Vacay Interlude

I had to cut short my time out west for the 95 project due to a family issue back home, but I had a week to get there so decided to make it a little vacation. I don't remember the last time I had a vacation.

I'd been camping in a cheap state campground by the Clearwater River outside of Lewiston, Idaho for about a week, exploring the area and doing some specific research. There was a camping spot in the Gospel-Hump wilderness area of the Nez Perce National Forest that I'd considered, but it was too remote for what I was doing. That was my first inkling I needed a vacation. Finding a beautiful place and doing nothing that involved thinking or people sounded good at that point.

On my first day, I rode down to the Gospel-Hump wilderness. I didn't know anything about it but the name. Gospel-Hump? Turns out it's a beautiful.

Unfortunately, I'd left my good hiking boots in Spokane (long, boring story) and had only slick soled Chelsea boots so could not hike down the steep hill to the lake in the above photo. That was probably for the best as I had forgotten my bear spray. When you're out hiking in the woods, it's very unlikely you'll ever get attacked by a bear, but studies show that if you have bear spray and forget to bring it, the odds of getting mauled increase exponentially. I just sat and enjoyed the view.

The next day I headed east along the Clearwater all the way into Montana where I met an old friend I hadn't seen for 36 years. I knew Erich during a year I spent in Peru in the early 1980's. We'd briefly caught up when he recognized me walking down a street in Las Vegas, which was even more coincidental than it sounds as neither one of us are the type you'd expect to find in Vegas. Turned out we both lived in Washington State and we hung out a few times after that, though he was in med school and very busy so I didn't see him much. Thirty-six years later, we meet again. We both knew it was 36 years. It was when I got married and he met his wife. I usually have to think about it for a minute, but eventually I can remember how long I've been married.

Knowing he was a doctor, I had a little bit of trepidation seeing him again. I thought maybe being in Montana he might have become a doctor to rich people and I'd find him living in a MacMansion, and of course these days there's always a fear someone may have gone MAGA, but with him I wasn't really worried about that. Turned out he lived in a cool old neighborhood downtown in an old high ceilinged wooden house and had worked in clinics with low income people his entire career. That was in character and unsurprising, but still, it made me a little proud to know someone who had done that much concrete good in the world. Actually helping people get well day after day year after year. It was great to catch up.

Leaving Bozeman, I headed southeast and ended up sleeping in a casino parking lot on the Cheyenne reservation. The next morning was South Dakota. I'd driven that route several times over the course of my life and always thought I should spend a few days camping in the Badlands, so finally I did.

Lot's of dramatic geography. Surprisingly few tourists. Buffalo everywhere. I'd never considered what I'd do if I came around a corner and there was a buffalo in the road. The answer was that I'd sit still, not look it in the eye, hope it doesn't charge and try to figure out what I'd do if it did. That happened three times.

The camping in the popular National Park was, shockingly, free and somehow free of large RVs or trailers running generators. Most campers pitched tents and the rest like me slept in small vehicles. Buffalo grazed all around. There was a prairie dog town in the middle of the campground. I saw antelope and other wildlife. The famous Badlands geography was incredible. I thought it was really going to be a great few days, but...

Those people with the giant tent were the worst campers I've ever been subjected to. Three middle aged sisters, their mother, and their kids. They were arguing and complaining, loudly, from the minute they pulled up and struggled to set up that humongous tent. One lady's Powerade had gone missing. Somone, or some people, had drank it all. It was disrespectful. She'd done so much to make this camping trip work and then they'd gone and drank all her Powerade. Now she had to drive into town to get more Powerade. It was so unfair. The Powerade conversation went on for nearly half an hour. And then it was something else. They complained about each other, and every possible little thing, not matter how trivial, and they especially complained about the kids, who are really horrible and couldn't do anything right. They put their hands in the dirt. That was unacceptable, if they did that again they'd have to stay in the tent. On and on and on. It started when they arrived at about 3:30 and was still going on at 9:30 when I went to bed. The guys camping on the other side of them said it didn't stop until 11:30. Never a pause. One complaint after another.

That's Steve (R) and Rick (L), the guys camping on the other side of the horror show campers. Steve told me that it was all bad but the worst part was that they were liberals. He had several anecdotes along the lines of the women wanted to go to a park in Utah but Trump had turned it into an oil field or something. Steve didn't want to bring politics into it, you know, but somehow every topic we talked about ended with him saying that liberals had ruined it. I said it's good you don't want to bring politics into it. I'm a liberal I told him, really more of a far leftist, and trust me, if we talk politics, you're not going to enjoy the conversation. He gave me a mildly surprised, quizzical look. We got along good after that and talked mostly about regular camp stuff and things like motorcycles and solar panels, which were all areas of mutual interest.

