Destination Chico!

Confusion Hill

We woke up in the Recreation Room of Confusion Hill and were quite confused. The nice old lady woke us up and said the owner would be coming by and that we needed to get up so he wouldn't be angered. Sounded like a monster of an owner. But we appreciated the workers allowing us to "camp" in their Rec-room and so we quickly packed up our gear and bolted down a sunny road. The rain had faded and as it turns out, it was a record breaking rain that dropped more inches in those two days than any other recorded time in history and we were glad to have had a warm fun place to hole up!

We got an email that morning from a lady named Jessie in Laytonville (who I had contacted via Couchsurfing.com), down the road about 30 miles that we could come and stay with them out on their farmland about two miles from town. So we rode excitedly for Laytonville and when we got there Arian wanted a large hot pile of fries and I had a veggie burger. It was a cool little town with a couple of cafes, a well stocked market, and enough nick knack shops to keep it interesting. And it was marijuana harvest season! So there were hippies with dread locks roaming the streets in search of work. They tend to stand outside until a secret grower comes by and offer them a job harvesting the buds that people smoke to get high. I've never smoked anything like that (although people always ask me what I'm on during my exciting spastic moments) but it was interesting to see an entire supposedly illegal profession operating there. I personally think they should legalize this weed and tax it enough to pa down the national debt, but hey, that's me. People tend to abuse things more when it's against the rules just to prove they can.

So we got nourished and then we rode on out to Jessie's place where her companion Ian and two other friends dwelled on a lot of land. The dirt road leading onto the property was long and winding and then it declined at an incredible angle. They had laid rocks on the road so cars could keep their grips, but our bikes were having trouble. We didn't know if it was the right place at first because it was way out there, but seemed right from the directions. Luckily we met two other couch surfers who were both artistic folk. They had already found jobs in the area. They kindly guided us down to the little homestead and it was like entering the Rainbow Gathering. They had this cool little house hooked to a camper and lots of fields for growing crops. Ian and the others were working on a Chicken Run for the 8 chickens that were wandering around. They welcomed us wholeheartedly and told us to make ourselves at home. We unpacked our wet grimy tent and let it dry out in the last embers of the setting sun. Then the temperature dropped and night fell and we all found ourselves inside around a toasty fire talking and sharing stories and art forms. At least three of our new friends played instruments, two guitars and a mandolin, and so Arian broke out his clarinet and joined in. I proceeded to tell my new friends about there astrology charts and think I ended up doing about five 30-minute freebie sessions that blew their minds. One of the artist guys was amazed because his mind was very scientific and yet astrology grabbed him and opened his eyes to new forms of knowing. One of there roomies was Chinese and her name was Christina, which I thought was bizarre. She was from Santa Cruz, as most of them were (Jessie's family owned the land), and she spoke lots of languages. She was extremely intelligent and fascinating and continued to make us chai and almond wine while telling great stories. I never got to look at her chart, unfortunately, but it was a great night of feasting and drinking chai! Turns out that Ian and Jessie had stumbled upon a Macaroni and no cheese recipe too and made us an excellent dinner. We even had seconds! Arian was happy sitting by the fire interacting with 20-something year old progressive, artistic folks and playing his music with a full belly. The kid worships food!

Eventually we all bedded down and the other two travelers graciously offered us the fold out couch and so we slept on a cushioned surface again with warm comforters and pillows. Real pillows! We were living in luxury again! The next morning we slept in, even though I knew we needed to go like 95 miles to get to the Blue Lake area south of Laytonville near Ukiah, but it was too cozy. Everyone else got up and went to town as Jessie worked at the local health food store and today was the day that the rare bookmobile came o town. They had all placed orders for faraway books from libraries online and the bookmobile delivered them once per two weeks.

So Arian and I headed out eventually and made our way back up the treacherous rocky road. I felt like we were forgetting something, and asked Arian to double check, but he said he had everything. I didn't want to have to come back down this crazy driveway. And just when you thought the driveway was ending it would start up another slippery slope. Eventually we did reach the top and were both winded. Then we turned onto the dirt road and I realized that my rain pants were not on me! I had slid out of them and folded them up and placed them on a nearby table! I had paid $70 bucks for those pants at REI so I wasn't about to leave them, especially with the skies threatening rain again. So I left Arian there by the fence where we leaned our bikes and jogged back down the hill. It was strange to be jogging again. My entire leg musculature had been transformed and it felt really weird to run! I wanted to pedal! So there I was running down the rocky, muddy dirt road in the most awkward way possible feeling like a stick figure whose legs didn't work right anymore, when the best thing happened. The joke was on me.

While Arian was waiting at the fence four of the others came driving back form town and they asked him what happened to your dad? Arian said, "He forgot his pants!" And they all busted out laughing, I heard later. Then they caught up to me running along in my tight little padded black biker shorts and offered me a ride back to the farm. I accepted wholeheartedly!

After I retrieved my pants, we went back to town and stocked up on some food and found our way south at last passing through Willits CA where highway 20 began that would take us east and back up to Chico. The day was sunny and the rain didn't come so we rode fast and hard down many amazing mountain passes. We stopped in Willits to see if any couchsurfers were available in Ukiah but no one had responded. Ukiah was five miles out of our way anyway, so it was just as well. But now we would need to search for camping sites out in nature along the big lake where the 20 skirted across the valley passing the Blue Lakes and then the larger Clear Lake. It was a long way to a town called Lucerne and I didn't think we would make it, so I was prepared to do some stealth camping. We did pass a few campgrounds but they were all closed for the season with large bars across the entrance, so we continue on our trek as the sun begin to set. Then we came to the largest pass and looked on with disbelief at the ominous slope. Arian asked me if he could hitch-cycle, our new term for riding along and sticking out our thumbs. I told him sure, but only when he saw open-bed trucks.

No one seemed to want to pick us up though and we trekked on and upward straining and struggling with gravity and our loads. It was getting late and dark and cold and we needed to stop. But just as we were about to cres the top of this pass, a large white truck came back from the direction we were traveling and the guy asked us if we really wanted a ride over the hill, at which point let out an enthusiastic "YES!" We pulled our bikes across the road to a parking area where he had stopped and he helped us load them up. He took us about 20 miles to a town called Upper Lake, where he dropped us off at a truck stop where he though we could camp. He was going south from there and we were going east, so we thanked him and bid him farewell, and stumbled into the warm truck-stop desperate for a place to set up camp. The wind had started howling through the valley and the chill factor was intense. My shivers started to return.

We met the owner of the Three Brothers truck stop who was a Muslim Indian guy. He and his wife were working the register when Arian and I rolled in. We asked him if we could camp in their grass outside or somewhere. The guy was really gracious and quite intelligent. It turns out he spoke Indian (Urloo), Spanish, English, and German. They had several kids and one was Arian's age and played basketball. He took compassion on us and told us we cold camp out back where the truckers sleep all the way in the corner so the trucks coming in wouldn't see us. We bought some food and thanked them profusely and went out to stake out a tent site. It turns out were were exactly in the corner of a giant shadowy parking lot bordered by thick bushes. As we set up our tent the wind intensified and we were both shivering cold. It was going to be a cold night with the wind coming off the lake and the temperature plummeting. We got into our little T-3 Quarterdome tent and that took the wind chill factor off but it was still cold sleeping in a tent on the hard blacktop with the cold ness escalating. At least we had our thermarest mats! Arian wrapped his jacket tightly around his feet to keep them from freezing all night. I breathed heavily down into my sleeping bag to create a toasty environment. We heard diesels going by right outside but luckily our tent had strong reflectors and they couldn't get to us anyway in the corner unless they came right at us. I imagined a diesel plowing into us and quickly erased that thought, praying for protection. That was when we heard the wild coyotes begin howling and the dogs barking in the distance. It was going to be an interesting night!

I woke up at four in the morning and Arian was sitting straight up on top of feet. He was shivering and cold and said his feet were frozen so he had to sit on them to keep them warm. So I quickly told him to come over to my side of the tent and get into my sleeping bag with me. He was still in his bag, but we tucked him down into my toasty bag and I rubbed my warm feet against his to transfer my heat. With Sagittarius rising, my body is always warm and throwing off enthusiasm and heat. With Cancer rising, Arian is a like a wet lake and gets cold easy. We got him good and warm even though we couldn't get the zipper on my sleeping bag all the way up, so I had to sleep in the most uncomfortable position ever just to barely keep myself covered, but at least the kid was warm and sleeping well again. It would only be a few more hours before morning and we would make a bee-line for the store and brew hot tea and hang out with the friendly Indian Muslim.

Turns out that when we got inside, there he was talking Spanish to all the liquor delivery guys counting stacks of alcohol and goofing around. It was col to witness a bright spirit such as his bringing camaraderie among many races in his little truck stop. I told Arian it was bizarre to see an Indian hanging with Mexicans and said that Indian was kinda like the Mexico of Asia with the same kind of tropical climate and such devotion to family and religion, etc. Arian thought that was cool and said maybe China was the America of Asia because they had invented so many things like paper, and gunpowder, and compasses, and clocks and thst maybe Russia was the Canada of Asia, and so forth. When you get this kid's mind churning, he just goes off like a rocket swirling in his brilliance. So we talked with our Indian friend for about an hour over several rounds of hot tea and several trips to the bathroom. Eventually we downed a couple of Monsters and took off down the road. it was sunny again but chilly and we had 120 miles to get to Chico, and facing the hardest part early for 40 miles of steep hills! I knew we wouldn't make it but I hoped to get over the mountain pass and down into the central valley where they grow lots of fruit. Maybe it would be warmer down there?

