South to the Sun, Half Moon Bay, Day 5, 8 am

I woke at 4 am. I let Madigan out to pee.  The sky was clear and Orion stars were dazzling.,  Lovely southern night.  I saw one trailer leaving and thought about it.  LA is 6 hours and I’m only planning on going half way today possibly SAN Luis Obispo, I climbed back into the camper bed above the roof of the Ford truck.  I’m glad I did.

I woke when the lights came on from a wonderful dream. I was with a group of colleagues and felt very much a part of.  They were showing me their clinic and inviting me to join them. It was all in one building and there were at least a half dozen or more, some of who I knew and liked.  There was even a psychiatrist in a white walled office wearing white starched shirt with cuffed sleeves inviting a young couple into what was clearly a psychoanalytic psychotherapy room.  I enjoyed it all.  

There was a bit though which is a mystery. They wanted me to take an injection like a vaccine.  I did but it seemed I had to have this ‘mark’ or injection to be apart of this group. I have felt the outsider so long and remembered when another psychiatrist wanted me to take a drug to join his group.  It wasn’t ominous and I liked them all. They had wives and children and houses and were regular sorts.  Guys I admired.  

Yet I also saw the Matthew 8:20 on the wall of Jim Houston’s office, “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests , but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

I thought to of the annual artist show called the “outsider festival’. The artist as outsider but reading history I know that the Impressionists I love were mostly friends but not part of the establishment of the day.  Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were part of the guild and yet went to Florence and Milan and Rome , places away from their homes.

I liked the dream though.  Nothing scares. I liked reading last night that Elon Musk said he was a 3000 year old alien searching for his home. He was obviously being humorous but I can relate.  He was joking about insomnia perhaps which I’ve had at times this year.  People describe happiness and I’ve had that feeling recently but more contentment I’m on an adventure and driving at times is high stress just as sailing was associated with a lot of adrenaline experiences,  I appreciate that many don’t embrace the challenges and perhaps know more serenity. I believe that emotions are contrasting and you can’t experience true joy without having known great sadness.  So many leads ‘lives of quiet desperation’ and I have known that too,

I have been so poor for days I’ve not had food.  Like a beggar I’ve depended on hand outs.  Leaving my parents home was a Prodigal son event as was coming home and being welcomed back by my mmother and brother and tentatively by my father.  Then I trusted musician friends and was betrayed. Later I’d be a dancer and have steady income. I really was rich in love.  Me and Bobby McGee described my life back then, the hitchhiking hippie married and in love working kitchens to pay for lessons and a bicycle. Bicycling across Europe to Morocco and having to borrow money to survive that first month in London.  I felt confident then.   I felt safe in the love of parents and being supported by a rich country I was so proud of.  Being Canadian was truly something after WWII and the sacrifice of the soldiers.  Our life in Canada was such a contrast to Europeans. In England they had just stopped some kinds of rationing when we were there.  

Then I was frugal doing university with just enough money to live but I had a students bachelor near the university and all I wanted to do was study. I lived in the library and was rich in books. I was meditating and praying and not long after fell in love again.  We were like our friends buying houses and working two jobs.  It was passed the time when in first year I gave blood to buy a stethoscope.  I was going somewhere. A yuppie. Young upwardly mobile professional.  I was climbing the mountain, rich in purpose and again in love,

The next divorce was a set back but not the personal betrayal or the anxiety or the alcohol and marijuana. I was drinking and smoking weed not so much for fun as to escape. I was deeply depressed with my life.  I had given up my dreams for marriage, left country and northern practice and gone into psychiatry to live in the city with her and now I didn’t know what to do. I did my American exams , had a girlfriend and thought of that life but returned to Canada and emergency work.  I really was picking up the pieces and all those other cliches.  The nurse I was with turned out to do coke. I escape to the country and was fine smoking dope but paranoid of my colleague who turned out to be a scoundrel. I only learned this from his previous associates who he stabbed in the back.  Sexually I was fucked.  I was haunted by my past.  I’d had such good times and couldn’t get over the feeling of being victimized and taken advantage of. I asked my self would I ever do that to someone struggling and realized I wouldn’t.  

 I was married again. I felt rich when I met her, psychologically troubled but thousands in the bank ,no debts, all I needed and was happy with my new Vanagon.  Truly a step up from the VW bug I’d had at the end of my last marriage.  I’d traded the Mustang I had and loved for this character car and the money to carry on,  For the next 10 years I was working and sailing, living in the country in a homestead for a couple o years having a truly incredible clinic and practice but again with the sick wife.  I ‘d gone through the death of one mother in law and now faced another sick and dying and the depressed and angry daughter.    I was always alone waiting for her to come home assuming affairs and worried about the coke again. I was drinking wine and smoking dope but everything was regular. I was enjoying the country practice and colleagues again.  But it crashed.  Her mother’s death and her lack of practice and ‘I never wanted to be in the country I only came till you got it out of your system’.  All her friends laughed and said ‘we all knew she was a Shaugnassey girl’

I returned to live on the boat. She could do her thing and I would work and train asa off shore sea captain, The renanisance man.  Maybe I’d escape to sea.  I eventually did but never felt poor all those years working and supporting here and feeling that I had what I needed and money was being spent on fixing up a house or outfitting a boat but that was it.  The women only made half what I did but paid their own way though in all those years I paid the lions’s share but didn’t care because I had money to pay for roofs and /or hull paint and workers who worked with me.  

I was only poor again when I invested everything into a new practice and she again didn’t show up for work and stayed in bed and wouldn’t come out of her room.  I remember saying, I can go to work and care for a thousand depressed people and come hone but i can’t come home and care for you as well, “ I was seeing a therapist and she refused to . Her drinking and drugging and the cocaine were all worse but I was seeing the therapist and telling him the truth and he was very concerned about her cocaine, not the wine, not the pot but ‘I’ve known too many people who have lost their lives to cocaine,’. So we sent her off to see. Her family and get therapy in Southern California with family.  

Another divorce.  I was poor then. I’d gone to stay at friends, the old gang who smoked dope and drank beer, guys I hunted with, we rode off road bikes, they made whiskey in the woods.  I didn’t know that cocaine had got to them. I didn’t like cocaine.  It gave me coke jaw and made me ill. I joked with a family physician friend whop felt the same. “I get enough stimulation assisting surgery, the last thing I need is something to get me wired”.  I felt the same. I liked a glass of wine and a joint and wine.  The Irish doctors I worked with liked to drink but didn’t smoke dope. I couldn’t do both and preferred the mellow of marijuania but it made me more asocial.  

I was really poor when my friends again stole and the ex wracked up debts and I later learned was a multi millionaire and we lived off all my money but she never touch he ‘stash’ while I was wiped out just trying to get through the divorce and keep my boat but she was playing lawyer games , not showing and waiting me out, the seige game.  I couldn’t work either.  A psychiatrist with a broke heart is like a surgeon with broken fingers . I took a Hippocrates oath. I didn’t work when I might hurt someone.  I was not able to make money. I lived off my RRSP’s.  I cashed in my pension. When I finally went to welfare the lady said I couldn’t have any money  She shouted me out of the office and shamed me.  Thankfully I had years before taken out practice insurance, from my very first private practice and thereafter with the help of my private insurance broker was supported. I had not money from the Doctors union because they paid based on last year of earning and I’d been sailing.  Welfare had been the only solution but then someone suggested I contact my insurance company. I’d been staying at a friends and working for him doing construction. I clean septic systems for old people.  It was a bottom I’d later laugh. I was going to church and seeing Willie Gutowski a Christian psychiatrist and chaplain I admired.  I was clean and sober months having decided that I’d drunk after my second divorce and now with this third one I needed all my wits about me because I’d trusted friends who in their cocaine addiction stolen tens of thousands of my dollars from RRSP’s.  It was a thing they were doing at the time. Inviting people to stay with them then kicking them out and stealing all their stuff.  I was told by an associate they were glad I’d got out with my clothes.  For months after they tried to extort more money and threatened to kill me.  I actually thought these were the friends and there was the X wife and I was smoking dope and drinking and my judgment was obviously totally off. I couldn’t afford to drink. I went back to church where I’d felt safe and my mother and father had taken me.  

