Jon Rombach

Dragged on your face by sled dogs

2012-01-27T11:51:00.000-08:00

The Eagle Cap Extreme sled dog race launched their doggies yesterday from Ferguson Ridge Ski Area outside of Joseph.

On Donner, Freckles, Sparky and Shep . . . hyah, hyah. . .

I used to report on these races for KWVR Radio and here's what the coverage would sound like:

"We're here with sled dog musher So-and-So, who ran the Idita–BARK-BARK-YIPE-YIPE-HOWL-BARK-DOG NOISE-BARK (two minutes of this) . . . now, back to the studio."

Sounds a lot like a Rush Limbaugh interview.
"Long-time listener, first-time barker...."

Pretty cool to see schoolkids up there rooting for mushers with hand-made signs. It was kind of like being at a football game, except in the snow with teams of sled dogs instead of football teams.

My trusty pooch Bula is part husky, part collie, part sheperd and would have made a fine sled dog back in her younger days, judging by how she would pull my arms from their sockets when I tried taking her on walks connected to a leash.

The worst phase was when she kind of got the hang of not pulling with a thousand pounds of force, so I'd be lulled into just walking along until she exploded after a chipmunk or the whispering wind or whatever she was always chasing and – boop – there would go my arm and blood would be spraying everywhere, my detached hand and arm dragging after her, still clutching the leash.

I'd catch up with her down the trail and she'd either be chewing on the chipmunk or my hand and I'd have to sew my scratched-up appendage back on, which is a trick when you're missing an appendage. It was a real hassle.

You get one of these when you join the Jack London Book Club.

The guy in this next photo probably understands the downside of having dogs that just want to pull when it's not convenient.

His sled caught an edge on a tight corner, tipped over and he got drug on his face for a while. Once he got it righted, the dogs took off and jerked the sled away before he could get settled in, so he slowed them down by dragging his kneecaps in the snow. His technique is pictured here:

Whoah . . . whoah . . . sit . . . lay down . . . stop . . . alto . . . cease . . . desist . . .

He'd get them slowed down enough and try and get up. Almost get to his feet, then – boop – the dogs would shoot off, yank the sled away and he'd go back to the kneecap technique for a while. This got repeated for about a hundred yards or so, and it sure looked like a fun game. Hard on the ski pants, though. It looked just like me trying to learn how to waterski, including shouting at whoever was dragging me.

Then he finally got upright and mushed off around the corner, straightening his hat, presumably enjoying the nice chilly breeze on all the new abrasions he just collected on his face.

This was half-a-mile into a 30-something mile course, so he had plenty of time to reflect on his joy of owning a team of real go-getters.

Yeah, yeah, you're real pretty, Mother Nature

2012-01-25T11:31:00.000-08:00

I'm sick of these goddamn mountains being all pretty and stuff when I'm just trying to go about my business.

Look at you, mountain, all painted up like a tart with your morning sun. You make me sick.

Here's them the other morning, when I got up and just wanted to be cross with the world and make some cinnamon toast. But instead I had to be all, "ooooh, look at the mountains, isn't that spectacular? I better go get my camera...."

Spindrift or whatever it's called, blowing off the cornice. Snow and ice, lit by the warm glint of the first precious rays of -- No. Stop. I have shit to do today. No time for this.

Tired of it.

Too old for fencing at a young age

2012-01-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

Went out to work recently – the commute is a real bitch, I have to walk all the way across my yard to the writing shack – and there was a guy out there in the cold on the edge of my property, doing something but it wasn't clear what.

Fixing the fallen-down fence, turns out. Planned on putting a couple horses on the 4 acres to the south of me. He had a roll of used barbwire and some staples. He's in his 80s. Still rides horses. Was just in the hospital the week before. Tougher than me, no doubt, but thankfully I'm immune to being bothered by such things.

I've never cared for fencing. It bothers me. I had to repair a stretch of fence after putting my '65 Mustang through it when I sailed off Parkway Road thanks to some black ice back in high school. Replacing the busted tie rod on the car was more fun than stretching wire. And that's the last time I fixed fence because a mustang broke through.

You can't leave a guy in his 80s out there in the freezing cold, stringing fence all by himself. So I offered to help and did, a little bit. But just a little. I kept offering, but he kept at it and I think he could sense I was useless in the fencing realm. I exude that kind of thing.

He says to me, he says, "I'm starting to get too old for this."

I says back, "I've always been too old for fencing."

He takes a look at me and says, "I did lots of fencing when I was your age."

I didn't doubt that or have much else to say on the matter, so I watched him finish up and he said "I think that'll hold, what do you think?" and I thought so too.

Then he brought the horses over. They're good neighbors. Probably because of the fence, I guess.

What's another word for thesaurus?

2012-01-20T10:57:00.000-08:00

I thought for sure my thought for the day would stump the universe but it turns out the thesaurus does have other words for itself.

Probably because it's a 'Super Thesaurus' with special word-suggesting powers. Unless you look up 'kryponite,' which case it starts throwing up and curls into a fetal position.

Here's what Roget's Super Thesaurus suggests for alternatives to its own bad self:

lexicon, word treasury, synonym finder, word book.

OK, Super Thesaurus, I'll give you 'lexicon.'

But 'word treasury'? Little uppity, don't you think?

'Synonym finder' sounds like something a well-spoken caveman would say, with a firm grasp on fancy parts of the lexicon and very cavemannish understanding otherwise. Pretty sure if you know the word synonym you can do better than 'finder.' Howzabout 'synonymizer'?

'Word book' just . . . no. That's what a caveman says when you ask what he got at the library.

Oh, the fresh-squeezed horror

2012-01-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

(Writing a newspaper column is great because you get to take up whatever topic you want. Occasionally friends will approach you, suggesting you might write about the upcoming Winterfest activities. Or the dogsled race. And you think, hmmm . . . no, I think I'm going to go with the orange juice. Yep, definitely the orange juice. Because that's what was on my mind. And it worked. I got it out of my system, no longer dwelling on OJ. Good for me, but the reaction to this column was pretty much crickets. There was some positive feedback, but for the most part I got kind of a "what the hell?" response. Which is exactly what I think about the OJ process, specifically the labeling: What the hell?

Check out the book Squeezed: what you don't know about orange juice, by Alissa Hamilton for more.)

'And Furthermore', Wallowa County Chieftain January 4, 2012

I go into 2012 concerned about how we complicate things in this world. Specifically orange juice and pasta. Not the usual canaries in the coal mine, but hear me out.

The worst Christmas gift I know of was given to my mother. By me. My sisters got on board too, but to their credit they were skeptical. Mom took a vacation to Italy with friends. They attended a cooking class and the homemade pasta, Mom said, was amazing. She’d make us some when we were home for Christmas.

So when it came to choosing a gift, I figured a pasta maker was ideal. I was proud of myself for having such a swell idea. Mom unwrapped it and did a good job pretending to like it. Later we assembled the thing, plugged it in, fought with it, unclogged it, called it names, abandoned it and then Mom rolled out the dough with a wooden rolling pin and sliced it with a knife like the Italian guy showed her and it was fantastic. No attachments, no electricity. The fancy pasta maker was idiotic and unnecessary, but at least it was expensive so she knew the intention was good.

This long way around to something straightforward brings me to orange juice. I like it. I think OJ is good. I gladly buy the premium stuff. Not-from-concentrate, pure, fresh-squeezed 100% all-natural juice. I know something’s going on since it’s available year-round and doesn’t spoil. But there’s an awful lot of somethings going on.

I wish I’d never laid eyes on the articles that made me think about orange juice. I’ve got much better things to be bothered by. I’m mainly appalled at how the words used to sell juice have been put on the rack and tortured until Webster wouldn’t recognize them.

Here are two recipes for 100% fresh-squeezed all-natural pure juice:

Squeeze oranges. Recipe #1 stops here. Just drink it.

Recipe #2 is a tad more involved. Heat the juice to pasteurize it, remove oxygen, store deaerated (that’s a word) juice aseptically (also a real word) in a tank for up to one year. One OJ processing plant boasts of their one-million-gallon indoor storage tanks. They have 56 of them. That’s a lot of deaerated, aseptic pure and natural. Not exactly straight from the grove, but technically it was fresh-squeezed at one point. Good enough for marketing departments and the FDA.

The taste disappears when the oxygen is removed, so the next step is to hire yourself a fragrance and flavor engineering firm to mix up a custom, proprietary “flavor pack” – basically perfume for the tongue – to revive the blah liquid back to what you would recognize as something that came out of oranges. Throw in some ethyl butyrate and other things that don’t sound right. Check with the FDA about mentioning your flavor pack, they say don’t worry about it. Charge a lot because storage tanks are expensive. Pour and enjoy. Mmmm. Delicious.

I’m not opposed to pasteurization, additives, preservatives or chemistry projects. They have their place. But terms like 100%, pure, all-natural and fresh also have their place and it’s not on the label for something that’s been sucked of its being, suspended for a year and then artificially resuscitated. That sounds more like a zombie movie and I don’t condone those either.

To review: the people in charge of breakfast have kidnapped familiar words and used them for a process that is the reverse. What next, breakfast industry? Peanut margarine? I don’t know what to believe anymore.

So my resolutions for 2012 include not reading things on the internet anymore ever again. I also plan to find an old-fashioned juice squeezer with a handle you lean into. I will now and then press fresh fruit and drink the results. I will also, on special occasions, make pasta from Mom’s recipe: a few cups of flour, a couple eggs, dash of olive oil, pinch of salt, dribble of water, roll out, cut into little strips, make al dente, eat.

Simple. Honest.

Happy New Year. And thanks for reading these pure, natural, 100% freshly-typed words which have never been stored in a tank. Though I did add a flavor pack to bring out the citrus undertones.

January in Hells Canyon

2012-01-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

Went down to Hells last weekend on a volunteer cleaning detail to pick up some trash and whatnot at campsites. And by whatnot, I mean gross things people shouldn't be leaving where they know other people are going to be visiting.

View out the back of the Forest Service jetboat.

I kept samples of the gross things or soiled toilet tissue in question, stored in hermetically sealed vials after being recovered with kitty litter spatulas. These samples will be tested for DNA at the lab and I will then track down each offender and they shall know it is I and vengeance shall be mine when they look out their living room window to see a guy squatting on their lawn taking . . . great care, um, to rake their leaves, because I want to set a good example and counter bad deeds with good. Either that or I'll take a crap on their lawn to teach them a lesson. I'm divided on that. But vengeance shall be mine, either way.

Here's a pithy observation from Ace Barton, tacked on the wall of the museum at Kirkwood Ranch:

And here's a solar panel below the airstrip at the Forest Service admin building, across from Pittsburgh Landing.

Looks lonely. So ronery.

Mike Baird and I went along with the Forest Service folks and had a fine time, even though the mission was to clean up after folks with bad manners.

Pack string.

Cows.

Driveway Rage

2012-01-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

Battery-powered Jeeps rank very high in the awesomest-ever Christmas gift index. Very high. Nieces Claire and Anna must have done something right this past year because Santa kicked down for one of these prized plastic chariots.

I'm envious and considered stealing it, but Claire somehow sensed my plan and ran me off with this look:

Yikes.

I believe Claire could run a grizzly bear off with that expression. Or an army. Or star in a movie, co-starring a priest.

Anna looks like she just wants it all to be better.

To be fair, I brought this on by teasing the girls. Lifting up the back of the Jeep so it wouldn't drive and so forth and then asking them to make a scary face. Uncle stuff.

But asking for a scary face is one thing – downloading your Christmas photos a week or so later and finding results like this made me reach for heart pills I don't even have a prescription for.

I'm guessing Claire will score high on nonverbal communication if her school tests for such things.

Here's a smiley one, after I asked them for a non-heart-stopping scary face:

So cute.

And I like this shot a lot, of Mom pedaling her bike while we were having our driveway fun run.

About that sawdust in my eye

2012-01-10T10:10:00.000-08:00

So it goes a little something like this – I'm kerfing out some endgrain on a 2-inch thick slab of wood. I don't really know whether kerfing is the right woodworking term here and in my old age frankly I don't care. Making channels on two slabs of wood to join them, inserting a glued piece in their respective slots.

So. An operation like that sends up tremendous poofs of sawdust and 24% of it bounced off my face, 1.6% of it deciding to homestead in my eye.

Safety glasses would have been good. A ham and cheese sandwich also would have been nice, if I'd had any ham. Or cheese. Or bread. I did not.

Entonces, the next day my eyes were a little red. To be expected. Day after that, one eye was really really red. I shot some old contact lens solution in there. Held my head under the faucet to flush it. Borrowed a fire truck and shot myself in the face to flush it out and relieve me of this speck.

Yeah, well, I had pink eye. Conjunctivitis, if you're in polite company.

Features of this condition include looking like a horror show, waking up to your eyelids welded shut by caked boogers. It's, uh, not great.

Talked to a teacher friend while this was going on and she related how a student of hers had a bout of the pinkeye and the word around the classroom was that she had got it because someone had farted on her pillow.

Egads.

I was reminded of Frank McCourt's description of his eye troubles as a youth, a condition he says made his eyes resemble "two piss holes in the snow," I believe is how he phrased it.

My new best friend is a little bottle of fancy eye drops that made it go away. Thanks, little bottle of eye drops.

Eyeball dustbin

2012-01-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

That's kind of creepy, actually.

This week on Handyman's Corner I want to talk about eye protection. Specifically when you don't use it. When you're leaning over your Skilsaw, reeaaally getting your face down in there because it's a delicate cut and you don't want any wavering.

It occurs to you this may be a good time – nay, the perfect time – to put on safety glasses. Then you think, Nah, I'm almost done.

Two things: I didn't lose an eye or anything. Instead, I gained about four pounds of sawdust, added to my eyeball cavity and I think it migrated up into my brain. Really need to sweep that up.

It would have taken two minutes to find and put on some glasses, but thanks to my time-saving decision to not bother, my eye has been on fire for the last two days, geysering out tears and fluids and causing children to scream and run because it looks like half my face is glowing red.

In conclusion: sawdust in the eye is a pain in the eye.

How To Make a Personalized Children’s Book

2011-12-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

For Christmas this year I put together an illustrated children’s book featuring my family. It was fun and took a really long time. The finished product was put together at the local copy store twenty minutes before they closed on the eve of Christmas Eve. Some of the paint was still wet on the illustrations when I scanned them in last-minute and the cover was done last-nanosecond. Wish I'd left more time for that.

Here’s some tips and things to keep in mind if you’d like to write and draw a book starring your nieces, nephews, sisters, parents, in-laws and Aunt Donna.

It’s deucedly difficult to draw a convincing likeness of people, especially if you want to remain on their good side.

Good caricatures exaggerate features. Nobody in my family has forty-two fingers or fish gills behind their ears or a foot growing out of their forehead, but still you sketch something out while looking at a picture and it just . . . I don’t know. A sketchy artist on a boardwalk somewhere can draw a giant forehead or little tiny ears or whatever and get away with it. Not that anyone in my family is sporting giant foreheads or tiny ears, but you rip something out and think, well, that’s not unflattering but somehow not flattering either. I think I’m going to buy scented candles as gifts instead of this project. But you push on.

‘Caeser salad’ doesn’t really rhyme with anything.

My niece Claire adores Caeser salad and that was a pivotal point for my little book. You can go through the alphabet in your head (...ballad....um....salad....), then search the internet for ‘rhymes with.....’

I ended up with ‘valid.’ Definitely a stretch, but, hey. Nobody really wants a scented candle.

It helps if you put the pages in proper order.

A Dr. Seuss-like ripoff already doesn’t make a whole lot of sense so when you switch pages around at the copy center and insert a rhyming couplet about a sea turtle where it should be rhyming a snippet about a metal detector, you risk confusing the reader. And yourself.

In your defense, back-to-back pages that come out of the copier with page 7 on the back of page two look an awful lot like page 9 through 12 and it’s almost closing time so you need to throw this thing together because you don’t have the industrial stapler at home and you should have started and finished this way earlier and remember when you were going to send this off and have it bound professionally? Do they still make soap-on-a-rope? Maybe Dad would like some nice aftershave. Anna could use a nice Barbie, I’m sure, and everybody else can get a calendar from the hardware store.

Cost and putting it together.

Seven bucks a book. Seven pages of double-sided color copies on 8 1/2 x 11. Folded in two, so each page out of the printer makes 4 pages when folded up. Cover was card stock. Back cover had a little illustration just because. So that made for 26 pages with either text and image or just text or just an image.

I found it helpful to make a little mock-up from notepad paper sheets with the proper number of pages, then you can layout how each chunk of text fits with your illustrations and fit the thing together. Also helpful or even absolutely necessary when you start making the actual pages. I used a brochure template set up for two pages back-to-back, which helped keep things orderly. Ended up with seven pdf files and in theory this should have kept things in order as they came off the copier. In practice, it got jumbled and I wound up figuring out how to reinvent the layout of the wheel and getting it wrong on one copy. Oopsy.

So there you go. To make a picture book about your family vacation to Hawaii, you should write a story, then get some crayon-slash-paints or whatever those things are and pretty soon all your pictures will have the same four colors in them, but whatever, and then do some trigonometry to figure out how many pages you need and what goes where and look for a template to lay it out and make a pdf and -- boom. You got yourself a book.

Easy peasey.

The Wind Doth Blow and the Hot Tub Stove Doth Glow

2011-12-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

Ma Nature cranked up her box fan a few weeks back and I cranked up my chainsaw after seeing the results:

Hello firewood.

The timing of this was interesting, as I planned to move the lawnmower inside for the winter on that very day. And the day before that and etc.

So missing the lawn tractor by inches was awfully decent of the falling spruce. Downright thoughtful.

Some of those limbs will find a new home in the hot tub stove, pictured here after I didn't crack the drain valve before single digits froze up the works.

Fire and Ice: not just a title for romance novels.

...or I'm assuming it would be a title for a romance novel....I don't really know because I don't read stuff like that. Seriously. I just....c'mon, it sounds like it would be a title for a romance novel, doesn't it? Not that I'm familiar with...you know what, I don't care what you think.