We rode hard all day, mostly up impossible looking slops until finally we gave in and started hitch-cycling again where we hold out our thumbs as we ride hoping for a pick-up truck to take compassion on us. At this point I just wanted to get to Chico, reunite with my good friend Brett and get working on books and possibly get Arian into the Chico Green School, an alternative High School where they buy the kids I-pads to replace text books. Arian already had an I-pad, but he wold gladly have another for educational purposes. But I was open to getting him into regular high school too in such a cool college town. I had made a deal with his mom that if I got him into school, he could stay with me as we planned for the whole school year, which Arian really wanted to do, and then he would go down there in the summer. Brett had a six year old son named Jatin, so Arian was excited to have another kid to hang with and play toys. Arian is like Christopher Robbins on Winnie the Pooh, the caretaker of all the young kids. He has such a great imagination and love of play and a gentle nurturing demeanor. I couldn't have had a more perfect child. He is very respectful and polite and creative and I love him dearly.

So we fought the mountain passes all day long and it was about 4:30 and the sun was sinking and I began to worry about camping in the cold again like the night before. Maybe we would zip our bags together like his mom and I used to do in our twenties backpacking through Australia and down the Colorado Trail? I began searching for suitable campsites off the road in secret looking places. I was feeling tired and weak and my spirit was broken. Then we found ourselves on the side of this steep incline and a religious person wrote a chalk message on the shoulder that said, "And the Meek shall gain Strength!" Arian and I joked around that we felt pretty bottom-of-the-barrel meek at that moment. He said maybe that was a sign we were going to get a ride all the way to Chico. I hoped so. We had made a pact that morning that we were going to get up early and make it 120 miles no matter what, even if we had to ride through the dark. He wanted this pact more than me. I was perfectly prepared to camp, but he just wanted to get there badly. So just as we crossed the last high pass and were gazing down into the valley with at least 25 miles to go to get to Williams along I-5, a white truck stopped and a 59 year old guy named Mark asked us if we wanted a ride!

We were overjoyed. He told us he would take us to Williams or Colusa and we could catch the flat roads to Chico from there going north. We talked and shared many stories about our adventure and he said he had always wanted to backpack across Nevada and go down the loneliest road from hot springs to hot springs located on government land. That was col, so I encouraged him to go for it, telling him about all the elder cyclists I met in Wyoming. He phoned his son Kirk, who lived in Chico and asked him if he wanted to have dinner. He was looking for an excuse to go to Chico to visit his son. Luckily his son was there and said yes! We were going to be dropped off in downtown Chico right next to a tree outside Starbucks along Broadway st. After we thanked him, and he sped away to see his son, I turned to see Arian standing with his hand on the tree and he said, "Dad, this is the first tree we landed in Chico by, and will remember it when we ride by." I gave him a high five and then went into Starbucks to phone Brett.

Brett had just rented and moved into a new house near the college two days ago and he offered us the finished garage for $100 a week. Turns out that he was still job searching and was needing help too. So we all came together to help each other! It was great seeing each other again after five years. Brett has the same kind of dry wit and sense of zany humor that Arian and I do. We had been roommates with him in Boone NC when Arian was 4 and lived in the pantry. We had been roomies in Asheville when Arian was 6 and lived in a fort in the attic. And now we would get to be roommates in Chico CA for a time while Arian was about 15 with his son Jatin at 6. Everything runs in cycles. Arian hit it off great with Jatin and in a matter of hours they were building forts and star wars legos and engaging their imaginations in play, which a lot of adults have forgotten how to do.

The next day I decided that getting Arian into school was the priority and also the litmus test of whether or not we belonged here. I had $12 bucks in my Pay Pal debit account and Brett wanted $100 a week. So obviously I couldn't give him anything until I got my next astrology chart order. I was feeling so lost and uncertain about life. The only thing I was perfectly Buddha-minded about was my love for Arian and when I was writing. Everything else was quite nebulous. I had been on the road for a long long time and made my peace with the Scorpionic rebirth lunar progression. I still had nine months to go before the enthusiastic flames of Sagittarius kicked in. But we went down to the school and got lost on our ay there. So we went and hacked into a coffee shop's wifi and phoned them and got the exact directions. When we found the alternative high school it was lunch time and there were all these brainy, interesting kids hanging out behind a high fence in a playground area. It was definitely alternative and Arian liked it. Two strange girls greeted us at he gate and invited us to the office. We told them about ur epic journey by bike and they were amazed. The word about us spread like wildfire throughout the playground and we were invited into the office to sit down with a lady named Susan. She introduced us to the staff and the Director had indeed received my email from Oregon. He was excited to have us and he was a cyclist himself! I smiled at Arian and he smiled back. He had found his tribe!

Normally they make you fill out all these forms and then bring them back and then they set you up with an extensive interview and then they might accept you. But after an hour of hanging out with various staff members who kept floating through the office and telling them our story and about Arian, Susan scrapped the whole process, and just declared that this was such an unusual and interesting turn of events that they would admit him right now! We decided to wait till the next day because we still had some exploring to do on our bikes and Arian was hungry. He deserved the best chips, hummus, and salsa twelve bucks could buy after completing an epic trip like that. I had ridden 3128 miles and he had gone 1128 miles, according to my bike distance computer. That didn't count the hitch-cycling miles. Turns out that the school was having a Halloween Day of the Dead festival/party on Friday, the next day. Arian said he wanted to go and begin making friends. The Director wanted me to come by next week and share the story of our journey with the kids and I agreed.

Shortly thereafter, we got a donation for $20 bucks from one of our loyal readers and we went and bought some groceries to get us started. The school signed Arian up for free lunches, due to our economic situation. I feel good about being in a progressive town, ready to complete my epic magi opus work on astrology and the RPG game with Arian. I'm feeling unstable with no finances so we ask our friends and family to help us out if possible through our donation button here. If we can't afford to live here, I guess it's back down the cold lonely road for us. But we are really happy to be here and it seems like things are flowing toward us staying for a time. We'll see what happens. As always, people can order charts at my website Divine Inspiration Astrology Help us help the world with our projects!

If we continue to stay here and hole up for the winter, I will continue the blog and start to ell the stories of synchonistic encounters we have her in Chico. The town feels like Boulder to both of us, all hip and progressive and big enough to have a lot of cool stuff going on but small enough to be really welcoming and warm. And there are trees everywhere! I'm ready to write like I've never written before! Woo hoo!

Avenue of the Giants

We had a restful week in Arcata staying with three different sets of people, thanks to Couchsurfing.com As noted in my previous post, the three college ladies and their one male roommate shared their abode with us when we arrived, which was a good thing because I was out of it for a few days from over-exhaustion and had the shivers that night. Not fun! After our agreed upon two nights, we transferred to another house about a mile away but very close to Mosgos Coffee shop and Murphy's Health Food store, so we were in heaven for four nights. I had met a guy named Kevin who was a friend of the ladies and he was a Gemini, and we really connected even if briefly. Turns out, true to his sign, he was a journalist major and was on his way to a conference in NYC where he hoped to make some career contacts. As a result he offered us his room, and his three roommates were very cordial and cool. We didn't hang out much except for to sleep and heat up tea at night mainly because everyone was in class all day and we were at Mosgos drinking chai and working on our new RPG called Emergence, where you create an adventure character based initially on a random astrology chart. Think Dungeons and Dragons meets Astrology and Archetypes!

After making great headway on the book, we decided to transfer to another gracious couchsurfer host whose name was Paul. Turns out that Paul was into strategy board games and had a copy of Settlers of Catan that he had bought online but that none of his friends would play with him. So Arian and I jumped right in the first night and I barely won. Paul gave me some stiff competition! Then the next night we played two games in which Arian came out victorious both times. He is a wise master of strategy. He just needed to see the game in action one time before he became a force!

After two nights with our surfer friend Paul and his college roommates, we were finally rested and ready to continue our journey to Chico, CA to visit my friend Brett and possibly settle there for 3-6 months. Chico is another hip college town with lots of unique characters. We could have went across to Redding and south to Chico but decided that we really wanted to see the Redwood Forest and ride our bikes down the Avenue of Giants. It was a good choice because the rain held out for a few days and the sunny ride was spectacular. My friend Kriss had said that the Redwoods would be like church, all reverent and holy, and she was not exaggerating. When you ride your bike down the Avenue of Giants, you feel like you are entering another world, another time. Turns out some visionary environmentalists of the 1800's got together and managed to salvage just these 2% of our nations old growth forests. The other 98% helped build the industrial centers of the coast like San Fran and Eureka. I'm so glad that there is more of an environmental focus in the modern world along with a deep appreciation of natural beauty.

Some of these trees tower 300 feet into the air weighing over 300 tons. Some have sections near the bottom that look like black doorways into the realms of the fey carved by lightning blasts. We like fey portals into the astral realms! One grove was dedicated to Fairies and invisible beings. We met a elder gnomish bicyclist who had a sticker on his bike about being on a quest for invisible beings like elves and dragons that only he could see. But he quickly found out that we had the sight too! I sent some couchsurfing requests ahead to places in the Redwoods, but it turns out that they were traveling or overbooked, so camping was back on the menu. Whenever we pass roadkill on the road we jokingly scream the Lord of the Rings orc quote, "Meat's back on the menu boys!" Which has to be way gross if you think about it. But hey, people eat cows, which is bigger roadkill in my book. LOL

The night we arrived at the beginning of the Avenue of Giants, we tried to connect with a couchsurfer in Fortuna but we were unfortuna, and so we road on hoping for a campground or something. Unfortunately we were down to our last ten bucks, so we couldn't afford the one RV park we did find. I tried to haggle with the old grouchy owner, but he refused to budge and told us we should go camp down by the river. Yeah right! Instead we rode on into the deep night and it got really scary but I had Arian behind me with the red blinking backlight and I was in the front with my camp head lamp lighting the way. At last we came to a Vista Point, but couldn't enjoy the vista because it was pitch dark. We met a hippy guy who had a bus who was headed to San Fran, and he suggested we just stealth camp down the way in the bushes and trees, so we did! We wandered off into the woods with our bikes and found a suitable flat spot. At least we thought it was flat! Later we were both dodging rocks under our mats during our sleep finding many variant sleeping positions! We heard lots of strange animal sounds off in the woods and I was quick to have my razor sharp camping knife and my devil stick nearby in case I needed to fight off raccoons!

