# A Change for Some Change



## JanuaryBell (Aug 20, 2015)

I've been off the road since the end of June. At that time I left Canby, a town just south of Portland, after growing tired and annoyed at a woof farm from where I stayed. The place was a flop house. Fifteen twenty something year olds using one bathroom, and noooobody was cleaning it. That and I didn't have a dime to my name, and there was no money to be made from working for some shirtless stoner for free who was running the place. So, I left with a couple and two other girls towards the OR coast for a day out on the water. Said shirtless stoner's parents had a house right off the coast, and they gave us the keys.

The two girls with us originally wanted to hitchhike together, one from Brazil and another from Quebec. But the girl from Brazil got a call from her mother the night before, and she wound up with a change of plans. And little old me had already traversed the 101 all by my lonesome, and I had friends back in northern Cal to catch up with, so I was planning on making my way back south from Rockaway Beach.

The Canadian chica wanted to venture further down to LA. She wanted to hitch before taking a bus the rest of the way. All I remember from that month was agreeing to go with her as far down to Arcata before we parted ways. I was thrilled as ever to travel with someone since I always travelled alone. But in hindsight, I should've left her back in Rockaway Beach.

Things were fine on the first night. We found a decent place to camp. But the next morning, before we made it to Cape Perpetua, she abruptly told me that she wanted to leave before changing her mind, all this while we were walking down the road. She would wait around five minutes while we held out our thumbs and then give up and start walking further down the road. It was confusing as shit. I told her that we should camp together just for one more night and then get the hell out of each other's hair if for anything but for the sake of being on the same page. She agreed.

From then on out, it was babysitting. We had already been stopped by a trooper, because she kept insisting on walking along the tracks right in front of the highway in Coos Bay. And I had fallen knee deep in mud from trying to crawl up a ditch after dark. There were a couple of nights where we would camp out on the beach, but by the time we reached Brookings, I got tired of the sand and wanted to hide out in the woods. But no... I swear this girl refused to listen. Her English lagged behind her French, and my assertiveness begins and ends with myself.

We got picked up a couple of times where my sketch vibes would've prevented me from taking the ride had I been on my own. But she would jump in. She had a knife. I had my wits. I survived just fine on my wits so far, and my silver coffee mug that I keep as a blunt object. Every cell was screaming at me to just leave her. But I guess years of being conditioned by society has made me feel compelled to be polite, even when death is grinning a mere inches from your face in the form of a toothless meth head. I'm still trying to undo that shit.

Anyhow, I ended up loosing her just over the border into CA. She ran off and slept with some tweeker near the Indian Reservation, and I was glad to be rid of her. I made it into Crescent City before turning north on the Redwood hwy, and that's when one of my friends picked me up in his beat up honda. He works up at a small watering hole in Gasquet. I found two more familiar faces plus a few more before we all headed back up the mountain, up towards the intentional community as the place is listed somewhere online.

I had already been up this way earlier, woofing on the land for a couple weeks. I had tagged along then, but I had no intention of sticking around. The owner was a little off, unlike said shirtless stoner from Portland. This guy was in in his forties with a girlfriend from somewhere in her mid thirties. Both worked in town as a chiropractor and a massage therapist. He didn't allow smoking or any drugs, but he allowed himself a beer occasionally whenever he and his girlfriend were on site in the evenings. We would have weekly meetings where he would show movies on his laptop about the oncoming ecological and financial collapse.

I didn't warm up to this guy. There was also this invisible gender divide where women did women's work in the main lodge and in the garden, and the guys would busy themselves with harder labor outdoors. So the night when I was smuggled in, he wasn't thrilled, but he let me stay just that one night. And narry did I want to stay a jot longer myself. Two of my friends, a couple who were living in a van on the land were working out their issues when they told me they were leaving for the Seattle area and up to the San Juan Islands for a couple of days. They had family to meet up there, and I was trying to get in touch with my sister in the Seattle area before we headed off in their second vehicle, a tracoma with a camper bed.

We went through Portland. I can't say that I miss that place. The dumbest thing I can say that I did aside from that epic fail over traveling with a newbie was spending a few nights at the shelter downtown. I felt safer outside than I did behind those four walls where music blared on amongst the snores and ass smells that I can never find it in my own biochemistry to produce. I even stayed in shelter in Medford, and the churchbitches took away my bivy. I wound up with a 20 dollar pop up tent from Wal Mart before leaving town. After those two experiences, I will never EVER sleep at any shelter EVER. I have better luck rolling up in a tarp under a bush just outside of town than I have from sleeping next a paranoid schizophrenic woman who gets up in the middle of the night to scream at the 'talking heads.'

