Critical Mass:

Festivities at the Fabric House/Hotel Excelsior:

Robert and Tiare: Hawaiians striken by wanderlust no more.

Stoney and Lauren peace out.

Joshua is from Australia, a brother in wanderlust. I know him from Madrid. When I went to Portugal, Joshua set off walking the Camino de Santiago. He is currently in Edinburgh, Scotland.

joshua -

it was great to hear from you. hope you've come closer to resolving your existential dilemma in the scot-lands. you've got a good head on your shoulders. i'm sure you'll do fine.

cincy was hectic. i did find myself in my old haunts a few times and did feel that womb-like security, but sometimes it lapsed into that too-familiar stultification. many of my friends had gotten pregnant/married, a couple were dead, and many more had scattered to the wind. for all that though, cincy was still the same place it was when i left. all the reasons i had for leaving were still completely valid. this might sound like silly, egotistical reasoning, but just a couple of friends really missed me, and it had a two-fold effect: it galvanized me against many of the people who had claimed to be my friend, and it did make me a little sad to leave the ones who really did care. i think it's pathetic that people i've only known for a couple of years here in california are better friends than people i've known for a decade in ohio. that said, i do have a core of friends who mean the world to me back in cincy. i was a little sad to leave it, but i was more glad than sad.

things i miss about madrid: my friends (of course), walking through lavapies with carlos telling me bits about that neighborhood in which he grew up, the verve of the patio, of course, playing guitar and sharing fruit and booze with strangers in the retiro, pounding up the back roads of Vallekas on my bike late at night with a load of tea in my bag. looking at the mesa from the Pedriza watching the sun go down with my girl from ohio (mind trip!). there's lots to miss...

i flew to frisco. boring, i know, but i had my shit to deal with...i slept in a borrowed tent on the roof of a friend's house in Excelsior for a month and finally landed a decent flat 150 yards from Baker Beach, in the Presidio. i share it with the fellow i was sharing the roof with: a jew named Sam Israel. he plays bass in my band (we've only played three shows, but they've all been fairly successful).

i got a job as a nude model at the art institute. in addition to the modeling gig, there's a chain of three family-owned theatres here in the north west corner of the city, and i got hired on just by walking up and asking for a job. i was pretty surprised when they called me back. it's really, really easy and low stress. i make just enough to scrape by, but, as my mama used to say, 'sure beats a kick in the seat of the pants.' i work with a couple of mongolians and they're teaching me a few words of mongolian. it's cool, because it is an asian language, but uses a cyrillic characters (like russian). the practically negligible bit of greek and russian i know does help a little. i've always been in love with the steppes ever since i was nine or ten and read the biography of genghis khan. maybe in a few years.... i'm just getting settled in but i get itchy feet every once in a while, each time stronger than the last.

the other night i rode my bike across the golden gate bridge to sausalito. a woman from cincy, named sara, lives in a sailboat in the marina there. she teaches special ed kids, but everyone else in the marina is ex-military, as this whole area used to be a giant army base. oh yeah, there is one conciencious objector who lives there (he went to prison for not going to 'nam). there was a kickin' band at the clubhouse, the beer flowed freely, and it was a really fun night. i slept on the sailboat and when i woke up a baby seal was eating a crab on the jetty and sara went and petted it. i have to say, though, that drinking with old sailors didn't really help my case of wanderlust. i can hold out at least a year, i think. maybe more, if i take a few short trips. one of my mexican buddies from madrid, rafa (whom i believe you met), is coming to visit this weekend. that'll probably make me want to hit the road even more.

as for women, it's pretty hilarious. my friend sara (from cincy) set me up with her co-worker H. on a double date. H. seemed nice: berkeley grad, 26, cute, into yoga, punk rock, etc. a few dates later, i spent the night. nothing crazy, just some high-school level making out. in the morning, she takes a shower and says "you can use my computer while you wait." cool, i need to check up on a couple of job applications. i need to e-mail my resume to someone, so i download it off my e-mail but....it disappeared! i search for 'resume.doc' and click on the first one that comes up, assuming it's mine and sweet jesus! it's a crazy list of sex acts, kinks, and deviations that would turn your hair curly, all in a very professional resume form. you know i'm no prude, but man, that was too much. under the "Future Endevours" heading, she put:

Soft core pornography modeling
Hard core pornography fucking
Having really healthy, loving relationships
Establishing life partners


that's probably the least disturbing (and most hilarious) part of her 'resume.' you get the idea.
and she seemed like such a nice girl.... glad i found this out now and not post-coitus. i believe the moral of this story is, "rafa, be single for a long time."

my life is almost "normal" now. there is a certain comfort that comes from the stable, work-all-the-time-drink-with-the-mates-on-the-weekend existence. feels like the sojourn i had between graduation and travel...not how i want to spend the rest of my life, but i feel that now, in my working bachelorhood, i am laying the groundwork for future adventures. if you are on the road and have a place to come to, you are travelling, but if you have nothing to come to, you are simply lost.

take care of yourself, buddy. stay warm!

cheers,
rafa

July 23rd: After a day of airport hell, Taylor and I rode our bikes out of the Lisboa airport. The Portuguese dusk was cool and the scent of the sea wafted in from the coast. We promptly got lost riding down the brightly lit boulevards and the sprawling rotundas. Finally, Taylor and I were in Baixa, the old and touristy neighborhood by the waterfront. We stayed the night at the Lisbon lounge hostel.
In the morning we caught the ferry across the Tejo river. Searching for the N10 highway that would take us to Setubal, we got lost, took a wrong turn, and ended up on the interstate about to cross the bridge! Once we got on the N10, though, it was fairly smooth sailing. We got into Setubal around six p.m. and after getting groceries and beer, we rode over a hill out of town to a little beach hidden in a cove. The steep, densely wooded slopes drop off suddenly into a wide beach of coarse sand. At the end of the beach rises a jagged stone promontory. There is a sea cave at the base, but we didn't explore. People raced kayaks in the water. Miguel, the bartender at the beach cafe, gave us water and the good word on sleeping on the beach. Taylor and I unwound from our ride by playing frisbee and drinking beer. After a spectacular sunset, Taylor, a few feral dogs, and I were the only ones on the beach. Around four in the morning I woke up because I felt something tugging my foot. I sat up to see a dog trying to eat my sleeping bag. In the morning there was a fine drizzle coming down. It tickled my face and woke me up. We had coffee and donuts at the beach cafe as we waited for the drizzle to let up. The ferry took us to Troia. Troia was dead; a resort town too new for tourists. There are some Roman ruins that we stopped by, but there was an archeological dig and the guard wouldn't let us by to see the ruins.
The peninsula is flat and narrow. We could see across the bay to Setubal. The sandy pine forest lines the road and gives way to dunes. Trails break off from the highway, leading to the beach. Back on the mainland, the landscape returns to rice paddies and corn fields between the ubiquitous pine forests. We stopped for a great lunch in Carvalhal. I called my mom from a pay phone to wish her happy birthday. After eating we pushed on towards our goal for the day: the camping at Praia de Galé. It is at the end of a bumpy gravel road that goes up and down and up and down. We thumbed a ride from a fellow in a truck named Jão. Taylor was really into the camping; it was his first. The shore there has endless sandstone cliffs carved into weird shapes by the wind. The water is freezing cold and the sea bed dropped off suddenly. Sitting, drinking liters of beer, Taylor and I met a Madrileño named Gonzalo who was avoiding his girlfriend. They'd had a fight. The three of us smoked porros and played more frisbee. A little boy and his father joined in. The father would throw the frisbee like a discus and send it soaring tremendous distances down the beach.