When morning came, we were still alive and no animals messed with us. Thank you nature! We woke up with the sun and we were right there at the entrance to the Avenue of Giants! We saw many amazing trees riding down that picturesque stretch. Some of the bases of these century-old magical beings are larger than elephants. We saw the old base of a felled tree whose tree rings near the center dated back to the signing of the magna carta! Wow! The trees kept going too. Grove after sacred grove of great wise tree beings surrounded by floors of green moss, right out of a fantasy world. But it was the real world. Arian and I found that our creative imaginations were on fire as we began working out the details of the first adventure we would publish for our new role-playing game. We called it the "Mad Artificer", about two nations at war and the evil nation forcing a genius enchanter to craft a super weapon to turn the tide in their imperial aims. So we started dreaming up this artificer character, kinda like a medieval engineer-scientist who works with magic and technology, a technomancer. And he was kind of a mix between an Einstein and a wild nature man.

Next thing you know, we come around the corner and we run into this hippy guy, with wild red hair and flurry unkempt raving red beard that jiggled as he spoke, carrying a load of carpets. He called himself Wondrous Mountain, and we greeted him and talked for a while enjoying a rest. We even shared organic food and water with him, and Arian gave him a sewing needle because he said he needed one to sew his new cloak from one of those fabrics he was hauling around. I couldn't believe Arian actually had a sewing needle! Turns out that he rode an old Schwinn bicycle across country from Missouri this summer and that he had long abandoned his bike to search for a gypsy community in the western Redwoods, I think he said Mirtola or something like that. We wished him well after our half hour visit and told him that we would use him as the model for our crazy mad scientist character and he was overjoyed in Irish delight. He was Irish with Leo Sun, Leo Rising, and an adventurous Sagittarius Moon. Triple fire sign! No wonder he had such fiery red hair!

So we trekked on and ended up camping at an actual campground called Richardson Grove, and it was amazing to sleep surrounded by these huge trees. We had to ride another 8 miles through the dark to get there through towns called Redway and Garberville. It was the full moon that night and we had a delicious stir fry before retreating to our tent when the rain started. We didn't realize it was the beginning of the rainy season, the first big storm! We overheard many couples who came into camp with RVs quarreling over things like where to park the RV, etc. One couple got into a flaming fight when the dad rammed the RV into a wooden barrier. There were three camps near ours where major drama was going down. I told Arian it was typical during a Full Moon in Aries with the Sun in Libra. Lovers quarrels were in the air!

The next day we packed up our stuff in the biting, intensifying rain. Our tent was in a bad spot as a large pool had formed under it! Our feet were basically barely floating on our matts at one end of the tent all night. It was a mere precursor of what was to come! The rain was so intense that both our hands and feet were cold to the bone and it was miserable. Arian declared that he hated cycling! I told him it would make him tougher and add Stamina to his character during his adolescent phase of maturity toward being an authentic adventurer. That was right out of our character design system, but it didn't help quell his foul mood. We kept stopping under bridges to get warm and eat and even stuck out our thumbs when pick-ups went by, but no one had compassion for two lonely soaked travelers. And it was another 30 miles to our destination in Laytonville. It was going to be a long cold drizzle of a day!

We rounded a corner to see a bridge with an intense incline near a place called Confusion Hill. The canyon below was hundreds of feet deep to a rocky river and the bridge just kept going and going. When we finally made it to the top we were both relieved to see an enigmatic gift shop called the Gravity House with an RV-Campground across the highway. We pulled in and had some hot apple cider and hot chocolate and warmed our souls while talking to an old retired navy guy who was also a biker. He was smoking a cinnamon stick to help him stay off cigarettes and he had strange eyes, a burly mustache, and a a shirt with a crazy looking jester that said something about everyone around here was kinda weird. To top that, the place was called Confusion Hill because government scientists came in to study the weird magnetics in the area blaming it on minerals beneath the earth. Our new friend had a sign with about seven other theories, his favorite being a deeply buried alien computer. I liked that one, but I liked the one that blamed it on multidimensional portals even more! Especially after I had seen many that day! He said the locals called the lightning charred holes in the big trees goose-pins. Turns out that settlers would pin their livestock in them so the wild animals wouldn't get them!

The rain kept barreling down and I could tell that Arian was done for. It was only six more miles to Leggitt, and he probably could have made that, but not 30 to Laytonville. The sun was going to set in a few more hours and it didn't feel right to keep him out in the cold again. I didn't want him to get sick like in Washington. So we went next door to haggle again. Before we went into the office to talk to the people, I logged onto their wi-fi and found that I had gotten an astrology order and a few small but heartfelt donations. Food and lodging was back on the menu boys!" we cried. Which was a good thing because they wanted $21 dollars for us to set up our tent in the rain and mud! We never set foot in the tent though. We enjoyed the recreation room so much with a TV for for college football and large cozy couches with comforters, that we never actually made it out to the tent. We stayed inside all night with the owner's permission. They had compassion for us as this was their first big storm of the season. We enjoyed the coziness so much that we broke out our cookware, made some hot tea, and cooked some Thai noodles and basically enjoyed being warm and dry for a spell. The next day we woke up on the couches and decided that with the rain still coming down hard that we might as well stay another day and hope the weather report for Monday was right. The forecast said we'd have some light showers in the morning on Monday, but that the storm should break. Arian didn't have to twist my arm to keep me curled up with Pro football happening, especially since my Broncos were hosting the rival Raiders! It was a depressing game, because the Raiders jumped out on us due to lots of errors and we just imploded and ended up being cooked alive at home 59-14 in our continual commitment to sucking!

During the night we had two strange events happen. First a guy from San Fran who was on his way to Eureka came wandering in. He had a flat tire and had driven the rent-a-car twenty miles on a flat and he needed to send an email and use my computer to call his girlfriend. Then several minutes after he decided to drive on to Garberville, another stranger comes in who claimed that his lights on his car stopped working. We told him about the strange magnetics in the area and advised him to get some distance from here and things would be fine. We hope our two stranded soaked travelers made it to their destinations!

So here we are on a rainy Sunday night watching the Packers face the Vikings and feeling quite content to stay inside again on these cozy couches. We are both ready to be settled again for a while. Being homeless and wandering around is fun in the summer, but the cold weather makes it stupid. My good friend Moses, an astrologer and now fantasy writer like me, offered me a chance to come down to Prescott AZ for a winter retreat, but I told him I was intent on checking out Chico CA fist and then San Fran. But at this point, and with the cold creeping in, Arian and I are craving a place to call home. Living like this makes you really appreciate the simple pleasures of life...a hot cup of tea, a warm soothing shower, friends and community, a dry place to sleep, a good strategy board game, etc. When I set out on this adventure I was committed to Locational Independence, but I added the cycling part of the equation to the lifestyle. Yesterday Arian cracked 1000 miles in that rainstorm and I cracked 3000 miles. Three-thousand miles on a bike. He made level 1 Cyclist and I made level 2, but we are both ready to be commuter cyclist in a city. We still have at least four more days to make it to Chico, California. Hopefully the rain will let up some, but I fear it will challenge us till the bitter end when we roll into town to begin a new life. We went back down to the campsite and packed up our dirty rain-soaked tent and gear and hauled it all with the bikes back up to the Recreation Room. We played a game of foosball and then air hockey. I won foosball, barely, and Arian won air hockey. Only the Universe knows what will come next. Time to go record the chart order I got that enabled us to stay here. I am so grateful that I can inspire people's paths with astrology, my words, and my insights into their character.

As always, we appreciate donations here and chart orders here! We will need some funds to get settled in Chico, even if we decide to live with my good friend Brett. I will finally be able to settle in and finish these books to release to the world. 2011 will be an inspiring year of publishing for sure!

Entering California!

Abandoning Bandon

The night we arrived in the little cozy, marsh-surrounded town of Bandon, Oregon we rode south to find another campground at the Bandon State Park near the beach, but it turns out there was a sign that said Camping Prohibited. Bummer! The Sun was descending over a great forested hill that stood between us and the dramatic ocean. We thought about stealth camping, but worried that the wild raccoons would be a pain, so we decided to ride south to what looked like an RV park on the I-pad Google Maps.

We got there and they wanted $15 to set up our tent in this grassy fenced area. So I paid the camp host through her RV door while her potbellied husband watched college football on the TV. I would be sitting pretty watching the Broncos face off with the Ravens in Baltimore tomorrow morning. That was exciting, even if I had to ride three miles back to Bandon, possibly through intense rain. The storm was kicking up with the wind and Arian and I barely managed to get the tent set up without the rainfly flying off. Once we set up the tent we realized they had an indoor area with tables and bathrooms with showers, so when the storm raged, we went inside and enjoyed the warmth and worked on Emergence, our new role-playing game.