It's harder to get the wood fired tub up to temperature in windy conditions, but bad weather and hot tubbing go together real fine. Watching big flakes of snow come down in the moonlight while sitting in hot water is proven to reduce your stress index by a factor of four. I did a scientific test with a control group of somebody shivering in the cold. And I was way happier by a factor of four. Results to be published in The Journal of Hottubbing vs. Hypothermia

Santa For President

2011-12-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

Got pretty good feedback on the last Furthermore column in the Chieftain. But you can't even write the word 'wolves' without getting a big spread of reaction. I haven't heard back from Canada yet.

And Furthermore: An open appeal to North Pole's leader

Dear Santa,

Thank you for the nose hair trimmer and the Candy Land game last year. Candy Land is the best! You’re the best! The trimmer works way better than the old way of burning out my nose hairs with a candle. Also, thanks for the first-aid kit and the burn cream. It’s healing nicely.

Don’t let the wolves get your reindeer when you come to Wallowa County, Santa. Are you giving presents to Canada this year? Because they’ve been naughty and gave us a case of the wolves. Yessir, broke out like a rash all around our north end and thank goodness it hasn’t spread to our south end just yet.

I’ve got some requests here, Nick. Can I call you Nick? Rose Caslar says she would like a mule this year for Christmas. A mule with fuzzy ears. Along those lines, ‘The Ruby Gap Mules,’ the old-time band that just played with ‘Homemade Jam’ for the Wallowa County Museum fundraiser, well, the Mules are toying with the notion of going by another name but haven’t settled on one. So they asked if you’d bring them the perfect band name. I suggested ‘Kiss My Bluegrass,’ but they weren’t going for it. They had some excuse about not playing bluegrass, but with a name like that it sure seems like you’d adjust. Maybe just get them a Candy Land game instead because if they’re that hard to please. . . .

We could use another wind storm, Santa. That last howler didn’t quite strip all the shingles off my garage roof and I was hoping for one more gusty day to finish tearing it off before I climb up there to re-roof. Make it blow from the other direction, though, so it will pry the Enterprise football goalpost back into position.

What I’d really like this year, Santa, is for you to throw your fuzzy red hat into the ring and announce your candidacy for president. I don’t think you’d win, with that string of breaking and entering counts on your record. And there would be the question of a birth certificate, because if Hawaii doesn’t count, no way the North Pole is going to fly. Then there would be allegations of your elves being illegal. All that.

The coverage of these debates has been so painful to watch, Santa, I want to put some of that burn cream on my eyes. If you were president, I just think politics and the world in general might get along better if we applied Christmas thinking to every day. Not just naughty or nice and throwing a quarter into the Salvation Army kettle, but reasonable. I asked for all sorts of stuff when I was a kid. You remember. But I didn’t threaten to recall you when I didn’t see a battery powered Jeep in the living room on Christmas morning. I didn’t put a NoSanta bumper sticker on my Big Wheel.

What I like about your system is we all know there’s a reason. There’s trust. Maybe we’ll shoot our eye out, so that’s why we didn’t get the Red Ryder BB gun or a new war. Toys are great, but in all fairness we do need socks and underwear and education funding. We may not be thrilled with paying for highway maintenance or getting a hand-knit sweater, but we recognize it’s thoughtful and practical so we thank our aunt or state legislature and stay warm in our ugly sweater while driving smooth roads.

I don’t know, Santa. I haven’t seen your books so maybe you’re running a massive deficit and this notion of you bringing a fresh approach to politics is a bad idea. But I like your style, Claus. Everyone figures they get what they deserve from you and trusts you’re not funneling pork barrel projects into building unprofitable doll factories in one corner of your workshop to buy votes. I just wish you could leave some of your mojo in all of our stockings.

Could you at least be a consultant in D.C.? A lobbyist? Endorse a candidate?

You know what, I’ll just take Candy Land again. Or Battleship or Chutes and Ladders or something. Let’s keep this simple.

Merry Christmas, Santa. Don’t forget to vote.

Lloyd Tommy Doss

2011-12-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

Came across a real treasure today. Signed photo from Lloyd Doss. One of the Sons of the Pioneers and just a great guy.

Lloyd died not long ago. And that makes me sad. Rich Wandschneider wrote a nice piece about Lloyd in the Chieftain.

Rich is who sent me to meet Lloyd, back when I was doing a radio show. Said I had to meet this guy.

Lloyd's life story is one of the best I've heard. Goes like this, in a nutshell:

Wants to be grow up to be in the ultra-super-popular band the Sons of the Pioneers.

Grows up and by God if he doesn't pull it off and get into the super-ultra-popular band the Sons of the Pioneers.

Lloyd was working as a garbageman in La Grande, Oregon when the break came in the form of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. They came to town, Wills heard Lloyd play and sing, Wills liked it and said they could use a guy like him and he could join if he wanted to.

So he did. And years later the Sons of the Pioneers were wondering how they were ever going to replace Bob Nolan, who was retiring and was the same guy Lloyd had modeled his singing after. And Lloyd sounded an awful lot like Nolan and that was that and his dream came true.

The Pioneers already had Lloyd Perryman, so Lloyd Thomas Doss went by Tommy Doss for that part of his career.

Some boys say they want to grow up to be astronauts and some of them make it -- but c'mon. This would be similar to being a big Rolling Stones fan and eventually joining the Rolling Stones. With a lot of hard work and dedication and natural ability and -- plus, he's a handsome devil, isn't he? Look at that photo.

So I got to know Lloyd and his wife Naomi. Their son Tim is my neighbor. I tried to get Lloyd on my radio program but it was no dice. The guy was proud of his work, loved music, but just genuinely was not interested at all in limelight. Not even the tiny bit of local limelight being a guest on my little radio show would have put on him. He told me being in parades was one of the worst parts about show business for him. This from a guy that's been in Disney movies. John Wayne movies. Played Carnegie Hall. Did not like waving in parades.

So I tried to talk him into doing a book instead. Because naturally if you don't want to be on the radio and talk about your life, you'll want to have a book written about it. Sure. And for a brief while we were working toward that. He thought about it, wasn't sure, said no, then OK.

And I was excited. Because Lloyd's a straight-talker and nice and had interesting observations about a glitzy world he didn't necessarily embrace. Once he came home from being on the road and strangers were in his house. His family had had to move while he was traveling with the band and his wife had no way of letting him know. I think the strangers gave him his new address.

So Lloyd would tell me awesome stories and I had to go out on his porch when I went to leave and scratch notes down, because he frowned at my tape recorder the first time I plunked that down to do an interview. So I put that away and started to take notes but he was comfortable just talking and not interested in being interviewed. So no taking notes.

On one hand, I like that approach. If the stories are interesting you're going to remember. But it sure makes it a challenge when you get down to names and dates and whatnot.

I showed up for our last interview, which I was thinking was an early interview in a long string of them, and I remember I had suggestions for increasing the times we got together so we could step up the pace. Also there was already interest from a publisher. And I was always pushing him and knew I shouldn't but couldn't help it and he heard me out with my interview schedules and all that and apologized, but said he just realized he didn't want to do it.

We'd kind of had similar starts and stops like that before, but he meant it this time and I don't know if that's when he gave me this picture or it was another visit -- but I suspect it was that one because I've always associated it with him being very sincere and very clear that he loved the music but he just did not want to talk about himself. Or talk up a subject that had already been talked up enough.

I like how he writes 'to you' in smaller letters below 'Always My Best' on the picture. I don't know. I just like it because it seems kind of like an afterthought. In a good way. Like always my best is something you would write on every picture if you had to sign a bunch of pictures over the course of your life because you were in a legendary band that had a song called 'My Best To You' but you were like, what the hell, I'll throw 'to you' in there in a different size, make this personal.

That was just my initial reaction so I still think that.

I framed that photo and hung it over my desk at the radio station -- I even moved the signed picture of Willie Nelson to give Lloyd the top spot. No offense, Willie.

And when I hung up the microphone and headphones and got out of the radio business, I moved Lloyd's picture into my office at home and it had another top spot, above a bookshelf by my desk.

My visits to Lloyd after waving off the book project didn't get uncomfortable, I guess, but maybe. Because I'd still work on him about it, despite believing he wasn't interested and telling myself to back off. Still, I'd lose my resolve to just talk to the guy and enjoy his company and pretty soon I'd start in again on blah blah blah amazing story blah blah blah.

So my visits tapered off and I kept wanting to go visit but didn't and I was cleaning up my office when I saw something behind the bookcase and it was this picture that Lloyd had given me, which I'm delighted to have and somehow it had been knocked down behind the bookcase for I don't know how long and I was very disappointed in myself for allowing that to happen and not noticing.

So just like every time a person I've been privileged to know crosses to the other side, I confront the fact that I didn't pop in more to say hi when I thought about it. Instead there were other things somehow more pressing that I can't remember now and that, my friends, is a no refund policy.

I've shined up and Windexed the glass on the picture frame. I've got some Sons of the Pioneers recordings here and copies of solo stuff Lloyd gave me. I've poured a whiskey and I'm going to listen to you sing, Lloyd. And tomorrow I'm going to try to go see Naomi and say hello.

Thanks for the picture. Always my best to you, too.

Someone please do an intervention with Huffington Post headline writers

2011-11-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

I don't understand myself. I recoil at Huffington Post headlines. They are bad. Often so is the content on HPo. I'm embarrassed by Rhianna's dress being scandalously low cut not because it's low cut but because it's right next to a news item announcing some actual atrocity where, you know, people have been hurt or killed or pepper sprayed or got embezzled or outraged for genuine reasons. The juxtaposition is rough now and then.

And still I go read stuff on that site from time to time. Despite my longstanding frown directed at AOL, for reasons too numerous to go into here, but which shouldn't have to be gone into at all.

I think I go to Huffington Post because the links to The Daily Show and Colbert are handy and I can get a smattering of what else might be going on, so your recipe works in that regard, Arianna. But the headlines your writers come up with are dangerously low cut in the making sense department.

Take this one for example: Couple Shares Awkward First Kiss Ever At Their Wedding.

Sounds like they're trying to say, Most Awkward. Partly because they do that a lot. Most This Most That. Also seems like there should be a hyphen in there somewhere. But this one does make sense, I guess, if you squander precious minutes of your life and watch the clip, which I'm now encouraging because it is worth seeing, as the people have waited, they say, to kiss for the first time until they're married.

Lots wrong with that, but check it out for peculiar fact that they appear to be two fish that you put in a tank to keep it clean except they got confused and started cleaning each others' faces instead. It's something.

I will remain a virgin in regards to watching this show and feel dirty just having watched the preview. But I will get an aquarium now.

I Will Save the Post Office. You're Welcome, Post Office

2011-11-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

I haven't written a personal letter since right after the Magna Carta got ratified and I remember I was exchanging thoughts on that with my friend Marcus who was a crew member aboard the Merrimac at the time and we used to marvel at how our handwritten missives scrawled with goose quills might travel by zeppelin -- ah, but then the internets came around and I haven't licked a stamp in so long I still tried to lick a stamp the other day but they're self-adhesive now.

But wait just a minute. What's this? New letterhead from the desk of J Lee Rombach Enterprises, Esquire, featuring a snappy cartoon of me and my dog Boo, just out for a stroll. Just whistling along, not a care in the world. Just starting out letters like that.

Yeah. I'm back in the letter writing biz. Just feel like it. It feels good. Try it. Go buy a pack of stamps and send somebody a real live thing on paper. It's like getting in a time machine, only the time machine is sometimes closed when you want to send your letter.

We'll see how long my letter writing craze lasts.

If you would like to receive a limited edtion archival quality collector's series letter from me before I get tired of this retro fad, just send a first class stamp along with an idea of what you would like me to say plus $1.99 shipping and handling to my address, scratched out above.

The Frugal Carpenter: Storage sheds for pennies per square foot

2011-11-22T15:52:00.000-08:00

Chances are that if you've come to Rombach Manor for the first time, you've been directed to take some turns and then look for the big plywood carrot fixed to the side of my outbuilding.

A genuine Steve Arment carrot, no less. It's a collectors item. Don't rip it off.

One end of that building was teetering. Held up by spit and a whole lot of nails and black magic.

I jumped into action. I let it slide back into the earth for a number of years. Then ignored it. Then tore down the worst of it. Went back to forgetting about it. And then....then I got busy.

And started to fix it and then I went to Hawaii for a while and it snowed while I was gone and nobody wants to pound nails when it's cold so I would tap a few nails and then retreat to the woodstove.

But I finally got roofing on it. Behold:

Whoops. My ladder fell over. Luckily it didn't fall under the other ladder,
which would have caused 7,000 years of bad luck.

26-feet by 10-feet of covered storage. All salvaged material. Roofing tin, 2x4s, screws, the whole shebang.

Except for nails. I ran out of sinkers and had to go to the hardware store, otherwise this would have cost me nothing. Granted, it kind of looks like that.

But except for the hours and hours and hours it took me to salvage all the stuff -- nuthin'.

Except for 3 pounds of nails at $1.49 a pound.

Divided by . . . or into . . . uh . . . you know what? I'm not good at math. But for 260 square feet of storage, that ain't bad.

And the wind came up the day after I got the roof screwed down . . . it's still on there and the thing is still standing so this concludes our latest edition of The Frugal Carpenter.

Review: Thomas McGuane 'The Longest Silence'

2011-11-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

Double-linking, I guess is what I'm doing here, but hoowee . . . I'm just barely into this here book and already urging everyone with eyes to read it. Or ears. It's probably on tape. If not I'll read it to you over the phone if you're on my Friends and Family plan.

Thomas McGuane. The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing.

Review over at The Gearboat Chronicles, which is already linked on this site, but just pasting the whole thing here seemed wrong. This seemed less wrong.

Seriously. Good book.

Signs of Hawaii-ishness

2011-11-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

The Talk Story bookstore in Hanapepe, Kauai is one of my new favorite places to get stuff to read. Also, it's the westernmost book store in the USA, as the owner pointed out. Which was good, because I wasn't sure and was about to leave and keep looking for the westernmost bookstore because I don't fool with middle ground booksellers.

Many folks would say the Aloha Theater sign, also in Hanapepe, has seen better days. They would be wrong. I like to see some weathering on cool old signs I'm looking at and this one is perfect. Don't question me on this, I apprenticed with Papa Joe Dawson at Avalon Signs in Ben Lomond, CA and Joe taught me some things.

I find it endearing that there aren't even speed bumps in Hawaii. Strong evidence for their claim to being a good place to reside.

Even stop signs have more to say in Hanalei. Good info.

Even lizards forget to apply sunscreen now and then, and just look at the condition of this guy's skin. I tried to put aloe on him, but he resisted.

Pipes seem to be in no danger of freezing on Kauai

2011-11-10T15:25:00.000-08:00

11 degrees the morning I left for Kauai.

Drained the pipes on Rombach Manor just so's I wouldn't have to worry about busted copper joints back in Oregon while simultaneously worrying about sunburn on Kauai. I can only fret about one temperature extreme at a time.

A pot of gold at the end of . . . awww, man . . . it says Keep Off. . . .

Even ponytails grow pretty flowers over here. You need special shampoo, though.

Here's nieces Emma and Claire toward sundown at Baby Beach --

And little miss Anna. . . .

I don't know this guy's name, but he was a way better snorkeler than the rest of us.

Be something of a bother when I go to trade in the flip flops for insulated winter boots again.

Occupy Scott: Protest Hits the Poker Table

2011-11-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a longer, king-size version of the last 'Furthermore' column....which irritated one commenter on the Chieftain site, who challenged me to document one instance of TARP funds being used for bonuses. Well, HondoLane, I had to look up TARP funds first, because I'd forgotten that's what they were called. And then the exhaustive research really began. I googled "bailout money used for bonuses?" and about 30 seconds later was reading an article about a junket for executives at A.I.G. right on the heels of the bailout where the spa charges alone came to 23-thousand.

And then I quit reading, because research just tuckers me out. So I take your challenge, Hondo, and reverse it by challenging you to document that it has not been documented that following the release of bailout funds, somebody got cucumbers on their eyes in a spa and they probably wouldn't have if taxpayer money hadn't been kicked out for the general good of the nation. Get back to me on that.

Here's the revised version of Occupy Scott:

Occupy Scott: Protest Movement Hits the Poker Table

I joined an economic protest movement last weekend called Occupy Scott. It was on a much smaller scale than the Wall Street-related protests—Scott’s just one guy—but there were enough similarities that I now understand what drives the big-time protestors and got some insight as to how these uprisings function.

Scott’s a good guy. But he’s also an investment broker and when people like that have more money than you, it rankles. Particularly when some of their money used to be your money and they got it through an outrageous transaction. Like bailout funds becoming CEO bonuses. Or Scott beating your three-of-a-kind in poker with a ridiculous hand he had no business playing. Technically it wasn’t a criminal act for Scott to call my large bet and stay in with two horrendous cards that he eventually beat me with, but it sure seemed like it should be illegal and I felt he should go to jail for many years.

That's him, in the foreground. Probably been stealing golf balls or something.

Scott, myself and other buddies from college get together once a year and have ourselves a poker tournament. Scott got on a roll this year, his pile of poker chips growing until they developed a gravitational pull on even more of our chips and everybody except Scott resented this trend.

So we organized and began a grassroots poker table movement to Occupy Scott. Our demands were simple: quit taking our money. Or at least stop gloating about it. There may not be many parallels between Wall Street shenanigans and a game of Texas Hold-Em, but rubbing things in does seem to bring on the protestors in both cases. If you’ve run a bank into the ground, sent the economy into a tailspin and rewarded yourself for your good work with taxpayer money, that might be viewed as taunting and send the wrong message.

But that’s the game, on both Wall Street and at the poker table. You collect as much money as you can, however you can. Bluffing, playing some hands you normally wouldn’t. And now and then it pays off. And big payoffs lead to more opportunities. Scott could afford to risk his money against my solid hand because he had a tower of chips and it wouldn’t hurt him to wager. Then he caught his flush on that last, hateful card and I wanted to go live in a tent in his yard and poop on his car.

You can push people around at the poker table when you’ve got more chips. You make reckless moves against the little guy because they can’t afford to call you, even when they know what you’re doing is wrong . . . heeeey, wait just a minute . . . maybe there are more parallels between poker and Wall Street than I thought.