That night we got pretty drunk listening to a Fado singer at the bar in the camping and eyeballing the passing girls. Taylor wanted to stay for Saturday night, but I talked him into moving on. After riding out the super-bumpy dirt road, we hit the N261 and took that through the rolling hills, marsh, and pine forest. We took a break in an old cemetery on side of a hill on the outskirts of Villa Nova do Santo André. From that hillside you can see the valley below and the road winding through the hills. A short distance down a little dirt road, hardly more than a path, there are the bare stone ruins of an old church. An olive tree gives shade to a couple of benches, and a fountain burbles away nearby. The walls of the cemetery, as well as many crypts, are all white washed and blinding in the afternoon sun. A bougainvillea was in full bloom in the corner next to the utility shed. The branches waved gently in the breeze.

In Sines we stopped at a grocery store. I asked a shirtless young man with large knife scars across his throat if there were any parties going on that night. He told us about the international music festival at the Castelo do Vasco De Gama near a beach by the same name. He wrote down directions on our map and Taylor and I got there in a few minutes. An ancient moorish castle (the Castelo) on the top of the hill looked down on the half-moon bay. A stage was set up on the wide boulevard that followed the shore. Shops hawking food, clothes, incense, silver, cloth and all kinds of hippy goods lined the boulevard on both sides. There was excitement in the air: it was the last day of the week-long festival.
The music hadn't yet started, so Taylor took a nap on the beach. I watched some boys jump off a dock into the bay for a while but then I got bored so I walked around, getting trinkets for girls back home. I picked up some "chocolate" and some space cake for Taylor and myself. We smoked a porro, drank some wine, and settled in for the concert: The Dizu Plaatjies' Ibuyambo Ensemble, from South Africa, Koby Israelite, an amazing psychedelic accordion player from Israel, Rokia Traore, who is from Mali but sings in French as well. There were three more performances as well, but by this point it was two in the morning and we had to ride in the morning. We hunkered down on the beach in our sleeping bags and woke up with the sun.
Our destination for the day was Villa Nova do Mil Fontainhas, about forty kilometers away. The road is flat along the beach, with occasional rolling hills. The beaches are beautiful, with amazing cliffs and rock formations. We passed many small resort towns and farm villages. There isn't much development there.
The ride was fairly uneventful and easy going. When we got to Mil Fontainhas we felt like more so we made it down to Cabo Sardão. The village is tiny and untouched by tourists. It is surrounded by fields. The population, all of five hundred people, is almost completely middle-aged. We got food for the night from a little grocery. The flirtatious, bespectacled old woman who served us made me promise to return the beer bottles. Just outside of town there is a lighthouse in the dunes that sit above the cliffs. The cliffs are tremendous, dropping off a hundred meters or more to the raging sea below. They were the most impressive and beautiful cliffs I've seen since Big Sur. Much of the stone is dark and dense but on the top of the cliffs there is a lot of sandstone. Veins of granite run through the sandstone and so the softer sandstone weathers away into complex and spidery shapes. Taylor and I decided to camp there for the night, but just as the sun set, ridiculous clouds of mosquitoes swarmed out of the rice paddies around town hell bent on sucking every drop of blood out of our bodies. There were so many mosquitoes they would darken the sky. All thought of camping there was quickly discarded and we beat a hasty 8 kilometer retreat to the hostel in Almograve. The mosquitoes chased us most of the way. The state-run youth hostel felt like a prison. It was ugly and awful but there were no buzzing vampiric insects and it was cheap. We slept until 10 A.M. The breakfast there was abysmal, even by hostel standards. The coffee was undrinkable. After checking out we got a real breakfast in Cabo Sardão. I returned one beer bottle to the old lady at the grocery. I'd smashed the other bottle the night before by throwing it off the massive cliff in a moment of recklessness, remembering my promise to the old lady the instant the bottle left my hand. The flat farmland quickly gave way to rolling hills, foothills, and then mountain passes near Maria Vinagre. Our goal for the day was Aljezur. Ten kilometers north of Aljezur, as we were chugging up a long, large slope, two blondes in a microbus sputtered past us "You going to make it?" one of them called to us in English. A moment later the van went "ker-plunk" and the blondes had to pull over hastily.
"You think they need a hand?" asked Taylor. I knew what he was getting at.
"It's time for a smoke, anyhow," I said. "Y'all need a hand?"
"She just needs to cool down, hey," said the one riding shotgun. The blondes are named Saskia and Aleisha. They'd sold all their possessions, left their native Australia, and bought the van in the U.K. the year before. They had been wandering Europe ever since, living in campings and car parks. I bummed a cig and rolled a porro.
"We'll have to meet up at the camping in Lagos, hey," said Aleisha.
"We were thinking about going to Sagres," I said.
"But who knows," Taylor was quick to interject.
We traded road stories and exchanged e-mails as they waited for the van to recover. Smoke break over, Taylor and I set off again. The girls shortly drove past us, smiling and waving as the van grumbled off into the distance.
"We have to follow them," Taylor stated with utmost conviction as we spun up the hill.
"Man, we don't even know what camping they're going to..."
"Are you telling me you're going to let them get away like that?"
"Lagos is another thirty kilometers away!"
"They WANTED us to come, man."
"Well...let's have lunch and think about it."
Lunch turned out to be fantastic. There was this tiny little German restaurant just on the other side of the bridge in Aljezur, on the Praceta de Kürnach. Taylor and I feasted on Bifandas (Portuguese pork chop sandwiches), Currywurst, half a liter of Erdinger Weißbier apiece, and huge coffee and ice cream floats for dessert. Looking at the map and feeling properly fortified after the meal, I pointed to Lagos and said, "I bet they're going to this camping because it's the one on the map."
We didn't stop riding until we hit the Gulf. We cracked 300 kilometers as we rolled up to the lighthouse at Ponta da Piedade. It had been five days since we left Lisboa.
We found the camping without much trouble. After a shower and a shave, we dropped in on the Aussies. They were surprised and happy to see us. Taylor and I were served gin and tonics and invited out for the night.
Lagos is crawling with Australian tourists. Most of the bars there seemed to be run by Australian ex-pats for Australian ex-pats.
The beaches are beautiful, with many small beaches and some large beaches scattered and hidden among the sandstone cliffs of the coast. I spent the day exploring and sunning myself. I had made reservations for four at a Thai restaurant for that evening and so invited Saskia and Aleisha out. After dinner we went to a manky bar and played a really bad game of pool. The girls were quite flattered and invited us to breakfast the next morning, but their stove went kaput. It's the thought that counts, right? I ran errands and picked up bus tickets back to Lisboa. Taylor and I had to meet Daniel Vogel-Essex there August 1st. Our last night in Lagos, Taylor and I went to a terrible, empty, and consequently quite enjoyably tranquil hotel bar called "One Fat Monkey." After a several drinks (starting with tequila) we went for a stroll and talked about the old days. On a whim we ducked into a trendy bar blaring dance music and crammed full of people. I took a perverse joy in cock-blocking a disgusting old Italian man trying to pick up fat English girls who must have been no older than nineteen. When the English birds blew the bar, my cock-block successful, the Italian then turned his amorous intentions to me:
"What do you want?" He asked.
"A beer."
He passed me a beer from the bartender and then said: "But really, what do you want?" and gave me the eye.
"A beer." I laughed in his face and he got really upset. He spun around and immediately started in on a group of kids sitting behind us. I guzzled the beer and Taylor and I ran out of there.
The next day we just loafed about, waiting for our bus to come. As we were sitting by the water front across the street from city hall, about to smoke our last porro, a fight broke out next to us. There is a row of small stands along the sidewalk of the avenue where local skippers hawk boat tours of the coast. One such skipper was being visited by his girlfriend. They were having some sort of discussion. My Portuguese is pretty non-existant, but I believe the couple was suffering fidelity issues. As the skipper sat on a bench, head in hands, his girlfriend looked down on him in silence. Her cellphone was clutched in one hand.
The skipper from the neighboring stand, shirtless and muscular, swaggered over to the distraught tour boat operator, seated still with his head in his hands. The shirtless skipper said some untoward remarks, concerning, I believe, some indiscretions of the sad skippers' girlfriend. The sad skipper immediately leapt up, now outraged that such accusations could be leveled against his woman.
"I will kill you! Don't think I won't!" he cried in Portuguese, striking a pose of fisticuffs.
"Yeah? Yeah? Bring it on!" responded the shirtless skipper. He took off his walkman and watch and set them near his stand.
The accusations and insults continued to fly. Punches were thrown (and ducked). Vulgarities flowed freely. The sad skipper let loose a series of impressive flying kicks. An old man passing by on a bicycle nearly became a casualty but managed to escape. Finally, the sad skipper grabbed up a long metal pole, used to support the parasol of the stand.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" he screamed and charged the shirtless aggressor, who promptly turned tail and ran. They ran all the way down the avenue, around stands, terrifying tourists, some of whom attempted unsuccessfully to quell the violence. About ten minutes later the police showed up. Of course there was no longer any fight to break up, so the police had to settle for giving everyone a good scolding.
The police left and Taylor and I finally got to smoke. Just as we finished, our bus pulled alongside the curb. Taylor slept most of the way. I managed my notes. It was late when pulled into Estação Do Oriente. The ride along the silent and dark docks of the Tejo shore was smooth and uneventful all the way to the Lisbon Lounge. We didn't even get lost!
In the morning after breakfast Taylor and I rode down Avenida 24 de Julio along the Tejo river front all the way to Torre de Belem (The Tower of Bethlehem). We showed up early but Dan was already there, waiting for us. The three of us, happily united, rolled through Lisboa. We stopped at a cafe for some awful food. Dan told me about his life in Berlin and about his recent stroke, which left him with a blind spot in his right eye. He hadn't slept in two days, so we snuck him into the hostel and let him take a nap in my bunk. Dan had forgotten to book lodging in Lisboa. He claimed he had been occupied with girl drama. As he dozed, I found a hostel for him: Traveler's. Traveler's is on 113 Correiros, in Baixa. The entrance to the hostel is in the back of a tiny little flag shop.
