Road 'head

When we were in the Philippines earlier this summer, we stopped to get our passport photos taken in a camera shop. We were delighted when we found out that they offered much more than that!

They were offering 8X10 PHOTOS OF YOU WITH AMBIGUOUS EMOTIONS AND YOUR FAVORITE DOLL!

We were disappointed, however, when they told us that they weren’t yet offering SAD LONELY MAN AND A BLOW UP DOLL OF GRANDMA.  

We rose from bed in our hotel suite,

and what was it that our eyes did meet?

“A Goat on a Chair!” Mike exclaimed.

She was seeking protection, for it had rained.

Agape our mouths did drop, alas,

Ne’er had we seen a goat on its ass!

Every time we think we’ve found the perfect place to camp, we encounter this:

So let me get this straight. We can’t pitch our tiny 7x7 tent, even though we will be taking nothing from and leaving nothing in the area. Yet, someone in their RV, which is basically a moving house that they call a ‘camper,’ can park here and suck energy out of the earth and pump gas fumes into the atmosphere. It’s not camping. It’s a house on wheels.

And another thing: the sign clearly indicates a tent-like structure. Yet, this is the sign often used on major highways (sans red slash) to indicate RV parks where tent camping is not allowed. Sometimes it means tent camping AND RV camping, sometimes it means RV only, but there is no way to know until you’ve driven 30 minutes out of the way to get there.

Our grievances are as follows:

1. Parking your RV is NOT camping.

2. If there is room to park a living room and leave it running all night, there is room to pitch a tent.

3. The red slash reflects in such a way that you can’t tell whether it says camping IS or ISN’T allowed until you are a foot away from it and at the proper angle.

4. Down with the government!

Being a Leo, Val is a fire sign. Thus, she is filled with intense passionate energy, even from the moment she opens her eyes. Val has channeled this energy into educating herself about social problems in our society. This is great and all, but sometimes it can be very intense.

One morning, (in fact, the morning after we slept uneasily in a grizzly-bear-infested park) Mike awoke to the sight of Val, already staring him dead in the eye.

“Amy Winehouse is dead.”

“What? That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, and another thing. When a male rock star dies of drug related issues, he’s a rebel and an idol. When it’s a woman, she’s a DIRTY shame and whore! I’m going outside!”

“Ok.”

A couple of days later, Mike awoke again to Val’s piercing stare. (Note: we had been driving through states with anti-abortion billboards every hundred feet)

“You know. It’s all about protecting the rights of the fetus. Unless that fetus is born a girl and grows into a woman whose rights are consistently ignored by the very same people.”

Mike eventually caught the ‘morning news bug.’ Val awoke to find Mike already looking at her.

“Dominique Strauss-Kahn is getting his criminal charges dropped. They’re discrediting the woman he raped, with the bruised labia, based on a lie on her taxes. Yeah, that’s related.”

“Oh no, you’re kidding.”

“Yeah, and another thing. Mitt Romney is bulldozing his 4 million dollar house to build a 12 million dollar house because ‘he has too many grandchildren and there isn’t enough room.’ Stop fucking breeding.”

We’ve had a lot of camping drama, as you know, but nothing like this. Spoiled by a night under a friend’s hospitable roof in Wichita, we were not prepared for what lay ahead. We arrived at Harrison Boat Launch in Missouri just after sunset. Scouting around for a good place to put our tent, we noticed the camping sites were all next to a river and all of the ground was slightly damp. As camping was free here, a little moisture could not deter two campers determined not to pay. Besides, we packed an extra tarp. 

Around midnight, we were both awakened by what we thought was sunrise. The light, however, turned out to be incessant heat lightning. We considered putting the fly over the tent in case it started raining, but we both just fell back to sleep, comforting ourselves with the notion that the storm could pass ‘by’ us and not ‘over’ us. This thought carried us through the initial sprinkling, but even that could not move us.

We could ignore it no longer when the waves of torrential downpour began over us, around 1250 am. We hastily put on our shoes, which by this point were sunk into the mud, and sloppily covered the tent, running to the car for shelter. Bolts of lightning and deafening thunder were now occurring between flashes of heat lightning. The short run to the car left us soaked and covered in wet mud.