I was finally able to face the anal pain and shame and unhealed tear and hemorrhoids and had surgery. the pain was excruciating and I was up all night and didn’t take anything . I had God and I could suicidal but I wasn’t going to . I was going through the pain with God and I was admitted to hospital and was in pain and couldn’t shit because of the pain and had the worst medical care I could have known.  Third world.  Not even sits bath,  The psychiatrist may as well have been a psychologists and the nurses counsellor because they just gave me meds that worsened the constipation and worsened the pain but I wasn’t a Christian and this was shame and pain and I had a gay man in the bed beside me and the psychiatrist like the one I was seeing was saying I could drink again and didn’t need to abstain

I had gone back to church and was seeing Willie and was approached by Doug who introduced me to Willie.  I hadn’t been drinking or smoking dope months by then and was glad to know these two but I literally felt safest with Jesus and at church.  I only trusted my Christian lawyer and she got back my boat leaving many many millions for an old steel hull I’d lived on and worked on and wanted to sail across an ocean on because that was the goal before she went insane. Of course when you are insane you think everyone else is insane.  

I was living on carrots then and couldn’t afford meat, back to life as a student when I saved and scrounged but didn’t feel poor, I enjoyed most the invitations out for dinner with friends. I loved the home cooking of women.  I was very poor and didn’t know what I would do.  It was only the ex trying to sell my boat having taken it across border and broken international laws to get it to where she was selling it to a friend out of spite along with all the other things she was doing to hurt me when I’d never wanted to hurt her but did everything I could to help her pass her exams to work and live but I did’t want her doing drugs. I was shocked when I told her psycvhiatrist all I wanted was for her to not do cocaine and drink and drug and go to AA. He said ‘women don’t go to AA’.  I was late to have him be chosen as the speaker at a recovery conference I attended where he was thought the authority on addiction.  So many atheists were jumping on the ship that was floated by the spiritual.  The abstinent had money and the whole community and even religious communities hustled the recovered but said no to ‘spirituality’.  So often people would say I’d not go to AA because of the ‘god stuff’.  Yet they wouldn’t acknowledge that addiction was their religious and the religions like Catholicism wouldn’t have AA because it wasn’t god enough or their god.  The only requirement for AA was a ‘desire not to drink’ and it was suggested in the steps that a person would find a ‘god of their understanding’ that wasn’t booze or themselves. Alcoholics were described as egomaniacs with inferiority complexes.  

I was studying theology and spirituality at UBC attending Vancouver School of Theology and Regent College, and I returned to my private practice and lived on my boat and continued to see Willie, Bernie, and Ray. I ‘d gone to Homewood when I was over 6 months sober and glad for the time there with Graham Cunningham and the psychiatrists.  I was astonished that the addiction,called cancer of the brain, was so pervasive. I d married women who drank and drugged and that was as much an attraction as their obvious beauty and genius. I even took the job at UBC over Stanford because my boss to be suggested we go for a drink to celebrate. That was his test and my department at the time was full of people who liked to drink. Ironically I sat in a meeting for months with the former head when we were both sober.  I laughed when he said to me ‘if you can’t do the time don’t do the crime’ and we were both sentence to a life of sobriety. I was digging myself out of the hole and having a spiritual life and whereas all my previous friends and women I knew drank now none did.  I actually had colleagues now who were clean and sober, When I drank and smoked dope I thought everyone did but we were the minority.  I was back to meditating and praying and loving the natural highs of hiking and sailing and cycling.  

I wasn’t poor in those days but each year after a divorce and quitting drinking I’d experienced a financial ‘bottom’. Now I’m relatively rich again and old but that feeling of poverty worrying about food or rent and getting calls from the debt collecting wanting all the money my ex wife had taken still haunted me.  Fear of financial insecurity will leave us and it’s a promise and I’ve always had money I needed. I’ve had my ‘daily bravado’ of the Lord’s prayer’.  I’ll always thank Willie for telling me that Jesus said over and over again ‘do not be afraid’. I loved discussing Christianity with my friend George when he was listening to Ekart Tolle’s power of now I’d read.  We both were aware of “one day at a time’ and Brother Lawerence living in the present yet it was hard to practice this,  Living in the past we carried resentments and living in the future we had fear. The aim was to be present. Ironically I’d read Richard Alpert , Baba Ram Dass’ book Be here Now when I’d dropped acid as a hippie. Now years later I sat with 30 psychiatrists laughing and discussing which spiritual text we’d read under the influence of which drug or alcohol. I’ll never forget Hugh sharing how he always read the Bible when he was drunk on scotch.  What a crew,  I laugh so much these days.

I’m aware now when I’m not present and can do spot checks and don’t dwell on the past,  I’m under a lot of stress with this driving for days and the fatigue and rain and night. I’m aware I’m getting old but I’m getting there. Travelling ,even crossing bridges is unsettling. I’ve coming this way again. I just passed SAN Francisco where I lived in Marin Country in the late 80’s but I’d first come to San Francisco in the early 70s and been dancing in the street after attending the strawberry mountain peace and love festival in Colorado with my friend Kirk who met his guru then and left for India. I was with the most beautiful girl in the world dancing in the streets of San Francisco listening to the song ‘if in you re going to San Francisco he sure to wear some flowers in your hair’.  That had begun with the summer of love and was still going.   We were there dancing in the streets  and she wrote ‘love’ in her red lipstick on my forehead.  Decades later I’d write Love in white paint on my navy blue Baja Bug pissing off my yuppie girlfriend Suzanne who didn’t like me or the whole hippie era. I was the ‘doctor’ and should act like one,  All my life even when I was a doctor, doctors doctor, I was told I should act like a doctor.I’d been an actor and dancer and I was a doctor. I also got kicked out of high school for reciting a poem I’d written “hey man what a fuck u-‘.  Decades later I’;d be told ‘saying the work ‘fuck ‘ was un professional.  Not once did anyone check if I had Tourette’s either.  I really could related to Dr. House especially when I found his character had addiction.

I’m now so full of gratitude on a day like this looking at the sun and green grass and incredible blue sky and blue ocean,  I’ve got this crazy mutt Madigan (Gaelic for small dog) beside me and our job to day is just to drive 4 hours or so to Luis Obispo .  I love these west coast ports since I sailed into them or by them a couple of tines when I sailed south to Mexico or when I sailed to San Francisco before sailing solo in winter to Hawaii.  It’s a new day.  

God is good all of the time. All shall be well. All Shall Be Well. All manner of things shall me well,  I am struggling with comparison and envy and self pity but know these enemies of joy. I’m laughing thinking of the times when I didn’t have food or whatever and was really poor and lost but today I still have those feelings at times but by comparison today I’m rich. Maybe not in years of life. Maybe that’s what I’m grieving the life I lost and wasted though I don’t believe any life is wasted.  I just wish I’d been less afraid, kinder, more loving a better husband, sober longer. It’s 26 years and some now but I often think if I’d stopped drinking five years earlier things would have been different but the fact is what occurs is the best option. If I’d stopped drinking five years earlier, stayed in surgery, chosen a different wife I could have been hit by a car and died.  Life is the best option of the choices as the time, consciously and unconsciously.  My friend told me that when he flew his spitfire in the Battle of Britain alcohol saved his life because it stopped the shaking and gave m him courage to get back in the plane and face almost certain death, what Light foot once called ‘his liquid courage’.  Maybe being shot at, being in a plane crash being taken hostage and all those near death experiences raised the anxiety level and left me with trauma in the body that never forgets.  It was just that life happened, it unfolds as it should. The Bugghist doctor I trained with who taught me his Merton wisdom said ‘no praise, no blame, no regrets.’

And the great Tai Chi master asked what enlghtenement was ‘I shit when I’m shitting’.   When I rode my motorcycle 4000 km to Sturgies I knew when ever my mind wasn’t on the road I was dying not living.  Focus.  I’m doing ‘meditation in motion ‘ now especially with 10 lanes of highway going 100 km an hour.  

Time to get going.  I want to walk him a bit before we saddle up.  

thank you Jesus  

I thought this was an old guy 

South to the Sun, Day 4 ,evening, Half Moon Bay, California

I’m here in Francis’s Beach Campground, Half Moon Bay south of SF and 400 miles north of Long Beach. It was an unremarkable long haul down I had to stop twice because I was zoning out.  The countryside was spectacular, forest and mountains.  Redwood Highway and Highway of the Giants.  Some Kich big foot site and a few other Disney kind of places .I expect the kids like it. I saw a herd of deer and think they were domestic.