Dan woke up in the evening. Taylor and I were getting restless and wanted to go out. We had struck up conversation with a few girls staying there at the hostel and we invited them out to Barrio Alto. There was another pair of Aussie girls, traveling with an Irish woman. One of the Aussies immediately took a shine to Dan (or Dan's muscles). Taylor's boyish good looks and suspenders won him the attention of the Irish woman. I was left with the other Aussie girl, Karen, 25, Choir mistress for various churches. She spent most of the time talking about her boyfriend and the big diamond ring he'd gotten her but hadn't given her yet. A tribe of Germans accompanied us. After hours of bar-hopping and shameless groping, The Irish woman, age 32, drug Taylor back to the hostel for sex in the bathroom. Needless to say, he was rather tired come morning.
The three of us set off rather late. It was a miserable 60 kilometers getting out of Lisboa: confusing roads, humongous hills, stiff headwinds, and blazing heat reflected off of the burning asphalt. The headwinds were a good ten kilometers an hour. The considerable resistance made even downhill sections tiring and strenuous. The only consolations were cooling effects of the wind and the stupendous views of mountain valleys full of green fields and far-off red-tile roofed villages. It was long dark by the time we arrived in Ericeira, our destination for the day. All three of us were exhausted. We made a hasty camp on a local beach, ate some cream cheese and salmon sandwiches, and fell asleep. The beach was long, low, and wide. Massive boulders jutted out from sand and water alike, and the waves crashed noisily upon them. We had laid our sleeping bags a good seventy feet from the water, but around four in the morning the sound of waves woke me. I sat up to see Dan already sitting up, and the surf a mere five feet away.
"We're going to have to move, man."
"Yup."
Gathering up our things, we moved to a more secure portion of the beach, where the tide obviously did not reach, and slept soundly throughout the remainder of the night.
I woke up a couple of hours before the others. I pulled myself out of my sleeping bag and stretched groggily, only to notice we were right next to the lifeguard post, whereupon a sign was hung stating that all camping was forbidden. I decided to get coffee, and walked to the cafe across the boulevard. As I sipped my coffee and ate a pastry, I noticed the lifeguard leaning against the railing. His back was turned, but he had a half-empty glass of vermouth and was smoking Marlboro lights. He never said anything to us.
Dan and Taylor woke up. We broke camp and rolled out, aiming for Peniche. The headwinds never let up. In fact, they got stronger. We stopped for lunch in Silveiro. The festival for the town saint was going on and a marching band was there in front of the church to welcome us. For lunch we had the best rotisserie chicken I have ever had the fortune to taste. The rest of the ride to Peniche was painful and uneventful, excepting a moment when Dan lost the will to live and collapsed in a cornfield to watch the sunset.
We arrived in Peniche around dusk. For dinner we ate at a little bar in the dunes. I had a burger topped with cheese and pineapple. Delicious! We had a conference over our meal, reaching a consensus: To hell with the headwinds, we should be riding south. A bus to Porto was in order for tomorrow. The three of us wandered into the dunes to bed down for the night.
The Peniche bus station was impressively run-down. It brought back memories of Chihuahua, Mexico. To kill time before our bus left, the three of us poked around a traveling market and carnival in the field next to the bus station. I bought a pair of mirrored aviators from an Indian fellow.
"Betel?" I asked him, as he packed something into his gums.
"No, tobacco. With this, it is very good," he replied as he took a little vial and tapped out some cocaine onto the tobacco. He rolled it between his palms, stuffed it into his cheek, and gave me a smile. His little girl watched me shyly from behind the table.
We got to Porto around ten-thirty P.M. We ate for the first time since the morning in a little cafe across the plaza from the bus station. The plaza is called Batalha. After we ordered I thought it would be a good idea to call the hostel. The person I spoke with at the hostel told me that we had to check in by eleven-thirty! That only gave us thirty minutes for our food to arrive, for us to eat, and for us to ride across town. When the food finally came, we boxed it, paid, and ran. I was in the lead and going too fast through the steep, cobble-stone alleys. When I arrived at the first big road, Rua Clerigos, I stopped and looked behind me. Taylor soon rolled up, but Dan was nowhere to be found! Taylor and I rode back the way we came calling out "Dan!" We waited at the plaza, ducked down side streets he could have turned down, but nothing. I realized that Dan didn't know the name of the hostel, or the name of the street it was on. All he knew was that it was on the West side of town. I began to worry a little bit, especially as I felt it was my fault. Dan didn't even speak a word of Portuguese.
Taylor and I decided to head to the hostel. The ride turned out to be flat, fast, and smooth, alongside the river Douro. We passed beneath the beautiful bridges, one built by Alec Eiffel, that link the two bluffs along side the river. The Cais de Gaia shown illuminated on the Southern bank. I was too concerned about Dan to appreciate the scenery. What if he'd had a break down? What if he'd gotten hit? What if...? After some confusion, Taylor and I finally arrived at the hostel. It was not easy to find, and as we parked our bikes and headed for the front door I felt a sinking certainty that Dan would never be able to find it on his own.
"What took you guys so long?" said Dan, tossing down a magazine as Taylor and I walked into the reception. "I already ate and everything."
"You son of a bitch!" I gave him a hug and told him "I'm never worrying about you again."
The hostel was another abysmal state-run youth hostel, like the one in Almograve. The two night men were a ridiculously over-built, tattooed, and buzz cut troglodyte and a small-statured, pudgy, balding middle-aged man. They only gave us one key for the room. It smelled like a gym, or maybe a really run down dorm. Sixteen year olds tittered in the hall way, trying to get drunk inconspicuously.
In the room, as we disrobed for bed, we noticed our backs were very sunburned. Dan had a hilarious tan line from his muscle shirt. Taylor was a bit uneven due to his partial application of sunscreen. I was peeling. Dan suggested we take a group photo to compare our burns. We lined up in the hall under the light for the picture, hamming it up and cracking wise as to the penal nature of our hostel.
"Be careful, man, you're probably not allowed to have fun in here," I said as we returned to the room. No sooner had the words left my mouth than Mr. Muscles throws open the door and says in his best Schwarzenegger voice, "No laughing. Next time, you sleep outside," and clomped away in his combat boots. We just about died laughing.
On a cafe terrace the next morning, having breakfast, the three of us saw a young fellow on a mountain bike loaded down with gear stop in front of the cafe. We called him over and offered him a coffee. His name was David. He was a graphic designer from Paris. In the last few weeks he had ridden along the Northern coast of Spain to Santiago de Compostela, and had just caught the train to Porto. He was headed South for an electronica festival called "Boom" just outside of Castelo Branco. The four of us soon decided to join up for the trip south. We spent the rest of the day riding around the city trying to find lodging for David and a laundromat for ourselves. We eventually accomplished both. The hostel was near Praça Brasil and the laundromat was at the same plaza. We ate fruit and drank beer in the park in the plaza, beneath the tremendous column. Dan sang "The Ballad Of Sadie Brown" and I sang "Sixteen Tons" for David.
That evening, we went to a restaurant by Praça Ribeira to eat fish. We sat on the dock, looking at the bridges and watching the countless fish swirl in the water of the river. Later, at a hookah bar, we met some older Spanish ladies from Barcelona. They were very flirtatious and smoked us out.
The next day, after a brief, exciting ride down the bluffs to the riverside, we rode slowly and took lots of breaks. The shore was nice, the terrain fairly flat, and the wind was to our backs. I had taped a small transistor radio to my handlebars and blasted eighties pop. It reminded me of Rike back in Madrid.
Dan and David both took quick dips in the chilly ocean. Dan was wearing his ridiculous speedo shorts. Taylor and I played frisbee in the meantime. I will never forget, as we left the beach, David rolling, lighting, and smoking a cigarette as he pedaled along on his bicycle. How French is that? After a sixteen kilometer sprint through a pine forest, we arrived at the camping in Furadouro. We spent the evening chatting with our Helvitic neighbors, first, about the obligatory conversation about gun culture. Then Dan told a story of a girl he knew with split personality disorder, prompting a discussion of how people share reality. People were still talking when I fell asleep.
The next morning we headed down the coast along the peninsula formed by the Ovar canal. The ride was smooth and tranquil, through field and forest. Fishermen hauled their boats up onto shore and offloaded their catch. Farmers drove past in grumbling tractors.
The map didn't state whether there was a ferry to Aveiro, our destination, from the end of the peninsula. When we came to our last chance to cross to the mainland, David had to decide which way to go. He was on a schedule to get to the festival on time. Dan, Taylor, and I had no such concerns.
"So David, what are we going to do?"
"Hmm...I do not know." David paused for a moment. His face was suddenly lit with inspiration. "Ah! One moment!" He dug feverishly in his pack, and hauled out a deck of cards. "We will ask ze tarot!" The four of us hunkered down out our haunches in a circle and David threw a card. It was staff. "AH! We take the unknown way!" And so we pressed on down the peninsula. Of course, there was a ferry.
Aveiro was a small college town, and like most small college towns, dead for the summer. It seemed like a good place to kill our trip. We had ridden 551.4 kilometers, not counting jaunts in towns. We bid David farewell, as he had to catch a train to Coimbra and then ride across the mountains to Castelo Branco. Waiting for the train, Dan, David, and I climbed the ten-meter steel pillars in front of the station entrance. After finding a no-star hotel run by a sweet old lady, Dan turned in early. Taylor and I would have no such behavior and went out to a bar. There we met a couple of Spanish women from Asturias. Their names are Vanesa and Maria Jose. They bought us drinks, made us unbutton our shirts, and danced us dizzy. Vanesa kept dancing closer and closer to me and gave me a rather warm kiss goodnight.
I was hung over beyond belief the next day. Dan and Taylor made a foray to the beach. I just lay in bed and groaned. I felt better by the evening though, and as Vanesa's number was scrawled across my arm, I called her up. Taylor, Dan, and I had a much more tranquil night out with the Spanish ladies, though the night ended rather abruptly when Vanesa and Maria Jose got into a tiff and huffed off in opposite directions.
The next day we caught the train to Lisboa. There were planes to catch.