Upon entering the car, we considered popping Xanax and passing out for the night. However, not even Xanax could assuage the following legitimate fears that kept us vigilant during what we convinced ourselves would be ‘a short summer storm:’

1. Swamp Thing.

2. Glowing Beings slowly approaching the car and trying the doors.

3. Radioactive puddles.

4. Seeing the dark shadow of our tent floating down the river.

5. Getting struck by lightning.

During the two hour storm, we would intermittently decide to go back to the tent, only to be dissuaded by a sudden downpour and flash of threatening lightning. We also began to notice that the inside of the car was covered in what appeared to be little ‘turds’ of mud.  At this time, Mike thought it would be intelligent to tell a little tale of a friend of a friend who was struck to death by lightning even AFTER the storm had passed. 

Finally, the storm let up somewhat and, weary, we went back to the tent to find our bedding drenched because of our sloppy application of the tent fly. We fell asleep at 330am to intermittent flashes of lightning and the sound of trucks on the highway 50 feet from where we slept.

Here’s what we found in the morning:

Notice the stagnant brown ‘river’ and the partially submerged trees. The mud on the ground caked onto our shoes, equipment, and tent in such a way that it could not be removed by normal means. Our wipes suspiciously disappeared into the swamp in the middle of the night and thus we could not even attempt to clean our stuff. Val lost her shoes to the swamp:

Nice legs, eh? And yeah, those are Crocs. What of it?

The icing on the cake was the nest of spiders that had chosen the tent as their new home. Days later, back at Val’s home, not even the turbojet setting on the garden hose would get the mud off the tent.

I know. I know. Can you believe it? Someone named ‘PUMA’ adopted this highway!

We saw this on our way back into Boulder, CO after a peaceful night’s sleep at a local reservoir. Awoken by the sound of walkers and joggers only feet from our tent, Val emerged from the tent in her “I moose be dreaming” nightshirt and wished a woman and her dog a cheerful, “good morning.” The pup responded with glee and love. The woman, however, glared at her and yelled at her dog to “get back here, Jenny!” Then she walked away. It feels good to be homeless.

One need not spend more than a single day in Portland, OR (although we did) to meet the full range of its characters.  Portland is known for attracting mid-twenty-somethings, specifically those who don’t want to work full-time (our ears are burning…).  However, should you ever visit, expect to find way more than this demographic.  Here is a rough list of characters who stuck out in our minds:

1. Angry Dog Man (ADM). Our first experience with ADM was auditory.  We were relaxing in the lovely Laurelhurst Park, when we heard the outburst of an angry dog bark in the distance.  We looked over to see a giant dog intimidating a smaller dog.  Putting it out of our minds, we continued our walk out of the park.  As we exited, we were intercepted by said dog and his owner, a disheveled middle-aged man on a bike with a perpetual puss on his face.  The man ‘accidentally’ ran into his massive dog with his bike, and then he screamed at the dog, “GET IN THE TRUCK! WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO YELL AT YOU?” Mind you, the “truck” was a rickety wooden cart attached to the back of his bike that appeared to be made circa 1500—as in, it had wooden wheels.  And looked like the kind of cart with which they used to collect plague victims.  Before pulling ahead of us, he stopped, looked directly at us, and GROWLED (the man, not the dog). 

2.  Kylie Minogue Boy (KMB).  As usual, we finished our night in Portland at a karaoke bar.  In this particular bar, there were only eight people, one of whom was butchering Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” as we entered.  He was all too eager to introduce himself to us upon completion of his song.  The conversation started appropriately enough—exchanging names, hometowns, and discussing favorite musical artists.  One of KMB’s preferred artists was—you guessed it—Kylie Minogue.  Val agreed that yes, Kylie Minogue is great, but soon realized that the conversation did not stray from this subject matter at all.  After ten minutes of comments such as “Kylie Minogue is 43-years-old,” “Did you know she has a sister Dani Minogue?”  “Dani Minogue is one of my favorite artists,”  “I usually only sing Dani or Kylie Minogue,”  “I’m a drag queen but I was fired from 3 jobs for begging for too many drinks at the bar,” he opted to retrieve his make-up bag and show it off to Val.  “Look I have a lot of Mac make-up.”  Those of you who know Val even a little bit know she couldn’t have cared less.  During this time, Mike was conveniently at the bar getting a drink talking to our next character, Brian.  Ultimately, we had to leave the bar so that KMB would cease approaching us with new ‘tidbits.’  Oh, by the way, did you know Kylie Minogue is currently touring Europe?

