Utopia

"Woop Woop" is an Australian term for "no where" (at least that's what the label on the wine we drank in Jackson Hole, Wyoming told us.)

Last night we went to Mary's Lake Lodge in Estes Park to watch Pete play musics. Here's Chelsea in front of Lodges.



We met a guy named Nathaniel Daniel Johnson. His mom told him to check out Pete at the Lodge. We invited him to sit with us.
He was intense. We liked that about him. He broke up language phonetically. He said the root of the word Utopia meant "No Place" or "Nowhere". When you broke the word it up, it could say "Now Here" and Nate said this is what Utopia is to him: Now. Here.

I agree with Nate. I like intense people.

Biking in Boulder

Chelsea Meersea signing on.

I was enjoying my first day of absolutely nothing since I came out West. Since the last two weeks have been all sorts of detached drifting (perfect) this was the first time I could lay around, roll around, on the carpet making nonsensical sounds and dreaming about things I could be doing but preferred not to.

Eventually Meghann showed up from sleeping and had these crazy ideas of motivation, which I lack most the time. I prefer to be as inactive and uninvolved in the whole real life thing as possible. Sometimes. Never consistent bear in mind. She wanted to go for a bike ride. With a bit of coercing, as reluctant as I was, she got me.

Meghann mounted her bike excitedly since it has been awhile since she's done so and I was placed on Rachel's bike. I will admit, I was nervous. I don't really trust myself with most things and I've never rode on such terrain. The most I've done was cruise New Brunswick, NJ which I found somewhat difficult but that was probably mostly associated with the fact that my bike was pretty awful and I was usually struggling against the handlebars wobbling & twisting & turning. They did not want to be a part of my bicycle. They had their own agenda other than being involved with a cheap KMart bike.

Anyway, back to the present. The gears were what Meghann explained were "low" when I told her that I wanted to "lower" them, she said that I didn't want to "lower" them. The pedals were not even being useful on our downhill cruise and I was a little worried. I had no idea how to use these crazy gear adjuster things on this bike that I was borrowing. With a little fidgetting I figured it out and the rest of the ride to downtown was soooooo fun. I think I am going to enjoy my environmentally friendly new mode of transportation. Meghann said I should wait to see how I feel after the uphill ride home.

We got downtown and stopped at the sandwich shop that she used to work with. Food is good. Meghann said I eat a lot for such a small body. I've never really been able to properly explain that about myself but it has been pointed out to me plenty of times.

The sandwiches were pretty tasty.

From there we rode a few blocks to some store called Dragonfly. Meghann was being a spy. I liked that. For a minute I pretended that I was on a secret mission. I wanted to be in the mob. I didn't like how the store smelled. We also didn't lock the bikes and I knew that if someone rode away with Rachel's bike I'd feel awful so I stood outside and pretended to be on the lookout while Meghann made the hit.

I didn't tell her that I was pretending all of that.

Then we had to ride back up the hill to our abode. Once I realized by adjusting the gears just right it was an awesome ride and I felt really tough. I could get used to it and I will indeed.

After getting back and my heart rate stopped pounding through every vein in my body like a powerful drum, I rolled around some more on the carpet enjoying having no real agenda. Bill, Meg, and myself were talking about states and her trips and she was trying to figure out the best route to get to Seattle. Bill and her were discussing how long it might take if you take different routes so I whipped out my newest US map full of highways. I was distracted with my map for a long while then we realized we had to get to Hygiene in a half hour so we quickly showered to make our exit.

I put my hair in braids just because I once again have access to my brush which I didn't during our excursion.

We got Meghann's guitar. While waiting for her buddy who had it 2 girls came around selling magazines. The spokesgirl was from Wisconsin and her comrade was from North Carolina. I liked her enthusiasm.

Then we went to Hygiene which Marlene (the GPS) considered Longmont. I think it was Longmont because when we got there the sew-er said it was. But the sewing factory was awesome and full of Autumn's fabric. When we were there they were also making eco-friendly baby diaper accessory schwagg. The lady told good stories. She was a wonderful character. She had a tattoo on her right shoulder. Her husband was boxing things for shipment. Baby stuff.