"Little Americans flirts," to quote Henry James, "[are] the queerest creatures in the world."

Taylor talked me into going out. This is strange, because he never wants to go out. He's not a very outgoing personality. But, he'd just come from Germany. I hadn't seen him in a long time. Who knows, people change.

On the way out of a hookah bar, we asked some German kids for directions. They ended up taking us out to a skeezy college bar aimed at exchange students: mostly Americans, a few Spaniards, and the obligatory Japanese. The few locals are composed of bored college boys, looking to find, fuck, and forget whatever foreign co-ed drunk enough for temporary absolution from her boyfriend back home (because they all have one, whether they admit it or not). Some are sixteen, living with Catholic families who ask, perched around the dinner table, eyebrows raised: "Are you going out again tonight?" These little American flirts talk about Martha's Vineyard, their beach house on Padre Island, or the Hamptons. They gasp when they see hashish or rutting couples in brightly lit corners across the street. They forget to wear jackets when it is 12 C and then cuddle close to you. You stroke their hair and wonder, "When are my children going to do this?"

Taylor attempted to talk to the girl from Martinique, a breathtaking specimen of the beauty colonial France stole long ago. The girl to my right sat on a stool. Her hair is a wondrous mess that Nate Wainscott would envy. This girl and Nate also have similar taste in jeans. Skinny, low cut black ones that show off one's thin figure. Her robin's egg cardigan has a little Lacoste alligator on it.

"J'mapelle Lilly" she says, and it's a lie. I correct her Spanish (which is better than my French) and she makes me hold her handbag. Outside for a smoke she says, "Mi novio, my boyfriend, esta a le Boule, la playa. He leave me here." She hands me the cigarette. "Are you married?" she asks.

"Pff...no, not yet," I say. When the bar closes and everyone is leaving she grabs my hand and leads me to the now-empty brightly lit back room and kisses me. Buddha on the wall looks down.

"Tomorrow. You call me." She writes her number on my map before turning and going off into the night, surrounded by friends.

The next day Taylor and I do yoga in the park.
"She's married, man. And her name's totally not 'Lilly.' It's Tiphane."
I call her anyway.

"You come to my house at 4:30," she says.
"5:30."
"No, 4:30."
"5."
"Okay, fife. Bring your guitar. Bisous."
I show up at 4:30 to prove my point.
"Mentiroso! [Liar!]" she scolds me when I show up. She's from Lyon and twenty-two years old. Her mother is Sicilian and her father is French. Tiphane moved here and bored with this town already. Her house is the size of the apartment building my parents live in. Green leather salon furniture, two hundred years old, pointed at a large, black, shiny flat screen T.V.

Out in the garden sitting on a bench, I play a song I wrote with none other than Salvatore Cassato himself. It's a blues shuffle in A, from a cold night in Chicago and a hot bottle of sake. It goes like this:

I'm good to you.
You're good to me.
You say you love somebody else
but he don't make you happy.
He don't treat you the way he should,
so I'm wood.

I been to the East.
I been to the West.
I had all the kinds of lovin'
that a man could get,
but your kind of lovin'
was the best.

Now up in the mornin'
at the break of day,
you're huggin the pillow
where my body used to lay.
And if he only knew the way you thrill me,
why, he'd kill me.

I ain't gonna fight.
He ain't got the might.
I can satisfy.
He can't even try.
You got your love stoked up so good,
He'll just get hot,
but I'm wood.

Then I played Chopin's Mazurka in D minor on the piano. She liked it a lot. Practically purring as loudly as the fat Siamese I was petting, Tiphane ordered me to play more. I refused. "I haven't practiced in five years," I said. She gave me a pout, a Mars bar, and a kiss goodbye.

"Going back in a flash over the women I've known. It's like a chain which I've forged out of my own misery. Each one bound to the other." Henry Miller.