The next morning it was still a torrential downpour as we rode into town to witness the worst defeat the Broncos have had this season against the stout Ravens. My heart sank in disgust as I watched my team go down to face a tough loss. It was depressing, especially with all the injuries. Oh well, next we we had the Jets at home!

Arian and I decided to head back to the RV park, pack up our tent, and ride south once the rain let up. After the bitter loss I just wanted to ride! We passed the purple Yurt artist colony that our new friend Daina had told us about, but we were making good time and it was dry so we just stopped briefly to say hello, and then got back on the highway to pedal hard south so we could reach Port Orford. We passed a lot of campgrounds along the way, but just kept persisting until we reached Port Orford. It was a small town with stores and the main avenue looked inviting with lots of tourist gift shops and cafes, but we couldn't stop. The panoramic views of the ocean were exquisite! Our friend Tony said we could camp just beyond the town, so we rode hard to look for the spot. We eventually found it, but the Sun still had an hour on it, so we decided to ride toward Mount Humbug towering ahead and hope that they had re-opened the Humbug State Park. Tony said it was closed for construction. We thought we'd try it anyway, even if we had to Stealth camp!

Riding along the 101 glancing occasionally down at the marvelous sea is such a serene feeling. Your legs are pumping, your body is sweating, your mind is calm, and everything in the universe seems as it should be...and you live in nature. I have found that when I open my mouth to speak the words don't have much volume. It's as if I've seen too deeply into the darkness of the unknown and it's hard to even want to say anything about it. Arian always brings me back to laughter though, so that's a good thing indeed.

We eventually found the campground and we lifted our bikes over a stone wall to sneak in, but the camp attendant came by in his golf cart and told us to register. He was a friendly guy and said that the camp was still open to cyclists and hikers, just not RVs. He offered to bring us a pile of wood in his golf cart, but wanted $5 bucks, so we declined. We were overjoyed and cooked a great stir fry and boiled some delicious green tea. Our fuel canister was depleted after the meal and it was difficult to find the special butane cartridges that fit our stove, so we were despondent about the future of our outdoor culinary arts. The camp had showers and Arian told me to go first while he watched the camp so that he could stay in the shower a real long time and just soak up the heat. He loves the hot water meditation. I think I fell asleep before he returned. I was glad he was cozy and happy and had finally overcome those awful Northwestern sniffles.

The next morning we woke up inspired but a little sore and we set our destination through Gold Beach down to Brookings, Oregon right near the border to California. We wanted to make it into California, but when we arrived in Brookings we were so inspired by the Whale Rock and the campground overlooking the sea, and free showers, and a fellow cyclist, that we decided to stay and enjoy it We had stopped earlier in Gold Beach at a unique bookstore/cafe that charges $2.50 just for three hours of tapping their wi-fi. And we also had the great fortune of finding an outfitter that had fuel canisters that fit my SOTO stove! We got three and got some groceries before leaving town so we could cook something exquisite on our new butane cartridges.

When we got to camp we went down to where you could sit at a picnic table overlooking the choppy sea. The Sun was setting and the Moon was glowing bright in it's Waxing Crescent phase. The next day we would cross into California and hit Crescent City during the Crescent Phase. How cool would that be? And this time when we rolled into the post office, we prayed that my friend Steve's incredible care package would be there. He said he sent it USPS instead of UPS this time, so it would be waiting in General Delivery. I was psyched! The Whole Foods Pharmacy produces some amazing organic blends of this cake-like mixture that has the texture of a cliff bar. It is delicious!

When we got back to camp and started cooking, another cyclist rolled into camp named John (another John!) who was from Atlanta, Georgia and had ridden his bike up the east coast and across the Northern Tier and was intending to go all the way to San Diego and then complete a loop back to Georgia. He had already logged over 6000 miles! And I thought we were hard core! He was about 46 and he often stayed in hotels to break the monotony of the grind and enjoy the comforts of modern life. He had a pack of Cuban beans and yellow rice that he had carried from Atlanta 6000 miles that he just gave to us. Arian, who was born in Key West just 90 miles from Cuba, loved black beans and yellow rice. It was in his conch blood! His eyes grew wide with excitement while opening his mouth in surprise, his signature expression. This kid loves food!

We had a peaceful night at the campground and enjoyed long hot showers again. There's nothing like a hot shower when you're used to going days without one. You go into one of those little stalls and you slowly peal your biker shorts and sweat-soaked shirt off and hang them on the little towel hooks while you get the water going. Then you step into another universe of pleasure. Plus you get to go back to your tent squeaky clean and crawl into your sleeping bag without a care in the world but being fluffy and warm inside. You open up your I-pad and play a little strategy game and then drift off into bliss-filled dreams.

The next morning we rode out before our new friend but he quickly passed us when we stopped at a coffee shop for chai and storytelling with the locals. The barista had a magnificent spirit and was genuinely open and enthusiastic. She loved hearing about our journey. Next thing you know, her brother comes in too, and he's a gypsy with a van that he lives in. In a matter of moments we got talking and he wanted to know more about astrology and the Spirit of Life led me to do a quickie free interpretation for him and he was beside himself with a burst of celestial inspiration. He was a Double Aries, Sun and Moon in the Balsamic dark phase, and Scorpio Rising with Mars in Libra opposing his Aries luminaries. Intense dude but really cool. He had tattoos all over with heroic and dark themes and he sported a short cropped beard and he just reminded me of Hercules. A living breathing oracle of Hercules! I felt like I had briefly met a potential spiritual brother, and something told me our paths would cross again. But for that moment, the road was calling us to California.

We rode down and across a beautiful stretch where you could see the ocean full of strange rock formations that had once been mountains, but now reduced to rubble in the mists of eternity living dangerously as time. I imagined how many millions of years had to go by for the sea to dissolve a mountain down to its last lonely rocky core. And then I looked down at the asphalt my tires were spinning over and realized that this very road was a mere newborn compared to those mountains. We had been driving our obsessive vehicles down these roads for less than a hundred years and we acted like we belonged, paving mountain tops and cutting forests so that road could be laid in the name of progress. I was happy to be rolling on the side of that road, but I also realized how fragile it all was. A pair of thin rubber tubes full of air and some tires were all that separated my body from crashing onto the pavement. Death could happen any moment! A car could hit me or worse, a diesel. I had long overcome the fear of vehicles brushing by with their gusts of wind and noisy motors. In life you learn to block out the parts that vex the soul and just go for the ride freely no matter what happens. And then it does happen. Things happen. People die and other people get scared and wonder what it's going to be like when this frail vessel is reduced to a pile of bones or ash.

Science took a different route when it divorced itself from metaphysics. The Scientific Revolution freed us from religious oppression but gave us a world devoid of soul, a disenchanted drama of cold masses and billiard balls clanking against each other in vacuums of experimental space. Where was God in all this? I think we replaced God with to-do lists, television, and now the internet. The eternal being of love that crafted the Universe is still in all these things, lurking silently, waiting to pounce on one of us who happens to wake up and sense the reverential awe swirling through every unique moment. In the end, we will fade. We will die. And that's a comforting thought. Because that means there's something greater than I can imagine going on, and believe me, I've tried. I've been working on a book about the metaphysics of the Universe since my college days in Boulder. I call it Living the Mystery: The Physics of Consciousness. One day, I might finish the last two volumes and publish it. Maybe I should just get the first volume out there. I have it with me in digital pictures of my hand-written medieval script form. There are some amazing truths I've stumbled upon just by starting with the postulate of the Unified Field and constructing the Universe from there on up. The Lord Thy God is One, the Hebrews stressed. And today the Scientists who broke us away from taboo superstitions are back on the quest for the Unified Field. But they're a century late and a spiritual equation short.

I looked back to see Arian faithfully pedaling along. He gets behind in the mornings and then he leaves me behind in the afternoons. That's because we have different styles of going through the day revealed in our birth charts. He has Cancer Rising, a watery, emotional sign that wants to be nurtured and feel safe and gooey and starts the day slow. He crawls out of his sleeping bag in the morning like a pile of thick molasses. I have to keep shaking him and I'm all excited to pack up and go, and he is in another vivid dream ordering food or another hot chai. This kid is something else. That morning he was talking in his sleep again and he said one perfectly articulated sentence and then went silent again. He said, "Basically, would you like to go swimming or not?" That was it. He must have been having swimming dreams. My little crab! The whole morning I just let him ride back there through the misty cold so he can ride out his moodiness. Because I know by the time the Sun gets shining and descending toward the horizon Arian comes alive. You see, I have Mars Rising in the east in the enthusiastic fire sign of Sagittarius, so I wake up and dance and prance and neigh and stomp my feet cause I'm ready to go. Arian has Mars in earthy plodding Capricorn and it was setting in the 7th House at birth. So he doesn't catch his Mars wave of energy until the Sun has nearly set. He always wants to get jazzed off a Monster drink and charge the summit of the next hill then, leaving his poor tired lonely dad behind. But it's okay, because I let him sulk behind me in the morning and he doesn't say much until I mention lunch, and then he starts to perk up.

We rode hard into California and crossed the State line where they inspected us for produce, but I ate the last apple I picked from Tony's tree in Coos Bay just that morning, so they let us through no problem. And as soon as we crossed that border the Sun came out strong and blessed us with starshine the whole way to Crescent City. I had entered my 8th State on Magellan since leaving on June 20th. I was tired and 8 was the number of change. California would be the place of transformation. There were no couch surfer hosts in Crescent City so I knew we'd just pop by the post office, get our food package, and head toward the coastal hills. Tony the surfer warned us about the hill out of Crescent City. He said it was a monster of a hill and the way he described it made it seem like the wicked ones in Wyoming, but with more gracious scenery of great Redwood trees stretching their limbs to the sky. We rolled into Crescent City aching and tired and ready for some delicious food. Unfortunately, we had stopped in Brookings that afternoon when I was feeling weak and dizzy. I needed food, and I needed it bad. I got hungry. Then I got weak and bought a bunch of food. Arian was happy to be sitting on the sidewalk outside of the supermarket chomping down on an apple butter and peanut butter whole wheat sandwich though. And I was satisfied and ready to ride too. But we had loaded up on food right when we were about to receive food, and plus we had John's pack of Cuban rice and beans delivered by bike 6000 miles from Atlanta.

