Charlie being towed... |
~ The Americana Kitsch and Culture Tour
~ originally posted 21 Jul 2011
Charlie being towed... |
Dear MM’s,
You know it’s time to come
off the road when…
Your RV transmission spits
the dummy and dumps oil all over the car park at Bear Country USA.
Yesssss…
I am undecided at this point
what is energetically going on with this. I am at the shock and a strong
Bacardi and Diet Coke stage. The panic has been abated by the alcohol and
half a tin of Rescue Remedy lozenges.
Oh shit, oh dear…as my dad
would say.
If anyone wants to jump in
with possible energetic causes for this – please feel free.
I do know that transmissions
are about being able to move forward, or move full stop. So, somewhere I have
not been listening and have been avoiding STOP signs. This is not a
good thought for the day/week/month/year…
And ‘weirdly’ enough but not
too surprising, the last time I came through this neck of the woods; if you
have read the book…you will know that I also had transmission issues. Do I
feel like we are not moving forward in our life? Well…honestly—yes. We
need to make a decision—pronto! (Later, I realize, it’s more to do with
being on a ‘mission’ (transmission)—Thanks twin. And I actually need to go
with the damn flow more! And trust that there is enough time, money, energy
for whatever we need to be doing.)
And I was just talking to my
twin last night too and he has up and RUN away from the life he was living.
Sprinted, in fact. No ‘logical’ thoughts, ‘realistic’ reasoning or anything
ghastly like that. His heart just said, enough…of the situation he was in
and 2 days ago, he got up, packed up his truck in 4.5 hours and hightailed it
out of there. Way to go!!!
He doesn’t know how things
will work out—just that they will. This is abSOULutely brilliant!
This is the first time I
have seen him use his heart energy in over a year. And as we are twins and
always do things in unison—I have a feeling I am about to make some sort of
leap of faith too. I suspect this might be IT. Trust in the heart energy…
Okay…so this is um…fun…in
a weird sort of way. Kind of like being on holiday. Considering we live in a
camper, we have spread out amazingly well in the motel room. It already looks
like we have lived here for a month! Good grief.
Oh yes, did I mention, that
we are now at the motel and the novelty of having a bathroom that’s bigger
than an aircraft toilet is rather nice. Leo has had a marvelous time —all
NIGHT! Oh, let me look out the window, let me get a drink, the window, mums
bed, dads (queen beds but stuck against the wall, so too awkward, we opted
for one each) Leo spent all night taking turns as to which bed he would be
on.
Ever taken an excited 5 year
old on their first trip somewhere… Yes—exactly like that. Under the bed, on
the beds, on the window sill, use his toilet, drink some water, window again,
food, window, bounce on mums bed. Gee, not sure why mum is turning the light
back on and reading again. It’s like
And while it’s weird to be
off the road, it kind of goes with the rest of the week really.
The whole last week has been a mishmash of things. We have done all sorts of bits and pieces and been back in the dreaded Mid-West. I cannot even begin to describe how boring it is. The people are nice but the energy is as flat as a pancake. Despite this, we manage to find a few things to do, but honestly—(current circumstances and all) if I never see it again—THANK GOD!
We left
And this was what was
worrying me partly. I hadn’t had ANY bloody signs. And I did not want
to make a head decision. Also, the fact that I had had no signs was really
worrying. Was I off path somewhere? Had I taken a wrong turn? What now? Where
now? In my mind,
So, going on a wing and a
prayer, we toddled up into
We stopped in for lunch at a
wee diner called Patty Sues Diner, circa 1972. First of all, you get the
smoking or non-smoking section?! We were a bit nonplussed about that. I
couldn’t really fathom that any restaurant these days would have a smoking
section. And I loved the smoking ‘section.’ The whole place reeked of smoke.
Ugh. I never get this concept—it’s not like cigarette smoke knows the rules
and stops at the non-smoking section. I thought this might be a one off,
middle of nowhere type thing. But we struck it again in
So, despite the weird ‘non’
smoking section we opted for, we did stay because we were starving.
Everyone was very friendly and it gave us a warm thrill to be back in that
lovely Kentuckian energy. No matter who walked through the door or out it,
people acknowledged you and said hello. The older men all wore suspenders and
trucker caps. You get the picture.
So, the conversation at a
couple of tables over kind of went with it all.
There were 3 people talking
at the table and it was almost impossible to not hear them. Americans voices
carry. At first we thought they were talking about some family member, as
they seemed to have all the details and knew everything that was going on
with the situation.
