend where we bar hopped before a long tiring drive back to Jimmy's house.
Thursday was a relaxation day. We woke up late. Jimmy and I walked Zion and Maya. I sniffed the Ponderosa Pine which smells of butterscotch. Nicole and Jimmy's friends Kim and Sheldon set up a tent in the backyard. That night we played several fun rounds of the card game Fluxx which has ever-changing rules.
Friday, The Fourth, Bonnie and I drove into Bend. We shared an old fashion root beer float at the old fashion fountain soda shop and wandered around town shopping. That night we watched fireworks. Watching fireworks on the west coast is a very different than the east coast. Firework shacks appear the first week of June. Everyone buys them. The result was the free market firework show that was happening in a 180 degree panorama show surrounding the hill we were on. It was as just as beautiful as the tax funded government display that were set off at the butte on the other side of the hill. We stopped into one more party before heading home. The guests of honor of the second party were both victims of the war on drugs. The guy was an American political prisoner for dealing drugs, and the girlfriend was in a bad car accident on the way to visit him in jail.
Jimmy and I went to La Pine for breakfast. When we returned, Bonnie played us the ballad of Bernard Goetz on Nicole's guitar. Tentative plans are Reno, Salt Lake City, Denver/Boulder, Kansas City, Chicago, home & home.
* The Fort Canby turn around spot for Lewis & Clark might or might not be true. There was an interpretive tour about Lewis & Clark which we didn't have time to take, but I'm sure they would have told us it was the turn around spot. (A quick facts check at http://www.lewisandclarkwa.com confirms my story.)
Howdy,
Part three of Bonnie's & Hardy's NH to WA trip - "Deserts from OR to CO"
I drove NV. Bonnie drove UT & WY. It's deserted. Nothing to see.
Hardy & Bonnie
Howdy,
Okay, there's a bit more to the desert than nothing.
Bing-bing-bing-richochet-rabbits bouncing off the front bumper of the car. Some bouncy and not so bouncy things come out at night in the desert in Nevada. We had driven the car fast, but I hadn't slalommed the imaginary cones in the road yet. Nevada gave me real cones in the way of jack rabbits. Hundreds of the buggers come out at night. They try running across the road, part way across and back, down the road, and toward the headlights. To avoid accidents I usually slammed on the brakes so I would stop quickly and straight. Once, I swerved back and forth in order to mix up my defensive maneuvers in case the bunnies were connected telepathically. It worked most of the time, but I still ended up with a brace of rabbits confirmed dead. Score: rabbits 98, H&B 2, one unconfirmed.
But, rabbits are not the only things on the open range deserts of Nevada. Cattle think it is great fun to travel by the sides of the roads at night. One startled us in the left hand lane so I slowed down only to glance to the right where two bigger bovines stared at us from the right hand shoulder. I jumped out of my seat, stopped and reversed the car to take a picture. They started running before Bonnie was ready to take the shot so we probably have two hind ends in the picture.
We drove past the Pyramid Lake where thousands of Pelicans hang out and mate when it is time for them to do that sort of thing. It was dark so we didn't see any of the lake. We were almost out of gas and had to stop for the night until a gas station would open up. Our choices for the remainder of the night were either the high school or the museum parking lots. We investigated the museum and determined the roof would be where we setup the sleeping bags for the night.
The morning sun rose over the eastern mountains. We broke camp, but still had to wait until 7:00 for the gas station to open so we made some breakfast. A police car drove by around 6:30 followed shortly after by the police helicopter. The copter circled around a bit with their guns (maybe binoculars) fixed on our vehicle in case we were dangerous museum goers. We waved to them and they left us in peace.
Gassed up at 7:00 and headed to Carson City to visit my friend Michelle. We arrived in Carson City at 8:30. We visited the capital building. Michelle called us back while we were checking out the old Supreme Court chambers. We met Michelle and Armando for brunch which consisted of sandwiches on very yummy bread. Good bread has been hard to find on the road. We went back to Michelle's hung out, swam, went to a BBQ restaurant for dinner, and then stayed at Michelle's for the night.