Then we came to Lyons. I sure was tired by now. So blah blah Meghann pretty much covered this and I think her coverage is good enough. The most important things was our awful spicy iced chargers and how uncomfortable I made Pete even though I think he was a wonderful addition to the characters in and out of my life. We'll be seeing him later when Meghann gives him the charger for his computer.

Good people.

Functional Schwag

Chelsea and I are sitting at the Stone Cup in Lyons. The Stone Cup is closed. We went to the Barking Dog across the street to grab espresso energy. We both got iced Bhakti chai with two shots of espresso. The girl poured an inch of chai dust into our cups. It's too spicy and dusty.

We walked back to the Stone Cup to plug in and we met Pete. Pete forgot his mac charger. After an ounce of chat we found out he lives a few blocks away from us in Boulder. We devised a plan to get Pete his charger so he could finish his work. Pete started this company. Chelsea asked for a job. Pete got uncomfortable. Chelsea specializes in making people feel uncomfortable. Pete offered us schwag as collateral for helping him out. Chelsea didn't know what schwag is, so we looked it up. The term is most often used to refer to cheap weed. He meant it to be free promotional products.

When you live on the road or move across the country in less than a medium-sized suitcase, schwag is the last thing you want. Chelsea wants a job and me, I just like to be accommodating.

We're meeting him later with his charger so he can do his work and we can get some totes or pens - functional schwag.

just a tiny update

Since Ojo, I traveled down through Santa Fe to Albuquerque where Que was picked up for some road trippin'. We drove back up to Pagosa, nearly striking a horse with the van and then not a minute later, a deer.

Northern New Mexico is one of those areas you should enter with much more than a 1/4 of a tank of gas. We had to cruise downhill for a while to make sure we made it 30 miles on an "empty" tank. Keeping the roll going, we had to neglect a stop sign and a nice man in a cop car pulled us over to remind us not to do so. He was nice enough to follow us to the gas station to make sure we made it safely.

Quick summation, 'cause I'm tired. 4th of July in Telluride, slept on the stage. Gans and Chelsey flew in to visit (and live) in Boulder. Summer writing program, Steamboat Art in the Park and met a nice guy named Alex who has been accompanying Chels and I on our adventures. Tonight was Strawberry Hot Springs and Thai food. Super 8 and Sufjan. Many photographs of Jackie and I and Leland dancing and tree hugging are expected. Hope everyone in the world wide web world (redundant?) is doing well.

Be safe. Good luck,

meghann & leland.

Hooping Ped-Xing

I saw this sign outside of Ojo Caliente and thought it appropriate.

When taking a closer look, I saw that it was a sign against meddling with signs - offering $100 rewards to people who had any information regarding sign vandals.

Awesome.

If you fart and no one is around to smell it, is it still repulsively funny?

Traveling solo evokes a dueling combination of feelings: wildly nourished with freedom, yet thirsty for a companion. 

And though Leland is a great traveling partner, I sometimes wish I had someone in the passenger seat to comment on how off key my singing can be.  (How can I improve without criticism?)

I've been on a number of road trips with many different sidekicks: friends, family, boyfriends and strangers.  But this is the first solo road trip I've ever taken and it is opening me up to many different parts of the country and more of myself than I could have imagined.  The best part about my particular road trip is that I live in a festival world, where weekend to weekend, the vendors are my friends.  And each time, I meet and get to know people faster than I ever thought possible.  

For instance, Taos Solar Festival was sprinkled with even more Doloreans than just Kat and Chip.  This time around Chris, Nikki, Jennifer and Jerry joined in.  Chris gave me the best, most beneficial massage I've ever received.  Nikki made me feel joyous inside with her energy and smiles.  Jennifer was my trusty neighbor, whom I could chat with when it was slow (which was an entire day).  And Jerry was an intriguing trickster, who collects gadgets and one-liners.  Jerry saved our Saturday night with freshly squeezed Alaskan blueberry "Death Punch" (as he liked to call it), cilantro pine nut dip and a fresh shower for some very smelly vendors.