I stopped at an outdoor 101 best burger drive in at Willits. It advertises local sourced beef and it really was a quantum leap better than fast food. Madigan devoured his burger paddy and wanted mine. He loved the real banana milk shake too.  

In Coverdale I picked up at coffee at Macdonald’s.  I stopped before SF spacey and ate a box of chocolate to stay a wake. It worked.  I had fond memories going through Marin county past where I lived in SAN Rafael years ago.  I didn’t take the Golden Gate Bridge but the Richmond 580 following my guide and knowing that the last time I went through the heart of SF with the motorcycle and Camper last year it had been tight on the little streets.

The 10 lanes of freeway driving at 100 km going across the Richmond Bridge to downtown Oakland takes a lot of concentration.  Glad to begin looking for an RV place before dark tonight.  What a great find here. I was able to search campsites and RV parks close to me on a vista stop and this was 7 miles away.  I got the last site.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to book the upcoming sites in SAN Louis Obispo and Long Beach.  I’ve done well with finding places and have enjoyed the freedom.  

I’m wearing down with the driving.  Soon I’ll be able to stay for a while in one place. If there’s room in LA Long Beach I’ll book for a week or two before going back to Yuma.  I’m still thinking of Rosario.  This place on Half Moon Bay is heaven.  $50 with electricity.  Electricity is all I need for the  Starlink and space heater.  I filled up the water and emptied the black and grey water tanks at the Eureka RV resort so I’m flush. It bothers me that the exchange rate for money is what it is.  I will pay more in LA. Location, location, location.  

The weather was sunny today and I stood waiting for my burger in Willit enjoying the heat of the sun.  Here in Half Moon Bay its even and windbreaker weather. Just glad it’s not raining.  Tomorrow I’ll be in the warm. We find half way between SF and LA it really becomes wonderful. I certainly appreciated that it wasn’t raining all day today, just a little fog and a few light short showers.  I’m here for the weather and God is giving me what I seek. Thank you God!

Another great day travelling and getting closer to the destinations with enjoyment along the way.

Madigan is such a good companion,  It’s also good to check in with Laura and family. I can feel a bit lonely.  

Yuma trip Tillamook to Standish Hickey State Recreation Area then San Francisco and Yuma

I was travelling steadily enjoying the beautiful coastal views listening to Louise Penny’s latest Audio Book, a truly delightful and captivating inspector gameche novel, Madness of Crowds.  I’d so enjoyed her, “all the devils are here”.  She’s a brilliant writer and her references in this book to Ewan Campbell, the MK Ultra, McGill University psychiatrist working for the CIA and the discussion of eugenics are truly fascinating.  

I stopped at MacDonald’s to get me an egg McMuffin or a Burger and to get Madigan a quarter pounder burger. It also offere free WiFi and the connection was convenient. I loaded up on messages and checked the bigger picture maps.  My Ford F350 had a console gps and map I used religiously following the directions with rare error. This would prove critical travelling through San Francisco and later the foothills of LA to Pasadena.  The view is a short distance but it worked as my guide. I didn’t have a paper map and in retrospect should have.  

My Telus easy roam cellular service died at the Border.  By Tillamook I had an SOS sign and just assumed I was outside of cell range.  When I had WiFi in Macdonald’s it would work. I’d later find that I”d lost the capacity to ‘phone out’ but texts were working somewhat.

I drove through the Marin Country area with memories of my first being there with Maureen and meeting my friend Warren, later living there and doing my American medical exams, the FLEX.  I’d first been to San Francisco with Baiba the year after the song came out ‘if you are going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.’  I’d had love painted in lipstick on my forehead and been dancing in the streets.  We’d been at the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love Festival and were on our way to meet Baiba’s family at the world Latvian song Festival in Vancouver.  Coming up on the Golden Gate Bridge I was washed over with the sailing memories, passing under the Bridge in the fog, with the near collision with a tanker but surviving to dock at the Pier 39 on Fisherman’s wharf.  Later still I’d sail solo under the Golden Gate to anchor off Sausalito before sailing solo at Christmas through hurricane’s to Hawaii.  Then Laura, blind cockapoo Gilbert and I drove through in the Mini en route and back to San Diego.  I’d drive through and back  again last November on my Yuma trip then.  Lots of fund memories. 

I was struggling to follow the digital maps, see sites, and not smack my over sized truck and camper with the Harley on the front rack driving through the city.  It was a rush.  Intense.  Madigan, this cockapoo was fretting wanting to stop and I just kept on going. I expect he was enraptured  with the smells,  When I was first there the joke was there was the smell of ‘shit’ in the air, referring to marijuana.  Gracie Slick, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead and acid rock were the thing. Then later it would be Huey Lewis when I met Warren in Napa.   

Now given the Democrat California problem lawlessness and businesses leaving, the ‘smell of shit’ refers to the street people invasion. I didn’t see any of that . Warren and I joked in the past about the media representation ‘pit bulls running in the streets of Vancouver ‘ and “street jacking in San Francisco.’  Media hype.  Actually was still struck by the sophisticated flavour of the city I loved when I lived there. There were still beautiful people but they were all younger and I really was getting older.  The young person, hippy era, visit changed to the academic despite the VW baha bug, painted blue with love and peace on it. This time coming through with the truck and camper eventually crossing the Bay Bridge heading east was another time. The young people of the city today were a different time from the hippy and the academic era.  I’d met Warren in Napa Valley and he’d come up to Canada to go wilderness canoeing with me. An amazing man.  I’ll never forget our talks of gravity and other ideas of physics and philosophy. 

Today I’m reportedly an old man,  All my friends kids are the age we were back then when we were crazy and young.  Life progresses and I have 30,000 patients to show for it, some grand adventures and beautiful families and friends, lots of paper. I’ve written some too, published some, but mostly survived till now quite surprised by that.  Trips like sailing blue water solo through hurricanes, riding my Harley Electroglide to Sturges, bicycling a cross Europe, the recent trip to Ireland to find the great great grandfather graves and the Hay castle north of Aberdeen, hunting and fishing, skiing and wilderness doctoring all were incredible.  One of the joys of aging is the good times are more important than the struggles.  

Now I an in a rally type RV race  with a truck, California city traffic, wild with speed.  I’d just keep on going.  Rest stops were great places to walk Madigan. He was a great companion.  To listen to the audiobook I had to forego the console map so I chose between the two. Even with  my hearing aid I had trouble listening to the audio book on the iPhone without putting it through the truck speakers. I realised I needed to use the ‘off line’ map feature in the iPhone but was taking pictures of the map and saving it to photos. All very complicated but it worked,  I muddle through. 

The challenge was the foothills behind LA 2 hours north heading to the Pasadena turn,  I”d hoped to stop at the rest area but it was full and the next one was under construction. I pulled off at Walmart but security said I couldn’t stay as the police came by and ticketed anyone after closing, I was tired.  Thanks to the camper I could wash my face. The signs had ‘high wind warnings’, campers and RV’s advised to delay travel.  I decided to go for it remembering similiar times I’d shot currents and tides against time in my sailboat.  It was a rush but I tucked in behind a big truck in the truck lane and carried on. 12 lanes of speed.  55 to 65 mph.  Nighttime horror. It was 2 hours of intense focus and rush. I’d been quite horrified in day time but at night with camper and motorcycle carrier in my truck was still scarey.  The truck though was relatively new and had been up to date with service, quite a far cry from the VW Baha Bug with sketchy engine and no parking brakes.  I was a kid back then, foolish and immortal. I was well prepared and old now and still feeling foolish but I made it.  

There was just no place to get off the freeway to Pasadena and then Palm Springs and beyond till eventually I was the freeway ended, two lane traffic began. I saw a campground sign.  I pulled off the highway at 3 am to see the gates were locked and yet there was a space on the side of the road where I parked . I let Madigan have a little walk about before climbing into the camper and to bed to sleep for a few hours,

Dawn was beautiful. Waking with the light, I looked out to see palm trees,  It was warm and shirt sleeve weather. I was just before Salton Lake only a few hours from Yuma.  I really was elated stopping to fill up gas where I’d stopped on an earlier passage,

I drove into Yuma with a big smile on my face. The truck had no issues. The 500 lb Nighster Special motorcycle had survived on the front  rack rated for 600 lbs The Adventturer camper had been great 

My only problem was the Telus phone, I still couldn’t phone out.