Monday, we left for Reno to find a pawn shop. We were looking for a traveling guitar for Bonnie. We passed on any gambling. As Bonnie says, we can do higher level math so we know the odds are in favor of us losing all of the money we bring into the casinos. We sat on the corner with the cell phone surfing the net for pawn shops. We found some childrens guitars, but no traveling guitars. I drove out of Reno, but after the first stop Bonnie took over driving. Bonnie is a lead foot so we got across NV and stopped for the night at a Motel 8. We wanted to do some internet work, but there wasn't a local access number. Bonnie used the time to iron and cut out fabric for a dress she started making with fabric found in the Long Beach thift shop.
Tuesday, the drive to Salt Lake in UT was quick. We stopped at a state park to check out the Great Salt Lake. I wanted to take a dip to see how easy it was for me to float. It was stinky. There was also a 12 inch solid boarder around the lake of small flies. Yuck. We passed on swimming and headed to Salt Lake City. We called my cousin Laurie to find out what to do in SLC, and she recommended lunch at the Garden Restaurant at the top of the Joseph Smith Building.
After lunch we stopped at the 4th floor to use the family research center to research our family trees. We then walked through the flower gardens in Temple Square and did a bit more walking around town before leaving.
On the way out of town I had Bonnie run MacStumbler on my Powerbook to find an open wireless Internet connection that we could use. We found one in under five minutes at a hotel/bar. We parked in front of a fire hydrant and did some needed Internet work from the car. After the battery died we had no more reason to stay in SLC. The drive to Denver was by route 80 across Wyoming and down to Denver. The sun went down when we were in western Wyoming and the sunset against the rock cliffs was gorgeous. We arrived in Denver at 3:30 a.m.. We met Bonnie's friend Dave who was working the night shift. He gave us directions and a key to his house. We made ourselves at home and slept until noon.
We're in the home stretch...
Bonnie's friends Dave and Martha gave us some ideas of what to do for the day on Tuesday. The butterfly gardens were tempting, but we ended up talking to Martha most of the afternoon. Martha is a delivery nurse and she is expecting at the end of the summer. It was an extremely interesting discussion about all things related to pregnancies and babies from the delivery nurse side of things.
Dave brought Griffen home from doggy-day-care. Griffy is a 11-month German Shepherd. I watched Dave squirt the hose around the back yard so Griffy could psychotically chase the water like Otter chased the disco ball lights at my old parties. Dave also intrigued us with his reasons why we are at war with Iraq. Reasons that the Bush administration just won't come out and say. His theory is we are in a bug zapper war; troops are in the center of the Middle East to draw all of the stinging insects to us there instead of here. My take is that bug zappers draw bugs nearer to us that wouldn't be biting us in the first place, so I don't agree with his theory.
Hari-Krishnas: bald guys dancing around in robes with tambourines and chanting at airports. But, what do they eat? We had dinner at Govinda's, which was a Hari-Krishna joint adjacent to their temple in Denver. $7.00 all you can eat vegetarian buffet. If you can't afford it and live within a mile of their temple then you eat free, and Sundays everyone eats for free. It was delicious. By the way, we didn't see any bald and dancing chanters. The restaurant was the suggestion of Barbara, who is an old friend of Bonnie's family. Barbara rode in the back seat with a one-year-old Bonnie on Bonnie's very first road trip to Vermont.
After dinner we caravanned to Barbara's apartment. Barbara wanted us to meet Dee-dee. We chatted until Dee-dee got home. We chatted about real heavy stuff. Dave for instance explained how being vegetarian is crueler than being an carnivore. It was amazing because he was able to go one about it for about 10 minutes with a straight face. The door squeaked in the hallway and Dee-dee was home. Dee-dee is a nun, but not a Christian nun. Dee-dee was more of a yellow-communist nun, easily recognized by her orange robe (traffic-cone orange, not saffron). I'm guessing if any of the "red-communists" had nuns then they would have worn red robes. Dee-dee was from Italy and was very sweet. She talked for a while about "progressive utilization theory," which sounded remarkably like communism (though Dee-dee was happy that the Berlin Wall fell--Bonnie asked, to make sure), and then we politely explained how we value the individual and that changing consciousness, not gov't, is the way to get to what she desires. (So, Dee-dee's in the right business.) We said bye to Dave who had to work third shift again tonight. Bonnie and I helped Dee-dee fix her computer so she could send e-mail to people again. We said our good-byes and returned home with Martha.