Two beautiful people I met that were not from Dolores were Kishna and Jon.  They live on the road in their RV with their cute dog Scooby.  Never have I ever met two people more in love with one another.  More on these wonderful people later, as we have set to meet again sometime this summer.

Celebrity Status

New Dance Move: the Shoe-Through

This is Jen.

(Sorry, all you official blogger readers who laugh at my inability to understand how to upload a video.  I generally just avoid it - but this is too good to not share. )

The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles...

I drove to Santa Fe the night before Taos Solar Music Festival to see the Nederland rock stars Elephant Revival do their thing and was delighted to see that the Santa Fe Brewery had porters and sweet potato fries.



After finishing my complimentary beverage, I felt inspired to bring out the ol’ Moleskine. I wrote this little scribble about something that had happened on the drive from Taos to Santa Fe. My rocket box had somehow popped open, yet managed to keep all my belongings safely in place.

Rocket Box Release

So what if
all flows out & gone

Material things are always
as there as air is

Why be attached
when there’s
so much more
to air

Music, moments
Laughs and learning
Breathing,
Yearning for all
to come
(and none of it is tangible)

As I was scribbling my thoughts, a photographer nearby poked me awake with a comment: “Glad to see people still use those things” pertaining to my pen and paper.

And I agree. In fact, right now, I am writing on my laptop in my makeshift bed. Typing has become much faster and more efficient for me. But when did efficiency and speed become so important? Technology has shifted our values in very poignant ways.

Before typographically musing, I was reading an article in The Atlantic called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I was drawn to this article because I wrote my Political Science thesis on the social effects of New Media and our capacity to interact (or lack thereof). My favorite article that I read for this research was Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Now, three years later, I wish Nicholas Carr had produced this Atlantic article for related investigations into the topic. His gist is that shifting technologies are not necessarily making us stupid, but rewiring the way we think.

My favorite reference in the article is about Nietzsche. When Nietzsche was going blind, he purchased a typewriter; as soon as he got the typing down, he no longer had to have his eyes open to transcribe his ideas. One of his friends told him that his already terse prose was becoming even more telegraphic. German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler said his prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.” Perhaps this is why Nietzsche has always been so quotable for me as a voracious philosophy lover of the 20th century - he is succinct. I have to admit that I am quite a scatterbrain and have an appetite for knowledge, but a very short attention span for consuming it. Big eyes with a small knowledge stomach, I suppose.

I don’t think technology is ruining anything. We need not avoid it in order to save our attention spans. But I do think we shouldn’t let new media steal our old ways of communicating, learning and consuming information. We must attempt to maintain some old ways in order to continue to value quality and earning the gift of information.

Don’t let the vandals steal all our handles.

Amigos

Leland made tons of new friends in Bluegrass, Pagosa and Santa Fe

Entering Purgatory

We took off for Telluride Bluegrass a few hours late due to foiled travel plans. I scooted out of Pagosa around 3 pm, hoping to pull into town around 6:30 - just in time for Tiki Tuesday party with Pete and Cat. Unfortunately, technology got the best of me, and I followed my GPS system blindly into a very far out of the way dead-end.

Hermosa Pass: just behind Purgatory Mountain in Durango. I was excited to be in Durango, the first place I'd ever been to in Colorado, and still one of my favorite places to visit. I followed the dirt road switchback 17 miles up and behind a gorgeous valley of green as Nickel Creek trickled in the background.





Suddenly, I come around a bend to an actual creek that was more than trickling. It took me a moment to realize there was no where to go - that I'd have to turn back, drive back down through Durango to Mancos and up through Dolores to get to my final destination. I literally put myself 3 hours back on the arrival time and ended up setting up camp around 9 pm.




If only the new van could limbo. . . over the river.


But I won't diss on the new vehicle. I like my new jet-pack with rocket-boxes and automatic locks.

