2025: A ROAD ODYSSEY: PASSING THROUGH SASQUATCHLANDIA

Oregon is strange in flavors all its own. Maybe it's the cooler, damper climate.

The giant yellow slugs wouldn’t survive in the chili-fueled red hot Aztecoid Weird West of the deserts of my Native Aztlan. Though I could imagine a weirdo western where a stoic protagonist is buried up to his chin the searing sand, while the villain places these slugs on his face . . .

It was probably something that inspired Slugs & Stones & Ice Cream Cones and its unique decor. As far as I could tell, there were no slugs used in any of the ice cream served there.

We got up the next morning at the Americoast by the Pacific. The totem-pole-ish stack of signs boasted a vape joint, live theater, grooming for beach dogs, and still another dispensary in a town clogged with them.

There was even a colorful Mexican restaurant down the street. Just outside of Aztlán.

Next morning Emily and I had the taco omelette at the Indian Creek Cafe. Some kind of new cultural mix going on.

We headed north in search of the unusual.

At 11AM, in the moving Prius, I tried to log on to the Zoom event for Sound Systems: The Future of the Orchestra that had my latest story. Got connected but was cut off. We were in a no cell service zone. Later, I got back on again, able to at least participate as a spectator. We stopped to check out and take pictures of a bizarre store and an amazing sculpture of a bird.

I wonder if the folks on Zoom saw my face as I moved around . . .

Soon we came across the home/studio of the Chainsaw Wizard. Some of his sculptures were worse for wear and a few were gone.

He was actually there. Mike was soon searching through a poorly lit barn for pieces of weird wood that he could incorporate into his drums.

Nearby was a decaying hippie colony made up of old barns, treehouses, repurposed vehicles, shipping containers . . . and plastic greenhouses.

A friendly guy handed me a handful of home-grown marijuana buds, even though I told him I didn’t smoke it. He told me to give it to someone who does. When I showed it to Emily, she said, “You better get rid of it before we get to Idaho.”

A new divided country. Cannabis and non-cannabis states instead of slave and free.

Later we checked out antique stores in Coos Bay and other places that were full of people who had dropped out of the rat race in search of a human lifestyle.

America. Has anybody seen it lately?

Next morning, in a warm hotel room, I did a cross-portal social media announcement about Sound Systems and my story “Doula.”

Then, in the Otis Cafe I had a chorizo scramble with old fashioned hash browns. Chorizo is becoming popular all over, but it's a milder, gringo-friendly kind . . .

Tillamook was full of surreal photo ops as usual, including a Charlie Kirk memorial poster. Mike said he saw two more. I tried to get a picture but couldn’t get an angle with the right sense of irony.

Mike got a speeding ticket in Rockaway Beach–a school zone scam. They gotta raise money, I guess . . .

After a few more quaint towns we crossed the Columbia River Bridge into Washington.

Mike and I noticed that the cattle in Utah were bigger than those in California, Oregon, and Washington. Secret Mormon genetic engineering experiments? Something for the Jerry Corneilius/Raoul Duke story . . .

Restroom graffiti at gas stations was about yoga and trans rights.

There was more rain.

Next day, in Port Townsend, we took a ferry to deliver some drums.

This corner of the Pacific Northwest is like a countercultural utopia with a hint of dystopia turned upsidedown. Washington is far more industrial, more cyberpunk than post-apocalyptic Arcadia. More subtle about the weed, though not much better on the economic front.

Folks in Oregon seem to be having more fun, but maybe it’s the filtered sunlight.

There were not many displays of Trump support on this trip, and the Halloween decor was fewer and more low key. The worldwide horror reality show radiating from Washington D.C. overwhelms. Blues in the air.

I broke my prescription sunglasses due to the awkwardly placed cargo pockets on my pants. These designers just have to get creative. Guess I can look for a funky souvenir.

Whidbey Island was full of rich people who did more Halloween stuff. Money does make some folk  more festive.

While delivering another drum in La Conner, I captured a moss-covered dragon’s spider web. The delicate dance of this subtle light is hard to capture.

In some secluded spots, Washington looks like California or Nevada, except it’s cool, cold even . .  And crumbling. Like Yakima, where Emily found and bought a Jack-O-Lantern gas can and another Buddha for her collection.

By the freeway, there was a sign: YAKIMA IS THE PALM SPRINGS OF WASHINGTON.

In the morning, we woke up in Ontario, Oregon. Breath was visible. Ice (the natural phenomenon, NOT the evil government organization) has crystalized on the Prius.