Those of us in the Occupy Scott movement couldn’t really call our congressional representatives and demand fiscal reform or that the cards be dealt differently. I tried, but they didn’t answer. So I’m afraid our tactics weren’t that sophisticated. There was no violence, but lots of verbal abuse. Unflattering names, disparaging remarks, that sort of thing. Which Scott welcomed. He encouraged the outrage, in fact. Because when emotions cloud your judgment at the card table you go on tilt, doing things you shouldn’t without the bankroll to justify such behavior.

Poker and life do not parallel on that point. I’d bet if Occupy Wall Street accomplishes something, it will be because elected officials do answer a call to deal certain cards differently—and the occupiers being on tilt will have been the reason. In poker, going on tilt usually just speeds up the process of losing and going home.

I wonder how long the occupations will last, with winter coming on. That’s an all-in situation, where you decide whether committing everything to this one situation is the right move. All-in situations are usually intriguing to watch and seeing the next few cards in this game should be interesting.

Scott went home with about 350 of our dollars, but that figure was significantly higher before the Occupy Scott movement gained momentum. He claims that market fluctuations in the form of bad cards were to blame for his slight dip in earnings, and not the protest. But of course he would say that.

Hard to say what the impact of the real Occupy movement has been, or will be. But there’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing’s done.

Pros and Cons of Fishing with Dave Kesey

2011-10-24T10:38:00.001-07:00

Take a look at this:

That's Dave Kesey with a steelhead on the end of his flyrod. On one hand, I'm happy for him. Yay, Dave.

On the other 5,000 hands, I get just a little bit tired of seeing that happen, followed by this happening:

Dave Kesey holding a fish. I have to take ibuprofen to relieve the carpal tunnel I get from working the camera button, taking all those shots of Dave Kesey holding another fish he's caught.

It's just plain tiresome.

He'll let me take the first crack at a piece of water and I'll run my gear through, fish it real careful and get nothing. Then I throw a few grenades in there to make sure he has no chance of picking up a fish, but somehow the guy fishes the same water and just conjures steelhead out of the same drift I managed to do nothing with.

Ridiculous.

Here's our camp, down on the Imnaha, across from Lightning Creek. Photo taken at early morning. I was all bleary-eyed, but Dave had been up all night, sharpening hooks and cleaning the guides on his fly rod.

Here's a contorted view of sumac along the trail leading down to Eureka Bar on the Snake River. Not sure what I was doing with the camera angle on that one. But in my defense, I was delirious from hiking 10 miles in waders.

Dave had set out at dawn and hiked on ahead. Mike Baird and I stayed back at camp for the frivolous activity of having a cup of coffee and eating breakfast. Dave doesn't really eat when he fishes....just sort of draws sustenance from the air through some kind of osmosis.

And I passed him on the trail without seeing him, somehow, though I can't figure how. You can see the river the whole way down so the only explanation, really, is that he becomes invisible so the fish can't see him or whatever.

I can practice casting all I want, but some aspects of Dave's fishing technique I'm afraid I'll never be able to master. Like being magic. Nobody caught nothing that day. Except Dave. He caught a steelhead the day before, when nobody was catching steelhead. Caught another one the next day. Hooked a gigantic adult salmon that ran his line out to the backing before shaking the hook. Landed a smaller, five-pound jack salmon--on top of the steelhead. And then he yawned and said, "Ah, the fishing wasn't great...."

But the fish threw me a bone on the last day and I at least caught one. Pretty sure they just felt sorry for me.

Water Trees

2011-10-19T21:46:00.001-07:00

Darren Senn, everybody . . .

Just spent a roaring weekend at Black Butte Ranch for the annual Get Together With A Bunch of Guys I've Known Forever celebration.

Fourth grade is when I met some of these fellers. Then high school. Then college. Same fellers, you understand. Couldn't get enough of sitting in the same classrooms so we just went ahead and all went to the same college for a while.

At that bastion of higher education known to scholars the world round as Southern Oregon State College . . . except they call it Southern Oregon University now, I think . . . SOSC to SOU. That turns the nickname from "sock" to, I dunno . . . "sow," I guess. Nice move, SOSC/SOU transition committee. Way to rebrand. Sucks you had to buy so many new doors because students started beating them down trying to get in after your snazzy updated name.

Where were we . . . ah, yes. SOSC. So the merry band of Pleasant Hill High School graduates Mike, Darren, Jude and myself arrived in Ashland and straightaway got into a big gang rumble with Cyrus Cain, Scott Milani and Darryl Coppedge. They called themselves "The Warriors." The PHill gang cruised around on rollerskates, we had our brawl, which is really hard to do on rollerskates, but then we patched things up and now we're pals.

So we play poker for three days every year, interspersed with hiking, poker, frisbee golf where Darren hits Scott's rental car with one of the little frisbees . . . also real golf where we should have tried to hit Scott's rental car with golf balls but I just thought of it now . . . and swimming pool football and whatever else.

That pose of Darren's is really something. Reeeeeaaaally something.

So before you look at the following pictures taken on our hike this year, I must warn you that they are startling. I assure you they have not been run through photoshop, but will make your eyes exit your face all the same just from sheer amazement.

The trick, my friends, is -- no. I simply cannot reveal my secrets. But check out these trees here.

Or are they?

What? Grass growing out of the sky and ripples around that tree on the left? What in the name of Zeus is . . . .

Now pine needles and pond scum? I don't . . . I just . . . how can . . . .

OK, that's too much. Now the pine needles are scattered all over the trees like some sort of Jackson Pollock-y scratchboard thing combined with an otherwise plain-jane painting of trees.

Aside from mind-bending photos of trees reflected in a shallow pond, we managed to have enough of a good time that there's talk now of making this a bi-annual event. I'm for that.

Ghostly image of frozen turkey carcass

2011-10-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Started out the week with a bonfire. It looked like this.

Then I'm just toodling through the yard one morning and glance down to see this --

Which is . . . uh . . .

At first I thought it vaguely resembled the outline of a Thanksgiving turkey. Kind of stretched out, but you see it, right? A turkey outline?

Right?

After much paranormal investigation I narrowed it down to a ghostly bird carcass emblazoned on my frosty yard . . . or the spot where my dog was laying--or is it lying? down. And her body heat melted the frost.

Either one.

Not sure.

Jury's out.

Could go either way.

Wallowa County road closure reaction

2011-10-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

Reaction to the last Furthermore column--posted below about how crappy it is I can't get to firewood and the Forest Service wants to close more roads--has been positive. At least from the focus group of people I've bumped into who talked to me.

I've even got a secret source who cuts firewood for their own home, but also works for a certain government agency (rhymes with "Florist Circus") who, after agreeing with me that the proposed road closures are, and I quote, "dumb," went on to request anonymity.

At least they requested anonymity after I said, 'Sweet, I'll do a follow-up story saying I've got agreement from within the machine.'

And then they were like, 'Uhhh....but then I'd be an ex-employee, ha-ha....so don't do that.'

I shall call this person "Zanthabar," because usually I find pseudonyms to be, well, dumb. You're reading some expose' and the writer quotes Dave or Sally with some earthshattering thing or another and then they point out they're calling Ron or Susie this or that because Ron or Susie fear for their safety or job or whatever.

Why not 'Roscoe The Brave' or 'Shantar, Queen of Earthshattering Facts.' I mean, if you're going to give out fake names at least make them snappy.

So rest easy, Zanthabar.....your secret identity is safe and known only to myself. I will tell nobody. Unless they say they can keep a secret real good and then maybe I'll tell them.

Bowhiking and firewood that you won't

2011-10-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the Chieftain 'And Furthermore' I sent in for next week. Kind of an expansion of the bowhiking post put on here earlier.

I’d like to thank the deer and elk of the Minam and Imnaha units for another fantastic bowhiking season. Once again, I got my exercise for the year out of the way during archery season and will be filling my freezer with veggie burgers after never getting off a shot.

I consider bowhunting my version of a gym membership, where I pay ODFW to get in some cardio, or whatever it’s called when you move around and sweat. I don’t ever fill my tag, but I do get kind of in shape from all that walking around while carrying my bow. Bowhiking, I like to call it. Exerting energy doesn’t generally strike me as a good idea and I need motivation if I’m going to walk any distance or climb something steep. Like being chased. Or chasing something else. Like an elk herd.

Mike Baird does not share my cautious approach toward exercise. Baird let me tag along on a few of his elk forays this season, though they struck me as more of an Iron Man competition than the ‘little strolls’ he would describe them as. By late afternoon, I would be looking for materials to build a hut with, resigned to never getting out of the wilderness, when Baird would hear a distant bugle from three drainages away and merrily set off, saying if we just climbed this ridge, got to that summit, traversed that rock slide and scratched our way through miles of underbrush, we’d be there in no time.

And by golly we’d do it and Baird would bugle an elk in, but we never got a shot. Mike suggested I quit using my cow call and try to get my money back because it didn’t sound natural. Almost like something was suffering. I hadn’t been using a cow call, just wheezing, trying to breathe after an endurance march he would call, ‘just hiking right over there.’

Aside from the forced exercise, another bonus of bowhiking is finding firewood. Now and then you stumble on a patch of wood you may not have seen without wandering around. I found some prime tamarack this year. Cords and cords of it, just on the edge of old logging roads that all turned out to have tank traps blocking access.

If the Forest Service goes through with closing more roads, I hope they’ll offer some public education meetings about switching to propane or oil heat because I don’t know a thing about it. How do you stick your tag on a cord of propane? Do I need to use bar oil if I’m cutting a load of heating oil? I’m confused, Forest Service. Can we have access to all the paperwork generated by the road closure plan? There might be enough BTU’s there to power Wallowa County woodstoves for a winter.

I went to one of Ron Thies’ woodcutting meetings where I heard a good point: if the Forest Service is interested in fuels reduction, firewood cutters are doing their job for them. And paying for the privilege. I’ve also been to a Forest Service meeting where they explained needing to reduce fuels in the woods, and were going about it by spending lots of money.

If these road closures happen I’ve got another request: that the thermostats in the offices where this plan was cooked up be blocked by filing cabinets or cubicle dividers—some obstruction that makes it a challenge to get heat. Policy makers will be able to see the heat source but not get to it, a lot like that tamarack in the woods I can’t get to. If there’s a fire in that part of the office and fire crews can’t get there because a path that used to exist has been blocked off, well, at least the carpet has had a chance to regenerate because you haven’t been trampling on it.

I suppose I’d get more exercise if the road closures happen, walking around with my chainsaw and not finding anything to use it on. Just like bowhiking during archery season.

Around the old chrome microphone

2011-10-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

And Furthermore column, Wallowa County Chieftain August 31, 2011

There’s an old chrome microphone at KWVR Radio that stood in the corner when I worked there. A cool old microphone. Something that would be on the bandstand back when poodle skirts were in fashion. The kind of microphone newscasters in fedoras would have used to announce that Prohibition was over. It reminded me of the grill on a sedan a mobster would drive to a tommy gun shootout. I really liked that microphone and when we started an evening show with live broadcasts of local music, I finally got to use it. Some musicians admired the mic, discussing the merits of its sound properties. All I knew was it looked reeeeally good and putting noise onto the airwaves was just classier using that chunk of chrome.

I hauled that mic around the valley, broadcasting Jimmy Lloyd Rea from the lake, fiddle contests at Cloverleaf Hall, did a show from the Imnaha Tavern. Bronze Blues and Brews. Lots of venues. But the best fit with that microphone was in the lobby of the radio station with Bob and Jan Casey, Charlie Trump and Len Samples circled around the mic stand. Bob squeezed his squeezebox, Charlie fiddled, Jan on keyboard and Len guitar.

It was old-timey barndance hoedown toe-tappy, smile-on-your-face feelgood music. They were having fun. I was having fun watching them have fun. I wished we had video as well as audio so the folks listening could see this too. Len Samples did this thing with his shoulder, where his whole torso was involved in his guitar strokes. It started when he put his shoulder into it, went down to the strings and seemed to come back around in a loop. I’m no musician, but I’ve watched a fair number of guitar players and never seen anyone play quite like Len. I think of how easy and content Len’s guitar playing looked every time I see a guitar player wincing, seeming to be in pain while battling it out with their guitar.

So I miss Len Samples. Charlie Trump too. And I’m going to miss Bob Casey. He told me he learned the squeezebox from a Basque sheepherder. Met him out amongst the sheep. Heard him play squeezebox back at the wagon, figured he’d like to try, so the herder said go get a copy of the National Enquirer magazine and there’s an ad in the back to send away for a squeezebox. So Bob did. The hardest part being the embarrassment of buying a National Enquirer.

Bob Casey was awfully good at making me laugh. I’d only run into him now and then, but it was pretty much a guarantee he’d get me to laugh. Even the time he explained a major trauma he’d just gone through years ago, he somehow got me to laugh when that was the very last thing on my list of things to do.

I noticed grey hairs in my sideburns a month ago. Pointed them out to friends who pointed out they’d been there longer than a month. Getting old is still new to me. My least favorite part so far is trying to adjust to the growing list of people who aren’t here anymore that I’d rather were still around. I don’t care for that part.

I’ve driven by Bob and Jan’s place many times since I got to know them, singing into that old microphone at the radio station. Often times, passing their place, I thought someday I just might stop in. Visit. Never did. Didn’t want to bother them. Bob’s gone. That bothers me. You were a good guy, Bob Casey. Glad to have known you. See if you can trade that harp in for a squeezebox.

Bowhiking

2011-09-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Bowhunting season ended yesterday. No elk, nor deer, hanging in my shop. But I sure enough got my exercise in, which is how every hunting season goes for me.

Here's Mike Baird bugling from above the Imnaha River. He gets a feather in his cap for his bugling skills, which did bring the elk in....we just never got a shot. Also, he gets a feather in his cap because he found a feather and put it in his cap.

Saw this guy when I was tromping through the woods. Which is one reason I like the bowhunting. Get to see things you normally wouldn't.

Wallowa Lake kokanee

2011-09-13T16:26:00.001-07:00

This here is up from Wallowa Lake right next to the cabin I've been moving. Right where I dip Bula's water bowl. Wish I could take the stream along with the cabin but I don't have a trailer big enough.

Got some video too that I'll splice up when the splicing's right. That big guy chases off the little guys. Bully.

Log Cabin Rescue Mission

2011-09-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

Some people save whales. Others rescue kittens. Me, I can't stand the thought of old log cabins being euthanized.

So this cute little bundle of logs from Wallowa Lake will live on after I finish moving it, replacing some rotten logs...then drawknifing it back down to natural and putting it all back together.

Sounds easy. Probably would be with an energetic crew and a crane. Instead, I have me. A crowbar. Some rope.

I did have Andy Fairchild help yesterday and he knows his stuff, even if he's never moved a cabin before. Neither have I. We managed to not get hurt, the roof and top logs got safely on the trailer and it's coming together nicely....I mean: coming apart nicely.

Here's a cool time capsule message written on one of the logs: Somebody Sprague signing his name, with the date August 11, 1920. I think that says 1920 anyway. '26?

And here's an interior shot. Fireplace will be repurposed into a pile of rocks. There's a limit to what I'm willing to move, and I don't have the same attachment to heavy rocks as I do old log cabins.

Hot chicks in diapers

2011-08-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

More photo imagery from the Salmon River last week. In this particular moment that's been captured forever in time, we see the river diapersuit modeled by Elizabeth, Karen and Dionna.

Stunning. Simply stunning.

Constructed of two durable yet elegant personal flotation devices, the PFD diaper ensemble is ideal for floating around gigantic eddies on a hot, hot day while drinking a beer or cocktail that can be stowed by sort of cramming the drink in between the upper part of your life jacket.

Sadly, there's also a men's version. It looks like this:

Not as stunning. It's just not.

The river diaper is strictly for floating. Not pooping. We practice Leave No Trace camping and strictly adhere...to....uhm.....

Is that a piece of corn right there up near the top?

Salmon River landscape ruined by a bikini

2011-08-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

I tried to edit out that lady in the picture because she just gets in the way of the hills and pretty sky I was trying to focus on, but, whatever, I guess it'll have to do.

That's Karen, exploring around on a beach in the vicinity of Flynn Creek Rapid on a float last week.

Slicing apples from 40 yards and moving to Sherwood Forest

2011-08-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

Before I hear from People for the Ethical Treatment of Apples, let me just say this one was old and wrinkly.

Week before bow season opened, my bow was shooting happy. Then I notice fraying on one of the new cables put on three months ago. Mysterious because I can't figure where the chafe would come from. Off it goes to Floyd the bow mechanic.

New cable and guard, and I expect some tweaking to be necessary, but can't get it sighted in right and finally notice the center serving has unwound and crept up the string on me, migrating the D loop up and out of whack....

I watched every youtube video tutorial there is, tried a new loop setup, learned some new knots, moved every pin and allen screw there is after changing one thing to accommodate another -- then my field points were right on but when I shot a broadhead it was all over the place.

A couple sheets of paper tuning later, backing off the poundage, raising the rest, new spark plugs and an oil change later--it was a great relief to finally get the Martin Panther shooting right and see a chunk of apple fall off from a broadhead at 40 yards.

Take that, fruit.

Update: I guess I have to move to Nottingham now.

I was standing behind the old '67 Buick in the yard, shooting across at the bag and having a chat while slinging some arrows at the same time, not doing a very good job at either activity....but I was consistent enough to hit one arrow with another and Jacey says, "I think you messed up that other arrow."

If by 'mess up' she means getting all Robin Hood and shooting one arrow right down the shaft of the other, then get Friar Tuck on the phone and tell him to get ready because we got some robbing from the rich to do.

I'd feel a lot better about this if it was a bullseye that got duplicated, but, ah, well. I seem to be shooting low, after all that applesauce talk.

Review: Carter Niemeyer 'Wolfer'

2011-08-18T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here's my recent Chieftain column with a book suggestion I'd like to see as standard issue for everyone involved in the back and forth of the wolf debate here in the Wallowas.

My review gets reviewed at a coyote, wolf and cougar blog here. It includes the line, "With all due respect to Mr. Rombach...." thanks. Always like it when I'm given all due respect, except, heeeeey....they couple that with "...who states that he was completely without knowledge of Wolves prior to downloading the contents of Wolfer...."