Portugal is in two days.

I know Martha from California but she is currently in Chile. Please forgive the lower case.


dear martha -

hope you're doing okay. are you still in chile? staying out of trouble? i'm sure you're busy having lots of adventures, seducing tall, dark, and handsome latin men.
as for me, i'm back in the land of the mangers-fromage (cheese-eaters) at my folks' house. i left mad about a week ago. i survived my year as elementary school teacher, bankrolled a few grand, and now, i am as i should be: sans job, house, bills, or steady girl. my only problem is my lack of a bike (or velo as they say here in france) but that is quickly being remedied. the weekend before i left i ran in an alleycat race and a ciclonudista rally, which is exactly what it sounds like. the attatched photo is from in front of the royal palace in madrid. the alleycat was not nearly so mellow: a scramble to seven "Corte Ingles" department stores scattered throughout madrid. roughly twenty five kilometers in length, seven stalwart bike punks and myself dodged buses, taxis, cars, and mopeds, generally ignoring traffic signals as we wove our way through rush hour traffic and 110F/43C degree temperatures on fixed gear bicycles (my buddy juan lent me his spare). i placed fifth out of eight. it was my first time not finishing dead last. i only rode so fast because i was in so much pain. my friend lori was there to witness the start and the finish (though she was a good two liters of beer in by the time i wheezed across the finish line at the okupa). she came to visit from NYC, as she got two weeks off her job as a techie for sesame street. she and i have history, but it's always been a fairly casual thing (except the for this one really hairy experience but that's another story). anyhow, she had a lot of fun, and my friend rike (remember her?) kept her company. speaking of rike, things took off with her. she became my steady girl of sorts, though she's a riot grrl and would totally break my kneecaps if i she heard me say anything like that (but it's true). i guess she liked my politics. hah! we took a weekend around valencia on the beach and we slept on roofs and abandoned lots. i never actually met a girl who would do that kind of thing before, just the ones who would talk about it. that trip was really great, actually. we caught the bus down to valencia from mad, kicked around for the rest of the day. the next day we rolled on to faro de cullera, and there it was fuckin' fantastic - white sand beaches, clear blue water, palm trees, the whole nine yards. we were smack dab between two small resort towns in an even smaller podunk with barely a grocery. there were eight people on the beach, and one of them passed me some hash. it was amazing. we slept there on the beach looking at shooting stars and rike told me about hitch hiking through patagonia. in the morning i woke up with the sun and ran ten kilometers down the beach only to find a giant statue of buddha standing at the mouth of a river. when i got back to our "campsite" i took a skinny dip in the ocean to cool off. people seemed pretty lax about nudity there. later in the day rike and i hiked up a mountain along an old pilgrim trail to an old castle, talking about fearlessness, stopping only to drink water and cry. we made it back to valencia for the festival de san juan (summer solstice to us pagans). thousands of people showed up at the beach to make bonfires. to the sound of pipes and drums, people drank themselves silly. at midnight everbody ran into the ocean to jump three waves and ran then back onto shore to leap three times over the roaring bonfires.
when we got back to mad two days later, spain was in the playoffs for the european football championship. rike, lori, my aussie friend josh, and i met up with all my mexican gang to watch the final game (spain won). during halftime i hit the streets and sold the all the scotch i had left to people smoking cigarettes outside of bars. i made enough to pay for dinner. it got so crazy in the streets later that the cops had to bust out the tear gas and rubber bullets.
it was kind of sad seeing rike off. she was good to me and more than a lover she was a very good friend. i learned a lot from her. i left her my bike; i wish i coulda left her more (or not at all). i gotta admit, i'm gonna miss mad a bit. for as much as it pissed me off, it had a lot of things going for it and the few friends i made were solid. i hope to see them again, but pedro is in india, conchi is wandering the pyrenees on bike, josh is walking to santiago de compostela...carlos will probably make it to lisbon in august, though, and my mexican homie panchito is gonna be in SF this winter. most likely i will meet up with him then. maybe if you're that neck o' the woods i can present y'all. he's a real card.
my last night in madrid i spent in front of an old convent where forty nuns were executed by a firing squad of anarchists during the civil war. some of my best friends from madrid were there: panchito, josh, carlos, rike. the next day lori and i caught an overnight sleeper train to paris. all my luggage made flying unreasonably expensive. i had a couple of old guys (70+) as roomies. they told me what life was like under franco and how bad the old spanish cars were. in paris we met a queer dude from louisiana by way of san diego, but we left him at the taxi stand. lori and i had to go on to angers and my parents. lori was there for a couple of days. my parentals gave her the obligatory tour of the local chateau and a french cuisine meal. lori split for rome and met up with my sister in a random turn of events. since then i've just been chillin' with my parental units, drinking beer and doing laundry with them.
i dumpstered two quality (but very old) bikes and my dad and i are working on getting them roadworthy for the portugal trip. it's taken us to every single bike shop in town. we even fell in with the local anarchist collective that runs a little bike co-op. today we got a contact for an old (60+) pro cycle racer who specializes in vintage bike parts. tomorrow pop and i will pay him a visit.
my buddy taylor shows up wednesday, coming in from berlin. it'll be a whole different kettle of fish then.
well, i think that's about it. take care of yourself. don't worry about writing a novel back, but it'd be nice to know if you're alive...