Since that time, I've been living out in the San Juan Islands which is an hours ferry ride to Canada. I had no problem finding a job here since the tourist season is still going on. The day I applied at the local grocery store, I was already pulling a work shirt over my head and clocking in. I found another job within the same week, housecleaning at a hotel. In the meantime, I'm allowed to camp out in a backyard from the owners in a neighborhood nearby, and I don't have to pay rent or worry all that much about anyone running off with my shit (It's a small island). So for the moment, I'm putting a pretty penny aside for a ticket out to Europe. I already got a passport that still has five more years on it. Only thing is that there's no stamps on it. Might as well find some stamps for a change.


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## Mankini (Aug 20, 2015)

Eh? San Juan Islands? Sounds intriguing! I love Humboldt; I have acquaintances in Juneau and a good Bro in Wasilla. Exciting.  Was that IC BBRanch by any chance?


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## angerisagift (Aug 20, 2015)

JanuaryBell said:


> I've been off the road since the end of June. At that time I left Canby, a town just south of Portland, after growing tired and annoyed at a woof farm from where I stayed. The place was a flop house. Fifteen twenty something year olds using one bathroom, and noooobody was cleaning it. That and I didn't have a dime to my name, and there was no money to be made from working for some shirtless stoner for free who was running the place. So, I left with a couple and two other girls towards the OR coast for a day out on the water. Said shirtless stoner's parents had a house right off the coast, and they gave us the keys.
> 
> The two girls with us originally wanted to hitchhike together, one from Brazil and another from Quebec. But the girl from Brazil got a call from her mother the night before, and she wound up with a change of plans. And little old me had already traversed the 101 all by my lonesome, and I had friends back in northern Cal to catch up with, so I was planning on making my way back south from Rockaway Beach.
> 
> ...


just read a novel by Michael Slade called Burnt Bones that takes place in the San Juan Islands #PigWar


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## JanuaryBell (Aug 21, 2015)

voodoochile76 said:


> Eh? San Juan Islands? Sounds intriguing! I love Humboldt; I have acquaintances in Juneau and a good Bro in Wasilla. Exciting.  Was that IC BBRanch by any chance?


The intentional community was called something about the return of Buda or whatever word that means in Hindu. The owner running the place was what one of my friends called 'a prepper.' The San Juan Islands is the dope. It's worth checking out Orcas and Shaw. Everyone comes here to whale watch. Humboldt county back in Arcata was alright, though I didn't get to stay long.


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## JanuaryBell (Aug 21, 2015)

angerisagift said:


> just read a novel by Michael Slade called Burnt Bones that takes place in the San Juan Islands #PigWar


Did it take place during the Pig War? I heard the Pig War wasn't much of a war. Between the British and American camps, only a pig was killed. Someone got to have bacon for breakfast...


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## angerisagift (Aug 21, 2015)

JanuaryBell said:


> Did it take place during the Pig War? I heard the Pig War wasn't much of a war. Between the British and American camps, only a pig was killed. Someone got to have bacon for breakfast...


no. the novel is suspense/horror but the author is just very good at background/history of places he writes about. i just thought it was funny a war almost started over a pig . #Bacontodiefor


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## Mankini (Aug 21, 2015)

I lived in the Olympic NP for a few months: that NP is my favorite out of all of them: volcanos, sea stacks; beaches, rainforest. <3 I used to take friends to Arcata to hang out in the Plaza and smoke cigars, hassle the local cops.

True story: A few years back, the Twilight franchise had become immensely popular with kids: soon, the town of Forks, WA, was inundated with tween girls who had discovered that the community mentioned in the book was areal little town....I read an article in the local paper featuring a gruff young guy with a beard who said, and I quote: "Kid walked up to me with a bunch of her giggling friends and asked me Do I know where 'Edward' lives. 'Edward WHO?' ".


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## angerisagift (Aug 21, 2015)

hmmmmmm Edward Scissorhands????


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## Deleted member 14481 (Nov 14, 2015)

That story makes me not want to pick up traveling partners.


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