Cattlecars of the Sky, redux

Here I sit in La Guardia airport, where I’ve been for the last six hours waiting for Air Canada to come up with an idle 767 to clear the surplus bodies abandoned after a couple of flights were cancelled this morning due to thunderstorms. La Guardia was apparently named “greatest airport in the world” (quotes not mine, LL) in 1960, but in 2008, it leaves a bit to be desired. Specifically, services. The only place after security that sells hot tea is sold out, and anyone looking to drink themselves silly to combat the boredom is out of luck, too. The universe (ie: Robert Milton) willing, I’ll be out of here by 5:30 tonight.

This wraps up part one of my summer vacation. I left my friends at the commune on Monday and made my way to Manhattan with Tim. On Tuesday, were got up at 5:30 am and cycled to Central Park to sit in line outside the Delacorte Theatre to wait for the scheduled distribution of free tickets to the 41st anniversary opening of HAIR. Seven hours on a blanket in Central Park was infinitely more pleasant than the same at La Guardia, and we got the tickets we sought. They even turned out to be great tickets. The show was great – with the Central Park setting, it was like being in the 60s again. And how oddly relevant it all seems, once again.

Also on Thursday, Tim took me out to a few Chelsea galleries. Most memorable were pieces by Zhang Huan at the PaceWildenstein Galleries. I have since discovered that there is an exhibit of some of Huan’s work at the VAG right now, so I’ll have to check that out too.

Wednesday night, after a day of cycling in Manhattan and dinner at an Indian restaurant, another sort of culture: Mamma Mia (the film, not the play). We’d read an amusingly critical review in the New York Times, and decided to give it a go. It was, as the review promised, awful but entertaining. I suspect that it might be an ideal candidate for viewing under the influence of mood altering substances.

I should be back in Vancouver late tonight, unless Air Canada abandons me in Toronto for the night. I’ll not have time for much more than re-packing, though, as I’ll be off to Singapore on Sunday.

Alabama

The nudist gathering finished up, mercifully, with one sunny, warm day on which to actually remove one’s clothes comfortably. Though the overall event wasn’t really my scene, fundamentally, I had some fun and met some good people. Among these was Paul, who most people considered my body double though we didn’t think we looked like each other at all, beyond the hair-and-beard thing. After a couple of days, we were both sick of people asking us if we were related and we started making up stories ranging from incestuous fantasies to Manson Family idolatry, and even found a few believers.

At the end, I went back to New York and hung out with Tim, who lives at Easton but also has an apartment in the city. Among other things, we went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Central Park before travelling back to Easton together. I then spent a few days helping out with a large retreat gathering, and saying goodbye to all of my Easton friends. I feel like I was there for more than just a few short weeks and I’m going to miss everyone. Perhaps I’ll have to come back next summer.

A New York image on 5th Avenue, where even the homeless are in on the patriotic action:

The next leg of my journey back to Vancouver was a stop in Chicago to visit Marsha, whom I met in Costa Rica in May. Here’s a picture of Marsha reflected in the “Cloud Gate“, a giant legume-shaped sculpture that the locals refer to as “The Bean”. The photographer can also be seen in the reflection if you squint closely:

Here’s me with the Chicago skyline hiding in the smog behind:

Impulsively, we decided to take a short drive (589 miles) down to Madison, Alabama, where Marsha has a second home. It took about nine hours of driving, in Marsha’s Mini, travelling through five states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. Of those, I had only been to Tennessee previously. We stayed in Alabama two nights, then drove back to Chicago on Saturday. Here’s me and the Mini, in front of the Alabama house:

When we got back, we went to an outdoor concert by the Lyric Opera Company of Chicago in Millenium Park downtown, which was surprisingly packed.

Tomorrow night I’ll be boarding a flight to Vancouver, bringing to an end this season’s travels. Probably.

At least my carpal tunnel is getting better

After almost three weeks at Easton, I’m back on the road again. However, I’m not on the road as originally planned.

The other day, I took a test ride to the local town of Greenwich (that the locals pronounce “GREEN-witch”), not a particularly hilly route, and I did it with no luggage. The round trip is 30km, and by the time I got back, my left knee was sore again. As it seems unlikely that I’m going to manage to peddle this bike to the Poconos, let alone New Brunswick, I abandoned that plan in favour of a less knee-straining public conveyance: the Adirondack Trailways bus. As a result. I’ve got Simon and Garfunkle tunes stuck in my head.

Displays of patriotism are everywhere, some more tasteful than others. Here’s one on highway 40:

Now I am in New York City again, where I will pick up a charter bus to the Poconos tomorrow afternoon. This evening, I went to the National Museum of the American Indian, at the southern end of Manhattan, to hear Martha Redbone sing. The theatre in the museum has terrible acoustics, and I could make out almost none of the lyrics, but it was still pleasant.

This church on highway 40 has the crosses all ready to go. But for what? If only I’d had someone to push the shutter for me as I posed…

The nudist convention in the Poconos starts tomorrow night, and goes for a week. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stand the company of 800 for a whole week, but as Grant always says, “God hates a coward”.

I’ve enjoyed my stay at Easton, and have decided to go back there after the nudist thing. For one thing, I left my bike and most of my luggage there, but also, I like it there. It’s an interesting dynamic. In the simplest description, the residents can be divided into two groups: “The Party Boys” and “The Church Ladies”. Though I don’t think of myself as wholly either of these, I tend to think that I have a foot in each camp, as I appreciate characteristics of each, in my own peculiarly paradoxical way.