So I walk into the post office and it turns out that two front line employees called in sick, so I had to wait thirty minutes in a long line just to ask them to hand me my package. Indeed Steve had come through and saved our tummies with a ton of delicious organic goods. And that box was heavy as the postal lady dropped it with a deep thud on the counter. I picked it up and felt how heavy it was and just closed my eyes in disbelief. There was no way we would be able to pack all that food on our bikes and make it up the monster hill before sunset. Would we turn around and head back to some of the campgrounds we saw on the way into Crescent City and try to sort it out? Or would we eat some first and then try to desperately stuff our panniers with food and try to make it to the campground we were aiming for over the mountain in Klammoth? Either choice was a desperate gambit.

I remember the time me and my dad were traveling through Macon, Mississippi and our truck broke down. I was only about 3 or four, but when he went traveling I always wanted to go with him. He was my dad and I loved him, plus I was blessed or cursed with wanderlust. I see it as a blessing. But there we were, me and my dad broke down on the side of the road and I was crying. But an older black guy came along and rescued us and we got to stay at a hotel. I almost drowned that day in the swimming pool. My dad went to get some towels or something and I was so excited to jump into that pool that I just dove on in without even knowing how to swim! About a minute later my dad returned to find me underwater struggling to breathe. He pulled me out just in time before I died. He was my hero that day and we enjoyed the rest of the day. He must have been scared out of his mind.

I had a situation happen like that once with Arian when he was about three. I was out at the beach one day and we were out about a hundred yards over the Atlantic Ocean sunning on our favorite pier. I was hooting and hollering and carrying on with all the little half-cuban Key West local kids and showing off by doing backflips off the pier and into the water six feet below. Then later, Arian wanted to come swim with me so I taught him how to jump six feet off the pier into the sea where I would catch him and swim him to the ladder. Then when were done frolicking I decided that I would just swim with Arian back to shore with his arms wrapped around my neck and riding me like a dolphin. I got about halfway to shore and started to sink and run out of gas. I wasn't the best swimmer. And Arian, sensing me struggling kept squeezing tighter to hang on and choking me in the process. So there I was with my kid on my back in the water, but exhausted and ready to sink. I tried calling out but it was a quiet day at the beach and no one was in sight and I my head kept going under.

Sometimes we make stupid decisions and have to face the consequences. But that day I had my angels in my corner. Because right when I knew it was over, I realized that I could probably touch the bottom with my feet and just walk along the bottom of the sea through the current and the brine and just hold my breath while holding Arian aloft so he could breathe. I knew I might drown, but I wasn't about to let him drown too. So I just surrendered. I reached back and said calmly so I wouldn't scare him Ayenne wanna Fly.. (Arian always pronounced his own name Ayenne when he was that little so I did too). I took my son into my arms and I breathed down a huge gulp of air. My arms were exhausted from swimming and I could barely even hold him. It was probably the most horrible and terrifying feeling I've ever had in my life as I reached out my right foot for the brine covered coral seabed. To my astonishment, it wasn't too far down at all and I found that I could even poke my face out of the sea just a bit as I made my way through the shoals barely able to hold Arian. What a relief! When I got to the shore I collapsed and cried. Arian wondered what was wrong. I was coughing up sea water and felt like I had just fought three sharks. That day something in me died and something was reborn. I've never told anyone that story until just now. It's still a painful memory. But it reminds me just how frail this life really is and that we could go in any second. It makes me devoted to living life to the fullest. That's why I can't live a normal life of punching a time clock and showing up for a job and being subservient to the establishment. I was born to challenge and change the paradigm and I've devoted myself to my destiny even if it kills me.

Arian and I were able to somehow pack all the food gifts on our bikes, but his backpack was way too heavy. I wondered how he would do going uphill. But we decided that we were going to give it our best shot and tackle the hill south of Crescent City, the Hill of Doom, as it came to be known. With our waterproof panniers stuffed and open so the rain could get in them, we rode down the beach toward the ominous slope that began one of the hardest rides I've survived. The Sun was going down in an hour and we had too far to go and it was uphill most the way. We made our ascent with confidence, but Arian started to fall behind. We stuffed the backpack strapped to the back of his bike on top of his panniers to the gills and it was severely limiting his ability to move briskly. I found myself trying to encourage him but just getting angry instead. I stopped and let him catch up and there was terror in his eyes. He looked bewildered and I could tell he wanted to cry but was holding it back.

"We're not going to make it dad," he said. "It's too heavy and the sun is going down." He pointed off through the thick redwoods to the setting sun. I let my anger go, even though I knew I would need to summon it again to really crest that hill. My panniers were packed to the gills too and I was having an extremely hard time pedaling as well. But sometimes you've got to be a hero to your kid, like my dad did when he jumped in and pulled me out of the pool in the deep south. I looked him firmly in the eyes and I grabbed both his shoulders and I said with fierce determination on the shoulder of the road, "We are going to make it no matter what. Give me that backpack. I'll carry it on my back. I spent all summer with a heavy pack on my back and I can do it again for ten miles up this hill, damn it!"

"But dad, it's too heavy. There's no way you can carry it and all the extra weight you already have."

Don't quote me the odds," I said, quoting Han Solo from Star Wars. I unstrapped the pack from where it was bungie-corded to his rack and I slung it on like a warrior going into battle and I said, "Ride! And you better not let me catch you!"

He sped ahead and was delighted by the feeling of lightness. I turned inward to call on that anger again. I was going to need every last drop to get to the top of that hill before darkness fell. The huge Redwood trees were a sight to behold, but I had one focus, and that was to pedal like that day when I held Arian up out of the sea and walked along the bottom to save both of us from drowning. The going was tough as I had never carried that much weight on a bike at one time. I felt like Magellan's wheels were going to just buckle and bend, but I put it in the lowest gear, "One-slash-One" as we call it, and I started churning out distance. It was the most excruciating ride of my life and with the amount of sweat I was generating under my jacket I felt like I was drowning again. Not only that, the Sun disappeared behind the trees and rocks and the cold seeped in, so I got a chill even though I was burning up at the same time. Arian was impressed that I could carry that much weight and I did catch him. Not only did I catch him, I generated enough energy from the depths of my soul, that I started leaving him behind! When we reached the summit, I was in so much pain that I couldn't even talk. We just pedaled along in agony across the flats waiting for the slope to start is descent. When it did, I told Arian "See ya at the frickin' bottom!" and rode like a man possessed by gravity. I didn't feel safe going that fast with that much weight so I had to apply the breaks to keep from crashing out of control. As I rode the Sun came back into view again and it was just sinking into the brilliant blue ocean as I streamed down the mountain, the essence of beauty displayed in brilliant fiery orange and blue. I stopped at a rest area near the bottom overlooking the sea and waited for Arian to catch up. He eventually did but the sun was long gone and he said, "The Sun set at exactly 6:45!"

"Cool," I said. Now we know what time to shoot for. When we get to Arcata, I'm going to need a week of rest."

"Me too," he said, and then we broke out our lights to face the twilight road. We still had a ways to go before Klammoth. Sure enough, we rolled into the first RV park under the covert cover of darkness, and a very unfriendly old lady made us pay $18 for a tiny tent sight. Arian could tell I was pissed. 18 bucks for one night in your own tent on Eternal Being's carefully crafted earth? Arian looked at me and said, 'Look, they've got warm showers and wi-fi dad. I've got five dollars I can contribute."

"No," I said. "Keep your five bucks. That's yours. I got this humor (a constant inside joke between us). And I plucked down my debit card to pay the foul-tempered lady. She was like talking to the crone on a bad hair day. After we paid our fine for sleeping on the earth, we wandered back to the campsite and set up our tent. There were two Canadian travelers in the spot next door (a guy and his girlfriend - young twenties) and they came over to chat and ask us if we needed help setting up. I love Canadians as they are so friendly and cordial. We didn't need any help but I enjoyed talking to them and sharing stories while we cooked the Cuban Black Beans and Yellow Rice from Atlanta. I told Arian that he could have double rations tonight, mainly because we needed to get rid of some food, but also because I was hungry as a horse. We all laughed and after dinner I took a deep long Arian-style shower.

We looked at the map and it was 60 miles from where we were to Arcata. I told him we could do it in a day if we got some good winds and flat roads. But it didn't turn out that way at all. The next day I woke up sore as could be, but partially recovered from over exhaustion, thinking that we had a nice medium 60-miler of a day ahead of us. Not only was I wrong, I was worse than wrong. I made another bad decision by skipping the scenic bicycle route to stay on the 101. We learned long ago that bicycle routes take you down the most out-of-the-way hilly as hell but scenic as heaven path. And we didn't want that. We wanted efficiency and expediency. It turns out that the 101 hill we had to climb was worse than the one out of Crescent City, even if a steadier climb. But I had emailed our future hosts in Arcata and told them we would be there around sunset and I knew we could make it, even with all the extra weight. I found out later that the scenic route was the easier trek. Not only that, we ran out of water (the raccoons ate Arian's water bottle and we had not found a replacement yet). Running out of water on a hard ride is almost worse than drowning. It's like drowning in dryness. I remembered that fateful day outside of Jackson Montana where I had to hitch a ride 15 miles to town after becoming dehydrated. It was not fun at all.

