Phutu...or is it?

8/7/2003 I can't believe that my summer vacation is over. I am sitting on a stool in a little booth under the grandstand at the Humboldt county fair. I knew the house wouldn't be done. I guess it's a lot closer. Before I had to leave I did manage to get the back door in and a lock on it. I also got the rear steps reconstructed so that Romi could go in and out at his convinience rather than us having to walk him around the house all the time. Romi is actually on vacation at the moment. Since Dory had to go to a national sales meeting for her company I dropped him off at my mom's house for the duration of my stay in beautiful Ferndale.

I remember one of the things that irked me the most about my stay last year was that I was lodged in a Super 8 motel that ended up costing about $95 per night. The worst part was that they had a continental breakfast....I am a little confused about the origin of that term...but if one was to take the adjective "continental" and suppose that it accurately described the food that was served, then it could be a synonym of words such as "nauseating", "terrible" and "inedible." So this year I am not staying there. I am staying in various places because I didn't get my act together soon enough to get a good reservation for the entire two weeks. Last night and the next two I am staying at the Holiday Inn express, which is right next to the Super 8; fortunately they don't get their breakfast items from the same stanky (yes stanky) bakery. Breakfast this morning was actually edible, although not great. Then on Saturday night I will be camping since that was the only day which no hotel rooms were apparently available. Actually, I kinda' like that it will bring my average nights lodging costs down...for the remainder of the fair I will be staying at the Shaw House Inn which is a B&B. It is actually cheaper than the hotels are....and I am assuming that the breakfast will be much better as well.

This morning, with nothing better to do, I took off to go explore the redwoods. There are a lot of state parks around the area most of which are filled with really large trees. I grew up in redwood country so I am not totally overwhelmed by them but with my new recent interest in trees I figured that I should take another look. Yep, they're big. Really big. One thing that I did notice is that many of the really large ones that are very near to the freeway have dead tops. I'm not sure if it is because of the freeway or if they are simply older and were left there to make the freeway seem more scenic in the midst of an area that has been logged to death and then clearcut after it managed to recover.

I got a voice mail message from my brother this morning. He is flying down to Argentina to go skiing for a couple weeks. He called to tell me as much and added that someone had cut off the artichokes that I was growing in my front yard. Now that really fucking pisses me off. I mean, I started that damn plant from seed in February and nursed it along all these months with the intention of letting the damn thing bloom so that I could see a really large purple thistle as it was meant to bloom. So along comes some dumb-ass who knows nothing and cuts it off thinking that he is going to have a nice artichoke for dinner. Well, I've got news for that idiot, the damn thing was almost blooming already so if he thinks he's going to be able to eat it he's mistaken, he'll just get a throat full of prickers. I hope he/she does eat it, bastard. So when I get back maybe I'll put up a sign to that effect, adding that I will buy artichokes for anyone who needs them badly enough to steal them from my garden. Fucking people amaze me. Pardon me for swearing, but I hate morons who do really stupid shit.

8/8/2003 In the second day of my stay here in lovely Ferndale I have once again found myself with some extra time. Bill, if you read this, it's not really my fault, there's just not a whole lotta work to be done yet. So this morning I started my day with a leisurely breakfast, reading the book that I found yesterday at Ferndale Books. It is by the same author who wrote "Conifers of California" which I used on my trip to Lassen. It's all about Pinyon pines which are those pines characterized by large edible seeds. Thus far I have learned that they are a main source of food for Many tribes of Native Americans in the southwest and Mexico as well as a host of birds and rodents...probably not that interesting to many people. I suppose I could be reading some fiction, but somehow this justs seems so much more interesting.

After a quick drive through downtown Fortuna in search of more bookstores I made a swing past the fairgrounds to check on my computer and printer, making sure that they were done with tasks assigned. Then I headed off towards Eureka, once again in search of a bookstore, but I got sidetracked when I saw a sign for the U.S. Forest Service office. I swung in and spent about an hour perusing maps of the nearby national forests in anticipation of my day off on Tuesday. I think I might go get lost on a mountain or something. The only problem is that the roads are long and curvy, I think it'll be about a two hour drive to a good trailhead, possibly more. But I imagine that I won't have anything better to do.

I did finally get to a couple bookstores, and I found a couple more books, which I'll spare you the details of since they are equally as interesting to me and un-interesting to other people as "Conifers of California."

8/10/2003 Ill-equipped camping is ill-advised camping I say. I managed to forget to bring one essential item for camping....a sleeping bag. So I thought that I would stay warmer by trying to sleep in the car rather than a tent. Of course hatchbacks aren't exactly the roomiest of cars, but I found that I could stretch out completely if I put the passenger seat all the way forward, the back seats flat and put a mat over everything. The only problem is that there is a little plastic tray right behind the back seats that sticks up just enough so that I was sleeping with my head on one side of a hump and my feet on the other. Using the tent as a blanket, I tried to sleep that way for a while...a couple of the longest hours of my life. After which I gave up and got into the drivers seat, leaned it all the way back and sacked out there. Funny how I didn't try that first because, other than being cold towards dawn, I slept pretty well. At least as well as one can sleep while camping.

I headed out around six-thirty to find a place to get some coffee and breakfast. It's funny how that is so much more important after camping than it seems to be after a normal night's sleep. I remembered that I had found a place last year that was open early so I dropped in and enjoyed some watered-down coffee and two of the largest pancakes I have ever seen. In fact, the lady who was cooking had one of those huge short-order-cook spatualas and she still barely managed to flip them. Now I remember...Uncle Buck. When John Candy is making breakfast for Macaully Culkin (sp?) he makes these huge pancakes that he flips with a pizza paddle. Mine weren't quite that big, but they were big anyway. I love that movie, I always wanted a copy of the soundtrack but I never could find it, the music was awesome.

Of course, since I didn't have a hotel room to go back to after breakfast, I just sat in my car and read for a while. I've been doing a lot of reading since I got here, so far two books. Around 9 AM I decided that I had had enough reading for a while...especially since I had essentially been in my car for 12 hours straight. I drove over to a little park right near the main part of Ferndale and went for a little hike. Aside from the fact that there were quite a few flys....why I can't really say, it was a nice hike. I walked almost all the trails in the park by the time I was done but I stopped in the middle at an overlook for a while to relax. It was very quiet and peaceful except for one thing...I could hear the loudspeaker from the racetrack making announcments to the horsemen...I remember hearing that the city of Berkeley made Golden Gate Fields reduce the volume of their system for the same reason; people who were more than two miles away could clearly hear all the morning announcements.

8/13/2003 I'm soft at heart I think. I tried to make it out to the Trinity Alps Wilderness to do some hiking on my day off here in lovely Humbolt county but there was so much driving involved that I barely had time to do any hiking. I did see a small brown bear...he was really fast so I didn't get to admire him for more than a split second. He went barrelling accross the trail and down a hill at full speed crashing through the underbrush with such force that I felt sorry for him; if I were to run that fast I would surely cut my hands and arms and face on all of the fallen wood and such. Still, I was glad that it was him doing the running and it was away from me because I'm not keen to tangle with a bear. The rest of the hike was a little disappointing, It was quite steep and I didn't have the time of the energy to go far after all the driving that I had done. I need to go to these places when I have a few weeks to waste and I can just hike around and camp without worrying about getting back so quickly.

7/29/2003
7/19/2003
7/8/2003
7/1/2003
6/3/2003
5/29/2003
4/22/2003
3/18/2003
2/27/2003
2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

My apologies for typos and problems on this page. I was reduced to managing the site through AOL while I was in Humboldt...which is a challenge.

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