I don't think he was your average MAGA guy though. He seemed like some kind of elite. He was something of a photographer and asked if he could take my photo in front of the bike. Sure, I said. He was keeping a written journal for their trip out west, which he showed me. Looked like he'd written about 100 pages to that point in what was maybe the neatest, most legible handwriting I've ever seen from a man. I'm pretty sure he gathered enough information to look me up on the internet, or more likely with AI. I wondered if he got by my countermeasures, but thought it better not to ask. It occurred to me to reciprocate and look him up, but I realized I didn't even want to know. This modern world, eh? A blessing, and a curse.

The punchline to the camping experience is that the morning after the nightmare with the incessantly loud and obnoxious liberals, someone had put small animal shit on the seat of my bike. Hopefully, it was a prairie dog that was pissed off because I almost stepped in its hole, so it climbed up the bike and shit on the seat, but I doubt it. Or the poor kids from with the shit show parents. I wouldn't blame them for doing shitty pranks, I'd expect it. But I suspect it was one of the women themselves. At one point one of the women complained loudly about having to go outside to do something because she didn't want to be the one who was being looked at. I thought maybe they were talking about me, as I was pointed that way for a stretch because that's were the beautiful sunset was visible. They thought I was staring at them, which I wasn't, or perhaps being judgmental, which is not entirely inaccurate. Maybe the shit was some kind of petty revenge for that. Maybe they thought I was a conservative like Steven and Rick. People tend to assume people wearing western boots and riding dirt bikes are conservative. Can't hit back at Trump, smear some shit on a MAGA guy's motorcycle. Maybe?

A common complaint from conservatives I meet is that liberals are obnoxious and judgmental. As someone who can pass in both camps I can see how that might happen as it happens to me sometimes when I'm pegged as a conservative. There's a way some liberals just drip with distaste that makes people hate them. These are the same people who like me if I'm in REI gear rather than Ariat. I usually like them as well.

Conservatives tend to be the opposite. Where I'm from they call it "church nice." It's like "southern nice." It just means being on your best behavior superficially, like if you're at church. Beneath the facade, they are likely to be even more obnoxious and judgmental than the liberals who wounded them so. Still, I've found that I appreciate the facade. Better fake nice than authentically shitty. At least for meaningless social interactions.

I'm now back home now procrastinating on finishing the 95 stories. I'm considering doing some journalism on a local, data center thing that could possibly be made into a national type piece. I've gone to a few meetings and have been talking with a lot of people, both liberal and conservative. I'm leaning against it, but maybe.

Since I've gotten off the vacation subject and into White Studies, I'll leave you with this funny incident that just happened. I rode over to Illinois to get some edibles. The whole time I was out west I didn't take any cannabis, but I'm back in the midwest 10 minutes and it becomes a crushing necessity. On the way back from the dispensary it's nearly 100F and I'm suddenly very thirsty and feel the munchies coming on. I stop in an American Legion for lunch and a cold ice tea. I sit at the bar next to a portly young white feller in a Hawaiian themed shirt and down from a couple old farmers. I'm not one that makes nicknames for people, like never honestly, but for some reason I start calling the corn fed boy "Spud" in my head.

The farmers were talking about livestock and Spud asked them how much a cow sold for these days. $4.58 a pound, said a farmer. That went over Spud's head so the farmer explained you had to multiply that number times the weight of the cow. I pointed out that was almost the price of hamburger and asked if that was because of tariff's. Largely, said a farmer, but also because of the drought out west. Talk about the drought and wildfires ensued. If there's one thing farmer's like to talk about more than the price of crops or lifestyle, it's the weather. Spud asked why it was so hot and dry out west. Global warming, I said, implying the "duh." The farmers nodded sadly, but Spud launched into a rebuttal against the global warming hoax, explaining that the excess heat was caused by evaporation from the cooling ponds around power plants and data centers. At that point in these kinds of conversations I either declare myself a liberal and warn that they won't enjoy a political conversation with me, which I am more likely to do if I have some kind of respect for the guy. But more likely I just disengage, especially with the Spud-like variety. But as I was disengaging, one of the farmers got legitimately angry and told Spud he was a fucking idiot and to keep his fucking mouth shut about things he knew nothing about.

This is in a place that voted over 75 percent for Trump, probably higher among farmers. I'm curious to see what November brings.