So I gave most of my last water bottle's liquid contents to Arian, and told him to conserve it. If we could make it another 20 miles to Orich, then we'd celebrate with a pair of Monsters so we could make it another 20 miles before sunset. We rode up and up and up and up, and it seemed to never end. I was sweating buckets under my coat but feeling chilly due to a mild headwind that kicked up. My old favorite friends had returned: harsh headwinds and steep hills. We passed a road crew at the apex that consisted of prisoners from a nearby correctional institution. I thought about stopping to ask them for water, but it felt weird and the apex was here, so I excitedly charged forward to realize that around the next few bends, the road turned up again and even steeper! Holy frak!

I had one drink of water left in my water bottle when we finally made it to the real descent. I told Arian that I was going to ride fast and had to find us some water and to just keep on coming at his nice easy slow downhill pace. I was ready to give the horse his head. I pointed Magellan downhill and said to Arian, "You know how you are always charging me a quarter for saying a bad word?" He just nodded and smiled slyly. He could sense what was coming. I said, "See you at the _)*#*^$&#*@(*#@(*^&@)@&@&#@(#&)(@&#)(&)@(#)(@&#)(&@)(&#^!#*&#)(*#)(*#(*!_#*_)*#_!&& BOTTOM!" I had been composing it in my head for about ten miles and it was better than some slam poetry. But I won't repeat it here. I had to buy him a couple of Monster drinks!

When I did see the kid again, he found me rolled off into a cabin resort area where they had a water pump right there by the road. I had already downed two bottles and was feeling waterlogged. I made Arian down a container and a half and then we rolled down the road into Orich. Arian had made himself a sandwich back at the apex and I kept munching on the care package food trying to put a dent in it, but it was so much! Steve had been his usual generous self and hooked us up good, even though we could barely carry his gifts. He even sent body lotion and chap stick and other interesting products based on the Phi ratio. We had cleared the mountains and now we were back on the sea, and I bought us both Monsters so we could begin the second leg of ou journey through the lagoons all fired up and excited. Arian rode ahead of me wild and free. The lagoons were a sight to see, but the traffic was dense and the road was curvy and the shoulder was a foot, so it was hair-raising riding the whole 20 miles., but we made it.

Then as the sun was threatening to set on us again, we rode fast down the 101 to finish out the last 20 miles in the dark. We rolled into the hippy college town of Arcata ready to fall off our bikes. I had memorized how to get to our hosts house, three young beautiful college ladies and there male roommate welcomed us into their clean, warm, inviting home. We took hot showers and collected all of our clothes for laundry. After the shower we stayed up late talking and I ended up doing three mini-30 minute astrology readings to their utter amazement. You should have seen their eyes light up when my words unraveled their characters and spoke to the mystery of being. They knew they had heard unfathomable truths about themselves that night, and would probably always remember it, but I was over-exhausted and shivering when I took to the futon couch in the living room by the big cozy soft couch that Arian wanted.

My upper back was in such acute pain that I could barely suck air through my left lung. it hurt so bad just to breathe in the air.
I didn't tell anybody except Arian about how bad my condition was, but I was going down hard with a sickness that had me shivering through the night, coughing, and aching all over. I knew I had pushed it too far the last few days and I was ready for a week off. I had Arian walk on my back to release the pain and I did manage to get some sleep. But the next day we could barely enjoy the town of Arcata. We rode our bikes around looking for a cafe to sit at like zombies, almost crashing into each other on occasion. We finally got settled in the sunroom cafe of a local health food store and were happy to have such cool hosts and to finally be where we wanted to be in a college town. Arian even thought it felt like Boulder. To the West you can see the great hill with the Community Forest where transients often live and where the Humbolt University is situated. To the east and coming into town from the north we saw great swaths of sand dunes leading to the sea. Later that night, our hosts offered to take us to a poetry reading in Eureka and I had the gall to sign up to read a few of my cosmic poems. The poetry reading was held in an art gallery space and they had chairs set up in rows all proper, surrounded by the strangest art I'd seen. They made me pay five bucks to get in the door, but I was cool with supporting the local artists. There were only about twelve or thirteen poets reading that night, but each one was amazing and left the audience cheering in delight. Some of the elder poets would scream out when a poet would get his or her groove on and let em know they were feeling it by snapping their fingers. "You tell it girl!" "A-huh!" And that kind of hootin' and hollerin'. I thought I was in a black church in the deep South. When I went to the stage, after feeling like I might not make it through the night, I told them that I just biked about 3000 miles to share this moment with some beautiful fellow poets. I felt like crying. But instead, I took a deep breath and tried to speak through the numbness and read three poems.

Year After Year

The leadership changes again and again
   but the agendas and deceptions remain.
   Year after year people call for change,
   for something institutions could never arrange.
There’s an amazing revolution around a blazing star
   it opens us to life as a still pond,
   rain piercing the surface calm,
   as moments drum on and on...
   There are no nations in this
   courageous orchestration.
   I want to know if you can summon the discipline
   to govern yourself, if you can be guided by
   faith in the mystery of eternal being?
   Sure it's tough playing a freedom-fighter
   in this shaking theater of the soul.
   But it beats wandering through life cold
   living someone else's crumbling mold.
   Laziness haunts humanity like an insidious mist;
   we'd rather be slaves than face the terror of our bliss.
   Wake up!  Wake up!
   Feel the "whack" of a Zen master's stick!
   creative power unleashed, the cosmic kick.
   Transform your world, people of the edge!
   Precious time is wasted seeking approval on the ledge.
   Jump in!  Jump in!
   Find the inner treasure.
   Cross the threshold seeker; fulfill your measure.
   Once you join the spiral dance,
   you'll never live your mystery in a trance of chance.
   No government could ever contain the surprise that you are.
   So aim your passions arrows at horizons afar...


Then a Haiku that took me three hours to compose while meditating on the surf and sand in Key West.

"Sand dried rapidly.
Ocean Tides Crash on Beaches.
Footprints washed away."

Then I hit em with my title poem, "Engaging the Infinite"

Above the whirling sea, stars await your return
 mirrored across the deep span stretching within.
 The curving space between here and there is endless
yet it feels like you’ve been abandoned in the emptiness.

You can never stop the flow of dark imagery
coursing through your heart.
 Those chambers of guilt and fear always struggle
to contain the tingling fire dancing as your soul.

It hurts to be free. It hurts to be free.
 But when you step into your passion,
the whole universe opens within and
others may wander with black holes for hearts
devouring your visions with their fears.

Tell me. Tell me. How old are you?
 That’s not your age. It’s simply the number
of orbits you’ve made around this star.
You’ve made many orbits around other stars.

Like a timeless electron zipping around
an atomic nucleus, you are infinite.

And if you argue for your limitations
you have to fight them.
But if you discover your possibilities
you get to create them!


So stand still. Gaze at the sky.
Sense the reverence rising inside,
and know that your being, your aliveness
is an extension of eternity.


They loved that last one and the whole crowd went wild as I stumbled off the stage. It was an honor to be among fellow poets in the faraway land of Arcata. I went to bed that night feeling slightly better, but one of the girls had to bring her friend who was all into metaphysics and Tarot by so I could interpret his chart. So there I sat at ten o'clock looking into this young man's eyes and knowing that my words could change his life forever, but my body wanted to collapse on the floor. Would I ever recover from this? I knew I had to line up more couch surfing in Arcata. I wasn't ready to ride in this state, but our hosts said we could stay for two nights only. It would be brutal to ride again now. So I prayed for guidance and I spent about 30 minutes with this young man who was a born healer with Chiron conjunct his Sun and Jupiter and Mercury in Leo, a Moon in Aquarius conjunct Saturn, and Scorpio Rising with Pluto in the first house like the German Goethe. I quoted him Goethe's Holy Longing poem and the chart reading blew his mind wide open. He said, "Wow! Others have tried to read for me but no one has ever even come close to describing the depths of my soul as closely as you did, thank you! It sounds like I have a lot of responsibility with these gifts."

"Indeed you do my friend. To whom much is given, more is required."

I told him I had barely scratched the surface. After he left, I lumbered over to the futon couch where Arian was still reading a new fantasy novel on his I-pad, and I crashed hard again into another dreary fitful pain filled night of dark half-breathable sleep. I felt like I had finally symbolically drowned...

Sand Dunes of Enlightenment

The Road Winds South

I woke up the next morning at a campground near Sutton Lake, excited to see Christina again, just to sit across from her over a steaming chai and look into her eyes and say "Hey friend. I still love you." But my intuition kicked into high gear and said, "She's not coming."

"She's not?"

"Nope, and it's probably better this way. Easier to move on..."

Arian and I packed up our little camp surrounded by the thick green forests and rode 3 miles into town. We hadn't done laundry since Astoria, and we wanted dry warm clothes bad. So right when we entered the north end of Florence, Oregon and spotted the Laundry/Showers store, we quickly zoomed in for a spell. And they even had Wi-Fi. I called Christina on Skype to see if she was on her way to meet us, and she said she wasn't coming. I told her "I know, I heard..."

It's strange having a psychic connection through the creative void and a relationship to the invisible guides of the soul, because you know more than you should, but they still keep you guessing and spontaneous. In a way, our connection to Spirit cultures our spontaneity. I was trying to plan my day on seeing Christina just because she happened to be in the area, a planned spontaneity I thought, but the universe had greater ideas. Instead, Arian and I rolled into town and found a quaint little coffee roaster cafe under the bridge with a perfect view of the river, and I was able to focus and get an astrology order done, connecting with the cosmic muse. It was a happening little cafe and so I tried to keep my voice down a bit, because if I open up full steam and talk as loud as I normally do, people might think the universe is caving in as the archetypes begin there rhythmic dance.

