# Old Stories - #37



## The Cack (Dec 25, 2011)

*Travelogue post #3*

1) I rode up in the back of a white rusted pickup with these two nice guys from Vancouver, WA @ the Jantzen Beach mall. Riding in the back is insane--some people say they can't ride backwards on a train? My god! It was my first ride on this trip, and very much like a rollercoaster. Children waved like a parade float, women smiled to placate the shock/outrage, and the more than one teenager gave me the "peace sign".

2) Thanks goes to Val at the Blaine, WA Subway shop. Not only did he laugh his ass off at my sorry sight, but he gave me a discount on a meatball parm hero.

HIM: That'll be nine-fifty-two
ME: How much?
HIM: Three-thirty-two
ME: Cool, I'll tip you a buck! See how this works?

3) In Salmon Creek, a woman gestured over to me and handed me $20 without even asking. Her son looked mentally disabled, and looked, as I hesitate to say, ALOT like the monster from the Goonies.

4) In Blaine, trying to go to Bellingham for the first time, a drunk came up to me. He was missing his two front teeth. And, he was really drunk, trying to walk. "Are you native?" he asked, after I gave him a gentle greeting. I answered no, but he was convinced: "You look native. Here," and he reached into his pocket to pull out a $1 bill. "Oh wow," I said, again surprised by the random amount of money in my possession. Then he gave me two bus tickets. After a few seconds, he saw some clarity in his drunkeness--

"Not to be an indian giver, but could I have that dollar back?"

I gave it back to him, we shook hands. "I gotta go check myself into jail for a few days," he said, crossing the street and going to the Canadian/US border.

5) On the MAX in Portland, beginning my exodus, a large tourist type man took an interest in these young girl who was talking about disco.

"Oh, the Hustle... the Electric Slide..."

"Electric Slide?," replied the young girl.

"Yeah, you don't want to know," he said. Boogie-woogie-woogie. "Wow, that really dates me!" he added, and his equally tourist-chubby wife laughed together.

In my mind, I considered telling them a joke, but it might go over their heads. So, I made a note to jot it down.

"Oh, what's wrong with dating yourself? I do it all the time. At least I'm guaranteed to get laid."

Yeah, they wouldn't get it. 

6) While sleeping in the ampitheatre near the beach at Blaine, WA, birds squawked all night long. I had prepared myself not to get caught--jail would impede travel, no doubt. However, I heard footseps! They weren't on gravel, and they intensified with the nature, the wind, the cold--thump, Thump, THUMP THUMP THUMP!!! I got scared, thinking that some thief had seen me and decided to lighten my loaded, and grabbed my knife, peeking my head out from underneath my sleeping bag. I was getting colder, but my heart was racing--WHERE WAS HE? 

AND THEN I SAW HIM!!!

Actually, _IT_. It was an American flag flapping in the wind... 

phew.

7) I whispered "Ariel, I find you incredibly attractice" and nibbled her ear in front of her friends. She was the most sober of them all, but her entire body was covered with sweat as I seduced her. Ginger hair, absolutely immaculate fair skin, supple chest. Her friends were playing the game of "grab the drunk girl's fat deposits because they don't mind", but I abstained because here was Ariel! 

Even her name sounded good! I pressed up against her, and she smiled. We even had music in common--"Ah, you have the embouchre of a flute player! Good for--"

"Eleven years!" said her drunk friend.

And, then the Birthday Boy friend that they had taken out grabbed them. Ariel looked at me longingly. I tried to persuade her, but it looked as though she would be drunk-wrangler for night. "We're going... to... McDonald's..."

Birthday Boy sauntered up, half-apologetically as the group slowly walked around from the front of the restaurant's fluorescent, post-midnight glow. "Sorry to cockblock you, man," and they walked away.


----------