peace,
rafe

An Empty Bottle Of Jack, One Thousand Euros, A Gas Mask, A Mirror, And Aztlan

Friday night in the teteria with no name in Lavapies I gave Ana la Gitana a backrub before I had to leave. Ana is a gypsy (I met her in Granada) and she is the sexiest cougar (thirty-eight) I've ever seen. I think she hexed me when she kissed me goodbye.
When I left her, I went to pick up these two American girls, 19 and 20, art students from Indiana. The young one is Mary: a former dancer with a face made like a Modigliani. Bridget is a photographer. She wears glasses and has long, curly red hair. They giggle a lot. It is their first time out of the country. After a stroll and a bottle of wine through La Latina, I took them to the Mexican gang's pad and after a couple of rails, a lot of gin and tonic, and a tall bourbon nightcap, I was twisted. It was pretty late when I decided to head back to my sugar mama's (Ilana's) apartment down on the South side. Mary came back to my place to bump uglies all night. She had no idea what she was doing, but shit was tight. Sex with young girls, in a nutshell. Mary and Bridget flew to Barcelona the next morning.
I spent Saturday down in VK (Vallecas), blowing tea and working on my rasta friend's bike. She'd just got back from a cyclotour in Ireland and was about to do another one to Santiago de Compostela.
That night I met up with my Aussie friend Josh because he invited me to a party in Santo Domingo. The house is right next to Opera and across the street from a house of prostitution, known colloquially as a "puticlub." I brought a tea cigarette*, a liter of Coca-Cola, and a liter of Negrita rum. Everybody got well lit because they're not used to just tea, they're used to chocolate with tobacco. There were a bunch of journalists, artists, and travellers, and the lighting was perfect, so after a few drinks the joint was hoppin' and I didn't stagger home until seven thirty.
I spent all Sunday in bed because I was coming down with a cold. I went to see a doctor Monday and got a two-day "get-out-of-work-free" note. I celebrated by notifying my boss and smoking a fatty. I felt a lot better with two days off so I spent all day playing guitar at Ilana's place. I took a break to run a lid of tea up to Lavapies to the Mexican gang. I got forty yo-yos for it. I'd just gotten back home and I was cooking up some dinner when the phone rang. It was Rike. She wanted to drink a beer and talk revolution at nine thirty p.m. That's what we did, after some confusion in regards to geography (I got lost).
Sitting in the park we talked in the two languages we have in common: mostly Spanish, but some English creeping in. We spoke about our favorite memories of snow and about making art with information. A liter of lager later we came to my sugar mama's penthouse. By "penthouse," I mean, fifth floor, no elevator. That building is falling down, but you can get on the roof for a mediocre view of the city. Plus, I had an "oh" of tea sitting there, in an Egyptian carpet bag.
"Tienes un llave?" Rike's interest was piqued.
"Si."
"Oooh!"
After huffing up the endless stairs, smoking on the roof, I said,
"Es que, Ilana esta acostombrada a ser lo que quiere, y quiere un hombre en casa. Con todos el piso vacio menos ella me pidio a mi a quedarme. Cuido la casa, cocino, y tal...Sabes, ella es muy pija, de Santa Monica, Judia, un pasta que te cagas. Su tio tiene casinos en Las Vegas. Le conozco de Berkeley, en California."
Back downstairs, Rike and I watched "Charlie Wilson's War" and after tea toddled off to bed around midnight. I slept  in the room I usually sleep in, and Rike slept in the spare.
Where is Ilana? Doing blow and boozing it up with the Mexican gang: Panchito, Santos, Maximilliano, Dante, and the Brasilero Andre. Jo and Roxy are accompanying Ilana and the boys. Disco Disco Blow, Disco Disco Drunk, Disco Disco Home. At seven A.M. eight coke hounds too drunk to stand yet too spun to succumb to gravity's urge are ringing the bell incessantly. I let them in, groggily, and attempt a return to bed that is not to be. They scatter like shards of a shattered bottle. Roxy and Maximilliano are rutting like rabbits on the living room couch. Ilana and Santos are thumping at the walls in Ilana's Room. Dante and Jo are on the roof. Dante won't stop talking. In fact he's talking so much, Rike came out of her room and went to mine to avoid the noise. I try to get Dante to smoke on the roof so he'll calm down but he won't. Maximilliano must've finished 'cause Roxy came up to the roof laughing and said "I walked in on Ilana and Santos and they were fucking! But I don't think they'll be much longer."
Roxy was right. We got back downstairs and Santos was just coming out of Ilana's room with a smug grin on his ferret-like face, adjusting his pants, and blood steadily oozing out of his nose and down his upper lip. I don't know if that was from the sex or the cocaine, but it was probably both.
"Oh, wey, tienes sangre en la cara." Dante looked concerned, but when I wasn't looking he'd made off with the bottle of Smirnoff that I'd had in the fridge. By the time the blood was off Santos' face Jo and Roxy had left. "I have to fly to Germany in seventeen minutes," Roxy said as she bis'd me. Jo said "I have...class...?" looking at her watch with a look of utter confusion on her face. The boys tried to leave three times but kept forgetting things. The third one I ignored and got back in my large, comfortable bed, which contained within a soft, warm, lightly clothed, sleeping strawberry blonde anarchist graduate student from Berlin, aged twenty six.
I woke up a few hours later, and she was cuddled up next to me. Faint, white light came into the room from the window high against the ceiling. The distant hum wash honk of traffic on the street five stories below wafted in from the living room windows like chloroform.
I stirred and Rike nuzzled against me.
"No tienes que trabajar?" I asked.
"A last dos."
"Y que hora es?"
"Las once. O que sea. Pienso que lo puedo hacer mañana, tambien." Then she nibbled my neck.
"Que suerte tenemos." I said. Rike lifted her head and looked at me.
"Porque?"
"Todo el mundo alla afuera curriendo con tanta prisa, y nosotros, estamos aqui."
Then we made out like teenagers.
I made Rike mint tea before she left. Downstairs, she kissed me goodbye. She promised to see me the day after tomorrow and kissed me goodbye again.
I left Ilana sleeping in the mess, took the stash, and split for my home pad. I would've taken the Smirnoff if I could've found the top  but Dante had lost it. Whatever. I still had a bottle of Negrita rum.
At home I made half a liter of strong rum and coke, with a whole lemon in it, and a peanut butter sandwich with banana and raisins.
I took all that and my guitar and sat in the sun with the park for hours, until Ilana came and it started to drizzle. It must've been around five. Ilana needed keys because she'd left them in Santos' jacket, but he'd left his phone. "This morning just won't end," groaned Ilana. I laughed at her. She left. I went home after that. It was time for me to go, anyway. I made a dental appointment, got the antibiotics my doctor prescribed me (but I won't take for just a cold), and picked up a few groceries on my way home. I had one last errand. A bar had closed and there were cases and cases of liquor, taxes paid, unopened, under a pile of sweaters at a social center. Sitting on at home right now, I have a eight bottles of Dewar's White Label scotch left, two bottles of Negrita Rum (which is most excellent), three bottles of Smirnoff, and one bottle of good Pacharan, which is a spiced Aperitif. There's more rum and a couple of huge bottles of gin I need to pick up later. I've scored roughly three and a half cases of liqour. I got on my bike, picked up a case of Brugal rum, and carted it over to Lavapies. After way too much fucking walking and way too fucking much waiting I sold it to Andre the Brasilero for forty yo-yos. Then I went home and by eleven thirty I was asleep. Tomorrow was Wednesday and I had work in the morning.

*Jazz Musicians Blow Tea.


**names changed to protect the guilty

May Day I flew out of Mad to Nantes, France. I got in two hours late. Dad met me at the terminal and I could tell he was tired. We talked a lot on the bus into town, eating sandwiches and drinking tea.
In the morning it was drizzling. Even though we got up early (9-ish) it took us a while to get going. By the time we ate and picked up supplies, it was eleven o´clock. I bought us tasty spiced pita and goat cheese from a little lebanese place, ¨manned¨ by a twelve-year old fellow. Pop and I were quite impressed by his mature, yet good-natured demeanor.
Nantes used to have a bustling ship yard but it wound down about a hundred years ago. Now it has a fairly thriving arts scene and is a popular tourist destination, from afar and from within France. We un-hitched our bikes from in front of the train station and took a spin around the little island in the middle of the Loire. There we had a great view of the now defunct port facilities, the empty docks, and the massive motionless cranes. I told Dad how it reminded me of the miles of cranes along the docks of Oakland. On this little island in the middle of the Loire used to stand the Union halls for the harbor workers. Now, the massive warehouses and meeting halls have been converted into art galleries and community spaces. Inside one such converted warehouse was a giant mechanical elephant, fully articulated and powered by means of a complicated pneumatic system. Round about this time the drizzle let up and we set off pedaling down the D107, along the northern bank of the Loire. Dad kept telling me about this amazing bike path that he had noted on the map, that ran next to the river. It ran the roughly seventy kilometers to St. Nazaire, our destination for the day. We kept passing points where, on the map, the bike path crossed the highway, yet, this path was no where to be seen. The rail line, however, kept mysteriously appearing where the bike path was supposed to be.
"Dad," I asked time and again, "Are you sure that's the bike trail? I think maybe it's the railway."
"Ah, no, it's the trail! The man at the map store told me about it. He said we could take the D17, almost all the way, too."
"Okay, Pop," I'd say and nod.

Finally, fifty klicks in, I looked at the map legend. The "bike trail" was indeed the rail line. We'd been riding on the trail, concurrent with the D17, all along! I have always known I get my excellent sense of direction (HAH!) from my dear old pop. Our erroneous quest for the bike trail led to many interesting, if circuitous, diversions like this one:

We climbed up a bunch of long hills and rode into Saveney right about nine o'clock. We were beat and it was a holiday but luckily there was an inn open. After a steak dinner (breaking my three-week veg streak) and a couple of pints of tasty, tasty Leffe, Pop and I crashed. I watched some really weird David Bowie movie until I passed out. Bowie played a time traveling alien and I understood nothing because it was all dubbed in French.
The next morning we got up early. The sky was cloudy but quickly cleared and was wonderful the rest of the way. I drank a lot of coffee and ate a ton of food. We kicked off down those big hills and blew across the flats all the way to St. Nazaire. The East side of St. Nazaire is an ugly, ugly place. There's about ten miles of refineries and industrial harbor. I found a sweet radioactive magnet that's about a square foot. It was lying by the side of the road. I suppose it fell off the back of a truck. After a pit stop for more beer, and some conversation over pita and goat cheese by a really gross canal, we set off again. The countryside improved immensely as factories gave way to beach, farms, and resort towns. Our pace was much better the second day: we made fifty kilometers in just three hours. Of course, we still had twenty to go! It was a great feeling when we got to the beach on the West side of St. Nazaire. The last haul to Le Pouliguen went smoothly and when we hit the crescent bay, there were hundreds of kites flying in the sky. Here we are, 110 kM after leaving Nantes:

Mama and Olivia came walking up from the train station right as we were chaining our bikes in front of the hotel. It was great seeing them. We went for a stroll along the beach and ate crepes.
I took a photo from a jetty in the canal leading to the ocean.