And all said in VERY thick
Kentuckian hill accents. Think—hillbilly accent.
One person said. “Weeeell,
eyeee haaaave aan o-pinnnn-ion; you knooow whaaaaat, in marrr o-pinnnn-ion…”
Boy, we sure do love the Southern
accents and the hill accents are quite the deal. I have a friend Jim Bird the
Third who was from the Kentuckian Eastern Hills – gen-u-ine hillbilly. It
took him YEARS to tone down his accent. He got hell for it when he worked in
oil engineering. And most of them are Texans—so that gives you some idea of
the hill accent!
I then voted them, best in
category for the most innovative use of ‘drug’ I have ever heard. Here you
didn’t need to worry about illegal substances. Here you had to worry about illegal
speech!
They were talking about what
the mother had done and the brouhaha surrounding it. And you MUST say
this in the thickest hill accent you can manage:
‘She done drug three of her
work mates into it.”
LOL. We sat there in pop
eyed wonder at this. :-) Good grief! What’s even funnier about this whole
thing is that we thought it must be a local thing. Hot gossip around the
place. But no, it’s some case in Florida —they don’t even KNOW the people??
Good lord!
So that amused us for the rest
of the afternoon as we headed north. Worth the price of the sandwich alone!
The next day we went into
Louisville, KY to go to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Not Ali…but the
baseball bats. This was fun. There is a HUGE
At the end of the tour, you
get a small Louisville slugger bat to take with you, which is very fun. You
can even get your own bat personalized there!
This was fun and then we had
the odious task of finding an RV park for the night. Over the river to
Indiana we went—that counts right for a State visit! Anyway, we found a RV
park over the river and I have to say, I was feeling pretty low on it. I had
hoped that Louisville would be THE place that we had been looking for in
Kentucky but it didn’t grab me at all. I found it industrial and really busy.
Damn.
So, feeling terribly ugh
with it all, I hunkered down on the computer for a bit—then wondered where
Aaron had gone. I finally went outside the camper and there he was talking to
some lovely people Dawna and Todd Spencer! We ended up spending the evening
with them and their kids and it was soooo nice! That made me feel better and
what really put the icing on the cake, (just when I thought the damn Guides
had gone to the Bahamas —again!) What topped it was that Dawna was born in
South Carolina, brought up in Kentucky and Todd LOVED Seattle.
Well hot dang! I realized in
a blinding flash of inspiration that I had shrunk my dreams and slit their
throat. And thus, you got the, ‘I have a dream’ blog! This bolstered me and I
felt that we WERE on the right track. I just had to expand my dreams again
and stick with them.
So off we set for Washington
State, coming up through the Mid-West and into the Wild West part of the
States.
I have never seen so
much corn in my life! Well, there was one other time—that was the LAST time
I went across the Mid-West! Good grief!
What we were doing there was
seeing the St Louis Arch or the Gateway Arch. It’s very impressive as you
head towards St Louis. A massive steel arch that sits on the river front and
is the ‘gateway’ to the Mid-West. As we were walking up there, we got talking
to Don and Larry who were truck drivers from Utah. We kept talking as we
staggered up the zillions of steps to the monument. We went into the monument
museum, which thankfully is very air conditioned and underground. We got
tickets to go up to the top of the arch and it’s on some strange system, so
it was going to take a bit. I was gasping for air, so I sat down and the guys
went off to see the exhibits. Later, I saw the photos and, of course…they
looked fun.
It was extremely
disorganized and finally after what felt like HOURS, we finally got to go up
to the arch. What an utterly creepy experience. The Arch is not very wide, so
they take you up there in these capsules. Imagine putting 5 kitchen chairs in
the tightest semi circle you can get, with everyone’s knees touching, and
some people having to bow forward because it’s not tall enough for their
heads. Then they shut the door. Four claustrophobic minutes later, you are at
the top.
If anything, it’s almost
weirder. You get off the capsules and you are on the observation platform,
which goes up a bit of a steep incline and it’s very narrow. It’s also very
small, the windows are like slits and yes, you get to see St Louis 630ft
below. But after only a few minutes, we’re all done. It’s very weird and very
creepy. Other people are flicking nervous glances and smiling bravely – they
are done too. We come back down in the creepy capsules and all heave a sigh
of relief when we get back to the bottom.
Ugh.
We exit there and
stagger back to the camper. I am gasping for air, it’s horrible.
We gladly leave there and
get on the road. We stop twice to try and find a restaurant to eat in and
just crossing the car park is like a mountain trek in the Himalayas at
extreme altitude. The humidity has to be about 110%. It’s awful.