Not completely without knowledge. I know you don't capitalize Wolves in the middle of a sentence like this person, so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Also, with all due respect, if by 'downloading the content,' they mean I bought a copy of the book like I said, then OK.

Review is below.

And Furthermore

Jon Rombach

I’ve stayed out of the wolf debate up until now because I don’t really know anything about wolves. But it sure doesn’t seem like that’s a requirement for joining the discussion, so I might as well wade in here.

I ordered the book ‘Wolfer’ by Carter Niemeyer after reading a review that described Niemeyer’s career as a government trapper turned wolf specialist, in charge of both introducing and removing wolves, depending on the circumstances. He developed enemies on both sides. Gained allies that started out as foes and had other working relationships start friendly before going south.

Well, that’s the guy I want to hear from. And by page 2, he was already making sense with this line: “Wolves are not all the things people want them to be, good or bad….”

I say this book is worth reading, for this alone: Niemeyer spends a good deal of time walking you through the business of determining whether a cow is dead because of a wolf or not. It’s a crime scene, essentially. And an autopsy. Animals tend to stop living now and then for reasons other than either a wolf or a slaughterhouse bolt. There are telltale signs when a wolf kills another animal, just as somebody who knows what they’re looking at should be able to determine when a wolf was not the cause of death, or has been eating from a carcass that was already dead from disease, previous injury or whatever punched it’s ticket. He relates cases where wolves were in the vicinity and that’s all the evidence some folks needed—despite no wolf tracks among the other tracks at the scene.

Wolf haters and wolf lovers will both likely find passages they’ll despise and embrace in this book. Here’s some that stood out for me. Page 183: “Hearings are a sign that the government has already made a decision. Taking public testimony is just a way to ease folks into an idea and let them blow off steam about it.”

Page 203: “In the wolf business, there’s no changing people’s minds, so there’s no point in arguing with them or trying to stop them from doing something illegal or just plain stupid. I’ve never known a wolf hater to become a wolf-lover or vice versa. When questioned, few people have neutral feelings about the subject, and those who are tolerant of wolves are usually afraid to express themselves.”

Page 182: “…wolves weren’t guilty most of the time.”

Page 331: “It was another case of wolf advocates being the wolf’s worst enemy.”

208: “No matter what the decision was regarding wolves, no one was happy….”

352: “The wolf issue has brought out such hatefulness in people. I want them to see that it doesn’t have to be all one way. It can’t be.”

So there you go. That’s my contribution to the wolf uproar. Read this book if you want. It’s not great, but is worth reading if you think you may find yourself talking about wolves.

If I’d grown up in Iowa and was fascinated with fox hunting and taxidermy, I’d go ahead and say ‘Wolfer’ is great. But Carter set out to write a memoir and he did, complete with reminiscing on an Iowa childhood, pursuing foxes and mounting animals. I had to brush by these to get at his wolf experience, which is why I bought the book.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tie flagging on the collar of my elderly, 14-year-old husky-mix dog so I can take her on a stroll and explain to startled passersby that, no, that is not a wolf. She might lick your hand if you hold it out, but she’s not going to hobble over on her bad hips and tear your throat out. You’d be surprised how many times I have this conversation. Unless you’re Carter Niemeyer.

Cookie Monster Waits

2011-08-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

Years ago I had Rain Dogs playing in my truck and a friend's kid asked, 'Is this the Muppets?'

Kind of, I guess. As proven by whoever had the time to do this bit of editing:

Rush Limbaugh blowing his foghorn

2011-08-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not a highly trained broadcast specialist. But I did work at a radio station for, I don't know, six or seven years.

And I would walk in to hear the voice of Rush Limbaugh coming from the AM broadcast booth each and every morning. Usually 'Clinton' or 'Monica' would be the first word I'd hear, even years after Clinton left office.

Rush experienced some sort of hearing loss, if I recall, related to his years of wearing 'cans,' which I would call 'headphones,' as I'm no highly trained broadcast specialist.

I also experienced a sort of hearing loss related to radio work, though mine was of a self-preservationist type where my brain learned to tune out Rush Limbaugh, because otherwise I would have gone crazy.

So. Despite knowing better I listened to a clip this morning from a recent case of Limbaugh talking.

The context is Rush Limbaugh criticizing Al Sharpton for making a mistake while talking.

Message being: if you can't talk and not make mistakes, don't talk for a living.

Here's Rush's delivery:

"...Al, lemme just tell you, as a -- as a highly trained broadcast specialist: stick to activism and the fog horn. . . ."

The fog horn?

I, uh . . . Rush, I'm not -- do you mean fog horn, like activism is warning others of peril in the way that a fog horn is blown during foggy conditions that . . . I don't. . . .

Then Rush goes on: ". . . and the bull horn. . . ."

And he does it pretty seamlessly, just adds bull horn to the fog horn and I guess that's where his high degree of broadcast specialist training kicks in. But, um, you just . . . uh, flubbed what you were saying which was making fun of somebody else flubbing what they were saying by way of telling them to get out of broadcast journalism if they can't keep from -- oh, to hell with it. I don't have to worry over these things anymore since I blew the fog horn and got out of radio.

Here's the audio if you want to hear it. You only have to make it to the :21 second mark. But also notice the sputtering that goes on from :07 to :11 seconds. That's some highly trained jibberish right there.

Messing with Morgan: A how-to guide

2011-08-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

Morgan Jenkins is a great pal. He taught me to row a boat and convinced Penny and Paul to give me a job as a river guide during a downswing in my employment arc after I threw in the towel on being a newspaper reporter and wasn't exactly sure how the next round of bills were going to be paid.

He may regret that kind deed. And Paul and Penny may have revised their hiring protocols since, but let's stay on track here.

Mo and I have logged some river miles between then and now and river guiding has been a great way to see some of this country I moved out here to see.

Also, I'm sometimes mean to Morgan just because it's funny. For me, I mean. Here's some time-lapse photography from the other day when we're driving out of Dug Bar and stopped to soak in the view looking down on the Imnaha Canyon.

Mojo is fond of Shuttle Monkey, a stuffed animal with bendy appendages that rides along in the Winding Waters truck on all driving missions. I don't know why, but Morgan insists on it and he's attached to the thing. So on this day Morgan thought it would be nice to have a picture taken of us two buddies in front of this great view -- and Shuttle Monkey should be in the picture too.

So I asked if I could hold Shuttle Monkey and Morgan didn't like the idea but I persisted and then threw his stuffed animal out toward the prickly pear cactus behind us. I really am kind of an arsehole. Totally uncalled for but I got a great deal of enjoyment out of the thing and here are the stages of Morgan's disbelief. Priceless.

There's even a video featuring Shuttle Monkey over on the Winding Waters Gearboat Chronicles site. Watch it here. Sorry Mo.

You can't see it, but Morgan has a look of disgust on his face.

OK, now you can see it.

After, "Why would you do that?" and "I'm sorry, it'll never happen again," we patched things up.

Hammer Down

2011-07-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

Back in Missoula college days I took a carpentry job working for a nice guy who overlooked my lack of carpentry skills. We discussed this and I lamented the gaps in my woodworking abilities but he insisted my ignorance was trumped by the fact that I appeared for work and was not bankrolling a drug habit with my earnings. There had been other employees who did not share these qualities.

So we got along. And he insisted I purchase proper tools, sending me back to the store when I first appeared with a cut-rate pounder, measurer and pouches to carry them in.

I explained I didn't have much in the way of money, which is why I was working, so he gave me a framing hammer of his own.

I've always liked that hammer. It ain't fancy. It's a Stanley. No big whoop. But, you know, it was a gift from my boss.

And I've pounded nails with it for, what? fifteen-ish years? Also pounded my thumb with it once or thrice. I have a fondness for that hammer.

Then I broke the goddamn thing the other day. Prying a nail out of some board and c-c-c-rack, there went the wood.

I put a new handle on there, but ah, it's not the same.

Please Don't Splash Me: Cage Match On the River

2011-07-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

Thirty teenagers. Water, water everywhere. Teenagers squirting and throwing water everywhere. It's odd, but I don't know a river guide that enjoys water fights.

Paul caught in the melee. Hang in there Pauly.

It's part of the deal and I'm all for people enjoying themselves on float trips -- but something about getting shot in the eye with a stream from a Super Soaker just doesn't excite me.

So when two rafts are about to engage in a water exchange, you turn your bow to face the onslaught and distance yourself as much as possible. The rest of the time you pick up paddles that have been dropped in the river, retrieve sunglasses that have been knocked off someone's face and wait for the armistice.

Then you float into some rapids and the same kids who were just moving gallons of water around to wet other people shy away from being splashed by a wave. Interesting.

Perfect Opportunity

2011-07-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

Heading out for four days on Old Man River, so this would be a good time if you were planning on robbing my house.

O, wait, no . . . it would be a good time if you like boobytraps and houses guarded by two Canadian wolves and a housesitter packing heat. So keep that in mind.

And now, I present a picture of a rock with some kind of grid shadow thing going on. Beautiful. Just . . . I don't know how I do it.

And some leaves. Forgot to mention those.

Horsies

2011-07-02T08:23:00.001-07:00

Part One of my series: Photos of Horses Taken Way Too Far Away and Way Too Up Close. It's groundbreaking stuff.

It's like the White Album, but with a horse and some sticks in the corner.

Legs, tail, cute baby horse nose. It's all there. I was just trying to get a blurry picture of some fence wire but those caballos got in the background.

Turns out I'm a ninja

2011-06-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from fishing the Beaverhead River in Montana. The fish there see a lot of flies, see lots of fishermen and so they're smart. Many have postgraduate degrees. You can talk art with them.

Catching these fish with a flyrod was proving to be a chore so I changed tactics and just pulled one out of the water with my bare hands. Really. Swear.

Here it is, pictured below.

You might notice that this fish has seen better days, what with the decomposing head and all.

Sure, this rainbow was on its way out -- but still, technically, this is a living fish in a stream and you wouldn't think you could just pull it out of the water with your hands. But you'd be wrong.

I watched a video recently where a guy explained that if you can get your hands underneath a fish and rub its belly, they calm down and you can just pluck it out of the water.

So I tried it. Got my hands underwater, moved them upstream slowly and the fish was getting agitated, moved away a little bit but then I snuck up, made contact and he kind of flinched, but then settled down when I gave him a little belly rub.

Then I got both hands under there and just ... pulled him out of the water.

At that point I realized I was ninja so I spent the rest of the day sneaking around in the river breathing through a reed, jumping out of the water to karate kick other fishermen, used throwing stars to cut the ends off cigars of rich guys that like to float down toking on giant stogies ... used nunchucks to swat mosquitoes back at camp and caught caddis flies with chopsticks. Things like that.

So that's how a ninja spends his time when the fishing is slow.

I've got to go practice doing backflips now.

Keep your eye on the kids with purple hair: Graduation 2011

2011-06-10T07:18:00.000-07:00

Wallowa Chieftain column from 6/9/11

Wallowa County schools have turned out another fine roster of graduates and there should be high-fives all around. Graduates, teachers, parents, coaches and everybody else who helped these kids along through their schooling careers—you done good. All of you. High five.

I don't have any photos related to high school graduation, so this sunset symbolizes attendance records. Beautiful. Except the ones you missed.

It’s tradition to fill these graduates full of last-minute nuggets of advice as they step over into being adults. But I’ve been thinking. These graduates just sat through twelve years of instruction, they’ve seen how our ideas are working out and I’d like to hear what they have in the way of advice for us.

We had plenty of time to tamp our message in. They’ve been tested and graded along the way so it seems fair that graduates get a chance to evaluate us on this world we’re handing over to them.

We hear from valedictorians during commencement ceremonies, but what about the kid with the record for being sent to the principal’s office the most during the past twelve years … I’d wager that would be a lively address and I’m sure we could all use some insight on getting into a little trouble but still managing to come out alright.

What about the shy kids? They’ll be quietly running things before long anyway so we might as well get a sneak preview. The kids with purple hair. They end up surprising you. I’ve seen it happen. The ones going after rodeo buckles instead of college degrees. The ones who want to travel. The ones wanting to stay put. I’d say there’s valuable insight to be heard from all of these newly-minted adults.

Still don't have graduation-type pictures, so here's an image of the chimney of life, shown emitting vapors from the fuel of your earthly toils that you keep adding and adding, except when the weather's nice and you don't need to. Think about that for a minute. Yeah.

A big long commencement ceremony where every graduate gets to speak would feel like it’s taking twelve years, so instead of that we could have sort of an open house where all the graduating seniors are on hand and you can walk up, congratulate them on finishing school and warn them against taking wooden nickels or advise them to buy low and sell high or whatever. Then it’s their turn to tell us what they think. If they feel like giving advice, I’d probably ask for help in making sense out of cell phone plans. Used to be that teenagers were the only ones able to program a VCR but these days we need younger folks to explain phones.

All these kids—pardon, young adults—have something worth hearing and I for one would like a breakdown on what our twelve years of telling them what we think they need to know has boiled down to. Lay it on me, graduates. Send your general observations, advice and detailed instructions on how to turn off the annoying voice command thing on my phone to jonrombach@gmail.com.

So bon voyage, graduates, whatever your voyaging preferences might be. College, run the family ranch, or my favorite—don’t really know. If ever I do stumble on a pile of money I believe I’ll set up a scholarship to assist those interested in pursuing I Dunno.

I majored in Business at first, then changed it five minutes later to Art, then Taking A Year Off, then I forget what and -- oh, I declared just about every major in the catalog except for Accounting and ended up with History. My academic advisor liked to drink.

Just like offering advice, it’s tradition to give a graduating senior analogies. Life is like (something) and you’ve got to (something). So here’s mine.
Graduates, life is like an analogy. It’s one thing, but some people think of it another way and you’re both probably kind of right, depending on how you look at it.

And just like an analogy, sometimes it won’t really make much sense but that’s OK. So just remember that little bit of wisdom and you should be fine. Now go out there and make us proud and make cell phones easier to understand and maybe clean up all this international conflict and do something about the economy and don’t take no for an answer unless it’s the right one and a bunch of other stuff. You’ll figure it out.

Gearboat Chronicles Theater: Shuttle Monkey

2011-06-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

Rolling out a test product here, from the Winding Waters video archives.

This first round of Gearboat Chronicles, video-style, shows Morgan, me and Shuttle Monkey on a lower Grande Ronde trip. It really livens up a shuttle drive if you have a video camera, some elk and a stuffed animal with bendy arms.

Darren Senn wrote and recorded the Gearboat Theater theme music, though he wasn't aware of that at the time. I lifted it off his record, I Gotta Get Organized. Track 2, Cute Little Cowgirl. Look him up at darrensennmusic.com before he looks you up.

In-flight mower refueling

2011-06-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

Pretty sure my grass is on the juice. Shooting up illegal growth hormone. It's angry all the time. Moody. Has pimples. I mow it and next day it's just taller.

Had to rig a refueling system so I can stay in motion at all times and get gas while I'm on the move. Only way to keep up.

I mean, look at the size of the dandelions. You could make lumber out of those things.

Jacey jogs behind the mower and pours gas in while I keep cutting grass. Took some trial and error but we're getting it. Just don't ever drop a match on my lawn.

Shopvacs and husky dogs

2011-05-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

Snow storm? Site of a meteor strike and the meteor was made of cotton? Nay. Jacey's dog spurts fur. Shed is not the word for what her follicles do with hair. You can hear the hairs growing and they shoot out just when she's laying there. That right there is a pile of hair from about ten minutes of brushing.

I've made fourteen sleeping bags with fur collected from this beast. Tied flies with it. Knitted them into other dogs and waited for a lightning storm and brought them to life with jumper cables. Filled holes in my yard with the fur of the dog that dug the holes, so that's a symbiotic relationship kind of.

I've been spraying her dog with Nair when Jacey's not looking. So far no progress. But do make sure to wash your hands if you try this tactic. I rubbed my face out of consternation and now have only one eyebrow and some tiger stripes down one cheek where I don't have to shave anymore. So there's that.

Rustic barnwood reincarnated as platform for lemonade and potato salad

2011-05-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

Chieftain column, May 26, 2011

I’ve been collecting old barnwood and lumber over the years here in Wallowa County. Working with boards that were nailed together ninety years ago gives you a real feel for history. Especially in your fingers and hands. Some of these splinters are never coming out. I’ve tried tweezers, needles, vise grips … some are so large they’re not technically splinters but chunks of wood. Something you might kindle a fire with. I made choker cables out of dental floss to pull them out but it was no good. Thought about trying to burn them out like old stumps, but I believe I’ve got no choice but to let these pieces of old red fir and pine and tamarack buried in my system stay where they are.

Arise, old boards . . . and function once again by facilitating meals outside.

So Wallowa County has literally become part of me. Little molecules of old tight-grained, rough-cut, true dimension lumber are right now sloughing off and running through my bloodstream. Probably some paint chips and antique dirt too. But hey, good with the bad.

First building I salvaged was an old pack station barn at the head of the lake next to Heidi’s store. I spent weeks up there pulling nails and sorting boards. Finding old graffiti scrawled or carved by long-ago wranglers.

Apparently Randy and Bev had issues.

The Matterhorn Swiss Village is right across the road from where the barn stood, so I spent a good deal of time thinking about how we call Wallowa County ‘Little Switzerland.’ And I decided we should get a tourism official from Switzerland over here to see what we’ve got going so they can start advertising Switzerland as ‘Big Wallowa County.’ I think it’s only fair.

Wood pegs that used to hold bridles and tack in that old barn now hold up towels next to my hot tub. The tub sits on a deck made from other pieces of that old building and I’d like to think the boards are happy with their new job, as opposed to going onto a burnpile.

I’ve been building picnic tables lately with other boards from that barn. You can try one out at Mutiny Brewing in Joseph.

Not pictured: potato salad and lemonade.

The legs holding you up used to be the pack station. The benches are from a house on Alder Slope and the table tops used to be walls inside a cute little log cabin at Wallowa Lake.

It's so cute.