Turns out Christina didn't want to talk much about why she wasn't coming but I eventually got it out of her. She had a new boyfriend who was a Scorpio jealous type, and she didn't want to rock any boats. How lame! What kind of friendship were we supposed to have then. I guess only words across cyberspace and phones. Oh well, I bid her soul goodbye in the depths of my being and thanked her for the experience. She said she was still going to sell our house in NC and try and settle our debt. I didn't really care. I told her I wasn't interested in any of it. She could do whatever she wanted. I didn't even care if we ever got legally divorced. I was now eternally immune to the legal marriage bug. I had gone over our relationship and how it began and in hindsight saw the wrong moves we made, maybe unconscious moves better describes it. We jumped into a boat together to escape a situation where my former intense Canadian girlfriend Tanya and her old boyfriend Richard were all up in our space and lives. So we bought a house together in the woods and moved out to enjoy the isolation to our own detriment. I love the serene isolation of the woods, but my soul thrives in a vibrant community. I got depressed and gained weight and felt like dying, because I gave up my dream to live another's. Never again. Have a nice life, Christina. I'm so over your darkness and confusion and ready for a new day to dawn. Can't wait till the Scorpio finds out how frigid you are. That will be some in intense drama. If I sound miffed about her ditching us to please another I am. Oh well... Life is already much better without her and her fearful limitations and attachments to the so-called REAL world.

Anyway, back to the journey at hand. I've always been great at escapism. My family has a long tradition of it. My dad was an alcoholic and my mom could get raging drunk and emotional by a bonfire with bikers too! We just love to escape. I was against drugs and drinking mainly because of the pain I endured watching them go through it and a devotion to a pure lifestyle nurtured by great teachers I met through school and sports. In life, we tend to create our own demons out of the fears that haunt us, and then we run from them and pray to some higher power for help. We pray for divinity to help us defend against ourselves, our illusions, our madness. We run from our fears.

When I embarked on this quest I was running from my fear of being bored to tears in the isolation of the woods. At the same time, I was doing an experiment in lifestyle design to embrace a new way of digital nomadic living on this bright blue planet we call Earth. After dropping and breaking my LCD screen on the DROID phone, (I have to admit that I miss it, but only because email was an addiction), I had an intense realization. It brought more craziness and obsessiveness into my life than I needed. So I'm consciously choosing to break my contract with Verizon as a statement of rebellion against another monthly bill that only added compulsive behavior to my life. I hardly ever used the phone to TALK to people! And I can TALK to people over Skype for free, or even call their phones from anywhere in the world for $3 bucks a month. I hated how I entered Canada and started getting all these instant roaming charges from Verizon. Screw you too Verizon! Can you hear my now, bitches?

I seem to have a negative tone today. There's wind outside and the storm clouds are rolling in. But Arian and I have been having a great bonding time as Father and Son, and as friends. When he is in school around other kids all day he seems to take on this attitude that the parent is just an authority figure that must be appeased so he can get fed and whatever else he wants. Most kids think there parents are necessary hardships to be endured. That is until they get older and realize the cool relationship that could have been developed. In a way our society breeds bratty, selfish, egotistic children with its addiction to winning and being number one!. Somebody need to smack them with love. But instead we just keep buying them gadgets and trying to entertain them.

On this trip Arian and I have developed a new relationship. I feel respect coming from him and I respect him too. He has struggled up hills in the face of devastating winds, he's pedaled through rain for three brutal days with sniffly nose. He's rolled into camp exhausted after 50 milers and collapsed after a mug of hot tea. But most of all, he appreciates the little things so much more. A homeless cooked meal in the middle of nowhere soothes the soul. Stir fried veggies in MOngolian hot oil with rice noodles makes one's tummy tranquil. We've laughed together and shared stories and insights and amazing vistas. We've become friends, even though the boundaries of parent and child are still firmly in tact. And I don't get that feeling that my kid thinks I'm stupid when I tell him to do something like pack up the tent or wash the dishes. He understands the responsibility of being alive of enduring a long day of pain and overcoming the selfish self just enough so that the visionary self can shine through.

So we packed up our stuff in Florence and headed south to the Honeyman campground five miles to the south. We felt great with freshly laundered clothes and a nice stock of food, including his favorite meal: Chips, Hummus, and Salsa. Altogether we only rode our bikes less than ten miles, and our legs enjoyed the rest. We also stopped in after doing laundry and had some Thai food in Florence. It was delicious. I love the tingle and spicy heat of a nice red curry sliding down your throat and into a waiting warmed belly! We camped at Honeyman campground and encountered several other cyclists at the hiker/biker site: Two girls from Canada and a guy from San Diego heading home. We saw him before in Newport and heard his story about fighting with the raccoons over his panniers! We brewed some hot tea and set up camp and enjoyed another nice dinner. Afterward, Arian and I began working on our new Roleplaying game called Emergence again, fleshing out the Skills that characters can train like Ranged Weapon Combat, Seafaring, Courage, and Wizardry. We're nerds that way! We both get really excited about designing characters and going on mythic adventures in our imaginations.

Arian said that he had a long term goal of figuring out how he could make money in the world, like I did with astrology. I suggested that he could run the Emergence RPG website and make money from selling and promoting the PDF we were creating. We both agree that it's going to be the best character design system ever devised, and that it would appeal to the novelist as well as the gamer, so we have two markets. I told him we could get my German I-pad ap developer to design an ap that runs people through the process of character creation and that we cold sell the whole book and a series of accessories online. He got really excited. I told him that he comes alive most in life when discussing RPGs and music. So why not make them the center of your longing. I told them he would never have to be a slave to any job but the one of his own creation. He is now very excited about running the online website when we get it done and getting people excited about the new game system by talking about it on forums. I told him we would release the first three chapters as a free PDF download as a try before you buy deal. That seemed to excite him too. I want my kid to live his dreams. I would be sad if he just took a job and showed up to "make ends meet". What are these mythic ends that have to meet? And if they are really meeting, then why is everyone so unhappy, clogging their lives with food and TV and gas-guzzling environment-destroying cars and glued to their little Smart-phones all day long texting like the world is going to end. Surly we've one batty as a culture? I've learned to watch any commercial and hear the message tot he core and then realize that the opposite of what they were saying was closer to the truth. If someone says they are #1, they probably only wish they were. I hear desperation. If someone says you'll save money, you'll actually spend more. If someone says something is great for the environment and all-natural, somewhere in their production process nature is being screwed. Smart-phones are really dumb phones...they keep you tuned into the cyber-world while ignoring the world around you. You miss the spontaneity happening in the flow of life.

The next morning we woke up and Arian was cold. he had put on another pair of socks during the night to try and warm his feet. I woke up first and he was talking to himself in his sleep. I looked over the great Wall of Panniers that divided the tent in half and he said, "I would like a hot chai." He was completely asleep, and a laughed out loud. His eyes shot open and he slowly realized where he was. He asked me, embarrassed, "Did I say that out loud?" I said, "Yes, we better get you to a coffee shop!"
We both laughed our heads off. My kid was dreaming about steaming hot chai with cold feet in his sleeping bag. He said that we were couchsurfing in his dream and that our host asked us what we wanted to drink. I had asked for hot tea and when the host turned to him, he said, "I would like a hot chai." Hilarious!

So the next thing you know, we're packed up and heading south toward a little town called Gardiner. On the way we rode past the great Sand Dune near Dunes City that you see above. The sun poked through the clouds and began to warm the sand and I had a great idea. I stopped next to one of the huge sand dunes and Arian came riding along and stopped too. I said, "Are your feet still cold?" He said, "Freezing!" I said, "Then take off your shoes." He turned to see the large gleaming sand dune through the trees and his eyes widened in excitement. I love when he gets that excited look. We parked the bikes and took off our shoes and socks and we ran up the sandy dune. It was quite a hike to the top and our old couch-potato, video game selves would not have made it ten feet without gasping for air. But we made it all the way to the top no problem with our rock solid legs and strong lungs. Life is just more fun when you are in shape! Sex is better too!

I vowed that when I did settle down for 3-6 months somewhere to write and create that I would start each day off with a devotion to the body and physical fitness and that I would ride my bike everywhere like I used to before Christina came along and wanted me to have a cell phone and a car so I wouldn't feel so lonely in the woods. That was the best part about Christina, her loving nurturing spirit. She was so nurturing that I think it deprived her of her self-assertion, always pleasing others. She used to come home from rubbing people all day exhausted and I was just excited to see somebody and wanted to jump on her like a happy dog! She just needed five hours of recovery and would sink into web TV land and feed her food addictions and I would jump on the futon couch next to her and help her down yet another bowl of popcorn. Sometimes I had dinner waiting, but she liked bland food and complained about the rich spiciness of my cooking. It was always a struggle between her pure Virgo and my multicultural Sagittarius.

The town of Gardiner was a ghost town, and if you blinked. you pretty much missed it. And some old exploration party was massacred by Indians back in the day. Yeah for the Indians! Damn white people think they can just move in and take over these sacred lands and push the Indians away like a disease. I imagined taking a load of machine guns back into time, and uniting the tribes against the invading Europeans. I imagined a scene where the over-confident European/American soldiers encountered a small skirmishing party of Native Americans wielding M-16s. That would teach them not to just come in and take land from people! Instead we have the depressing grey paved over modern world and the continual worship of Progress in a land lined with little churches where people congregate and pray for a better existence in some elusive afterlife. Blah!