I stopped at MacDonald’s for sausage egger and his burger paddy and more coffee.  I used the WiFi to get address and directions to Bonita Mesa RV Resort and Park,  It was sin the foothills area east of town 5 miles.  A terrific place. I felt instantly welcome.  The two ladies in reception gave me all the Good Sam low down and a couple of guys in golf carts led me to my site and guided me in.  They left once I was hooked up and I felt a little bit like I was in heaven, hot and sunshine. I heard it was snowing back in Frazer Valley.  I walked Madigan to the desert and got my Starlink working to see my patients,  I was only able to see a couple who were on the Oscar and Doxy.me (like zoom) connection. I simply wouldn’t be able to phone with the Telus . I couldn’t even call 0 or star 611.  I surprisingly got a couple of calls in but there I was trying every way possible to reach Telus but it was like trying to get through the Borg.  Hal was crazy.

I couldn’t phone anyone yesterday. Belinda and Karen at Royal Columbia were trying to get a human at Telus without luck and the Doctors of BC technical assistance were very helpful. I even talked to tech support at T mobile the carrier which was working on ny iPad and my phone had dialed in.  They all said Telus was the problem.  The AI kept insistent that my number didn’t have an account too.  What a nightmare. 

I woke this morning at 3 am and was worried about this because I couldn’t even phone my bank and I’d set up What’sapp.  I could text and email but Telus only had a connection, very complicated through on line where I left message and the calls didn’t continue.  

Finally this morning, I thought I’d try and at 3 am, the hour I used to wake with nightmares, I phoned star 611 and got a lovely young man who checked my account and said everything was fine. Hallelujah, He even said he’d have some one call me later in the day.

2018 I found emails about the same roaming issue where I’d not been able to contact support but was run around by their AI but that time it was only a day. Here I am 2 days tell ing them I’m a doctor and patients and pharmacists are trying to reach me and I cann’t phone them. Now I can,

I’m still going to by a ‘back up’ T mobile phone and plan for while I’m here, In future I only regret I didn’t do that immediately so I wouldn’t have lost contact with patients and such but I never thought Telus would take so long to solve the problem,  I had left messages Saturday but became very Ernest Monday.  Now it’s 3 am Wednesday. I have back ups for everything so now I just need one more even though I have Star link.  My satelittle phone also wouldn’t call the Telus number and I’ll try to find out what the Iridium issue was there.  It says I can’t phone for for some reason but I have a 6 month plan from the fall.  I had the problem with Iridium in Europe as you need to do something when you leave Canada,

I didn’t drink and I didn’t kill myself, I appreciate how difficult technology is for my old patients and the frustration and castration of citizens and customers that occur with the companies going to AI.  Belinda told me she left Telus because when she had a problem she’d end up talking to a person in the phillipines who wasn’t helpful.  I know I’m not alone but feel for my patients with depression and anxiety and how overwhelmed they are with the high costs poor service and increasing demands.  Laura stopped having able to for a while because to the tech problems and so many people I know are enraged by the high cost of food now and they’re doing their own check outs and bringing their own bags. The joke is that soon they’ll be expected to unload the trucks,

The fact is I found a Walmart a mile and a half from here.  So I have milk for coffee and bread. I ‘d a fridge full of food but did’t bother doing anything but making coffee and a sandwich or two on way down. 

I just had macaroni today.

My HD Nightster Special had the problem with alarming at the beginning of the trip so the Barnes tech pulled the fuse.  I stopped at  Bobby’s Territorial Harley Davidson and the tech folk were great slippign the fuse back in but finding the ignition didn’t work,  Some wiring short. They were down a tech and booked for 2 weeks. I was able to leave my bike there with the assurance they’d get to it as soon as they could.  I’m enjoying my truck without the camper and Laura’s coming Friday. I don’t need the motorcycle.  

Sandra told us she’d used St. Thomas dental clinic so my next plan is to cross the border and set up cleaning if I can.  I’ve got day of patient and pharmacist phone calls to catch up on the next couple of days,  

It’s been busy.  I’ve been very very busy with the extraordinary 2500 to 3000 km drive over 3 days and little sleep.  I’d thought I’d be across the border in Mexico having Nuevo rancheros and watching the world go by but not yet.  Hustle . Hustle.  Good feelings though

So thankful that Telus and T Mobile, the Clinics and Doctors of BC all came through .So thankful for Star Link and my apple computer, iPads and phones,  Life is  amazing. I’m truly blessed and glad to be here. Looking forward to getting into a routine. I did that last fall and enjoyed the time.  I swam several times a week then and there’s a pool here. There’s a laundromat too. I bought a Yuma Harley Davidson t shirt telling the guys I’d be able to go another day without laundry. 

Now I’m going back to bed, grateful.,

Thank you Jesus.  Thank you God. Thank you all of you and for all the blessings,  God is good all the time.  I’m looking forward to getting to meetings and church too.  I’ve a 3 -4 hour drive to pick up Laura in Phoenix,  There was no easy flight connection to Yuma and she was afraid of the Christmas season chaos.  

I’m looking to hearing the rest of the Louis Penny Detective Gamavhe story.

Thank you, thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!

Eureka California {Yuma Trip)

5:30 pm and we’re in another Motel 6 in Eureka.  We left from the Motel 6 on I5,  296 miles south of San Francisco.  The distance from San Francisco to Eureka is 271 miles or 4 hours and 37 minutes. Today I drove 9 hours and the distance was 271 plus 296, a total of 562 miles or 1247.4 km.  I didn’t stop for lunch.  Had a Egg sausage at Mac Donalds.  

I didn’t get off the free way.  The highlight was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.  

Memories of coming into harbour with Gilbert and Angel and memories of leaving harbour with Gilbert and Angel, and watching land disappear and I began sailing 24 solo in winter through a hurricane to the Kona , Hawaii.  

I am so thankful to have made Eureka. I arrived at 4 50 just in time to buy a warm coat that was water resistant. I lost my fall jacket I drove down with.  The last few hours the weather became quite cold .  I am glad I made it and now have a winter fall winter coat that will serve me well tomorrow . Tonight I ‘ll use it for walking the Madigan on the lawn out back.  

The time I drove Pendergast  my Baha VW Beatle from Canada en route to San Francisco I’ll just dropped my companion off to hitchhike to Eureka after hitting a deer. I pulled into a diner and as I got out of the car the two front wheels fell off. The fellow in the diner said he was a Volkswagen mechanic and would help me fix it the next day.  Sheered lug nuts from hitting the deer that had been hit by the big truck ahead of us.  We’d just sailed over the carcass.  I always thought it was one of the most godly synchronistic moments.  

That’s when I first heard of Eureka. I’ve passed this way before and here I am again.  

It was a lot of territory today , going from south of SF heat then the bare hillls to the Red wood Forest. Major transitions.  

It says it’s 12 hours on the I5 and I’m taking the coast 101.  It says that’s 17 hours. I want to miss the altitude at Grant’s Pass and Sisykou.  Rain and snow are forecast for tomorrow. It’s actually a shorter distance taking the 101 Pacific Coast route.  I could cross back to the I5 there or go on through Aberdeen,   I expect that decision can wait for tomorrow night after a 9 hour drive.  I am driving in the Mini Cooper with all wheel tires .  I expect it can do it just fine but I wouldn’t like wind and rain and snow. I’m also considering coming down and back with the camper or hauling an RV or taking a bus so figure this is a good recannaisance.  Wind rain and snow are less than ideal conditions so we’ll take longer getting back.  

I’ve not been driving at night as well.  No need for speed. I’m exhausted each night from a long day of driving.  

Great scenery.

19 yo - Wedding #1

I don’t remember proposing. I was 19 and Baiba was 18 yo.  We’d been to the doctor together to get the birth control pill. That had been a big trip.  I had this thing with sex. Marital sex was good sex and non marital sex was bad sex.  So I confess I looked forward to marital sex being even better.  Baiba was looking forward to marriage.  Family from all over were coming. It was an important wedding.  Mom and Dad weren’t happy I was marrying so young. Neither was Maija but it was the 70’s and we were head strong and free.  Marriage was an amazing event.

