06-02-11 Give Us Dirty Laundry

06-02-11
Well, I could've been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear, give us dirty laundry
15.6 miles
The sun comes up bright in the east. It’s 5:25 am. Like yesterday I decide to sleep in…to 6 am. Like yesterday the air mattress has deflated enough to notice. Like yesterday I move Mischa over to rest on my arm like we used to do when I had a hammock. It’s the little things, ya know?!
I get up and try to see if I can make a video for Kickstarter on my own in the camp. It’s not working. I decide to write a bit more and gather my things for the Laundromat. I still haven’t paid for my spot and I figure, if I’m going into town I might as well do something besides just get change.
The host comes up and tells me they are not going to be here tonight and that I’ll be on my own in camp. Is he hinting that “I can leave without paying” of just that “I’m on my own”. I ask if I have to worry about any wild animals - cougars, bears, etc. the says just the occasional deer or rabbit. I can deal with that.
I get changed into shorts and sandals. I think of Bill Paxton’s line from Terminator when Schwarzenegger shows up naked. “Washing day, eh? Nothing to wear”?! Perhaps some of the worst dialog in any movie ever…but it’s Bill Pullman and his exaggerated delivery makes the scene almost work. I think of that as I am changing by my car in the open with no one else around. Why walk the extra 50 ft when I’m the only one that will be embarrassed by this display. (Mischa’s seen it hundreds of times - creepy enough for you?)
Anyway I’ve finished or mostly finished outlines for over 5 days of posts. It’s 10:30 am and time to roll.
I get to the Laundromat and get the change of the ten I need for camping and for the washing. I’ve worm my bleu jeans nearly daily and they’re overdue. I check the prices. $1.75 for the wash/ 25c for 7 minutes of drying. I figure $2.25 will do it. I go out and write…and write…and write. Change the washing into the dryer and give it some quarters. I write some more.
Around the beginning of the writing I realize I don’t have my checkbook with me. It’s not so much the checks, it’s my driver’s License inside that I’m worried about. I’m guessing it’s sitting on the pad at my campsite. That it came out when I did my quick-change act before leaving. I’m hoping that’s where it is and that it‘s still there when I get back. This could pose a major problem for my journey. Nothing to do at the moment. I go back to writing - Mischa on my knee.
.I talk to a few fellow laundry-mates. One has a dog about 7 years old. I write more and more. It’s getting hotter and hotter. It’s 1pm and 87 degrees. It’s cooler in the Laundromat than outside.
I check on my clothes…still damp. I put in two more quarters for another 13 minutes. I’m about to walk away when I discover my blunder. I didn’t check the temperature settings. It was on permanent press instead of cotton (HOT). I re-adjust and wait.
A man collecting his cleaning keeps looking at my car. I wonder what he’s looking at. The stuff inside? The bumper stickers? The License? He loads his car and comes back to the door as I watch him watching my car. He asks “is the Saturn yours?
“Yes”
“You need some work on your tire”
It’s really low. I thank him and check all the others. Just this one. I wonder if the cow catchers at the camping site have damaged the rim? They are pretty jarring to drive over. There is a gas station a two businesses down and I drive the car over gingerly. I’m a little surprised. There it is. An air hose. Free to use. No fees, or “ask attendant” signs. It’s just there. I fill and check the levels of all the tires (only one was properly at level.) Now I’m good to go.
As I write this it is some 5 hours later and it is holding air fine (unlike my air mattress which I re-inflated upon my return.
As I get back I see two your park rangers who I’d briefly met yesterday working bringing gravel to one of the sites. I ask thme if they had found a checkbook. They hadn’t seen any. I check everyplace I’d been in camp. No luck.
I go back and check the car. If necessary I’ll empty it out completely to confirm or deny the whereabouts of the missing checkbook. As luck would have it I find it in short order. It had slipped through the back of the drivers seat into the floor of the back seat. Lifting up a few things revealed it’s hiding place. Poe was right - hide in plane sight.
I brought some Ice back with me and put that into the ice cooler and keep seeing the two rangers with their skip hauler going back and forth. Around 4pm they bring it back and load it onto their truck with the trailer meant for it.
I ask them about directions to Hill City for tomorrow. We talk about a local Lakota Sioux radio station KILI and how I was surprised about the great native-american artists that the channel played. A band called Indigenous impressed me greatly. They ask me if I’ve been to any pow-wow’s. I haven’t. I felt that most of the ones I’d been close to (in California) had been too tourist-y and corny - like the Corn Palace!) We talk about movies shot around here (Dances With wolves and Hidalgo) and about their growing up here. I tell them about my journey and they seem interested. We talk about finding a place to settle down. About one of their father’s having recently retired from a career in law enforcement and how at first he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his time, but now he’s in full gear doing things. I commented on how different it is from evem my grandfather’s generation where a person world work for the same company for 40-5 years retire with the gold watch and be dead within two years - for lack of something to do that validated who they were. It used to be that a person’s whole identity was wrapped up in who they used to be in a work context. Take that away…and there would seem to be no self worth, no identity beyond their working lives. And they would have little to validate themselves. It was not a universal occurrence, but prevalent enough.
As their work day ended we said goodbye and I was almost alone in the park. As they started to leave, onne truck came in - then another, then a couple of trailers. Looks like I won’t be alone tonight after all! (No more “quick change” artistry for me!)
Two things happened this evening that haven’t occurred for some time. First, I cooked over an open fire. With all the rain and bad weather, I haven’t had much opportunity or inclination. I did a few “Lunchbox stove meals in Kansas, but that’s been about the extent of it. But today was the kind of weather I’ve been hoping for over the last 10 states - 3 months - take your pick. I think the last fire cooked meal was in
Savannah, Georgia. And while it wasn’t great (Creamy Chicken Rice - from a package), I managed to add a few touches that made it worth the cooking; I added a cut up chuddy-brat and some fijita chicken (pre-cooked). It ws pretty good and Mischa enjoyed a lot of it!
The second thing dovetails into the first in a thematic sense. Mischa and I played. Mach fighting. She knawed on my finger, and before she got too rough, we switched to one of her toys (YES, I brought along an assortment of her “babies” plush toys.
The thematic tie-in is Normalcy;
I’d forgotten how it was for us to play together each night when we had a place to live.
Some of those things fall by the wayside when you’re driving over 200 miles over multiple days and trying to plan by the eat of your pants.
But having a day when it’s sunny, you get to do little domestic things (like cloths washing) and cooking and playing with your dog in the most absent-minded everyday manner. Gives the Illusion…of what used be taken for…normalcy.