3.  Brian. When we met Brian, we were excited at the prospect of making a new friend and having someone interesting to talk with for the night.  What started like a normal conversation quickly degraded into ceaseless complaining about an ex-boyfriend and a stubborn wallowing in his own misery.  He also claimed that he would only do a karaoke song if they had “When Love Takes Over” by David Guetta and Kelly Rowland, which they didn’t, and which would have been extremely inappropriate. 

4.  The participants in an S&M initiation ceremony. Thumbing through the local queer newspaper, we stumbled across an event entitled “Leather and Lace Show” occurring that night at 7pm.  The performances started off relatively tame.  There were some amateur drag performances, a man named Andy (is a tramp) who re-wrote the words to “The Lady is a Tramp” to say “I like a big, uncut dick up my butt,” and several other harmless sing-a-longs.  Then the initiation ceremony began.  The emcee alerted the crowd that the performance would be an emotional one, and it certainly was.  The initiate appeared on stage surrounded by her soon-to-be masters, who promptly ripped off her t-shirt to reveal black x’s covering her nipples.  They then proceeded to whip her with leather crops, claw at her flesh with their nails, and generally inflict pain followed by tender comfort.  The initiation, although unexpected for us, was quite a beautiful scene to be present for, and we will never listen to “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence the same way again.  This event also turned out to be truly amazing because there was a seamless solidarity amongst the gay, lesbian, and queer communities as well as being highly age-diverse and body positive.  Leather daddies, butch women, drag queens, sadomasochists, femmes, bears —you name it—everyone had a place in this lovefest.

In summation, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND GO TO PORTLAND.

One half of a full rainbow in Arizona. Look closely, and you will see that it is an infamous DOUBLE RAINBOW.

As per our M.O., we arrived at a campsite outside of the Grand Canyon after dark. Driving down a creepy, unpaved road for about 10 minutes, we came to what seemed like the perfect spot to pitch our tent. Minutes later, as he pulled up his pants after a visit to mother nature, Mike heard Val through the darkness, “Is this bone?” Sure enough, upon further investigation, we discovered this:

Val picked it up, saying, “it’s just wood. Isn’t it?” Upon seeing the spongy marrow, she screamed and threw it to the ground. And that’s not all she wrote. Pointing our flashlights around the campsite, we found it utterly littered with (animal?) bones and what appeared to be a sarcophagus. Both of us claiming not to be scared, we got back into the car and drove off. We eventually found another site with substantially fewer bones, but not before Val slammed the car into a deep ditch.

Later that night, just before going to sleep, Mike asked Val to close the window to the tent “in case someone peeks in.”  When she asked who he expected to be peeking in, he replied, “The Bone Collector.”

Val has a penchant for getting caught while saying the most inappropriate things.

In Kelowna, British Columbia: Walking down a residential street on a hot day, we stop in front of a lovely sprinkler that is spraying some much appreciated water onto the sidewalk. Val screams, “This is really getting me off! Look at me… getting off on this!” She looks up to see the homeowner, who has been standing 5 feet away the entire time, looking her dead in the eye, perplexed.

In Northern California: In a supermarket parking lot, Val is singing along to one of our favorite songs, substituting her own lyrics. As we open the doors, Val belts, “MY DICK IS NUMB!” At that very moment, an elderly woman emerges from behind her car, a look of disdain in her eyes.

In Mancos, Colorado: This one requires a bit of backstory. When one is camping in so-called ‘primitive’ campgrounds, one often finds oneself, shall we say, sans toilette. With nowhere to flush ‘wipes,’ the environmentally conscious citizen collects said ‘wipes’ in a special bag in their vehicle, just for the night. The following morning, we arrive at an organic food store where Val decides to throw away the special bag. Standing outside of the car holding it up, Val declares, “Is there a trash around here? We need to throw this shit away. And I mean literal shit!” Nearby, a young woman grabs her three-year-old by the hand and pulls her into the store.