The funniest memory I have is Jon and Fern.  Fernand Robidoux was an amazing singer. He’d been a choir boy and sung for the winter Cour de Bois festival in St. Boniface. Amazing tenor.  We’d sing Amen whenever we were drunk.  Fern only sang after he was drinking and there was limited window when he was a truly incredible. A nightingale who became a duck when the blood alcohol overshot it’s sweet spot.

Jon Cowtan was the guitarist.  We’d asked them to play the song by the Turtles, «  Happy Together »

Imagine me and you, I do

I think about you day and night

It’s only right 

To think about the girl you love 

And hold her tight

So happy together

If I should call you up, invest a dime

And you say you belong to me

And ease my mind

Imagine how the world could be

So very fine

So happy together

I can’t see me loving nobody but you for all my life

When you’re with me, baby the skies will be blue for all my life

Me and you and you and me

No matter how they tossed the dice

It had to be 

The only one for me is you

And you for me

So happy together

Jon and Fern had agreed to meet and practice the song at the Ken Matthews Dance Studio. Baiba and I proceeded there to see if they had finished and to ensure everything was locked up, Ken and Marie having been kind enough to let us use the studio after hours. 

We opened the elevator doors and there our musician and singer were. Somehow they’d made it onto the elevator drunk but passed out on the way from the second floor to the first.  They were piled on each other with the guitar somewhere in the heap. We had to arouse them. This was their inaugural meeting and they hit it off.  

« You know Fern can’t sing if he hasn’t a drink and sounds like a duck if he’s drunk too much. »

« Yes, that’s Fern. » 

« I just thought I’d accompany him and I guess we both went past the point of no return. «  Jon said, days later after he’d sobered up and got over the hang over.

« So you’ll be able to do this for the wedding. »

« Oh sure. Fern has the most incredible voice. »

I don’t really remember the service except saying « I do ».  Baiba of course was utterly beautiful as only the most beautiful woman in the world can look as a bride.  

What I remember though was the punch.  My mother doesn’t drink.  Maija’s nurse friends were very naughty. There was an alcoholic punch and an non alcoholic punch.  Mom loves non alcoholic punch. The nurses spiked both of the punch bowls. When I saw my mother at the after wedding party she was definitely very effusive and happy and loose.  

I said, « Mom, you’re drunk. ». 

« No, I’ve only had the non alcoholic punch. »

Dad with a gleam in his eye said, « Leave her Bill she’s just happy.’

I asked the nurses if they’d spiked both punches. 

« Not really. »

« We  injected all the strawberries with styringes of vodka. »

Mom loves strawberries.  

Paul gave an extraordinarily long speech quoting all the parts of the Dragon character that applied to me, a Dragon in the Chinese Calendar.  Everyone laughed because I’m a perfect dragon and it was kind of uncanny.  The dancing was spectacular.  I loved dancing with Baiba.  Everyone applauded.  It was a lovely time.  What I remember.

I acquired a STD from Baiba during our courtship and shortly after we were married I was in bed with the principle dancer of the Circle de Soleil dance company.  She was very insistent and drugs and alcohol were involved. I always had difficulty saying no to naked women in my bed. And saying I can’t I’m married only seemed to encourage them. Baiba was naturally not impressed. We would continue with competiting infidelities until we separated years later.  

I had the second lead in the main stage Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Louis Riel. I played the Mounted Police officer. The writer was a great Hollywood fellow and I’d remember him because I’d drop LSD ,I think it was the girl from Circle de Soleil as part of my less than unwilling seduction.  The  consequence was I became.amazingly high. I got together with the cast and remember the writer saying. « I want whatever he’s on’. That lead to a wild search through the city for more acid. I was still teaching dancing some at Ken Mathews. 

I was at the University of Winnipeg studying theatre at the time as well as Religious studies and English.  The first semester studying DH Lawrence I’d turned to my college classmates and said, « Don’t you think this is lame. Us reading some old guys version of his orgy a hundred years ago. Wouldn’t it be better if we had an orgy and wrote about it. »

It was consistent with my artistic thinking of the day and my hippy friend with a Yin Yang sign painted on his wall offered up his apartment. The two girls came and we drank a lot of wine which Id’ not considered. One girl was sophisticated and artistic and into it while the other girl cried and said she couldn’t go on with it, getting drunk instead. It was a rather sordid affair and the girls didn’t talk to us much later. Orgies have great intellectual appeal but in fact are rather debauched affairs.

A Professor of English from Montreal who insisted she was one of the women who Leonard Cohen wrote Sisters of Mercy about would crawl into my bed and try desperately to have sex with me, her also older male partner in bed with the other young actor, a female. She told me she and her girlfriend had ‘fucked Leonard’ with a lot of wine in a cheap motel room. When they heard his song they wished they’d had his experience of the otherwise sordid experience. I had to sleep under the bed to stay true to my love that night.  

Going on the road with plays or shows is a difficult time for performers.  If it wasn’t the others in the show it was the audience coming back stage with intent.  I was easy.  A male slut.  Before I was married.  Marriage definitely changed the dynamic. I would trying to be true and sometimes succeeding.

« What is it about women and men in uniform or on stage. ». A college math teach big on desire and low on experience asked me.

I’d not invite them to my room or to my bed mostly. In those days. They’d take off their clothes or show up under the sheets. The #me too movement was a marvellous lie that simply denied women the affirmative action they were taking in the 60’s and 70’s. Post Aids women went back to the passive resistant and downright fearfully prudishin some cases , but in the 60’s and 70’s many were definitely the aggressor despite the feminist narrative of the ‘victim’ woman.  I was often so drunk I was surprised at who climbed into my bed  with me and happy that they did.  I considered it charity too because the leads and the good looking guys and famous guys were facing a lot more hazing.  

This was when John Lennon was having a « bed in. »Hugh Hefner was at the Playboy Palace. I loved James Bond and young women on the birth control pill loved sex.  My problem was that I felt I had to get married to really enjoy sex. Marriage perse was more a ‘societal stamp of approval’.  

Years later I’d hear that Joan Baez had said to Bob Dylan. 

« Why do you always promise that you’ll make a woman  feel  like a princess but instead we end up feeling like whores. »

The different experience of men and women is perception.  I’d eventually go on to teach sexuality, be a sexual medicine expert, become the head of marriage and family therapy and serve the LGBT community and assist Transexuals getting medical and surgical care.  In a vote at the University of Manitoba Psychiatry of dozen psychiatrists I was the only one who believed that medical and surgical treatment for transexualism was reasonable. All the rest felt it was a matter requiring psychotherapy. I almost guarantee that none of those residents and staff men remember that or would acknowledge their position then. I remember I stood alone mostly on the matter ethically and pragmatically.

 I believe in both and have recommended for and against medical treatment. I ‘ve several cases in which the gender dysphoni was a psychotic phenomena and several in which it was a product of depression. I don’t believe children should be subjected to change because their parents and counselors are hot to trot on transexualism. I really believe there’s a lot of child abuse going on because of todays political agenda. At the same time I believe that Alice Dreger’s « Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex » raises many cogent arguments.

Doctors treat cases individually and ,alternatively ,as public health considerations. Finally there is the issue of funding and public health insurance.  There is no argument of any validity against transexual treatment and surgery since we already accept plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery.  Whether a person is ‘born’ one way or another is a separate consideration. It’s a matter of pragmatism.  I’m very much a pragmatist.  I further have no regrets about the adults I ‘ve assisted in their many varied approaches to sexuality.  Our government is deeply disturbed on the issue and the politics of the matter are swinging like a compass in a storm. I mention this now only to say that it’s not simple, it’s not binary and the Bible is open to interpetation. Most importantly Jesus wasn’t caught up in sex like the gays, lesbians, church and political church leaders are today. Lots of dirty minds.  Less dirty practices.  Major disease and health situations.  I served in the AIDs epidemic and watched as colleague sgo needle pricks and died. They were shunned because it was wrongly called the « gay » disease..It was a scary time. Some today are trying to turn back the clock to the 15th century while others are flying into the 22nd century without a space ship.  

Today I know that alcohol was a contributor to most of the questionable behaviour of this time. If I had to had it to do over I wouldn’t have drunk so often or so much even if by the standards of the day I didn’t drink that much. 