The next day we spent being family and walking way too much. We all had to be somewhere Monday, so we caught the train back to Nantes (the line that ran along our "bike path"). After a cab ride from an Iranian cabbie who blasted Chuck Berry, we all found ourselves at an airport hotel. There was no staff, only computers. Everything operated by barcode or credit card. I was really creeped out. That must be what things are like in Japan. My flight left at five a.m. and after a few hours of sleep my whole family walked the five hundred meters to the airport. Olivia and I downed espressos, and recounted our early morning experience with the gigolo at Termini station in Rome. My folks saw me off. When I got home I crashed for most of the day. I think I saw Ilana but I can't really remember. Monday morning, I was back at work.

Happy bicycle day. Looking forward to tomorrow.
El Coco lent me his fixed and I rode 21 km through the pouring rain, hail, and Madrid traffic. This race occured simultaneously in twenty-odd cities across the planet, so we started off at 14.00. I came in eleventh out of fifteen. Don't let that fool you! I was the second to last to finish; three dropped out. From the Patio to Lavapies to Cibeles, then to Olavide, Moncloa, Plaza Castilla, and finally back to the Patio.
Juan (from Asturias) won. A kid named Federico from out of town placed second. Coco came in third. The other Juan is in a wheelchair 'cuz he fractured his pelvis in a wreck. He still showed up, though. He was in the video down at the bottom. It's from a local newspaper. Coco, who lent me a bike, is the kid in the yellow jersey who says: "Riding fixed brakeless is like drinking decaf your whole life and then drinking espresso."

After the race we drank beer and smoked cigars.

Now I'm beat. Gotta eat and take a shower. Then maybe I'll look up a certain blonde...

Enjoy the video. It's from the last race.

Peace.