Pulling all the nails and slivers can get tiresome. Some would say salvaging antique boards is more trouble than it’s worth. They’re probably right, except you drag the first brush of stain across these old things and it sets off the yellow, grey and other shades that have been baked and weathered in over the years and, you know, I just don’t get the same satisfaction with a shiny new board that doesn’t have horse hair caught in the cracks or a water stain that started during a rainstorm back when Eisenhower was in office. Patina, some people call it. Seems an awfully fancy term. Too fancy, I think. It’s just old. Experienced. Been around. And I like keeping things around.

I studied history back in college. And I think all those history papers I wrote are the same as building with barnwood. You sort through something that’s been there a long while, decide what you want to use, make sense of the rough spots and sand away the splinters, put some preservative on and send it back out in the world to get more use out of it. So a biography and a picnic table aren’t all that different. For my next project I might just make a table out of old biographies. Or Swiss history books with stories from Big Wallowa County.

I just built a tiny little table for my nieces out of old Wallowa County barnwood. The girls have about five years between the two of them and they’ll be sitting on boards made almost a hundred years ago. No telling how old the trees were when they went off to the mill. So this stuff is made from sunlight and rain well over a hundred years ago and it’ll sit outside again in sunlight and rain that hasn’t got here yet. For more trouble than it’s worth, it still seems worth it.

Dandelions summon hail

2011-05-17T12:28:00.001-07:00

My dandelions are not ordinary. They saw me getting the mower in running order to mow them down and somehow managed to disconnect the coil wire. Fine. I'm used to their simple acts of sabotage. Last year they set a trip wire that triggered an incendiary bomb when I went to get the gas can to fuel the mower. That little prank cost me two eyebrows. So I've learned to sweep the undercarriage of the riding mower with a mirror on a pole like you see at border crossings.

Now, though, it appears they can conjure weather like some kind of mutant X-Men character.

I started mowing them down under a blue sky and I could see them whispering, then holding their leaves up to the sky and, sure enough, it starts sprinkling but I pushed on, not impressed by their little rain dance.

So they held their pistles or xylems and phloems or whatever up higher and summoned a hailstorm. A hailstorm, I say. Conjured right out of a blue sky.

Those white tracers are hail balls. And those little yellow flowers have magical powers.

So they've won this round and I'll have to rethink my landscaping approach. Maybe get some weed and feed, or an exorcist or I don't know what.

My yard, which will eventually be a hayfield if the dandelions get their way.

Still hailing.

Mother's Day coupons have caught up to me

2011-05-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

Chieftain column, May 12, 2011

I just discovered I have plenty of work to keep me busy for the next year or so. It won’t pay anything, but in an economy like this you have to be grateful to be working at all. I learned of my new busy schedule when I called home for Mother’s Day. Told Mom I’d be coming to visit soon and would take her out to dinner. There’s a restaurant we’ve been meaning to try and couldn’t get reservations once, so the family drew up a homemade gift certificate for Mom as a promise to take her there. “We’re going to cash that thing in,” I told Mom. “Great,” she said. “Are you going to take out the garbage too?”

Here's Mom sporting her Easter dress. Or parachute, I'm not sure which.

Mom said she recently stumbled on her collection of gift certificates in a drawer, given to her over the years by myself and my sisters. Some elementary school teacher back in our childhoods came up with the bright idea of making coupon books to give to our mothers, good for cleaning our rooms or walking the dog, doing chores and favors and whatnot. Mom seemed to appreciate those little coupon books. Though she was probably just being nice. And unfortunately she never exercised her legal right to have us wash the dishes, rake the leaves or paint the house. So we kept giving her these books of promises over the years, and since she didn’t cash them in the promises just got more extravagant.

I now owe my mother a Porsche, a Caribbean vacation, fourteen hugs, $18,000 dollars worth of yardwork, adjusted for inflation … let’s see here … I promised to do my own laundry twice—check that off the list—but some of these aren’t so easy. On three occasions I guaranteed Mom a “happy day,” which my lawyer informed me will be entirely up to her as to whether I’ve supplied it or not, and we’d better cross our fingers that she’ll be reasonable.

Seconds after this photo was taken, Grandma Mary Ann
rescued Claire from that bear sneaking up behind them.

I really should have had an attorney look these things over before signing my name to such documents, but I was in elementary school at the time. My lawyer back then specialized in playground assault claims, not contract law.

I’m determined to satisfy every last one of these promises. Mom isn’t trying to play hardball or anything. She just thought it was cute to find a sheaf of hand-drawn legally binding documents signed in my looping cursive of a kid’s signature. But a deal’s a deal. If I can’t make good on agreements voluntarily entered into with my own mother, I don’t see how I can do business with the private sector in good conscience.

But it’s going to take some time. I was cranking those coupons out at a furious pace.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I’m going to print a copy of this newspaper column and have it notarized, as a formal acknowledgement of intent to satisfy all previous commitments to weed the garden, bring in the firewood, not fight with my sisters, etc., etc.

And while I swore to put a stop to this business of piling up promises until I get clear of all the others I’ve made over the years, let’s go ahead and add one more hug to the pile. Why not. Redeemable upon my next visit. Nontransferable. Subject to change without prior notice and may increase to two hugs.

Smells like pancakes

2011-05-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

My writer's shack turned into a recording studio while I was gringo-ing around down in Mexico.

Pancake Breakfast frontman Mike Midlo came out for some Wallowa time and made sweet sweet music.

Lay your peepers on pancakebreakfastmusic.com and do yourself some good by placing your ears amongst the Pancake Breakfast audience whensoever the opportunity arises. You'll know the opportunity has risen just right when the bubbles on top are popping and it's golden-brown halfway up the batter.

¿Como se dice ‘root canal'?

2011-05-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Chieftain 'And Furthermore' column from April 29, 2011

Now you're speaking my language. Or spelling a second language I barely speak.

I threw my shoulder out trying to dress for springtime in Wallowa County. All those abrupt wardrobe changes. Started the day in a stocking cap, down jacket and insulated boots, then got streamlined to a t-shirt and shorts during the twenty minutes of sunshine. And back to foul weather gear for the driving snow flurries. What got me was the sudden spell where it was sunny to the left of me, snowing behind and a windstorm kicked up on the right … I hadn´t stretched out properly and – boop – my rotator cuff just couldn´t keep up with putting on a jacket and taking off a sweatshirt simultaneously. You won that round, Wallowa County weather. I know when I´m beat.

So it turns out Mexico is beautiful this time of year. And last-minute tickets to Mazatlan are really very reasonable. Wallowa County amigos Hilary Valentine, Edie Baffaro and Jake Kurtz have a house rented in Mazatlan and we haven´t seen one snowflake. Not a one.

Concern over sunburn v. hypothermia is just a plane ride away. Thanks, Alaska Airlines.

My spanish is just good enough that most people can understand I´m trying to speak spanish. Beyond that not much information is being transferred. The exchange rate is about eleven to one. I understand that one word, but those other eleven are something of a mystery. I´ve been told by plenty of english speakers back home that they don´t understand me either, so it´s bueno.

Another factor for Operation Mexico is that I´ve been putting off a root canal for a long while and was given the name of a specialist down here that comes highly recommended. I figured this might be the perfect time to get this root canal taken care of, since I can´t even explain in english why I´ve waited so long, or don´t floss as much as I should. So the language barrier is working in my favor on this one.

I was also given the name of a root canal specialist over in Lewiston who I´m sure is top-notch, but Lewiston seems like a foreign country anyway and as much as I like savoring the aroma of Potlatch, I went for the beach along the Pacific instead.

My plan to see the dentist is going perfectly, since I arrived during La Semana Santa, Holy Week, and every dentist is away on Easter vacation. The secretary for one dentist told me the doctor was up north, visiting some place called Lewiston. Crazy.

Jake Kurtz has an extensive knowledge of tacos in their various forms and I have learned a great deal by tagging along on his mission to sample a taco at every roadside stand in the greater Mazatlan metropolitan area. Al pastor, cabeza, lengua, carne asada … Jake is fluent in taco-ease and I’ve picked up a few terms here and there, like ‘mas papel higienico,’ for one.

Also met Bill from Pendleton during my rambles around Mazatlan. Bill Glenn. Lives in Portland now. He walked up while I was being lost near the cathedral in the old part of Mazatlan. Bill´s t-shirt announced in bold letters that he was a volunteer tourist aide.

That's Bill in the middle. That's me on the right in about twenty years.

He asked if I was lost. I said yes, but I was OK with that. Bill understood. He filled me in on some Mazatlan points of interest and we agreed I would show him around the Wallowas next time he came out for Chief Joseph Days.

So I had a t-shirt made up that explains I´m a volunteer ambassador for Wallowa County. Hope you guys don´t mind. I just about had a family convinced to come up and visit for springtime in the Wallowas, until we got to the part of what they should bring for clothing. I didn´t know the word for either ´longjohns´ or ´pretty much everything you have´and was flipping through the dictionario so fast that I aggravated that strained rotator cuff again.

See you in another week or so, Wallowa County. I´ll be wearing my souvenir sunburn and being happy about it.

When kayaks and lawnchairs collide

2011-04-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

(Chieftain column, April 7, 2011)

Pre-race staging area for Lawnchair Race 2011. Ricky Bobby's classy ride out front there.

I’d like to report an accident. A kayak ran over me Saturday. It was orange and moving quite fast. I couldn’t avoid the collision because I was trapped in a lawnchair at the time and the metal sled bolted under the chair was stuck in the snow.

Luckily my father taught me when I was a boy that if you ever find yourself in a downhill lawnchair race at a community ski area about to be run over by a whitewater kayak and can’t roll out of the way, just put up one of your legs and kick the oncoming kayak. Thanks, Dad. Worked great. Been limping since then, but think it’s just a pulled calf muscle. Jake Kurtz thinks he dislocated a shoulder in the same race, so I got off easy.

I'm the little black dot that gets pummeled about the 40-second mark. Next year: rollcage.

We might solve the energy crisis if Wallowa County skiers ever apply the same thought and effort toward other forms of transportation as they do sliding down a hill sitting on lawnchairs. The lineup before the race looks like a full-scale version of the pinewood derby on skis, inspired by old issues of Popular Mechanics and The Road Warrior. Timm Turrentine constructed a racing machine along these lines with a bumping stereo system he used to crank ‘Flight of the Valkyries’ during the race for mood music.

Two-time lawnchair race champion Paul Arentsen currently holds the patent on the winning design. It’s deceptively simple, with solid engineering theory at work. He got up enough speed this year to bounce off the video camera strapped to his helmet. Paul was so confident he’d be out in front that he pointed his helmet-cam backwards this year to get video of the people he was beating. That’s pretty bold. Bordering on cocky. And I told him so. I had to tell him using sign language, because I was still out of breath from climbing the hill with my lawnchair racer, which refused to be pulled up the mountain on the T-bar.

Paul's winning sled is in the upper-right. My not-winning sled in the foreground.

Some people might get discouraged when their racing vehicle refuses to be pulled uphill in a straight line—but I designed this thing to go one way. Down. So I saw this as a good sign. I put my racer over my shoulder and marched up the side of that mountain, pausing occasionally to catch my breath in the brisk mountain air and cough out my spleen, two gall stones and I think one of my Achilles tendons. It’s kind of steep.

Strategy is important. You want to line up on the left side because the slope pulls you into the trees on the right. Also you want to be far away from the guy with the kayak that has two skis zip-tied on either side of a 2x4. I got my starting spot on the left, but it was mixed blessings. So did the kayak. I saw that contraption at the bottom of the hill and thought, “That’s an accident waiting to happen.”

Turrentine hit play on “Flight of the Valkyries,” then it was Three, Two, One, Go and the race was on. I shoved off, got up speed and my sled that kept turning downhill when I tried going up now changed it’s mind and veered hard uphill when I thought we were going down.

I looked up to see the kayak coming right for me. Turns out it was an accident waiting to happen. But at least the wait was over.

And I can’t wait for next year’s Fergifest.

Wallowa Lake kokanee

2011-03-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

March on Wallowa Lake. Tire chains were needed on the boat ramp the day before.

Wallowa Lake was breaking records last year like a disgruntled employee at a music store. For a while, Bob Both held the record with his kokanee weighing 8.85 pounds. Then some 9.6-pounder got reeled up from the depths and currently holds the title.

This is Bob Both of Lostine. Kokanee whisperer.

That 9.6 pound fish enjoyed some fame, but now has fallen on hard times and currently works as a celebrity greeter next to the seafood buffet at a casino in Vegas.

The fish pictured below was lucked into by me after I talked Bob into showing me the secrets of kokanee jigging. He did that thing where he's like, 'Well, if I tell you I'll have to kill you,' and I was like, 'Ha ha, OK...' but then he really did give me a savage beating after telling me the secrets of catching kokanne -- I mean, really gave me a thorough working over with a tire iron, kicking me in the ribs and ran over me with his boat trailer a few times but joke's on you, Bob, I survived.

And then we went out fishing and I caught this fish pictured below. The fish enjoyed eating some corn kernels on the barbs of a jig down about 90 feet, then I enjoyed eating the fish with some garlic salt, pepper, fresh lemon, basil and garlic.

A 20-incher. Or, like, a thousand centimeters. Sounds better in metric.

Ice floe we parked next to. Tip: wear longjohns.

Photoshopped evidence of deer swimming a river

2011-03-21T22:13:00.001-07:00

I hauled a nice family from Los Angeles down the Grande Ronde River and as we passed a small island, I pointed out a deer standing in the willows, looking out at us.

'It hasn't been thirty minutes since you grazed...you get out right now.'

'How'd that deer get out there,' the dad asked me.

I waited a little and looked to his young kids in case they wanted to take this one. They didn't volunteer, so I ventured, 'Well, I'm guessing she swam.'

'Impossible. Deer can't swim,' he informed me. 'Their paws are much too small.'

'Hoofs,' his wife corrected him. Not hooves, but hoofs.

'Right, hoofs,' said the dad.

'OK,' I said.

'So how'd it get out there?'

I was all out of theories after the swimming one. But that's before I knew it was impossible for deer to swim with their little tiny hoofs. So I decided she was born there on that tiny island, about thirty feet across a shallow channel from the rest of the world. This seemed to satisfy him. And me. I felt much better.

Then I came across this photographic image recently of what appears to be two deer exiting the same river after I watched them swim it...and I can't explain it. Just can't explain. I'm shaken.

Mark Trail, you got some explaining to do.

Scooby Dooby News

2011-03-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

One of the smartest people I know is Claire. She’s three years old. Take it easy, other people I know, I’m not saying you lack smarts. Claire just has the advantage right now of fresh eyes. Sadly, I’m sure the world will tell her ‘just because’ and ‘that’s the way it is’ enough times that she’ll catch up with the rest of us on buying what’s put before us. But for now her critical thinking skills are uncluttered and she cuts right through the nonsense.

Her latest victory is rejecting clunky attempts to sway her belief system with a childish premise propped up by dubious and contrived circumstantial evidence. She was shown the recent hidden camera footage of NPR executives talking to fake bad guys and failed to see the outrage. OK, no, it was actually reruns of Scooby Doo cartoons. But there are similarities.

Here’s the transcript of Claire’s investigation into popular belief and why society is willing to suspend skepticism when told there is a monster on the loose:

Claire: “Mom, did you know that the monsters in Scooby Doo are just people in costumes?"

Her mom: "Well, they’re pretend monsters so you don't have to be scared about real monsters."

Claire: "So why do people think they’re monsters if they’re always just people in costumes?"

Her mom: "Good point, Claire."

I laughed when my sister told me about Claire rejecting Scooby Doo. I was proud of my three-year-old niece for seeing through the fakery and cooked-up intrigue to find the whole thing silly, even though it was designed specifically to draw her in. Then I felt like an idiot, because I remember being entertained by Scooby Doo. I got off the phone and went back to reading important news from around the world. People saying other people were doing bad things. Those people saying the other people were really the bad ones. Still more people trying to decide who was doing what – and it all started to look a lot like tired episodes of Scooby Doo.

Thankfully Claire’s schedule is pretty open right now, so I can run things by her before forming my own opinions. I don’t know what I’m going to do when she starts kindergarten. I try to call right after nap time when she’s rested to ask about things like collective bargaining, foreign intervention to remove dictators from power and things like that.

I made a handy reference guide to convert complicated matters into Scooby Doo terms. Oil, lucrative contracts and basically anything financial are Scooby snacks. Contested areas or a theater of operation become the haunted mansion. Occasionally Claire will shift her analysis away from the Scooby Doo model and tackle the problem by using a Blue’s Clues approach – so I’ve had to become familiar with another fact-finding cartoon dog to understand her findings.

So far Claire has the jump on political pundits by arriving at the logical conclusion at least two days before adults sift the details of a breaking news story and unmask the monster, which usually turns out to just be a person. I didn’t even finish explaining the NPR hidden camera controversy before she interrupted and said, “Uncle Jon, this is silly.”

The news was just coming over the wires that an NPR executive was resigning amid the fallout of this cartoon episode so I told Claire I had to get off the phone and make a call to NPR headquarters before it was too late to stop this nonsense.

But it was too late. And following the news just isn’t the same anymore. I tried to sit down and absorb the latest scandal today without reaching out and pulling off the cheap mask…and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid. Thanks a lot, Claire. You ruined the news for me. Can I come over and watch Blues Clues instead?

(Wallowa County Chieftain column for March 24, 2011...though in keeping with the Scooby Doo theme, I changed the ending. Claire's mom Jessica pointed out that 'those darn kids' kind of has to be included when there's any mention of Scoob, and she's right.)

You should have seen the septic tank

2011-03-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

A broken toilet seat. Not a burned-out lightbulb. Not a leaky faucet. The seat on the toilet in my house broke.

It’s pretty basic. A lid and a ring on a hinge. Been contemplating the universe from that seat for, oh, I’d say about five years. Nice looking wooden model for that rustic experience while moving things from one place to another.

I didn’t figure on ever replacing that toilet seat. I really thought that was one item you would install and be done with it.

But craftsmanship isn’t what it used to be and the copper tube this seat used for a pin on which the seat would pivot was made from ultra-thin metal. A big copper straw, really. I’m surprised it withstood that many visits, once I saw what we were dealing with.