I have a memory of Baiba and I on a train track screaming at each other. I’ve never hit a woman though I’ve been hit by them. Baiba wasn’t one of those who were physically violent. She had as sharp a tongue as I and the two of us had those « Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf » moments where she played a drunk Elizabeth Taylor to my drunk Richard Burton. On this occasion the voluminous verbal war ended with us throwing our rings at each other across the space. This followed with both of us on our hands and knees looking for the rings in the gravel. That followed with make up sex. Everyone who has had make up sex knows it too contributes to more marital arguments.  Nonetheless it is great sex. 

I have thought that if I hadn’t loved red wine then perhaps we’d have stayed married. Or if Baiba hadn’t also liked wine we might have found a happy place. But this is playing God.  While we can change the future the past is simply as it was meant to be. The past is fate. The future remains to be seen as fate or free will. 

I loved Baiba with all my heart and soul and all I knew at the time. I believe she loved me.  We really were so young. 

I dropped out of the play, dropped out of University and decided we needed to leave Winnipeg and get a fresh start.  We decided to go to Toronto to make money and then bicycle across Europe. Why not? Frankly  I can’t remember how that followed. At the time it made perfect sense.

I had been teaching  dancing part timeat Ken Matthews. Baiba was working waitressing in  downside cafe and teaching dancing a bit. I’d visit her in that cafe and write a poem ‘down side cafe’ about her working there.  It was a sad place and Baiba, so young and beautiful and fresh was the only light in the awful little place.

I’d drop acid. We’d almost split. We’d make up. We’d go to Toronto to make the money to go to Europe.  Baiba’s friend ,another dancer, was the girlfriend of the chemist in Rochelle. We’d suddenly be in the inner circle of the Rochdale Student Union experience, part of Canada’s most famous underground history. I had a friend then whose job was the admissions attendant at a porn theatre. Another friend was off to be a missionary in Africa.

Sometime I made love with a missionary on her way to Africa 12 times the day in the day and night before she boarded the bus east. She’d wanted to be completely sated before she became pious. I was glad to serve. This was before Or after Baiba. It’s like a loose bit of poignant memory in the jig saw puzzle of my mind.

Baiba and I were again staying with my long suffering glorious Aunt Sally who was completely flabbergasted by us. Baiba wouldn’t come home when she was angry with me and we’d drop acid and disappear together.  My Baptist aunt became the greatest prayer warrior with the challenges God gave her with us two kids. I believe I’m alive today because of her prayers as well as my mothers. Maija’s greatest prayer efforts would come when we were overseas. The wild times began in Toronto. LSD.

I’d work for a Jewish deli in the heart of downtown taking lunch breaks across from city hall. Serving gefilta fish and matas ball and lox and bagel I’d meet the famous comedians Wayne and Shuster. Aunt Sally would take us for dinner at the revolving tower where we’d have a great view of the harbour and city.

We decided to do LSD in a completely dark room. This is before William Hurts movie but coming from the same source. Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment was the best of the day. Baiba was reading Neitze. I read Castenadas and all the spiritual books of the day. We’d talk crystals and tarot on the street and in coffee shops. We were in Yorkville when it was Hippy before it went Yuppy.

I experienced Jung’s collective unconscious have the experience again of the one mind. Later a yogi would talk of many ways into the palace but not being without a pilot. Eventually a street addict would tell me the drugs made him fly but they took away the sky.

The next day I’d talk to a bus driver and ask him about his family, naming them and asking if his son had passed his exam at school he was worried about. He’d acknowledge it was all true and thank me for my concern but ask how I knew. I did. I’d know a lot of secrets and reassure people in the neighborhood that day. In the Here and Now I’d experienced the transcendent. Clairvoyance telepathy manic psychosis for a day, we knew this. The « trip » had been good. We’d take our friends acid with us when we left. 

We hitch hiked back to Winnipeg. Kirk was going to the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love Festival. This was an international holistic non electric gathering of conscious people for world peace. We thought « groovy ».  The plan wa to eventual  meet up with Maija and Paul and the rest of the family at the International Latvian Song festival in Vancouver. Thousands of Latvians were gathering to sing harmony. Groovy.

Kirk had this $100 1950’s wreck of a car which attracted major attention at the border. Kirk looked Kirk but I looked like Hoffman from Easy Rider and Baiba looked like Carly Simon. Kirk and I had cried at Easy Rider. I’m sure seeing us me a long hair » with Baiba upset them.  The guards were jealous and irritable. My mother had given me a bag of vitamins because she was worried we weren’t eating. I had an English dictionary because as a writer I was looking up every word I didn’t know in my voracious reading of  those days. I was journaling when I was devouring everything I could read. Lord Byron, Keats, Shelly. The guards had us strip the car. We told them that if we were drug dealers we’d be driving one of the Mercedes they let through all the while they hassled us. Finally looking at the vitamins and English dictionary they said « what are those?

My first lesson in border crossing. followed my answering, 

« Alright you caught me. I told you those are vitamins from my mom and I have the English dictionary because I’m a writer but the truth is that’s a bag of LSD and I’m a Russsian Spy so am carrying an English Dictionary.’

That’s when I was billy clubbed to my knees,  wrists hand cuffed together, dragged on my back down the hall where the hand cuffed were locked to a ring and I waited. Kirk and Baiba waited too not knowing what was happening to me.The RCMP were called.  My record as a Youth Representative to Parliament was known, my church involvement, my being a good university student who had dropped out was known and various sundry other details were given to me. I was told after this unsettling synopsis of myself and character were given that I was considered not a threat to the US and the Canadian government actually liked me.  I’d meet Pierre Trudeau a couple of months later and shake his hand without knowing he hated having his hand shook.  Pierre Would point  me to the washroom on the hill when I asked him. I thought it was a good thing that a Prime Minister knew where the public toilet was.  The body guard who let me slip threw the defensive proabably saw his next assignment in Nunavut.

US border patrol gave us a 10 day pass for the US.  We were not to tarry longer.

Kirk’s car broke down before Strawberry Mountain Colorado.  He called on his dad who was a great guy like mine to help him with the problem .We parted there and  hitched  a ride  with a crazy guy in a truck.  He hadn’t intended to go to the festival but decide on doing so after we shared his mighty fine weed. A half day before Strawberry Mountain we got caught up in the amazing gathering of people. I’d later have this same experience when I drove my Harley into Sturges. All these people going to the same place, converging in the  thousands, like birds flocking. 

There was no electricity at the Music Festival. Everyone had to climb the mountain with what was on their back.  We had our packs which we’d bought for Europe and our tent and were well prepared. Not like others.  It wasn’t that hard a climb and it ended on the most magnificent basin plateau. Tents as far as the eye could see.  Lots of campfires and communing. Tie dye and macrame. 

I remember looking for Peyote but not finding any.  We had LSD from our friend in Rochdale. We did hits of white lighting.  We were at the centre of the centre. Far out man. People were playing acoustic guitar and singing. 

I’d actually dropped my first acid at the Lead Zeppelin and Iron Butterfly Concert in Winnipeg that summer before I met Baiba. A girl gave it to me , another dancer. She and her black friend brought me with them when  Jimmy Page called us all to join him on stage as his dancers.  It was a wild night. I think I’ve written about it elsewhere. I ended up in the Winnipeg Free Press. Mud sliding. At the point the picture was taken and I had maximal propulsion and elevation I remember I thought I was Snoopy Chasing the Red Baron before I crash landed. 

My favourite memory of Strawberry Mountain was getting this idea to make love to the most beautiful girl ever in this high grass at the side of the mountain. A complete unique and original idea.  This high grass grew all along there so we would be hidden. I thought I was really smart to think of making love to Baiba there. Only when I looked to the side in the middle of love making I saw hundreds of bums bouncing up and down. It turned out everyone of us hippies thought making love in high grass on the side of a mountain looking out at snow capped mountains would be super cool. The entertainment continued after we’d finished and it was bouncing buttocks in a kind of  volley fire with new groups starting up while others petered out.   I still have that wonderful image enshrined in my mind. 

There was also a fat sheriff who’d ridden a palomino pony up another trail. He was sitting on his horse there with an instamatic camera taking pictures as evidence of all the licentious love making going on. I’m convinced my buttocks remain in some American police file to this day. 