We studied where we were because we were going to have to make the same 20-30 minute drive again at 6:30 in the morning to meet Jill, Bonnie's friend from nursery school. Wednesday morning was the only morning on our trip that required an alarm clock. Up at 5:45 to pack the car and be on the road again with a quick breakfast rendezvous with Jill and her husband Hughes. Fresh orange juice, omelette, eggs-benedict, and hash browns energized us for the trek from downtown Denver to Indiana.
Not much happened in Kansas. It was very similar to my last trip through - two turns and a lot of straight highway. We did caravan with a couple of fast moving mini-vans for a while. I called Ben in Chicago to let him know we wouldn't be passing through Chicago on the way home. As we approached Kansas City I tried calling the folks at Handmark, but we couldn't make our schedules sync up so we passed through Kansas City and the rest of Missouri. In St. Louis we passed almost right under the arch-thingy. It was closer than I came to it on my last trip west. Illinois was dark.
Indiana was where we made camp. We found a lovely campground with a lot of space. Not many campers. In the morning we had a bit of a bother trying to remember how we got to the campground. But, our misfortune was our fortune because we stumbled upon the lake and were able to take advantage of the high water levels to grab a picture of the lake washing out part of the road. Back onto the correct road out of town and onto the highway, but. There's always a but. :-) Bonnie spotted an "Enough is Enough - Vote Libertarian" sign. Being the Ambassadors of Liberty that we are, we turned around and went a'calling to see if anyone was home. Their son was home so we gave him a note for his parents, a Free State Project brochure, and a Vermont Libertarian Party pen.
Reno was the town of Pawn Shops. If you gamble, you lose money, and you need to pawn your stuff to gamble some more to win back the money you lost, but that doesn't usually work, so you lose twice. Indiana was the state of antique malls. We stopped into several. Bonnie collects WWI and earlier sheet music. I collect cylindrical records. Bonnie found things. I did not. Around six in the evening it was time make a near-final push to Bonnie's land in central NY.
We arrived shortly after sun-up. Although we were tired, the first order of business was to check on the gardens to see if they survived for three weeks against the vicious slug and herbivore attacks. The gardens were doing okay, with only selective destruction of crops. We picked/ate some greens, peas, and berries. Then we were able to pitch the tent and sleep. Later in the day, we toured the gardens, brook, a sweat lodge in progress, and the yurt platform. There were some nice fossils at the brook. The noon whistle in town sounded, but our clocks were still on Nevada time.
The gardens were demanding Bonnie's attention. While she groomed the beds, I was writing our version of a Nikah. Bonnie returned with my jeans covered in mud and plant guts. (Bonnie had been wearing my jeans since NH because, if you recall, she wasn't planning on taking this trip any more than I was, so her clothing selection was sparse.) We forgot some of the items we picked during the tour of the property so Bonnie went to retrieve them. I spent my time by braiding an engagement ring out of timothy grass for her. She accepted it.
On the way to Vermont we passed through Saratoga, NY. I've never driven through and it was a cute, busy, tourist town. Five hours after leaving Bonnie's property we were in Grand Isle.
Sunday morning, I gave Bonnie the full tour of my property then we went into Burlington to look for a ring to replace the temporary one. We walked north on Church Street and I started to turn around because I didn't think there were any shops on the top block, but we circled around again and went upstairs to Middle Earth. Bonnie narrowed the ring selection to four possibilities and asked the young saleswoman to set them aside for us. We walked down Church Street looking for other shops. The normal jewelry stores were all closed on Sunday, so we popped into a couple other hippie shops that sold gems and rocks. We returned to Middle Earth and picked The Ring out of the four rings.
Last stop was Shelburne to pick up Bonnie's Jeep. Bonnie headed south to pick up her cat and kittens. She'll be moving in, in about two weeks.
So ends the first adventure of Bonnie and Hardy. Many of you know that I like to eat my desert before dinner, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise to find out we had our honeymoon before our wedding.