So I bought a new one that will probably fall apart five years from now and confronted the dilemma of what you do with a broken used toilet seat. It’s a little bit gross, even to be throwing in the trash. So another solution occurred to me. And it gave me the closure I was looking for.

This is what chorizo will do to you.

Aluminum marks the spot

2011-03-09T10:17:00.000-08:00

Chieftain column, March 9 2011

I don’t just pinch pennies. I squeeze those things until Lincoln complains of migraines. People have tried calling me cheap, but I don’t pay attention. I never pay if it can be avoided.

So there are times when I wonder about my attraction to fly fishing. Plopping fake insects in the water can get expensive. I’ve seen fishermen on the river with enough fancy gear to equal my entire earnings for the year. And they see a guy in duct-taped waders with a garage sale flyrod equal in value to the change under their sofa cushions.

So I don’t enjoy losing flies when I’m fishing. That’s two bucks you just left on the river bottom. Lost one the other day. Hooked a steelhead, he came up shaking his head and, snap, broke my leader. Despair.

Fishing guide Tom Farnam told me to stop sobbing. I recovered and hooked a steelhead again twenty minutes later. When this one surfaced, Tom said he believed this was the same fish. Got this one to the bank and removed my fly. Then I got back my other fly that had broken off and was still hooked in his mouth. Tom was right. Same fish. So that’s one way to economize when fly fishing.

The steelhead train from Minam Motel to Rondowa along the Wallowa River isn’t running this year. When I rode the steelhead train last year it had a bunch of happy fishers on it, staying at local hotels and motels and discussing dining options at the LT, TG, Lear’s, Mutiny, Friends, et cetera. I heard plans to bring families back in the summer. I heard the sound of economic stimulus actually working through a unique interaction with Wallowa County just like the train people said it would. Then I heard they stopped running it. Okey-dokey. At least it’s a pretty shade of yellow on those parked rail cars we’re storing. Yep. Sure are pretty.

The good news for steelheaders is that some outdoorsmen have devised a way to make it easier for out-of-county fishermen to find the good fishing spots along the Wallowa River that you can access next to the highway. Most popular fishing spots have been clearly marked. Just look for the cluster of Keystone Light beer cans. Sometimes Coors. Or Bud Light. Mostly Keystone though. This marking system cuts down on the time you might waste scouting for good fishing holes. Also look for remains of warming fires, sometimes with charred Gatorade bottles or half-burned Styrofoam bait containers. It really spiffs up the outdoors. Looks great.

Coors Light used to flow from that culvert before the recession.

Instead of the Adopt-A-Highway system, where volunteers pick up other people’s mess, how about we lift fingerprints off the Keystone Light cans, then call the mother of whoever left the garbage and tell them to get their kid back out there to clean up their mess.

This is like a high school senior portrait, where 18 year-olds
lean on a branch, looking like they're trapped in shrubbery.

I’m not usually concerned with things being spic and span. The floorboards of my truck look like an archaeological dig and it’s time to wash dishes at my house when you can’t balance one more dirty cup on the teetering pile in the sink. But I don’t leave old receipts and junk mail in other people’s rigs and at least offer to do the dishes when I’m at someone else’s house for dinner. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m guessing the same folks leaving garbage on the riverbank wouldn’t be OK with me tossing my trash in their yard. Anglers would start showing up at their house, thinking it must be a good fishing hole.

If these beer cans were made in a pleasing shade of yellow I might not mind so much.

Same fish twice

2011-03-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

True story: broke my line when a steelhead shook its head at me. Lost the fish. Then caught the same fish again twenty minutes later.

This here is the fish.

And this here is the fly he ate the first time.

Full report over at the Gearboat Chronicles site.

Persistence. Let this be a lesson to all of us. And also, let the broken leader also be a lesson about making sure your leader hasn't been banged up on the rocks so bad that it will break if you get a steelhead on. That's also not such a bad lesson.

Possibly the worst way ever to leave this mortal coil

2011-03-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

Aaaaand I'm back.

Hoo. The updates got away from me there for the past . . . what, since August of oh-ten. I believe the idea is to put something on here more frequently than every 8 months.

I was on a black ops mission. Real hush-hush. Didn't have a secure line to update the site and couldn't compromise the mission. But I've managed to elude the border guards in a certain unstable country and smuggle my way out in a container full of toaster ovens. So democracy is safe once again and I can resume the important work of posting here items of great relevance.

So. Where was I. Oh yes. I went back in the photo annals to pick up where I left off and found this dispatch torn from a newspaper that I got from the recycling center as fire-starter for my wood powered hot tub.

Thank the stars this story caught my eye, otherwise you and I would both have missed the -- no. I can't make sport of this. It's tragic. More than that. Horrible. The stuff of nightmares. Except nobody would think up such a thing.

He did not go doing what he loved.

A guy isn't seen for a while. Reported missing. Digging activity in backyard. Man located inside septic tank. Cause of death: accidental drowning.

I mean . . .

"No evidence of foul play," could have taken the day off in this case.

How deep is that septic tank?

That's all I got. I could dwell on this, but would rather not.

Good day.

A Rapid By Any Other Name: Chieftain column 8/11/10

2010-08-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

Here's my Chieftain column from last week...this here photo gives a look at some of the new rock in the river at high water.

And Furthermore
Jon Rombach

That resurfacing job on our highway looks great, if I tilt my head so I can see past the crack in my windshield from all the rocks kicked up during the chipseal project. Ah, well, good roads are important and it stimulates the economy. I’ll be swinging by Mountain View Glass for a quote from Joe and Mandy on just how stimulating a new windshield is going to be.

I got that crack driving to Minam for one last rafting trip down the Grande Ronde before the river gets too shallow. All that rain and snowmelt we had a couple months back blew out tons of rock in the section of river near Barnes Spring and, by golly, Wallowa County and the Grande Ronde River have a brand new rapid. It’s a bouncing baby Class II, I’d say. Has its mothers eyes. I floated over right after it was born, and at high water it just kicks up easy waves. At low water, the Grande Ronde now pools up on the right side, then zags left over the new gravel bar through shallow braided channels. Not difficult to negotiate, just interesting to see a new feature.

This new rapid doesn’t have a name yet …I talked with Dennis the BLM river ranger at the boat launch and we briefly discussed this lack of a name. I casually referred to it as Rombach Rapid just to see what he thought, but he didn’t seem to think much. I’m just worried this rapid is going to be named the obvious ‘Barnes Spring Rapid.’ Booooring. No offense, Barnes. The other rapids would just be picking on Barney his whole life. Martin’s Misery will steal lunch money. Minam Roller will start fights. And The Narrows – well, The Narrows is a Class IV and can be something of a bully. Wears a leather jacket. Moved out and got it’s own apartment in Clarkston. Drives a muscle car. You know the type.

Maybe we can do a write-in campaign to name this thing. Whittle your suggestion onto a piece of driftwood and drop it in the Wallowa River. All entries will float down toward the confluence with the Grande Ronde and some might even make it to this rapid I’m talking about. We’ll have Ranger Dennis check in the springtime and if there’s a name on a stick floating in the eddy, then there we go. If not, we go with ‘Barney Rombach Rapid.’ I’m sure the Geographic Names Board will approve of this method. It sounds almost scientific.

I’m disappointed with myself, though, for not being able to come up with a decent name in this situation. Ever since I was a young boy, my dream job has been to grow up and get paid to think of names for colors of housepaint. You ever pay attention to those? Rustic Tangerine. Misty Floormat. I think the paint industry people cut words out of old 18th century novels and cooking magazines, then spinning all the words inside a Bingo ball cage to draw out unlikely matchings when they need to name a new shade of semi-gloss ... ‘OK, people, here we go … our new version of tan shall be … “Croissant” aaaaand … “Countryside.” Oh yes, that’s lovely. Soon all the breakfast nooks of the world will be graced with the gentle hue of Croissant Countryside.’

Actually, that’s not a bad name for a Class II rapid. I’m going to go carve that on some driftwood right now.

Kesey, Cassady, Kerouac: Chieftain column, July 28, 2010

2010-08-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here's the 'Furthermore' column from the Chieftain from last time around...I don't recall if Fargo ever did get that blue 70's Camaro on the road.

And Furthermore...

Ken Kesey once asked if he could help me. I didn’t know much back then, so I said, Nope, I’m just waiting. Kesey wrote ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ ‘Sometimes A Great Notion’ and helped co-author the 1960’s. The man knew more than others about how certain things work. Or stop working.

He also knew some kid was in his barn, staring at his crazy painted bus. Apparently trespassing. I grew up about five miles from Kesey’s farm, in Pleasant Hill, Oregon. My buddy, Fargo Kesey, bought an old Camaro in high school and asked me to help get it on the road. The Camaro was parked in his uncle Ken’s barn. Fargo was late. And that’s how I had my big conversation with literary heavyweight Ken Kesey: Can I help you? Nope.

Years later, I did have questions. What are the odds that the same man, Neal Cassady, would drive Jack Kerouc’s ‘On the Road’ and other work, which helped drive the Beat Generation … then Cassady ends up behind the wheel of Kesey’s bus, Further, helping to drive another cultural shift. Did Cassady use his turn signals so America could brace itself? Did anyone ever ask Neal if they were there yet? Did Cassady ride the brakes, or use them at all?

‘Kerouac, Kesey, Cassady’ became the title and focus of my final research project in college. It was supposed to be a history paper comparing cultural shifts among the Maori in New Zealand with North American tribes, specifically the Blackfoot Indians. My notes from studying abroad in New Zealand got soaked with saltwater during a sailboat wreck in Hawaii. I took an extension on that final paper. Then another. The University of Montana finally hinted that if I wanted my piece of paper with ‘Diploma’ on it, I’d better send them their paper. Soon.

My copy of Kerouac’s ‘The Dharma Bums’ had more notes written in the margins than what survived after my New Zealand research floated around on the bottom of my ruptured boat, so I wrote all night about cultural shifts America experienced because Neal Cassady learned to operate a clutch. If Ken Kesey had asked, ‘Can I help you?’ during that frenzy, I would have said yes. Get this down to FedEx and overnight it to Missoula, would you, Ken?

Japhy Ryder turns the engine off in ‘Dharma Bums,’ sets the e-brake and takes Kerouac for a walk. Shows him the mountains. Gets Jack interested in Buddhism. Slows him down. Gets him to listen for quiet. It almost seems a yang to the full-throttle yin Kerouac picked up from speeding around with Neal Cassady.

This Japhy Ryder is based on Gary Snyder, Pulitzer prize-winning poet who was here in Wallowa County at the Fishtrap writing conference this month. My favorite moment came during a question-and-answer session when someone in the audience explained they had taken a year-long course studying poetry, and the instructor had asked them to answer this question: What is the poet for? They never found the answer. Could Snyder help?

Snyder’s studied Zen Buddhism, so I prepared myself to not understand his answer. To be honest, I didn’t even understand the question and never really understood poetry. What is the poet for? Snyder took two seconds and cleared it all up with the answer: To write poetry. Next question. No wonder he got the Pulitzer, this guy.

I should have asked Ken Kesey what his bus was for when I had the chance.

Slight Chance of Rainbows

2010-07-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

What the hail? Wallowa County has been getting slapped with sudden thunder and lightning spurts this week, sometimes with hailstones, often with ripping wind....

These here shots were at the lake yesterday and that monster of a cloud was building quick.

You have to peel your eyes, but there's a chunk of rainbow under the base of the cloud in that upper photo.

Got home and talked to Mom Rombach, who described an identical cloud forming out from her backyard over in Washington State. We think it was the same one, though can't explain the atmospheric anamoly that had it appear in both places at once. Please investigate, Bureau of Clouds.

Bigfoot and Butterflies

2010-07-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

‘Where Bigfoot Walks’ is a sturdy title so I pulled that book off the shelf when I was staying in a cabin down in Troy, Oregon between the Wenaha and Grande Ronde rivers earlier this year.

Robert Pyle is the author. He’s a butterfly guru and got on the trail of Bigfoot between netting mariposas. Met him out at the Fishtrap Billy Meadows writing workshop last week and it’s a good thing when you can look into the eyes of whoever typed out some words you’ve processed with your own eyes. Office newsletter, classified ad, whatever. Things make more sense once you put the writer and message together.
So. He’s a helluva guy to walk with through a field full of wildflowers and butterflies. I can vouch for that one. New book, ‘Mariposa Road’ hitting bookstores soon.

Here’s some pictorials from an afternoon at Buckhorn Lookout, perched over Imnaha Canyon.

Grande Ronde N-N-N-Narrows

2010-05-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

The lower stretch of the Grande Ronde is miles and miles of gentle flow, then boom, a Class IV. The Narrows. The river gets squeezed on a tight left turn and water interacts with basalt in some interesting ways.

I know one rower who got catapaulted from their boat, right behind their dog which took flight first. There’s a cross on the bank where you stand to scout the rapid, and that tends to add to your concentration.

Morgan and I were shuttling Graning Weed Control through the lower corridor, stopping to spritz noxious weeds with growth inhibitor.

And there were a couple bear sightings, which is always interesting. One of them more than usual. Details here
in the Wallowa County Chieftain report I typed up.

So we take a look at the Narrows this time and the usual left-side sneak is not so sneaky. It wants to push you right into a frothing hole that’s not so inviting. Next option is to dodge some upstream rocks and run right over a shelf of rock that’s got enough water to form a miniature one-foot waterfall-like feature…but we settle on a compromise and decide to just clip the edge of this shelf and squirt down the center, dodging a somewhat menacing rock that’s cutting through the water.

As Morgan is going through fifty yards in front of me, he passes that rock and stands up to wave me further right. OK. I adjust further right. Now I’ll be going over the shelf.

He waves right some more. Right, right, right. OK, I pivot in the relatively slack water above the rapid and move right.

Now Morgan and his passenger are both directing me right and I head for the far side.

Getting closer to game time. Point of no return. I’ll be sliding over that drop in thirty seconds. Water is picking up speed.

Then we stop.

I’d been looking ahead for the best tongue of water to slip over and came to rest on a barely submerged rock, lurking just below the surface.

And there I sat.

Well allrighty. This gave me plenty of time to study the situation and the results were that I was probably going to be running this rapid backwards once I spun the boat off the rock. Swell.

We adjusted the seating arrangement so Jake moved to the back of the boat and Chance bounced up and down while I wrestled with my left oar to spin us off.

Didn’t even have to run the Narrows backwards, which was handy. Down below, Morgan and Bill described that fin rock as much sharper and menacing up close than it looked from the bank. A potential boat ripper they figured called for as much distance as possible.

So that’s my new Narrows strategy. Park on a rock to get a look at things right above the technical stuff and you get a much better perspective that way.

We got home, had just enough time for a laundry scurry and headed back out for a Hells Canyon expedition with high school students from Hood River. River season is moving right along with a few calm moments in between trips. A lot like parking your raft on a rock to look ahead and see what’s coming.

This Week in Raspberries

2010-05-06T09:40:00.000-07:00

Elsewhere on the internets this week, the Gearboat Chronicles gives a rundown on our Hells Canyon rafting trip last week, surveying for a rare shrubbery that snubs the rest of the globe and chooses only to reside along Snake River in the HC. Click here for that. Or use that link on right side of this page, lazybones.

The Chieftain column -- you better sit down for this -- involves a bush in Hells Canyon we went looking for last week. I tried to mix it up a little bit, but there's an outside chance of the weeist bit of overlap. Ah, but it's about thornless raspberries. And who doesn't like raspberries.

Snowed all day yesterday and here it is Seis de Mayo with the woodstove cranked, snow on the ground and more of it 60% likely to fall yet today.

Cat Creek Bat Room in Hells Canyon

2010-05-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

Floated Hells Canyon last week and pulled over at Cat Creek, which I'd never stopped at before.

Jordan Manley was telling me about a room in the house where bats holed up and, by golly he was right. I guess. I somehow assumed bat guano would be white. No reason, I just figured it that way. But the floor in there was piled up with blackish looking stuff and while I'd never smelled bat poo before, I'd say that's what it smelled like.

Jordan says he's seen bats pouring out of there and we did see a robin nearby, up in a walnut tree branch. So I'm fairly sure there's some crimefighting going on in Hells Canyon based out of that old house.

One Mississi…Holy $#!%

2010-04-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

Taking pictures of lightning is harder than you think.

The gods were bumper-bowling the other night, just hurling shots one after the other without waiting for the rack thing to come down and reset the pins up in the mountains. Must have been dollar beer night. I mean, it was something to behold. Whole valley lit up. Great big zig-zag bolts. My dog peed her pants. Actually they were my pants, I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing wearing my stuff.

So I thought if I’m ever going to get a lightning bolt picture, it’s now. Set the tripod up and took several million frames but the closest I got was this sort of whitishly lit-up sky photo. Really, there was an impressive bolt right there, just a second before.

On a sidenote: trying to hold a phone conversation when someone’s trying to take pictures of lightning is a bad time. Here’s a transcript:

“Hey, how’s it…O my god…

Sorry. There’s a lightning storm going on and…whoooooooaaaahhhhhh……

What’ve you been up to?…juh-eeezeeus…did you hear that? Man.

Yeah, I’m trying to….seriously, this is….you should….”

And then more of that, until your friend kindly suggests they should let you go.

Lawn care

2010-03-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Planted fireweed in the lawn this year and it seems to be taking off pretty well.

Mowing is going to be exciting this summer. I’ll have to wear my asbestos shorts.

The Giving Away Tree has a special this week on electric ranges

2010-03-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

A gas leak blew the knobs off the last propane stove I had in my kitchen. The mini explosion also lifted the rings off the burners and caused ringing in my ears. Too bad, since it was an ultra-cool appliance from the 50’s. I hated to take it to the scrap pile in the sky but blowing up is a feature I decided just wasn’t worth it.

So I’ve been using a free stove I loaded up from some stranger’s driveway. It wasn’t pretty, but worked. Now I have a pretty one again. New. Snazzy. And the free stove is going back into the universe from whence it came. Thanks, free stove, for your service. You heated water and baked things with the best of them. Now you can continue to roam the earth, preparing meals for other people. Godspeed.