Hammockinabag

I asked Chris and Kat what they thought my favorite made up word meant and I think we finally found it's definition.

adjective: the burnt out, unclean, feeling after festivalling oneself relentlessly for weekends on end
noun: objectification of the descriptive definition

We went to Michael's in Taos New Mexico and I saw an old Boulder friend eating breakfast with his fiancée and mother. Small world, ain't it?

I recommend trying Piñon Coffee at Michael's - yums!

6%

left on the upper right corner - -
cannot wait to get some juice to document these travels

Back to TRide for Bluegrass!

Back for the big one...

We build an actual shop for this festival - two booths back - with heaters at night.

Time to break out the cali in me . . . I am stoked


Plus there's always the beauty of the ride there and the town :)

Salad . . . uh.

A few weeks back Rachel Tim Erin and I went to Valley View Hot Springs – the secret naked camping grounds with gorgeous algae filled natural springs of hotness. When relaying the directions to my oh-so-capable manual drivers, I would tell them it was just past Salida. All three Alaskans continued to pronounce it salad-uh, when it was clearly suh-lie-duh.

… time warp a few weeks .. . . . . . . .


After spending five days in this wonderful historic town right on the Arkansas River for FibArk, I think I finally concur with my pronunciation-impaired friends. Pronouncing it correctly would go against all the quirkiness this town has to offer.

I met 5 real gems. In short, the characters I crossed paths with daily were:

- a corduroy sewing hippie chick living in South Park CO with her husband Stu and two children who I swear to gaia were raised by wolves.

- the sweetest young playboy model looking jeweler who had 15 sisters and 9 brothers

- a didgeridoo making man living in Ward CO with the light bluest eyes I’ve ever seen

- a young girl who was betrayed by her lover – her girlfriend cheated on her in the jail cell next to her after they robbed the only cool coffee shop Salida has to offer: Bongo Billy’s

- my Israeli hat seller friend who tossed Frisbees with me and made me feel at home


The music was kicking, the river was flowing and all in all, I would come back and do it again. Most festivals have very definite “themes” or purposes, i.e. bluegrass, folk, art, etc. This festival had so many things going on, it was always entertaining. Two of the four days had 2 hours worth of karaoke on the stage in front of us. The first day, 75 percent of the participants blew me away; one of the guys serenaded me with Elton John, while another woman nailed Black Velvet. The second day of karaoke was the contest, which drew in all sorts of crazies. One guy totally ruined one of my favorite songs (She Talks to Angels, by the Black Crowes) by messing up a very essential line. He said, “She’ll tell you she’s an orphan so you won’t meet her family.” The true line, which says much more interesting things about the girl, is: “She’ll tell you she’s an orphan after you meet her family.” Much different, bud.

Someone stole my hoop. ☹ That’s what we get for sharing, I suppose.

A chick AC/DC cover band named Hell’s Belles from Seattle really just ROCKED the house on Saturday. They really did well with the crowd, too. I loved one line the lead singer shot out at the men in front: “Hey, I’m really lovin’ this testosterone cess-pool you got going on here in front… really entertaining and all… but I am pretty sure the people around you would rather not get intimate with your elbows. If you wanna jump around like a crazy – there’s a fence over there – go bounce off of that a few times. Thanks guys, let’s all have a good time.” These girls rock it – check them out sometime if you ever get the chance.

That’s all for now. No pictures because it was a very busy weekend and I took as little as possible to and from the show. That’s an excuse – I had plenty of time. I just forgot.

Kat & Chip

My favorite part of the Telluride Jazz Fest were my neighbors Kat and Chip, of River Totems - whom I called collectively "Ketchup."



After leaving Telluride, I wandered south toward my favorite town in Colorado: Durango. Just before my turn to go east, instead of meandering through another great little town - Dolores - I stopped to check out my map.

Lo and behold, Kat drives up next to me at my oh-so-random pit stop and we get out to greet one another. She offers that I come back to her house in Dolores for a while to see where she lives and meet her pup.

I was so grateful to run into Kat again, as I wasn't sure where I would go or what I would do with the rest of my day. Here are some photos of her beautiful house in the hills of Dolores.


She collects gnomes and scatters them around her 5 acre property...




