Hello and welcome home. To me. Because I was not home and now I am!

Last Tuesday night I packed up in a VW van with four gentleman friends to go on a skate trip of Oregon. I’ve been on tour several times so in general I can handle being in a van close-quarters style with many people, though in the past it’s been in a hen house mostly- or all-female situation. Is everyone eating too much soy? No, I am just partly gay and in the 90s that meant hanging out in a gender panoply under the umbrella term of “dykes.” CHANGES.

We shoved off around 9:00 on Tuesday night and drove to Shasta where we camped. Anyone who knows me knows I do not camp and it’s just because I like modern conveniences such as bathrooms and cable television. But you also know I am somewhat adaptable. The dudes were kind enough to let me sleep in the van while they availed themselves of the outdoors and serious magic that is Mount Shasta. The van transforms like a…thing that becomes another thing…so that the interior can have a downstairs and upstairs bed. It was insanely comfortable, absolutely no less comfortable than my home bed except for when I peed I opened a sliding metal door and leaned my bunz against the van and did it on the ground. Other than that my lodging very much resembled my home life. Except no gunshots. But do you know what I mean.

In the morning we skated the Mount Shasta skatepark. It was heaven. Nestled in trees, clean air, and boulders left in the skatepark. It integrated so smoothly with the park where it was built. We stayed there for 3-4 hours. Check out Bob after a sweet backside grind over one of the boulders!

So from there we went to Weed. The shops along the highway have all taken the time to make t-shirts, lighters, and various other items which speak to the name of the town as also the name of a drug. A drug that can lead to writing amazing songs and also songs which capture immature descriptions of adult situations. Or maybe it’s not the drug it’s life. I don’t know. Who is the mother who is the daughter. I DON’T KNOW.

There were a couple kids at Weed who were straight out of Paradise Lost the documentary except not dead or in jail. They were nice. One kid had a board the other had an injury. The park was old but really fun, it was easy to try new lines every time I got in the whatever, flow bowl I guess you would call it.  We rode for a while then got back on the road with most people in the van drinking a SNICKERS-themed coffee drink from a drive-in coffee hut. Five dollars for the high of your life.

We drove to Myrtle Creek skatepark which was HUGE. They are not interested in new people getting into skateboarding, they just want people with no fear hormones and great athleticism (i.e. 14-year-old boys) to blow their face off airing over the giant tunnels in this place. Either that or they think skaters are twelve feet tall with size 35 feet and this park is then just regular or a little small for them. We met this kid who was probably about fifteen years old and he was shredding the joint to pieces on a super beat-up board wearing a sorta deeply crappy necklace employing rasta colors. It looked like he ripped the collars out of many t-shirts and tied them together and said NECKLACE! At some point a lady who looked like she was wearing her Ford Aerostar as pants rolled up and handed him something. He came back over and tried to give us those Jesus chapbooks which I refused. He totally didn’t care. The lady, whom I assumed was his mom, watched the whole time. And by the way, I’ll say again, this kid was an incredible skater. I don’t tend to think of religious people as being good at sports but we all know that’s bullshit because aren’t all football players total Jesus time all the time? And they’re total jocks. So the mom left in her van. We went over to have a beer in our van and a few minutes later this grizzled-looking older dude with a car that looked somewhere between a steam punk burning man vehicle and a cardboard collector rolled up and claimed the skater kid. I assume that whatever big, angry personality was being toted around in that truck would drive any woman who felt her destiny was to live in terror of her husband to become devoutly afraid of God.

That night we hauled our tired bods up to Portland and stayed with my friend Tara. I was happy to shower the next day. It was the first and last time on that trip. We went to New Cascadia for gluten-free treats but so much of their stuff has milk and butter in it oh my god I’m boring myself who cares. We went to Junior’s for breakfast. It was vigorously okay.

Our crew with Tara in front of Junior's!

I don’t know why my chin is tilted up but it raises questions about having a square jaw and the aging process overall.

I have to do this in installments because there is too much to say. Thank you for reading! More to come!