So I’ve plopped the old one under the spruce tree at the end of my driveway. The giving tree, I’ll call it from now on. Or the giving away tree, I guess. Swing by and load the thing up. The price is firm and no matter how hard you haggle with me, I will not budge from free. Because, frankly, I don’t want to help load it up. You’re on your own there. Please, no need to come to the house. Free is free. Enjoy it, whoever you are.

Portrait of me with an underwater person

2010-03-11T11:53:00.001-08:00

And here we have photographic proof that I am the finest fisherman in all the world.

I caught this one with my hands and got all Mr. Miyagi because normal fishing tactics make me yawn. That flyrod in the background was left lying on the bank by some random dude. I don’t know what his deal was.

Even I Can Catch Fish. Sometimes.

2010-03-08T15:28:00.001-08:00

Pursuing steelhead really isn’t my bag. I don’t care for being cold and have a short attention span. Also I’m not a very good fisherman. So. There’s that.

However. Yesterday on the Wallowa River these things didn’t matter. The sun came up, I couldn’t help but catch fish and it was an everlovin’ blast.

Caught six. Two males and four wild females. Broke two more off. Lost track of how many whitefish I caught. A bonanza.

Didn’t start out that way. Note the ice buildup on the guides of my fly rod. And you can’t see it in the photo, but my feet were not working at the time, having iced over from wading in thirty-six degree water.

Gearboat Chronicles has a few more shots and details about riding the fish train. Met a state senator on board and also a guy who runs a blog for Field & Stream. More on that later.

Don’t make me buy this boat. I’ll do it. I swear.

2010-03-01T22:08:00.000-08:00

I’m getting a full-blown boatyard. First the sweet Star Craft I grew up being towed behind, water funneled into my nose trying to get up on water skis. Then I got custody of dad’s old cataraft, which was traded for a 26-foot sailboat…in perhaps the sweetest deal to ever grace a bill of sale.

And now I’m presented with this little number. The mermaid does not come with it. Nor the pile of sand. But it’s a cute rapscallion of a watercraft and belongs to a friend who wants it to belong to someone else. I think that someone else might be me.

I will have the first boatyard in landlocked northeast Oregon, or go broke trying.

Updates: subject of this week’s Chieftain column is Chuck Fraser’s tie from the Thrift Store Formal. Read all about it by depressing the mouse feature above that link to your right.

Further update: I am drinking water in the photo to be found at this week’s Gearboat Chronicles. Not beer, as has been suggested. I was on driving duty. That’s tap water. And I normally wouldn’t put a picture of myself on there like that, were it not for that jacket. Sakes alive, I’m proud of that coat and cannot deny the world a look at it too.

Sportsmen's? Really?

2010-02-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

Spent some time with Winding Waters at the Portland Sportsmen’s Show. I’ve gone to this with my pappy quite a bit over the years, and we’ve always called it the Outdoor Show. Everybody I know calls it the Outdoor Show. Probably because “Sportsmen’s” sounds stupid.

I didn’t consult Strunk & White on this, because I quit checking with those guys years ago. I punctuate, conjugate and hyphenate however I damn well please and it’s a system that works really well for me.

But it bothers me when other people throw apostrophes around haphazard. Even if they're technically correct, if it looks clunky, there's other words out there. And they're free. Take them for a test drive.

Sportsmen’s looks double-plural to me. It’s not, and I see it’s suggesting this show belongs to the sportsmens, but have you ever in your life deployed the term ‘sportsmen’ when talking? You have not, unless you’re the coordinator of a large trade show catering to outdoorsmen, which is also a word not often used, but slightly better than sportsmen’s.

So the sportsmens cruised around the Expo Center, investigating the many outdoorsmens activities while businessmens sold trips and equipments to their customers’s and I met some nice folks’s and we talked about rafting trips’s and, all in all, I had some good experiences’s.

If this insight into sportsmens and outdoorsmens hasn't satisfied your burning curiosity about trade shows, my Chieftain column this week and the Gearboat Chronicles are what you're looking for.

Pile of Sheetrock

2010-02-01T21:35:00.000-08:00

Two photos for comparison. In the one, you have a landscape/still life depicting the crooked stove pipe on my writing shack with the Buick parked next. But notice the landscape part. Blue sky. Snowy mountains. Crisp air. They’re actually filming a Ricola ad far in the distance.

Other picture is the nineteenth circle of Hades. Sheetrock. My current gypsum board to bear. Been catching up with a lot of sheetrocking in the upstairs of Rombach mansion. It’s long overdue. And it’s hot up in that attic. And sheetrock makes me angry.

And whilst I think my log cabin is peachy, there is not a straight plane, nor plumb or true line in the place. And so then I start throwing things. And inanimate objects get yelled at. And noone likes that.

I know a guy who was working in Portland in the sheetrock trade and he was receiving just indecent amounts of money for his efforts. It was a union gig and with the benefits package and all, he was right below Sri Lanka for annual income. I was appalled.

Now I just want to hire him. Here’s a fun game. See if you can spot how many different ways I did something wrong in this one picture. Ah, but that’s what joint compound is for, no? The texture on here is going to be four inches thick when I’m done.

Link to Haiti Links

2010-01-22T17:06:00.000-08:00

I suppose most folks have chipped in for Haiti efforts by now, but if by chance you were waiting or feel like adding more chips, the Gearboat Chronicles this week has agencies recommended by a local guy out here who's wise in the ways of how things work, or don't, in some cases, in that part of the world. He's recommended organizations and I recommended his recommendations. Read all about it here.

Meanwhile, lay your eyes on this lovely portrait of the old pickup, Betty Ford, looking fetching in morning light. She's a striking old gal.

Abracadabra & A Blizzard of Stars

2010-01-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

With apologies to Art Linkletter and William Cosby, I find myself passing along things kids say.

My wee niece Claire (pictured here in superheroine cape...it's blurry because she's moving so fast. She's a superhero.) says ‘Abracadabra’ when asked what the magic word is. I plopped that in my last Chieftain column, so I’m going with the short version here. But I must point out that not only is that off the cute charts, it’s absolutely accurate and I thank her for straightening me out after all this time. ‘Please’ isn’t even close to the magic word and I just hope I’m not so old that I’ll never be asked again what the magic word is, because I cannot wait to lay an Abracadabra on someone. I’ve been trying to instigate this by being rude lately, but so far no dice.

So I saw a friend who saw the Abracadabra thing and she passed this one on…

It’s a cold, frosty morning. Real cold. Real frosty. My friend’s granddaughter is taken outside by her grandpa and they take in this expanse of glittering sparkles of ice as the sun is coming up.

“Grandpa,” she says, “it’s a blizzard of stars…”

Man, I wish I could come up with that. It’s too bad we learn to talk right.

Buenas Dias, Wallowas

2010-01-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

A lot of mornings, I go for the two-course breakfast of a cup of coffee and a look around. Some mornings them mountains out beyond my back yard look awfully purty. Now and then, they’re fetching enough that I go get my camera.

And in the interest of supporting Wallowa County tourism, I’ve widened the angle on these morning shots to include our new scenic attractions. Those rail cars there.

WC has relied on tourism for some years now, dangling the landscape out there to entice people to come take a look and spend a few bucks. Then we made it even better by storing rail cars. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

There has been talk of putting together a scenic rail cars of Wallowa County calendar, and I’m no fancy photographer, but you can get a sense of how majestic it will be by my snapshots here.

Use your turn signals, Claire...

2010-01-08T21:40:00.000-08:00

My niece Claire is only two and a halfish years old but already knows how to drive. And not just little regular cars either -- look at the steering wheel on that thing. It's like a tugboat. She's not even in kindergarten and already has her CDL.

The real little one is Anna. She’s like 5 minutes old. They didn’t let babies into the place we were at, so her mom had to disguise her as a woodland creature.

The other two ladies are my sister, Jessica, and Ma Rombach.

Claire’s driving them to ‘the pumpkin patch,’ she said. Little holdover from Halloween.

The Path to the Rose Bowl...and a mysterious government facility

2010-01-01T12:42:00.000-08:00

I’m writing this just hours before kickoff of the Rose Bowl game. I might wish the Ducks good luck, except my family are staunch Oregon State supporters and would drive me from the family estate with hurled stones if they caught wind of me aiding or abetting any U of O activities. So you’re on your own, Ducks.

You always hear what a big deal it is to get to the Rose Bowl, but I was just there a week ago or so, and I have to say, it’s really not that hard. I wasn’t even trying.

I was driving the Winnebago north for Christmas, towing my Toyota truck, so that makes me roughly 50 feet long, considering 29-feet of Winnebago, plus the truck and tow bar. And that’s a lot of long when you’re merging over to make your exit in traffic. And if I ever catch the son of a witch who pushed me off my exit, forcing me south toward Los Angeles, I fear for him. I do. I would recognize those headlights anywhere. And there are many, many tortures I wish to visit upon you, you dog.

So anyway, there I was in the holiday spirit, asking Santa to let me apply a crowbar to every joint belonging to that jackass driver who, in retrospect, I should have just side-swiped and laughed while watching his car burn in my rearview mirror . . . but I took the first exit to double back and get another shot at my onramp.

Took a right. And another. Then wondered why there were bleachers facing the street I was on. Lots of bleachers facing the street. Odd. Until I saw “Parade Route” signs and remembered I was in Pasadena.

Then I ended up in the parking lot of the Rose Bowl. And took that picture you see here.

Later, I would ask directions from a lady walking her dog on how the hell to get out of here, and she told me, and I quote: “Oh, it’s not hard at all. Go up here, take a right at the first electric stoplight, and it’ll put you on the freeway.”

Electric stoplight? As opposed to, say, candle power? I didn’t get that, but followed her directions and went for miles through neighborhoods, finally saw a discrete sign promising the freeway, then all hell broke loose.

I thought I was rolling up to an onramp, but then it looked like one of those inspection stations where they ask if you have any live plants in your car.

But it was a security checkpoint, with guard booths, and a man ran out waving his flashlight at me, ordering me to stop. Here, then, is a transcript of our chat:

“Back that thing out of here, this is a government facility…”

“I’m just looking for the freeway.”

“Well, you missed it, it’s two streets back. Turn that thing around and get it out of here.”

Turning a Winnebago around with two lanes of room is not possible unless you have a helicopter or a crane. He wouldn’t let me go through his gate to turn around and I was sworn to never, ever, try backing up with a car on a tow bar behind a Minnie Winnie. The tow bar manual was adamant about this. Something to do with automatic, cataclysmic jack-knifing of the vehicle, the seas boiling and the sky raining blood.

“I can’t back it up.”

He didn’t believe me. People were going by flashing their security clearance and he was waving them through while losing his shit.

I explained I could unhook the truck and then turn the Winnebago around Austin Powers-style, pulling a little bit forward, a little bit back, until I heaved her around.

“O boy, what a mess . . . what a mess . . . if an emergency happens and you’re plugging up the entrance, I’ll . . . O boy, what a mess . . .”

It occurred to me then that this resembled a not-very-good action movie where I was supposed to gain entrance to a government facility by pulling up in a motor home, playing the rube and regrettably insisting I must get past the gate to turn around, thereby fooling the security guard and somehow stealing top secret information or plans to a rocket.

He’d seen the same movie and wouldn’t let me near the gate. I was, in fact, a rube who was insisting I couldn’t turn around without going past his gate first, and thankfully I didn’t get tasered and he seemed to believe I was just a dumbass who missed the freeway onramp, not a threat to national security.

So I set a world record for unhooking a Toyota Tacoma, doing four burnouts in a Winnebago to turn it around in a tight space, then re-hooking a Toyota and getting the hell out of there.

And that was my evening in Pasadena. Hope it goes better for you, Ducks.

Two if by sea

2009-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

My eyes have not seen many things cooler than what you see here.

Parked out in the desert by the entrance to Slab City at the time mine eyes beheld its glory, the busboat has it’s home port in Idaho. They tried to launch in Mexico, but ran into a storm of paperwork.

The skipper’s name could be Mike. That’s what the patch said on the blue overalls he was wearing. Then again, that just might be what the patch had to say.

They were running low on water. They carried Idaho hotsprings water with them to drink, and it was getting down there. Plus, all the border hassle. And they want to get home for Christmas. So they were on their way north to regroup.

Got it on there with a crane and were hoping to get it off with the lift at San Felipe, the only boat mover in the region on that side of Baja.

Or, he said, maybe they’d just back the whole thing into the water, let the boat float and the bus sink. But he was kidding. I think.

Salvation Mountain

2009-12-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

I had another landmark conversation. Went like this: “Slab City? You don’t want to go there…it’s full of hippies and religious wackos…unless maybe that’s what you are.”

“Sir, I don’t care for your tone,” I told him. I was talking to a couple of duck hunters in the parking lot of a wildlife area.

I saw the Salton Sea on the map after I fled that godforsaken parking lot I had been sitting in for three days…looked online and found Slab City and Salvation Mountain. It’s described as a mecca for RV people and bursting with character. So I headed there.

But it was dark. I wasn’t sure where I was going, and overshot my turn by four miles once I found a patch of earth big enough to turn this aircraft carrier around.

Pulled off next to a hunter’s check station and walked to a brightly lit camp trailer, strung with Christmas lights. It looks occupied, but isn’t. The two duck hunters drive up, father and son. Dressed in full camo with the back of their truck filled with decoys.

They warn me off of Slab City and say, “Hell, you can come sit around our campfire if you want. You wouldn’t catch me going to that Slab City, nuh-uh…that’s where that missing girl last week was missing.”

I’m not clear on the missing girl…whether she was missed from there, found there…turns out it’s both. I look it up later and find that a young woman had been hanging out at Slab City, left there, her car broke down, she got a ride back to Slab City and then heard her car had been found and she was presumed missing. She called the sheriff to de-miss-tify herself. Case closed.

I thanked the duck hunters for their kind offer, spent the night in a parking lot marked out with firehose lines, then backtracked in the morning to Niland, California, took a left and went three miles to see Salvation Mountain and Slab City.

It’s a decommissioned military base, buildings torn down leaving concrete slabs that RVers like to park on, thus the name.

Salvation Mountain is a brightly painted folk art-looking religious monument created by Leonard Knight. You may remember Leonard, his mountain and Slab City from seeing them in the movie, ‘Into the Wild.’ Chris McCandless hung out here.

Well, the duck hunters are missing out. This place is more intriguing than anywhere I’ve been in a while and it turns out people really do find salvation at Salvation Mountain.

More on that later.

Stay between the lines

2009-12-15T07:39:00.000-08:00

Notice, if you will, what these parking lot lines are composed of.

What you see there are old fire hoses. Smaller than fire department hoses, but of a size I’ve seen used for wildland firefighting.

Reducing, Reusing and Recycling is a good thing. I’m all for it.

But nailing fire hose into asphalt instead of painting lines? I just…it seems…never mind.

Masterpiece Conversation Theater

2009-12-14T06:50:00.000-08:00

Spent three days in a parking lot. Waiting. Looking at the road atlas. Checking email. Calling back. Waiting for calls. Trying to arrange for a new owner to feel the love of the Minnie Winnie. But the title is still in Salem, Oregon, holding me up.

It’s been ‘processed.’ They cashed my check. But it takes five business days, I’m told, to be mailed. Of course. You don’t just throw something in the mail, all willy-nilly, when it’s ready to be mailed…you naturally wait – what? C’mon, DMV, get in the game.

So I sat in a parking lot. A strategic parking lot. Right next to Yuma. Free. Close to the Mexican border with bargains on hot sauce and off-brand dental care.

Met my neighbor, one motor home over. Nice guy. Likes to walk around a lot. Especially in the middle of the night, when he can’t sleep. Says that’s been an issue in the past when they stayed at the RV park adjacent to the border crossing, what with border patrol in their guard towers wanting to shoot him at 3 am and all.

He has sudden, extreme and aggressive hand gestures that don’t usually match what they’re illustrating. He’s a retired electrician, so he’ll be telling you about a broken neutral wire, then his hands fly out, abruptly – like they’re pantomiming a plane crash or the collision of subatomic particles on a grand scale – really fierce sweeping and jutting of the hands and arms. It looks like he’s fighting angry bees.

But he’s still telling you about one time when he put an electrical connection where somebody thought he wasn’t supposed to, but it turned out he was right and he could put it there after all. But with angry bee hand gestures.

So my favorite conversation was this one. We’re standing in that parking lot I hope I never see again, where RVs and longhaul truckers have been staying.

A semi truck pulls out. My associate comments on how that guy sure is loaded down.

Then this:

“Boy, those truckers…they sure do come and go a lot.”

I wish I did have to fend off a swarm of bees right then, just to distract myself from having to reply to that. I’m all for chit-chat, but it’s give and take, mister. You can’t say “truckers come and go a lot,” and look at me for reaction. That’s more of a definition than a statement. It’s not fair.

So I say, “And they’re always carrying stuff,” which isn’t true. Sometimes they’re empty, on their way to getting full to carry more stuff and keep on coming and going.

Not long after that I caught Bula banging her head against the Winnebago because she was so bored. I agreed. We got out of there and I’m now close to Slab City, a decommissioned military facility near the Salton Sea, home to a bunch of RVers out squatting on the concrete pads left behind.

All those people coming and going.

3,780 milliliters of Hot Castle Love

2009-12-12T10:50:00.001-08:00

I’m set for life in the hot sauce department. Yessir, got me 3,780 milliliters of salsa picante.

I crossed the border into Algodones the other day to check out the dentist scene. There are forty-some clinics in four blocks and I have a chipped tooth I wanted to have looked at.

That first day I was just looking around, had a free exam and got some quotes, but crossed back over the border without having purchased anything.

The rest of the Americans and Canadians coming back had bags and bags of prescription medication, bottles of pure vanilla, which is a big deal here for some reason…liters of tequila, big huge souvenir sombreros and knock-off brand whatever.

The border guy looked at my passport, then asked what I was bringing back.

“Nothing,” I said.

He looked at my passport again, then asked me to step around the counter and empty my pockets.

“You went to Mexico for nothing?...what have you got in that pocket? And that one…put it all on the table…” Then he signaled to another border control officer to come over and help send me to prison.

“I have a chipped tooth,” I blurted out. “It’s in the back…it’s a molar.”

“Oh. A dental appointment. Why didn’t you say so? Welcome back. Have a nice day…Next.”