More gnomage:




This is her pup Tanzee and gnome number 8:




Yucca and lizards!




Cacti!




I knew they'd be friends - - - >



--- > best friends




Tanzee and Kat overlooking the valley




Dolores is a great town; Kat and Tanzee are friends for life. See you guys in Taos!


... the night, however, did not end in Dolores. I scooted down to Durango to catch a flick at the Abbey Theatre. With a Ska brew and buttered popcorn in hand, I made my way into the balcony seating (which was a nice comfy leather couch) and watched My Blueberry Nights with Natalie Portman, Nora Jones and Jude Law.

Decisions. I made it to the film just in time to miss the important first ten minutes. I also missed the opportunity of light and open internet cafes to find a good campsite. I drove as far toward Pagosa as I could and ended up sleeping next to a picnic table in a nice park by the river. A dog woke me up at 6:30 am with a sniff of my forehead.

Bum? No, just easy to please.

Mystically Hippie Me

I thought Fir st was funny..

Telluride has a cartoon map of its entire contents and I was a bit confused by FIR ST.


I wondered why there was a space in between the R and the S and then realized that all the streets were named after trees - so this one was FIR STREET.

I love the little towns of Colorado that are so small, they can name all their horizontal roads by letter. Salida is such a town. Mancos was such a town. This is Rd M in Mancos:


I am living on G st and 1st ave for the first night's stay and J st and 9th for the next three nights.

I am staying at Woodland's Motel, which is far from a motel since it has internet, a kitchen, a nice bathtub jacuzzi and it is owned by a family, so it feels more like a bed and breakfast. When I called, the initial greeting said:

Hello, you’ve reached Woodland Motel. If you would like to speak to Steve or Viva, and are not a telemarketer, please press 5 now. If you are a telemarketer, does your mother know what you do for a living? Please hang up now.

I thought that was charmingly hilarious. I called back again, just to make sure I heard right. Steve happily set me up with a one bed room, just a few blocks away from where I have to be in the morning.

Today was pretty rough for me, as all my close friends and family heard, since I called most of them. I nearly purchased a '93 maroon VW Eurovan for a mere 2 grand. Things ended up working out and the only thing I have to worry about is what kind of food I will fill myself with.

Thank you to everyone who helped me with my car trouble blues today. Especially Tim.

today smells like...

soot and poo

My mechanic, Glen, told me this morning to keep my phone charged, 'cause once it goes, it goes and I am where I am when it leaves me.

Damn.

End of the 'ride

This is my neighbor Chip. Words cannot describe how much I'll miss this surrogate uncle. Wonderful person :)


Plum and Lel!


This is my little buddy Hannah. She taught me everything I know about hooping.

---

Leland feels most comfortable perched up on my passenger seat, so he can see all the views. Since I can't see out the back of my car anyway, I keep my rear view mirror directed toward Leland, so I can watch how happy he is on his journey.

Launch

Telluride Balloon Festival offers free balloon rides for the folk who are brave enough to wake up at the crack of dawn and confront the nip of a mountain morning. Leland was one of these eager beings; he rustled me awake this morning at 6:05 a.m. Thankfully, we didn't need to leave our tent until about 7 a.m. because the festivities took place 20 yards from our sleeping bags.




Coincidentally enough, out of the 5 balloons blasted and tethered, Leland's big brother was the closest one to us.



The kids took a liking to Leland:


And some other kids were busy stomping shadows. The clouds passed over and he was convinced for a second that he pulverized his pesky follower.



Though Leland was psyched to arise so early, fatigue quickly deflated his excitement, so we got him a Mateo - soy chai with a shot of espresso and swirl of chocolate syrup. Yum!



Here is Kat, my next door boother, holding Leland. He's waving hello to the world!


Check Kat out online - her work is beautiful and inspiring.

A great first day for Leland ... out of the free-box and into the world!

Meet Leland

This is Leland - he was rescued from the free-box in Telluride on June 7th, 2008. He wishes to go out and see the world, in all its hues of blue and green. Leland loves balloons and this is his first hot air balloon festival!