So we pushed on to Reedsport and found an amazing natural foods store with adjoining cafe and had some soy chais! We topped them off with some vegan Mint CHocolate CHip ice cream and then restocked our oatmeal supply. We also added some enticing spices to our small growing collection. We had honey and cinnamon for our oats, but we added garlic pepper, and a cayenne/pepper blend called Hot Shot, plus some Basil. We were looking forward to tonights spicy stir fry if we made it to Coos Bay. The State Parks looked like they were on the far side of Coos Bay near the beaches and it didn't look like we would get to see Coos Bay and make it to camp, so I got on Couchsrufing.com and looked for a host. Within ten minutes I had a lead on a cool place to stay! A guy named Tony who was an avid surfer and his belly dancer instructor/performer wife had a cottage we could crash in behind their house just south of Coos Bay. Yahoo!

We got on our bikes with renewed spirits and rode like wild centaurs toward the bridge that crossed into Coos Bay. We quickly found Tony's place after hacking into a random wi-fi hot spot on one of our I-pads. He was a gracious host and had a wonderful little daughter. We never met his wife as she was busy teaching/practicing for a show. But he showed us to their little cottage in the back and said we could have all the apples we wanted off his tree. There were hundreds! I was overjoyed, but Arian can't stand the texture of apples and biting into them is like someone scraping fingernails on the blackboard! he gets the chill bumps just from thinking of biting into one!

We had a good night indoors away from the chill night and Arian enjoyed warm feet for a change. We got another response from a lady named Daina on Couchsurfing up in North Bend but on the other side of the bay near the State parks. This was perfect because we wanted to spend a day in Coos Bay working on creative projects and I could do my charts. So we told her we'd stay with her through email and then we went back into Coos Bay to find a cozy coffee shop called Cafe 101. It was a Christina themed coffee shop where the Barista would claim that God deserves all the credit for her recent stroke of planning fortune etc. They had a section with a big sign hanging in the air surrounded by stars that said "The Heavens Declare the Glory of God." If they only knew the truth of that, I thought. Then we devoured some more chips, hummus, and salsa under that sign on these big cozy couches and broke out the computer to work on Emergence! We worked at an astonishing pace all day until the clock stroked six. I thought about doing charts in there, but it was too quiet, and I didn't feel like rocking any Christian spoon-fed world-views this day. Eventually we made our way through the twilight busy streets and avenues of Coos Bay and North Bend to find Daina's place. She had a wonderful set of houses that she rented all on a large secluded plot of land and a large RV type trailer out back that she let couch surfers crash in. It had no hot water, no beds, but plenty of space and a nice little table. We pulled our sleeping bags and matts out and put them in the back room on the grey carpeted floor and broke out our cookware to make a great feast. But then there was a tap on the door...

It was our host Daina and her friend's daughter who wanted to ask us about our cycling trip. I invited them in, saying enthusiastically, "Hello! Welcome! Come on in. I mean it's your place!" They came in and I knew something felt off. Daina seemed way cool, like my own mom in a lot of ways. She felt like a kindred spirit. Her friend's daughter thought it was way cool that I had ridden my bike from Boulder. She was gorgeous, a princess, but with sad eyes that reflected her pain. She had recently entered recovery from drug usage and was in need of help, I found out later. Something told me to do her chart for her, to help her, so I started off by showing her the I-pad, and that lead to the astrology ap called Kairon, and next thing you know we're gathering up chairs to sit down at the little table with the MacBook Pro to do a full blown session.

She stayed quiet the whole session and just kept looking at Daina in amazement as I described the character her soul came to inhabit, and she was in her Balsamic moon phase when everything crashes and ends and prepares you for the next 30 year cycle of living. I gave her the full spectrum of insight and ended up blasting her with the Dead Poets and Daina's eyes shot wide with knowing and excitement. She loved poetry and philosophy and the discussion of astrological ages and cycles. Next thing you know, the daughter's mom shows up mid-reading, right when we got to the good stuff of chart evolutions, the changes indicated for her based on transits and progressions! The archetypes came through strong and blew the top off that mid-sized trailer with imagery and inspiration. Afterward, Daina wanted her chart done professionally, and wrote me a check for $195, my standard fee. The daughter was amazed at the timing of these revelations, because she was making a life changing decision the next day under the New Moon in Libra and was grateful for the celestial perspective and advice.

Daina let us stay two days and we worked on the game system and I got caught up on a synastry chart I had been meditating on. Those relationship charts are the hardest to do because you have to hold two total human fluctuating lives in your mind and communicate the strands of conflict and harmony in such a way that it inspires people to work with the energy and understand why we've been brought together. The mistake we make is that we tend to fall in love with a person as they are right then and there and our attachment to the vibration of goodness we feel when we encounter them stifles their growth. What we have to love in another is the very thing that will drive them away from us, once they spread their wings and fly. I was in the middle of the road of letting go of love myself, and both of us were better human beings for our time together. As the cosmic genius Simon Vai once aid, "What we love in others is the hoped for satisfaction of our desires. We do not love them for their desires. For if we loved them for their desires, we would love them as ourselves." But we never really do, do we? We love through the lens of our needs. Christina needed me to be normal, to go to a job and make money and punch a time clock to work on the debt that we had accumulated. But I couldn't do it. An artist would rather starve than accept mediocrity and the drudgery of soulless work. My choice was to let all the material wealth go. Let's declare bankruptcy and head down the road. We can work on our sexual incompatibility on a grand adventure! She craved the security of a home in the woods. That's what she'd desired ever since she drew a picture of it in 3rd grade, her little homestead in the woods, her place to escape and have plants as friends. I respected her for that, but I wanted to see the world and develop a traveling lifestyle. We had both been dreaming about having a cool Roadtrek travel van for years. Now I see them go by on the road and think of our sad dream. Now I camp next to them in campgrounds and am overjoyed that it never happened after experiencing what RV campers are like...Blah! RV campers are people who take all their family dramas and comforts out into the woods and try to pretend that there's not another family doing the same thing on either side of them.

I prefer rolling into a campground and seeing who is there at the hiker/biker site, the cheapest campsite in the park. Every night you could meet part of your human family. Yesterday we rode hard south through blustery winds uphill and Arian got to experience the pain and surrender of struggling to go 3 MPH uphill with wind tearing at your face. We only rode 30 miles to reach the coastal town of Bandon, Oregon, but it was a fierce uphill that burned our legs and made us leave more layers behind. And when we rolled into the campground exhausted, defeated, but serene and happy to simply arrive, we made our way pat all the petty families with screaming children and fenced fires to the hiker-biker site to meet a young couple from Seattle who were doing the 101 in reverse, an old man with a cart who was nearly deaf, and a middle aged man from Alberta, Canada who was an introvert and needed cycling time away from his life and his wife to go inward and dream. I know now the feeling Jesus had when they told hi his mother and his brother was here to see him. He gestured to the assembled masses and said, "These are my mothers and my brothers." And I feel the same. Thank you Jesus, for being a great humanitarian and teacher of the Way. I wish more of your retarded dogmatic followers could grow their hair long and go vagabonding down the road to share cosmic insight as you did. But no, they stay in their little clubs and meet on Sundays to see if all the gossip is true and compete over who has the best clothes and cars in the parking lot, and complain about the weather and the country is going socialist, and that we need more guns.

Everywhere I go I hear people saying the country is going bad and we need to defeat the Democrats and Obama before we lose everything we've fought for and become Socialists like in Europe. I say return to your body and perfect your own temple! I say focus on being happy deep within and living your dreams and you won't care about big brother. I say reach for more than Nationalism and go for the Global Village culture that is emerging. America will be one culture among many exciting brilliant expressions of humanity on the bright blue planet-spaceship we call earth soon. We won't feel the need to be number one in everything. We won't feel so divided across these fake lines we call borders. The borders are there to control the people on the inside more than they control anything else. I say reach across your borders and conquer your fears with your bliss. Go deep into the darkness of your woundedness and ask why you aren't happy? The French root word for Bliss means Wound! Can you transcend your cultural programming amidst the blaring commercials beaming materialism at you and find your true longing. As David Whyte says, "I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of your longing, if you can live day by day with the consequence of love and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat."

Time to go consult the cosmic muse here in Bandon, Oregon. I think we'll spend the day here and create art through language. Our hot chais are finished, but the sweet potato fries are on the way. It's all fuel for the road of life! I emailed my spiritual brother Brett in Chico CA, and told him I'm coming. I'm ready to settle for 3-6 months, before wandering somewhere else. But first we need to make it to Arcata-Eureka and couchsurf with people for like a week! I've heard that the people there are to the far left of left politically. My kind of people! We'll see what inspiration we can bring and find there as we complete the last stretch of the beautiful Oregon Coast. All my life I've heard of this amazing place, and now I've lived it day by day on a bicycle. I'll have it in my soul memory after I drop this sacred vessel and blast off to incarnate on other worlds in the galaxy. And I'll remember the time Arian and I had while pedaling along together laughing and making up jokes and sharing insights about our Emergence game.

If you love reading these words and you want to support our journey (feeding the kid is tough sometimes when gold pieces run short) I welcome you to make a donation. Even $10 bucks means we can camp somewhere legally and eat some veggies! There si a donation button on the lower left of this web page.

Or better yet, you can support my work in astrology and order a life-changing session here. If everyone knew what wisdom could be gained through astrology, I'd have people chasing me off the side of the road to do there charts. But science and religion and superficial culture are out to surpress such uncanny unmeasurable sacred wisdom. I enjoy being a rebel!