The bells were ringing when Emily and I got into Orgiva. It was eleven fifteen as we shouldered our rucksacks and headed towards the plaza. "Hey Z,” I said, because that’s what I call Emily, “How do you feel about coffee?”
“Coffee sounds like a good idea..." Z is a bike messenger from Greenwich Village but she goes to school in Berkeley.
We ducked into the first café we saw. The Slavic woman behind the bar made cafes con leche and the bells kept ringing. I noticed the napkins were for our hostel and asked how to get there. The bartender pointed upstairs. We had good luck the whole trip.
Z and I had spent the last couple of days at a hostel in the Albaycin in Granada. The Hostel was called Terrapin Station and run by an affable, and very stoned, young American named James. The only other person staying there at the time was a young Italian named Nicolai. He slept a lot. During the day Z and I would wander the streets, getting lost and arguing about how to get back. Invariably she'd be right. It took me a couple of days to unwind. Madrid is nicknamed the "fascist tomb" and the metaphor is double edged.
Plus, my roommate Eduardo had gotten really upset with me for having loud sex. I'm not even going to talk about work. And Buffalo Bill is dead. Another stupid death. Another friend I will only talk to in dreams. It also didn’t help that throughout Granada resounded the ominous, wailing music of the Holy Week processions as hooded parishioners carried bloodied saints through the streets.
Things finally relaxed the second evening, on meeting up with Jose Luis and Pastora. Pastora has begun painting again after being preoccupied with teaching photography for the last few years. Jose Luis received great acclaim at an international puppeteer convention in Iran for a puppet show of his. He "revolutionized puppetry in Iran," with his 3 minute magnum opus. Over tea in a teteria the couple invited Z and me to stay at their place there in Granada and offered to leave us the keys for their studio in Baeza (a UN heritage site). Then they took us out to dinner at a "Japones" noodle shop. They marveled at our Yankee aplomb with the chopsticks.
In the morning Z and I took the bus down the hill from the Albaycin, breathing the cool air and observing the descent into the new city. The bus to Orgiva left at 10 and we dashed through the bus station as the P.A. announced the bus was leaving at that moment. Of course when we got to the bay it was exactly at ten but the bus hadn't even arrived yet. "Welcome to Spain," I quipped.
Z slept on my shoulder as the bus whizzed around curves atop cliffs, heedless of oncoming traffic. The mountains were beautiful and every so often the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas slipped into view. Near Orgiva there is a valley full of windmill generators looking very 21st century.
After coffee and stashing our packs at El Semaforo in Orgiva, we found a hippie named Jose playing the flute in the plaza. He told us how to get to Beneficio: "Go to the West, out of town, until you find this one tree with this one graffiti, and there you make autostop. Everybody going to Beneficio."
Z and I spent the rest of the day drinking beer in an abandoned lot on a pile of rocks surrounded by gnarled old olive trees facing a graffiti laden corner. We wandered some more along the edge of town. Right by the city limits towards Cigarrones was a burro standing hitched in a field, a thin blue stream of smoke curling up from the bluff below, set against a backdrop of the Alpujarra mountains. On the way back into town Z and I stopped at an old inn where we ate Roquefort, drank wine, talked about our families, and eavesdropped on the French backpackers. Back at the Semaforo we slept until dark and after a spliff at the plaza, watching two little girls race, we went to a cafe so Z could sketch and I could write.
The next morning we set off, following Jose's directions, and quickly found the "one tree with one graffiti." A low stone wall stood at the edge of the hill. There seated on the wall, surrounded by plastic bags, contentedly munching a breakfast of bread and bologna, was a thin man in an old tattered Army jacket. He saw Z and me puzzling over the map discussing whether to hitch or hike. The thin man asked "Vere are you going?" "Beneficio," I replied. "Sit," said the thin man, emphatically. "Here you make autostop." He smoked cigarettes and talked as we waited. His name was Zoltan and he was from Budapest. Zoltan was tall, skinny, and clean-shaven with cropped grey hair. Zoltan’s face was long, with a hawk nose, sharp cheeks, long jaw and clear grey eyes under bushy eyebrows. He was wearing jeans and an old army coat. He'd hitched for many years. "It is hard to make autostop here in Spain. Zey don't give a shit about you. France is good, Germany, okay, but here, zey don't give a shit about you. You get only rides from South Americans. Ze Argentinians are ze best." A car would approach, Zoltan would take a drag and stick out his thumb. The auto would zoom past in a cloud of dust and Zoltan would burst out "Fuck you, Spanish Pig! Yes, you!" and shake his fist. Finally, after Yusef, another Beneficio bound hitcher showed up, the four of us got a ride from a woman. "Bless you, lady, you're the first," said Zoltan. The woman was about forty and a potter. Her name was Isabel. She drove a tiny little Citroen. Zoltan was heading up the hill to the other town, so Yusef, Z, and I got off at the top of the hill. We walked along a dirt road at the edge of the valley. On arriving at Beneficio, the first thing is the car park. It's full of R.V.'s, vans and dodgy old clunkers. There's a tiny little internet cafe/estanco out of the back of a wood paneled lorry with a bamboo-fenced patio. The path through the lot is lined with people and dogs. We got there in the morning so everyone was washing plates or building fires or simply lounging in the sun. Out of the car park you cross a small bridge over the "Rio" Sucio. It's definitely a stream, not a river, but the sucio (dirty) part is accurate. The first thing everyone said to us after "Hello," was "Don't drink from the river."
"I wonder what came first, the name or the hippies?" asked Z after I translated the name of the river.
Inside the valley, there are three plateaus. Two are large, with the stream running through the middle. Men, women, and children live on the lower plateau. On the side of the lower plateau, the third, much smaller plateau rises from the Eastern side of the valley. After first entering the valley to the West of the stream there is a forest with a few small clearings and several homesteads. This includes two bakeries, a goat cheese maker (who also has chickens), and a yogi. Most of the settlement, however, is on the East side of the river. There is some forest on that side but much of it has been cleared. The majority of the Eastern woods is just North of the car park. Then there is garden space, the main Teepee, and a small plateau above that, which also has a cluster of buildings. North of the plateau is a more agriculture space, a physiotherapist, and about a dozen homesteads, including yurts and teepees. Up the side of the valley is a big house which has solar panels. This is the community house. There is a I-Ching on a mural on the front porch. North of that there is a cliff and a ten meter water fall, falling from the plateau above. The valley continues up the side of the mountain for kilometers and becomes national park at that point. On the higher plateau the settlements are not nearly as dense and are inhabited almost exclusively by middle-aged, single men. One of these men was a fellow named Randy. Skinny, with a only a day's stubble, and dressed in black, Z and I bumped into him on the path. He noticed Z's CBGB shirt and cracked into a wide grin. "CBGB's - I used to work there, back in the 80's," he said. "Small world."
Cooking on a fire was a smoky experience. The first night we cooked potatoes in the main teepee where everyone was very, very stoned and continually bumming joints off of each other. After that we cooked outside.
The next few days I spent wandering up the valley, gathering firewood, or just looking around. Roberto, a Peruvian friend of James' who'd stopped by Terrapin Station back in Granada, turned up there in Beneficio and we would often bump into each other.
Wednesday afternoon Z and I found Zoltan's campsite. Oskar, the young Estonian, said: "Zoltan? He's over there. He's a bastard and he steals, but he is tremendous." A young, angry, and very pretty girl with platinum bleached hair in a huge fluffy sphere was leaving his site as we arrived. Zoltan was lounging in bed, soaking up the sun, and smoking a cigarette. "Come. Sit down," He said. "Welcome to my land, vere I am king and you are my subjects."
He told us of his many travels, all over europe. "I've been to every country except Norway and Greenland. Now, I would like to go to Africa. I would like to try African women," he said with a smug smile.
"Ever been to the States?" I asked.
"No. I would like to go, but I don't go until I can smoke on ze fucking plane. If I pay for ze ticket, I should be able to smoke on ze fucking plane." He told us of a place on the Spanish coast (Almeria, I think it was): "Zere are cliffs und you look down into ze vater und it is clear und zere are zeez gigantic round rocks under ze vater und it's fucking good." His voice was filled with a tremor of passion at this recollection.
"When was the last time you were in Budapest?" I asked. "Do you miss it?"
"I vas zere last December to visit my muzer. Is vere I am from, but I feel at home all over eastern europe." Here he rattled off a long list of Slavic countries. "I go into bar und zey know my drink, yes? So I feel at home. It has changed a lot. You have no idea vat it is like to live under a Communist system."
Z and I left Beneficio on Thursday. Several kids had told us of a big electronic music festival called "El Dragon" at an Okupa'd plot of land next to the Rio Seco, called Cigarrones. The nearest village, Tablones, is tiny. Of course, it was raining when we left Beneficio. We hitched a ride from some Italians in an old VW micro camper filled with puppies, leather works, and the reek of hachis. The festival was exactly what you'd expect: lots of drunk punx, hippies, painted lorries, and a general carnival atmosphere. Everyone was crowded under big top tents when we got there but the rain let up in a matter of hours. I'm pretty apathetic about electronica. When it comes to my preferred ear-shattering noise I prefer old NY punk or Japanese grindcore. Z, being from the bay area, is more into that kind of thing. She's into Haifi (or however the fuck you spell it). I still had fun. It was very surreal, seeing the "green" powered shops with their diesel generators and giant sound systems blaring megawatts of robot noise into this beautiful river valley and the Sierra hanging in the background. At night the fog machines would come on, along with the projectors, disco lights, laser shows, and swirling spot lights, creating a garish spectacle to accompany the incredibly loud thump crash skreech of the sound systems. The moon would shine serenely as it neared fullness.
The rain left behind huge puddles of water and children would leap onto the bumpers of passing vehicles to ride through the puddles. Occasionally a toothless, shirtless, punk would zoom by on a dirt bike, spraying bystanders with filthy brown water and drawing cries of outrage. Each time he had one more person on the back, up to three. After the rain children would walk around with trays of chocolate cookies, crying out "Bonbones de Marijuana!" Everybody was always drinking booze and the tangy scent of hachis hung in the air like Cincinnati humidity.
I would estimate about eight thousand people were there. Apart from Spaniards, there were lots of Germans and English. They all drove amazing caravans. I got the best chai tea of my life from a Swiss rasta named Christian.
Z was going to stay till the end of the festival on Monday and head back to Madrid then. I had to return to work, so I headed back to Granada on Saturday. The wind in the valley was ferocious. As Z and I tried to find the bus stop we tried to cut across the river delta to the road but we got hopelessly lost in the bush. Another surreal moment: A plump, freshly dressed Brit stepped out of nowhere in a clearing to bum a cigarette, said "Thanks," and then went on his way.
Z finally steered us into town (what can I say, I'd be lost without her). After drinking a beer, the excellent Alhambra Reserva Especial 1925, while sitting on the sidewalk I left Z at the pay phone in front of the empty churchyard. I hiked up the hill to the highway and caught the bus to Granada. It was threatening to rain when I got in, and the wailing processions were still going on. I called Jose Luis and met with him. He told me that Pastora had gone to the Dragon with a bunch of friends to take photos! Jose Luis' British friend Matthew, another theater person who now does freestanding rock compositions, was also due to arrive. I took a shower while we waited for people to arrive. It was my first shower in more than a week. I had just gotten dressed as the group from the Dragon arrived. After a couple of hours of art-sharing we went out for drinks. Jose Luis, Matthew, and I discussed the Catholic church, terrorism, and politics. By 4 A.M. though, we were telling dirty jokes. The next morning Pastora and I talked about photography and I told her of my (mis)adventures back in the States. After a delicious lunch of pasta with onions, apples, and walnuts, topped with cheese, Jose Luis walked me towards the bus station. Pastora and Jose Luis were incredibly hospitable and I was really humbled. It's amazing having people like that in your crew.
After a painfully slow bus ride back to Madrid(7 hours opposed to the usual 4), I got home and crashed. I started teaching new classes this week and now I'm settling in for the long haul to July.

Once upon a time in Mad-town, I wrote a letter to KD

sometimes i wake up and wonder if i'm as much of
an alcoholic as you are...


i'm not sure that's such a bad thing.




so.


you wanna know what livin' in the old world is like?

okay. lemme lay it on ya.

it's fuckin medieval, kate, it's fuckin'. medieval. I'm usin' every las' street hustlin' trick the thugs, skaters, n' ho's taught me when i was fuckin', fifteen? i mean, how much is too much?
these kids make me feel ill, as in, viejo, fuckin', old, kate, fuckin' seen-too-much, kinda thing. i mean.

(and this is where i take a heavy sigh)

gutenberg gave me my name. grandaddy phil, well, he was a Drucker, and in deutsche that's 'print-maker.' Cain't be no print maker if y'ain't got no press now, kin ya?" But my point is. And i don't care about the other boys. I come from a long line of information addicts. understandable, i think, for information is life and life is the hardest addiction to kick. Like Jews, the purveyors of knowledge are prone to persecution.
anyways. i have seen the future of information and it is the desert. in the desert mana falls from the heavens. Here in babylon they make you pay, kate, and i hate payin'. (sob) i'm a country boy (wail) i'm a..., (mama!).

(bebop band)


curtains.