The next day, we hit
Kansas… And I threatened to call this blog, ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore…thank god.’
In Kansas, we did find an
Air Combat Museum to go to in Topeka and it’s pretty cool…but so damn HOT.
We give up seeing another Civil Rights attraction I had found and push on.
Our energy is wilting with the heat. We are in the nineties here, all the way
through. Translation—about 35 degrees Celsius on average. Whew.
We wave at the Wizard of OZ museum as we drive on through. Inertia is setting in. Through the endless corn fields, and up into Nebraska. And oh gosh, more corn—fabulous. We stay in Lincoln, NE for the night and are so tired, that we manage to find a RV Park that is not only ‘Ye olde Freeway Park’ but “Ye Olde TRI-Freeway Park.’ It defies logic. We just can’t understand while anyone would put a RV Park right on the bloody freeway!
On the up side, it’s so hot,
that we have to run the AC flat tack all night—this drowns out the freeway
noise.
Nebraska…surely to god
there is even LESS to see in Nebraska. But it surprises us.
It feels like the longest drive across a State—some 500 something miles… Long.
But we stop at North Platte
at a Trading Post that has a miniature Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.
That was kind of fun. You start to realize that out here, it was the wild
wild west.
We pull in about 6.15 and
park in a decent wee RV Park, with no freeway noise. Wow. We are told that
the Front Street show at The Crystal Palace starts at 7.30 but be there at
7.15 for the shoot out, out front! Aaron dons his cowboy hat and off we go.
Front Street is a small
section of ‘old town.’ All the facades on the buildings look like they came
right out of the old West. There’s a saloon, an eating house, jail, general
store and a couple of other buildings. At 7.15, there’s a gun fight out the
front, complete with some racy dance hall girls! What fun! That starts the
evening’s entertainment. After the gun fight, we all troop inside for the
rest of the show, through the swinging bat doors and into The Crystal Palace.
Up on stage is the piano player, the walls have red flocked wallpaper on
them, and the bar looks pretty original.
Our players are local high
school students and every year for about 47 years now; this show has been put
on here at Front Street. It tells the story of the cowboys that came through
with stock on the cattle drive and the Oregon Trail Wagon trains filled with New
World hopefuls going the other way. They did a very funny skit where
the kids in the kids in the back of the wagon are doing the 'are we there
yet/I'm hungry/I have to go to the bathroom/are we there yet' routine. It
gives new meaning to 'road trips.' Imagine coming across these prairies with
kids. Just shoot me now!
There are parts of the
Oregon Trail and prairies where you can still see the wagon ruts…
I can’t imagine how these
people did this. It’s excruciatingly boring in a RV. And they probably didn’t
even have the corn to amuse them. How on earth did they not go insane in a
wagon? And the wagons are tiny. Really tiny. I had imagined them to be much
bigger. But if you sat people either side, say, on plank benches, you might
get 4 or 5 people on either side. Not very big. Along with this very
uncomfortable ride, they also had to contend with heat, cold, Native
Americans, wild animals… I wonder how many people went insane?
Anyway, we have a lot of fun
at the show. Almost a bit of old Vaudeville in there, which I love. The kids
are very talented and we get a good potted history of the West and the
Prairies without having to do an ‘interpretative exhibit’—nothing is called
a museum anymore… They dance, they sing, they tell awful but funny jokes.
They involve the audience. We have a great time! We also get talking to Mark
Irvin who owns over 20,000 records and who is a music man who contracts
copyright songs out to people. What an interesting job! Don’t people do cool
things?
So far on this trip—we
have met a balloon maker/stilt man, a Duck Master, and now a Music person!
Wow. And what interests me about these people is that you NEVER seem to meet
them in everyday life. But someone has to have the fun jobs and I always like
to meet the people who do.
Imagine being at a BBQ… “So,
what do you do for a job?”
“I’m a Duck Master.”
Blank look from the other
person and thinking that this guy was taking the Mickey. (This means in
Kiwi-speak—having someone on)
“Oh yes, and er, what does a
Duck Master do?”
Again, it’s the fun part of
life. The part we are SUPPOSED to be living. The part I think I forgot to do
as we did our own personal Oregon Trail across the flatlands. I was on a
mission!!! I realize now that the best thing I can do, is STOP, kick back,
get back into the flow, and trust I am looked after—always. And to let go
of the reins…and to trust the dream will be at the other side of the trail.
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