So the next time I crossed over into Algodones, it seemed in my best interest to buy something. And that’s when I found the mother of all hot sauce bottles. I haven’t tried this Castillo Amor brand, but I’m guessing it’s not very bueno.

Unless I’m mistaken, “Castillo Amor” translates as: “Castle Love,” which would also work for the title of a medieval romance novel.

It cost me four whole dollars, or 52 pesos, for this barrel of picante, and I love the fact that I now have enough hot sauce to invite several thousand people over for taco night.

The border guard took a look, said, “That is one big bottle of hot sauce,” then waved me right through.

You'll never get me to talk...OK, I'll talk

2009-12-12T10:26:00.001-08:00

Any fool knows you try to make a good impression with a person about to stick a dental drill in your mouth. I’ve violated this basic rule twice in my life.

I used to have medical insurance, back when Oregon provided such a thing. You had to swear allegiance to the socialist party, naturally, but it was nice to have the option. Only certain dentists accepted this insurance, and I switched my plan to a new dentist who had the magazine ‘Wooden Boat’ in their waiting room. A friend suggested I’d like that better than reading copies of Good Housekeeping that were several years out, and I agreed.

But the Wooden Boat dentist dropped my plan, I got a sudden toothache and ended up in the chair of my original dentist. Just…I mean, just as he was leaning in to apply the drill, the receptionist bolted into the room, saying, ‘Stop…stop…I checked his policy and he switched to another dentist…’

Uncomfortable silence. The drill wound down and got quiet. The only sound was my saliva being sucked through the vacuum tube. Masked faces looked down at me. I tried to explain, with the tube still in my mouth, but “Wooden Boat magazine,” came out sounding like no language at all.

Bless him, this dentist, he said, ‘That’s OK, we’ve already started so we’ll sort it out later.’ And he was very gentle and it did get sorted out. I probably would have gone for a nerve if I was him, just as a lesson in loyalty.

Yesterday, I was in Algodones, Mexico. The name translates as: “where half of Canada and the U.S. go for dental work.” It’s a small border town, chock full of pharmacies and dentists. A porcelein crown runs about $800 to $1000 bucks in the states. Algodones $180 to $200.

I was just getting my teeth cleaned and a checkup, and right before we got started, the nice lady asked if I’d been down here long. “Oh, a couple of weeks. Traveling around.”

“Really? Where have you been traveling in Mexico?”

“Oh, no. Arizona.”

She laughed. Shook her head. Obviously not impressed with my gringo-centric lack of basic geography. Then she increased the rpm’s on the drill and said, “Open, please.”

You could hit the U.S. with a rock from the front door of her clinic. Not even a big rock. So I didn’t think it was entirely fair that I was about to have my nerve endings Dremeled for implying that forty feet inside of Mexico was the same as Arizona.

I tried to explain, but the assistant stuck the saliva vacuum in my mouth and the drill was revved.

She was also very kind and didn’t torture me. Which is good, because I would have told her everything.

...ssssshhhhhh....

2009-12-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

There are two churches that made especially large deposits in my memory banks. Notre Dame, because the gargoyles were so freaky and also because, you know, it’s Notre Dame. And this one. In Sedona, Arizona. I came here with my folks years ago after we dropped my little sister and her stuff off at college in New Mexico.

Impressive, this Sedona chapel.

Back to Paris though. I got kicked out of the plaza in back of Notre Dame for taking a nap. I’d been inside, lit a candle and was taking everything in when a voice came over the loudspeakers inside.

Now, a disembodied voice in the house of the Lord automatically makes you pay attention, even if you can hear the static from what is obviously a PA system.

This voice said, and I quote: “…sssssshhhhhhh…sssssshhhhhhhh….”

It was a priest, or somebody, shushing everybody inside. And to be sure, there was some chitter chatter going on, and Notre Dame isn’t your standard tourist attraction. But the shushing went on for some time and it was, I don’t know, it wasn’t enhancing the experience.

So I went outside and sat on a bench in the sun, and it was warm and I was glad I was in Paris and next thing I know I’m being kicked in the shin by a gendarme, or whatever cops are called in France. I had nodded off in the sunbeam and miraculously hadn’t been robbed while I slept, I’m sure because of the refuge clause on church property. But I had to go.

I apologized and made a show of rubbing my eyes and making American hand gestures to make it clear that sort of nonsense wouldn’t happen again. I wasn’t done enjoying Notre Dame, and promised I wouldn’t nod off again. But I had to go. “Non,” he kept saying, pointing his nightstick at me, then the exit. I tried to reason with him using my limited French, replying, “…sssshhhhhh…ssssshhhhhhh….” but he wasn’t buying it. I was cast out from my bench in the sunbeam, gargoyles on the end of their gutters watching me leave.

Painted Rocks

2009-12-10T06:57:00.001-08:00

I’m not the only one who confuses petroglyphs and pictographs, apparently. The state of Arizona identifies this site as Painted Rocks, which, as you can see in exhibits A and B, have been chipped into stone. Not painted.

But I’ll allow for there having been paintings here. Maybe I don’t have the full story.

It’s impressive. A jumble of boulders just covered with designs. It seems the location is way out in the middle of nowhere, but the Gila River is right handy and this spot has been a corridor for travel since way back, according to a friendly interpretive sign that told me so.

Some of the graffiti is not so old, like 1924 and some from the 1800’s. Wagon train teenagers sneaking off to do graffiti, no doubt.

If there had been additions dated since, oh, say the 1970s, or 60s, or 50s, I would feel obliged to track down the owners of the initials and have a stern talk with them. And by stern talk, I mean break their knees with a baseball bat.

I just am not OK with messing with history. You just don’t wade into a fountain over in Italy, climb up and chip a tattoo onto a marble sculpture. Or go back and dub orchestra music onto the original recordings of Lynard Skynard albums. And you don’t chip or paint or scratch on or over or nearby a picto- petro- or any other kind of glyph.

Some folks do. And I wish it would stop. Because it takes a lot of time, tracking you down and beating you with a bat. I’ve got other things to do, people. Please.

I’m so thirsty

2009-12-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

This is marketing genius. Not only are they selling water in the desert, which is hard to beat for a location in that line of business...but they also give you free salt first. It's like complimentary pretzels in a bar, but better. I plan to invest in this company.

Alien art forms

2009-12-06T08:08:00.001-08:00

I didn’t know extraterrestrial artwork was even a genre. But I saw two paintings in one day here in Sedona, which you see here.

I don’t need to see anymore, because I’m quite sure I have now seen the best and the worst of this field.

The “Survivor” painting wins two ribbons. One for worst painting I have ever seen, ever, for many reasons. And that’s saying a lot. Also it wins best in its class for worst alien study. I mean…really? A dramatic, poorly-foreshortened rendering of Roswell? You can just feel the anxiety captured here. The gravity of the moment put down on canvas, freeze-framing the calm before the frenzied storm of self-published books detailing their conspiracy theories.

But, hey, I like the warm hues and jaunty feel of the reclining alien cowboy. That one’s a keeper.

They’re Here

2009-12-06T07:54:00.001-08:00

Sedona is known for its power spots and vortexes, where the earth’s magnetic fields converge to create unusually high concentrations of souvenir stands, casting visible auras of t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, bumper stickers and crappy jewelry.

Damien lives up in Flagstaff and comes down here on climbing trips. He told me where his favorite camping spot is, and how they usually have it all to themselves. Except one time, when he drove out there and saw the area jammed with vehicles. He asked someone what was going on and they answered, “Aren’t you here for the UFO landing? They’re coming tonight. Right here.”

I present to you the image of a lenticular cloud, taken yesterday over the vicinity of Sedona…and also another image, taken with a zoom lens, that may suggest otherwise.

Tour de Slo-Mo

2009-12-05T11:09:00.001-08:00

Took Bula on a stroll this morning. Gravel road went uphill, downhill, back up, then down and we came upon an older gentleman pushing his mountain bike up the grade.

“Pretty steep,” I say.

“It’s not too bad,” is his reply and I let that go, because I respect my elders and don’t point out that rarely do bikes get pushed up hills that aren’t too bad.

We chat. He asks where the dog and I are from. I tell him. He says Oregon is beautiful. I say Arizona is beautiful and we both nod and that kind of exhausts our things to talk about.

“Well,” he says, getting back astride his bike. “I guess I’ll be pushing on.”

“Have a nice ride.”

He’s got the bike in the lowest of low gears, the one where you make 48 revolutions with the crank for every inch of forward travel. So Bula and I are walking at the same speed, even a tiny bit faster, because he’s fighting the hill that’s not too bad.

“Nice talking to you,” I say, because it’s a little awkward to be right next to someone who said they’ll be pushing on a minute ago, and they’re still right beside you.

He nods, but keeps his head down and churns the pedals.

There’s a slight squeaking from his chain, plus the sound of tires and footsteps and pawsteps on gravel. Other than that, I walk and he rides and we’re exactly side-by-side.

“Man, I’m walking really fast,” I say, to ease the situation. He shifts up a gear, but it’s too much, then shifts back.

I reduce my pace, but then I’m just walking five steps behind him and it feels like we’re in a chase scene from the tortoise and the hare.

Finally I just stop. Bula had been looking from me to the guy, then back at me with ‘what the hell?’ stitched in her eyebrows. I signaled back: ‘I don’t…know.’

Mercifully, he crested the top and got on a downslope. Otherwise we’d still be out there.

A word about the word “boondocking,” which shouldn't be a word

2009-12-05T08:06:00.001-08:00

I have scratched the underbelly of the RVing society and encountered some things I don’t much like. The gas mileage of the Minnie Winnie, for one.

And the term “boondocking” I have a hard time with. This is when you stay in your RV somewhere that’s not an RV park, so you’re not hooked up to water, power and sewage.

But self-contained RVs have a water tank, a sewage holding tank, and the Minnie Winnie has a generator for power. You can pay twenty, thirty, forty, fifty bucks to stay in an RV park, and sure, some have swimming pools, laundry facilities and the like. I can see doing that occasionally to empty your tanks, wash your clothes, refill your water and charge your batteries. But all the time?

That’s like buying an espresso machine so you can make your own coffee, then driving it to a coffee shop and paying them to plug in your coffee maker so you can have coffee from your own machine. I just don’t get it.

Plus, most RV places I’ve seen pack you in next to other RVers and, well, I’d rather “boondock,” except I can’t stand to use that phrase in the context it’s been given.

Boondocks is a fine term. Means out in the boonies. The sticks. Hinterland. Originally “bundoc” in Tagalog, adopted by WWII GI’s who heard it used in the Philippines, where it means “mountain.”

So it’s a noun. But RV folks have turned it into a verb, where you’re boondocking, or you boondocked, or if you want to boondock, you can stay in the WalMart parking lot, or behind the Applebees restaurant.

“WalMart parking lot” and “boondock,” in any form, should never, ever, be seen or heard in the same sentence. Except the one you just read.

It’s called “freedom camping” in New Zealand, according to my source Damien Seuss, who toured around NZ for six months in “Teeny-Tiny,” the 16-foot RV his family of four stayed in.

And then there’s the movie “Boondock Saints.” It takes place in the city. I don’t understand.

Bushwacking is what I kept calling it by mistake when I began Operation Minnie Winnie. Though you can’t really get off the beaten path in an RV, so that’s not accurate either. Matter of fact, you can barely travel a washboarded dirt path in an RV, for fear your molars will rattle from your head.

“Dry camping” is an alternative phrase I’ve heard. Which is pretty dry, but makes more sense than boondocking.

OK, I’m done. That’s been bothering me for some time. You can go back to what you were doing now.

And that photo up there was taken while I was out dry camping/bushwhacking/parked far from the nearest spigot, electric hookup, sewer dump, swimming pool and/or laundry room. Beautiful, isn’t it.

En-Spired

2009-12-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

Got up to Flagstaff and went to visit Damien Seuss, formerly of Wallowa County. He was wearing an Ember’s Brew Pub hat, so I guess he retains some WC residency status.

Cypress had a school concert that night, so I stayed at the house with Banyon, who’s four. We played with some Legos, watched Lion King and read Dr. Seuss. Which presents an interesting question. Cypress and Banyon have the last name of Seuss. So if they were to go to medical school, I’m not sure if they’d have a thriving medical practice, or potential patients would be suspect of being treated by a real Dr. Seuss, for fear of getting their diagnosis in rhymed verse. Hard to say.

Damien took me up Morning Glory Spire outside of Sedona the next day. Breathtaking. I don’t mean the scenery, I mean climbing the thing took my breath.

But the scenery was a little bit out of this world.

Maxi Winnie

2009-12-04T07:54:00.000-08:00

I did manage to escape from the Verde Valley Motorplex by adding the lift kit to the Winnebago that you see here, with 56” Super Swampers, then just driving cross country over mountain ranges, across rivers…I am now unstoppable.

OK, so I tracked down someone with a key and got a little bit scolded, but they did open the gate.

That is a rather impressive photoshop job on the Minnie Winnie, though. Shadows and everything. That’s the work of a visionary graphic artist friend back in Wallowa County. It’s a good look.

But You Can Never Leave

2009-12-01T10:13:00.001-08:00

Burro traffic is what Sedona had in mind when they designed their streets. Not large burros, either. Squeezing a 29-foot motor home through that town is one constant scraping noise as your Winnebago mirrors snap off and you pull down storefronts on either side.

“No outlet” and “Dead End” signs were coming at me on all sides while I looked for escape routes. Turned into the parking lot for a museum, thinking museum parking lots would be, you know, big. But not this one. I believe it was a museum for pygmy-burro drawn carriages. I had to unhook the Toyota then pull forward, pull back many times before pointing the snout of the Minnie Winnie back at the exit.

Yegods. Almost got bottlenecked again in the designated RV parking zone, which…what the hell, Sedona? Does the harmonic convergence and crystal powers magically shrink things to fit on your streets and in parking spots? Why doesn’t this Harry Potter magic work on my RV? Why?

I got pointed out of there and kept going. Ended up outside of Cottonwood, where Al had told me about a big spot off the side of the highway where lots of RVs stay for free.

Found it. Pulled in. Parked. Unhooked the Toyota and went to town. Came back and the gate was locked. RV on one side, me on the other. Squeezed through the fence, hiked my groceries in to the Minnie Winnie and been calling around all morning to find someone with a key to this place.

I learned a lot yesterday. I don’t know what, but it was a lot of it.

Clearance Sale on Old Dead Stuff

2009-12-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

Elk hide. Rattlesnake skin. Taxidermied deer head. Dried cactus. Pretty rocks. All for sale at Brand New Dead Things. Plus some knick-knackery and maybe even a windchime.

Very nice proprietress. I asked about the name and she said something along the lines of, “We all come from the same [something…elements, maybe?]….rocks, trees, humans…” and so essentially we’re all brand new dead things.

I was with her at first, and kept nodding even after I’d veered off from following the connection of…well, I don’t know. Go ask her yourself. It’s in Yarnell, Arizona.

Watch out for these things

2009-11-29T22:04:00.001-08:00

Cactuses are pokey. Little safety tip there.

I walked out to water the desert one night, relieve myself of some lemonade if you know what I’m saying. I was camped way out somewhere south of hither, east of yon, but I thought to myself, well, I’ll walk out a little further. Don’t want to start a flash flood so close to the Minnie Winnie.

It was dark. And I walked into a cactus. A low-lying variety I would later have identified as "cholla." Pronounced "choy-yuh."

Piercing your shin with a cholla is pronounced "son-of-a-[gun]…what in the [for goodness sakes]…"

The spines, I guess they’re called, have some manner of barb to their design, because they don’t pull out that easy. The skin on my leg pulled up a good half-inch before the little [buggers] let go.

Bula got into a patch and learned her lesson. Tried to bite the cholla bulb off her foot and got a snootful of barbs for her trouble. I’ve brushed prickly pear and wished I hadn’t.

The worst I’ve heard is Jesse’s uncle, who was out four-bying in a Landcruiser with the windshield down, and the rig drove over some cholla, which flew up and attached itself to his face…I don't know how that was pronounced, but I bet it was worth hearing.

Young artist has mastered the pigeon portrait

2009-11-29T21:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve been seeing some top-notch artwork on this galavant through the southwestern zone.

The riders painting is hung in the museum in Wickenburg. The pigeon painting is currently on display in the living room at the home of Jesse Rens, propped against a lamp. His daughter Savannah created that. And aside from her brush mastery, she is a formidable kickball player. I can vouch for that.

Jesse, Brennan and Savannah let me park the Minnie Winnie at their place and showed me around Prescott.

Things to do in Prescott include: go to Jesse’s parents for Thanksgiving dinner. Go there again for Thanksgiving leftovers. Go there yet again for enchilada soup, which is my new favorite food, edging out caeser salads.

All we need is Love, backwards…and Revolution, together, somehow

2009-11-29T18:34:00.001-08:00

The youth of Yarnell, Arizona seem to be more politically active than most youth, based on this sign here they put on the side of their youth center. They also don’t give up easily, as this picture was taken a couple days ago, which is a good long while since the election. But they’re still pulling for him. Hang in there kids.

What are you talking about, this badge doesn't smell

2009-11-24T01:34:00.000-08:00

Well, I got a new hat. And bandoleer. My old one was, I don’t know, it was getting kind of stretchy. Bullets were falling out once in while and this one here was on sale at Macy’s and I just thought, you know what? I’m going to do it. What the heck. I’m going to buy myself a new bandoleer – and then I shot the shit out of the ceiling in there, celebrating my impulse purchase with, you know, squeezing off a few rounds and security did not like that. Not one bit. But we smoothed it out and I do like this new ‘brero.

...and then a right on Harsh Reality

2009-11-24T01:18:00.001-08:00

Even when there’s accidents on the Carefree Highway, nobody cares. Police show up, fenders are smashed, radiators boiling over, cars demolished, thousands in damages and the officer looks at both drivers, they look at each other and they all just start laughing.

“Ah, what the hell, we’re on the Carefree Highway.” The cop tears up the ticket and accident report he was starting to fill out, casts the fragments to the wind and then they all just run off out in the desert, playing a game of tag.

I’ve seen it a million times. But only on this road.