This was around the time  Arlo Guthrie wrote Alice’s Restaurant. He was in jail for littering. People forget how uptight the adults were.  Really. They’d been in WWII , had race riots and Nuclear stand offs,, Communists spies had invaded and stolen the nuclear secrets, moles were everywhere, the Vietnam War was raging.  Adults were wound up real tight and drinking way too much jack Daniels.  Not that our carrying on helped but it’s often forgotten that the adults of the day were bat shit crazy  which  they thought we were and we were but we kind of knew we were and they didn’t. One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest would come out a few years later and catch some of the flavour of the day. 

I’d later meet the brightest psychiatrists and an occasional psychotic one. One had done experiments on kids giving them LSD and observing them with a clip board in the locked quiet room believing that his refusal to ‘interact’ with them controlled the experiment. « They all went psychotic and paranoid. » The asshole didn’t have a clue that he caused them all to  have ‘bad trips’  . He was  probably the freakiest psychiatrist I’d meet. Though I met some pretty odd ones over the years, very much in the minority.  Psychiatrists in my experience except the greedy ones were a pretty good lot. Some became my best friends.  

Kirk joined up with us on Strawberry Mountain. He was not at all into drugs but  got into the Hurly Gurly dancing with the then  ‘boy guru’ crowd and be hooked. That’s when hhis discipleship began. My friend the holy man. We left him ‘stoned’ on love, in his case,  ‘agape’ , while I was definitely stoned on Baiba.  She was love incarnate. Venus. Aphrodite. Joy, Beauty, Wisdom enshrined.. 

We hitchiked on to San Francisco getting these ‘ticket’s’ from the police telling us not to hitch hike. But that was just Colorado. One one state outlawed hitch hiking and pretty soon we escaped, by hitchiking,  to the next state that allowed hitchhiking .  It was late at night. We  put up our pup tent in the ditch.  Baiba and I worke to lights and guns pointed in our face. Our tent had ocasioned a polic investigation,  We showed them our passports where I’d been keeping all the no hitch hiking citations. They flutter to the ground and showed the officer we were definitely anti socials. They said we had to take down the tent and move along. So we hiked out of there at night tired as can be only to catch a ride west in the wee hours.

Kris Kristoffenson had released  Me and Bobby McGee made famous by Janis Joplin. . I had a mouth harp and Baiba made Jane Fonda look butch.  We sang Bobby McGee as we waited for rides on the side of the road. I was also singing a song Jon had taught me a lot. « It’s a long and dusty road with a hot and heavy load and the people that I meet ain’t always kind, some are bad and some are good and some have done the best they could and some have tried to ease my weary mind’.

We walked and talked and got rides. 

In San Francisco the hippies closed down the city. There were tens of thousands of us. We’d come from Straw berry Mountain. Some other festival had emptied. Most had just come for the Summer of Love. It had happened and then just kept happening.  We were walking through the streets a thousand strong. We were dancing. »dancing in the streets ».  I had « Love «  and « Peace » painted on my face and Baiba had the same on hers.  IT was awesome.  Old now  I’d hate the traffic jams and the crowds. Not then. We were young and self centered and all felt at the middle of a huge wind change. 

 The year before the song « If in you’re going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.’had moved us all. Now we were Herat singing that song all together.  We’d all come to San Francisco from all over the US and Canada. All over the world. We met people from Japan and Europe and Africa. We all were just ‘dancing in the streets’.  Really. It’s hard to imagine.  I’m old but we were there. Grateful Dead and Gracie Slick and Baba Ram Dass days.  Music everywhere. No traffic moving because the streets were wall to wall with hippies, smoking dope,  drinking wine and dancing in the streets. 

I don’t know how we left San Francisco. Probably the limit of our time was coming up and we were afraid to be arrested. The song fest was starting in Vancouver and Baiba said it was the Latvian Love In thing. I wanted to be with her and singing with thousands of people sounded ‘groovy’ « Groovy’ was a word we actually used back then. Kirk and I would walk around singing ‘feeling groovy’ . I’d tell Baiba she was really ‘groovy’. She’d smile. It was groovy to be called groovy.

The song festival in Vancouver was a phenomena.  Thousands of Latvians singing. Beautiful harmony. I didnt know the words but the patriotism and uplifting spiritual revival songs with costumes and all these beautiful Latvian men and women and young people and old was fantastic.

Maija’s friend lived in Burnaby and we stayed with them. The green of Burnaby was unbelievable and I’d return here again and again attracted by the lush emerald beauty of the rain forest city.  

After that we flew to London. So in love. So crazy.

Driving the Mini Cooper from Eureka to San Francisco, Christmas Day

Christmas Eve we stopped at dog friendly Motel 6 Eureka. Eureka Christmas Eve!
While we were sleeping in the Motel 6 Jesus was being born for approximately the 2017’s time.
Laura and I slept in.  While Laura was showering I walked Gilbert and got us coffee.
10 am we got started. The weather was incredibly warm.  Fragrant sea air.   Heading south we passed through more Red Woods.  Then valleys of lovely farmlands.  California hills with dry yellow grass appeared. Laura pointed out the pampas.  It was terrific seeing palm trees.
Eventually we passed Marin County. So many memories of living in San Rafael, anchoring in Sausalito, eating breakfast in Tiburon. Then Golden Gate Bridge appeared.  I love the Golden Gate Bridge.  Passing over it, passing under it.   Sailing in the SV Giri from Vancouver in fog.  Sailing out from under it to cross the Pacific solo in winter.  I love that Bridge.  Now Laura, Gilbert and I  in the Mini Cooper were passing over it again.  What a rush!
We drove about San Francisco a bit.  There was just too many cars.   A line up of cars just  to get to Fisherman’s wharf turned us back.  I’d tied my sailing boat to Pier 39 so what more is there to do there.  Laura had been to San Francisco too. We began singing, "Do you know the way to San Jose? and headed south.
We kept on to Soledad.  We're here in dog friendly Soledad Motel 8.

Three Macdonald’s Restaurant pit stops fueled the road trip. Gilbert loves Macdonald's plain beef patty. Those MacDonalds staff were amazing, working so hard and efficiently on Christmas.

Gilbert liked the rest stop walks too, the international au de dog poo and piss.

I love the Mini Cooper. Laura loved the Hail Mary roof  handle.   While I was doing 65 miles on serpentine highways she told me the Mini's were rally cars. I loved driving down the  amazing California highway 101.

 Incredible!  Roadtrip! Christmas day roadtrip!