The rising sun set a golden mist ablaze.

CHICANONAUTICA HAS IMPRESSIONS OF NORCAL

Chicanonautica is about NorCal, over at La Bloga.

There's fog:

Tikis:

A museum:

 

And Koringa!

2025: A ROAD ODYSSEY: THROUGH THE UTAH OUTBACK, ST. GEORGE AND MARTIAN NEVADA

 

We didn’t bother looking for breakfast in Kanab—which was sound asleep when we left—so we went off in search of coffee and breakfast on the road. And it was worse than we’d thought. Not only is the tradition of getting up early to get things done dead in this part of Utah, but, as a helpful guy at a gas station explained, even though it was mid-October, a lot of businesses—even entire towns—close down for the “winter.”

Yeah, it was cold . . . And we saw a lot of CLOSED UNTIL MAY signs.

Capitol Reef was magic psychedelic geology as usual. Is this what happens when planets hallucinate? If computers can, why not planets? Or interdimensional gods?

Tezcatlipoca? Tezcatlipoca? . . . do you read?

The restaurants on both sides of the Aquarius Inn in Bicknell were closed, permanently, boarded up, as were a lot of the businesses we saw. Sort of apocalyptic. Was anything coming back in the spring?

The religious utopia that the Mormons tried to create is crumbling. Will they all leave, creating a mystery? What happened to the Mormons? Where did they go? Will we see animated pseudo-documentaries about them going off in flying saucers? Could they be living on some far-off planet with the Maya?

Or are the hard-working brown people moving into Utah now Maya rather than Mexica?

What goes around, comes around.

I finished re-reading Phil Farmer’s “Riders of a Purple Wage,” a tale of another imperfect utopia. Gotta tell the dissatisfied younger generation about it. It could help. It could cause trouble. What the hell, gotta do something. We’re all desperadoes these days . . .

 

Next morning it was freezing when we left Bicknell at 7:19AM. Then it dropped down to 20 degrees. I was glad the Carol’s car had heated seats. 

Thank Tecatlipoca for newfangled chicanderas.

We passed through a town called Koosharem. What kind of name is that? A local tribe? So alien . . .

In Circleville there was a sign on a house: BUTCH CASSIDY NEVER SLEPT HERE.

Soon we were back in St. George.

I wrote some disparaging, if hilarious things about St. George the last time we were here. This time I found it a bit more charming, but my twisted sense of humor helped.

It is still cheerfully dystopian in a Firesign Theater/Philip K. Dick manner, like chunks of SoCal sprinkled over red rocks. I tried hard to photograph the surrealism, but it was difficult, like taking pictures of smoke or fog.

I actually found cargo pants (I need them to lug my prescription sunglasses) in a thrift store. One had a tear, and they sewed it up and sold it to me at a discount.

What really knocked me out was the high density of Mexican restaurants. It competes with Glendale, Arizona. Guess they’re letting Mexicans live here.

I had fun, but dystopia, even an absurd one is by nature, disturbing. The happiness is artificial, like zapping your hypothalamus with an electric cattle prod. The shit-eating grins are creepy, and when the dopamine rush burns off, there’s a toxic emptiness that is also a side-effect of the postmodern, transurban sprawl environment.

When will some corporation come up with a cure for it that isn’t addictive or expensive?

The Sprawl (as William Gibson labeled it) is growing. Excavators chew up the ancient, natural, and historic beauty. An artificial consumer environment is being installed. And crackerbox instahomes are popping up all over.

Also, large houses, suitable for polygamous living. Stekes (or stakes) and temples in ritzy neighborhoods. Temple dresses, $150. And Mormon guys in nerdy clothes and haircuts. Brave new Mormons in a world being assembled by Mexicans.

Next stop Nevada, America’s favorite post-apocalyptic Mars colony, but first a short zig--or maybe it was a zag--under stormy clouds and a desert with drying evidence of rain through Arizona. You can never be sure about these parts.

We whizzed through Las Vegas to drop something off to Mike’s daughter.

Out of town, Whiskey Pete’s Casino was shut down. 

Gas was $4.95 a gallon near the expanse of solar concentrators.

 

The California inspection station at the border was unmanned. Gas over $5 a gallon in Yermo. $4.25 in Barstow. 

Most of the restaurants seem to be run by Mexicans. Even the non-Mexican ones. A plot to take over the food supply? Or will Mexican food save America?