Climate Change Catastrophes, Christmas Hope and God Incarnate

It’s amazing to be alive. I surprise myself in a random moment when I reflect on past darkness, near death experiences, illness, fears of the impossible and yet here I am today, still alive. I thought that everyone over thirty was impossibly old when I was 20.  I thought them wrong too.
I read recently that the last commune from the sixties still exists but that everyone guards their property from the takers and public works get no support.  We were so idealistic when we were young. We didn’t need history. The old had nothing to teach us.  We had each other.  There were so many of us too. I walked through San Francisco with flowers in my hair and finger painting on my face.
The drugs came and took so many of us.  The satanic drug dealers akin to the boards of tobacco factories, acid dealers, pot dealers and later coke and heroin hustlers.  Money. The basest materialists moved among us like bed bugs and lice, the lowest of lizards.  Our friends fell. I remember the first to go, the prettiest girl from my high school. We heard she’d been hospitalized.  A few years later she was in the safety of a born again church.  She’d seen the Abyss and didn’t want to return.  Surrounded by protectors her beauty was still translucent but looking closer one could see the opaque in her eyes.  The young and the beautiful were always too soft for the old and ugly.  Alone they perished. She survived, somehow.
I remember in the early 70’s the missing girls pictures all over Morocco and the blood stain of the murdered American on our rented penthouse floor.  I later  laughed that Maggie Trudeau wrote it was so safe for her there like all women who overlook the companionship of the Australian rugby team.  The ruling class depends on the strong but doesn’t wish to acknowledge them fearing they will one day usurp their fragile rule.
Heady days.  Such youth.  I will never forget dancing all night to London jazz with the eternally beautiful.
I thought that love would never end.  This glorious love between man and woman so rewarded with sanctified lust was the answer to everything until divorce upon divorce. A trinity of divorce.  And each divorce leaving scars on the heart like stab wounds mostly self inflicted until the abortions cut the soul.
Projection.  Always they blamed you even when you were not there. Miles away the blame was always on you especially when you were never even there.  Hearing gossip later.  The redactions and rewriting of history.
But tragedy was real and thankfully the comedy.
Now I am still alive.  I was so wrong. I thought I’d be dead by 30.  If I had died then I’d have been a hero. I was so impressive when I was young, athletic, handsome, intelligent, rebellious in an era of rebellion, surrounded by rebels.  Hip slick and cool.
Now I am old. Body parts don’t work as they once did. I have left behind the drunken all night parties and the orgies of all night studies.  I’m still doing all night call duties but I ‘ve not been called out of bed in years, the telephone sufficient for the external world. I’m there to reassure and guide. I don’t need to lead. I’ve spent decades ahead of the crowds looking back over my shoulder at the masses and revelling in my sacred loneliness. Now I’m overtaken by others, my skill only in hanging on.  I’m congratulated not by my great accomplishment but merely for living.
“Good to see you still alive ”. Friends congratulate each other.   Once I was congratulated on my awards and pieces of wall paper.
Today living is the award.
I am thankful to see the young but wonder how they can seem so very very young. When I was their age I thought I was an old man but now looking at them I cannot believe my youthful arrogance. My father’s advice and my mother’s advice and their lives seem so much more as I pass each of the milestones they passed. I read history and so little changes. I read the Bible and it’s words are wise today.  I thought everything I thought once was new to me. It was but it’s all part of an amazing interconnected tapestry. I see the relationships today where once I only saw the objects.
It is another Christmas too.  It’s coming up fast.  I am astounded at the nearing year end.  With all the doomsaying and dire predictions of the earth ending and great ostentatious Paris Summit and global warming and rising water I’m convinced I got caught up in the herd fear like I did when the number 1999 changed to 2000 and I thought my computer implode.   Mass terror is marketed by the media who sells fear and disease and death like dirty pornographic pictures.  Suburbanites and academics love to be voyeurs. Those who have known the horrors steer clear.  A sunny day and a picnic are enough.
I love to walk with my dog. His back was nearly broken in a fall.  I am so aware of individual fragility.  Each injury of mine with flying vehicles hurts on certain days of climate change, the real one, not the propaganda one.  I know the climate changes in a joint that today is reminding me of a particularly ignominious motorcycle crash.
I met another shooter and lamented our decreased hearing in our right ears thinking it would have been good if we’d used hearing protection earlier or moved further away from the speakers at the concerts.
Now I thank God I am alive.  I am so thankful for light and live to see the days lengthening. I rejoice for my friends that ski this season but helplessly think back to how much I enjoyed flying south to scuba dive, jumping the winter ship of Canada like so many others do. But there was a time when I snow shoed, ice fished and built quizzies and igloos.  Winter camping was so much fun when I was young. Now I realize youth is foolish and I’m trying unsuccessfully to appear sane as so many of my friends are being carted off with dementia and the government is threatening us all with physician assisted suicide.
Here I am glad to be alive and thankful there was no physician assisted suicide when I was younger and begged to die to relieve myself of the pain that eventually left me better and stronger and wiser.
Thank you Lord Jesus. Thank you God for incarnating in your creation so you can see what a muck up it is and suffer with us.  I feel sorry for others with religions where the God is high on top , the mighty landlord who doesn’t actually live in his kingdom so never knows how his people survive. Jesus is my guy. He’s one of us.  As Neitze the lover of the superman, complained, Jesus is a god for slaves.  I am enslaved in this body and life. I long for moksha. I want resurrection. I wake up pissed some mornings and I’m sure it’s sufficiently because the Aliens didn’t abduct me.
Now Star wars is on and I’m hoping to get to the theatre regretting missing Mel Gibson’s Crucifixion at the movie theatre and experiencing it only later when it was in the second or third wave of DVD release.  I want to be at the head of a cultural moment. I want to crawl over the fat ass body of a Kardashiansand be the first to see Star Wars. But my friends have always been there. When I was young I was early to Rocky Horror Picture Show but here I am wondering if I want to dress and get to the line ups that are the crowds that I revelled in when I was young but now abhor.
A man was knifed beside me at a bar and bled out while no one noticed. I fear the very crowds I was drawn to when I was young.
Jesus was born.  Hallelujah!
Jesus , God, lived and died.
The very people who attended the Paris Summit, the UN leaders, the Putin, Obama, House Said, China’s Communist Committee, France’s President, England’s Prime Minister and Justin Trudeau would be the ones who killed Jesus today. He’d not be crucified but rather put in a psychiatric ward to be silenced.  He’d be electrocuted perhaps.  As Christians we’d all wear little electrocution chairs about our necks instead of crosses. He’d be a God who was killed before he could end the war.  Trillions spent on weapons and myths would not be given to medicine and education because he was killed and silenced again and again.   Jesus the healer and teacher would be killed by all those who profit from war.
I would be there stabbing too.  Everyone on earth who is not a child would have the blood of Jesus on his hands.  This is a planet of war and killing. All the adults are equally responsible. There is no us and them.  Except perhaps the children or the very old and the sick and dying.  And the old and sick and dying had their turns.  But the children under 8 , maybe 6, those young enough that no one trusts them with a gun or a bomb even though their parents might use them as sex trades and suicide bombers and human shields, they are the only innocents.  Not the women ,not the men, not the boys , not the girls, perhaps only the infants.
Like Jesus whose birth in innocence is celebrated at Christmas.  God thank you for joining us.  Infant Jesus. Hallelujah!

Costco Family Outing

My friend Warren introduced me to Costco in 1986 when I lived in Marin County. Warren is financially wise and normally well ahead of the trends. Costco had only opened in Kirkland, Washington in 1983.
Now a quarter century and more later I'm still shopping at Costco and loving it. Tom and I provisioned my sailboat, GIRI, in Costco Honolulu when we sailed 34 days back to Vancouver, using a spanish turnkey to jury rig a solution to a broken mast. All our Costco food and supplies were well appreciated when the mast fiasco slowed our progress adding another week to our ocean crossing.
When I stay at the RV park in Burnaby the nearby Costco is often visitted. I outfitted the RV there with sheets, comforters, kitchen accessories and yes I love the fresh salads, and other foods that make for quick meals. Invariably too I fill my fridge freezer with frozen pies and other microwaveables that make for an easy after work dinner. I've bought most of my casual shirts and slacks there as well and even some electronics.
No surprise my financially wise brother loves Costco too. He especially loves the photo department in Kanata Ottawa where, as a photographer, he loves to get prints made of his digital pictures.
What I haven't done at Costco is make it a family outing. In the past I was mostly going alone or with a friend like Tom or Laura. This time though it was a real family outing with my brother, sister in law, their three sons and Andrew's girlfriend, Tanya. Tanya, it turns out had heard from a co worker that she'd got an especially sweet deal on quality cutlery and wanted to check it out. Andrew and Tanya having a tastefully decorated apartment overlooking the Ottawa River are highly selective about what they add to their elegant minimalist urban chic abode. Ron wanted to pick up prints. Graeme was having the family thanksgiving dinner this year so he was searching for seating for his new town house along with food items. Adell an accomplished chef and house party hostess was assisting her son with decision making. I wanted to contribute a pumpkin pie and Alan was mostly along for the ride.
The consequence was much wandering about, lots of family conversation, losing and finding of members and finally using cell phones to arrange a departure rendezvous time and place. It was in the end alot of fun and truly an adult family outing. The last time I was here they'd got me bowling and I confess I liked that too but this Costco Family Outing event I got more alone time talking with my nephews, albeit in the sock or hardware section and my brother and I had some really good family time discussing future plans by the fresh salmon. I was also amused by Graeme's general appearance of being on a mission. I knew he was looking for party chips but he still approached the task as a serious intellectual exercise requiring concentrated effort. I wanted to get two huge pumpkin pies and a huge apple pie while Alan showed restraint. Adell and Ron decided one pumpkin pie would be sufficient as others were bringing deserts too.
Tanya never did get the cutlery which occasioned the expedition. Andrew wanted something heavier and more substantial for the hand. A half dozen of the family contributed to this discussion with unsought opinions, stories about cutlery others had liked and generally a Martha Stewart cutlery moment was had by all. Personally I enjoyed the easy manner in which the young couple respectfully considered each others opinions and tolerated the opinions of family.
Shopping at Costco then was much more than just acquisition. I'd put it right up there with bowling, that's for sure. The pumpkin pie really was terrific too. And thank you Andrew for the delicious ice cream cone.
























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