Residents contribute, in exchange for food and shelter, to the maintenance and running of the place, which operates a not-for-profit model retreat business, mostly providing programs of spiritual- and self-development to those to those in the queer communities. Last week, I painted the rear wall of the guest house, and washed a few dishes. Who knows – maybe I’ll come back again next summer.

Here’s the view from Jeff’s pool deck, looking toward Vermont/Massachussets:

An interesting side note to this summer so far (interesting to me, though perhaps too much information for some of you) is my newfound chastity. It’s been almost a month with nary an orgasm, which is by far a post-puberty record, and not a blue ball to be seen. Really, it seems inexplicably relaxing, like having a vacation from biology. Or maybe my knee isn’t the only thing suffering the effects of a bicycle. Perhaps there is a life for me in the celibate world of the clergy. Well, except for that little atheism problem.

In the meantime, I wander, and experience the non-carnal. I haven’t managed much writing while at Easton, but that’s mainly because I have been more social and haven’t made time for it. Or maybe an overabundance of under-utilised seminal lubricants somehow inhibits creativity.

Now that I am giving up the bike trip, it seems likely that I will postpone the trip to New Brunswick, perhaps until next summer. Instead, I will probably spend the remainder of my time at Easton before returning to Vancouver in early September, though I may stop off in Chicago on the way to visit a friend, if she’s going to be in town.

Rediscovering Community

I arrived at Easton Mountain on the afternoon on Saturday, July 28, after a very pleasant and scenic ride from Albany, northward up the Hudson River valley. Easton Mountain is an “intentional community”, of sorts with an integrated operation that serves to generate income for, and participation in, the community, as well as to promote the ideas of community and social justice more generally. It’s part commune and part organised retreat, with both parts serving to support the other.

I came to Easton to attend a week-long all-male retreat focussing on “Self, Sex & Spirit”. It was a busy week of workshops and group discussions covering topics including identity, voice, spirituality, massage, theatre, compassion, movement, erotic energy, improvisation, poetry, art, yoga, writing, and combinations thereof, along with plenty of swimming, games, volleyball, and other activities.

This is a part of my ongoing quest to experience my life as a variety of diverse but integrated activities that challenge both my own conventions and those “recommended” to me by the world at large. I feel compelled to defy many of the “rules” of social convention and propriety, whether in search of more meaningful rules that better suit my personality, or in order to test those rules and adopt them with a greater sense of ownership and awareness than if I just accept them on the basis of their being approved unquestioningly by tradition, the family model, religion, or economics.

Partly because I enjoyed the week here so much, and partly out of deference to my complaining knee, I have been re-examining my travel plans. I am due to arrive in Tannersville, PA (in the Pocono Mountains) for a large nudist gathering on August 17th, and had originally planned to spend two weeks cycling to it via a semi-circular route through Boston. However, I have decided to remain here in the community as a “work-study” participant, and plan to cycle toward Pennsylvania on August 13 or 14. After a week of running around in the woods au naturel, interviewing participants, I will once again take stock and decide what my forward path will be.

Off to an unstellar beginning

Day one of my trip, yesterday, brought me to the dumpy-but-sterile Howard Johnson’s in Jamaica, New York, chosen for the fact that it’s just a mile from Kennedy airport. Here’s the $125 view:

Today, I cycled north through Queens toward the Bronx. On the way, the bumpy Queens streets (rural Saskatchewan backroads are smoother) broke the bolting holding on one side of my rear rack. Because of the weight, the rack bent, and I had to unload the whole bike to fix it, putting me behind schedule. Then, having carried on, I discovered that the only bridge that crosses to the Bronx is a bicycle-forbidded freeway with no sidewalks. Thus, I was forced to cycle west to Manhattan to use the Triboro bridge. Unfortunately, I somehow confused west with east and ended up way the hell out in Little Neck, practically in the next state, before I realised my error. To make things worse, my left knee started to hurt again.

As I have to be in Easton (north of Albany) by Saturday afternoon, I no longer had time to make it cycling. So, I was forced to rent a car and drive to Albany. The nearest location? Kennedy airport. I rode all the way back down there, and by the time I arrived my knee was killing me. There’s nothing cheap about New York, and I’m paying an exorbitant rate for this stupid car, a Dodge Magnum that looks like the vehicle of choice of a gangster pimp.

As I write this, I am having dinner at a “Roy Rogers” at a truck stop on the I87 Thruway, where a portion of every large Coca-Cola is donated to “support our troops and their families”. I ordered water.

I’m not sure what the knee problem is. I like to think that it’s this bike, which isn’t ideally suited to long-distance touring. At least, that sounds a lot better than old age. I won’t be able to stick to my plan to ride to New Brunswick if the pain persists, so a change of plan may be in order. Maybe in the end it will be a Greyhound tour of the northeast. I’ll have to put some Simon and Garfunkel on the Ipod.

Better news to come. I hope!

La Manzana Grande

I arrived in New York as scheduled on Tuesday shortly before midnight.

I am staying at a hostel that has 624 beds, but fortunately, they aren’t all in one room. It’s one of the few places in New York that has rates that I am willing to pay, as even dumpy hotels rent for $150. The hostel is in Manhattan’s upper west side, near Central Park and Columbia University, so it is quite a handy location for playing tourist.

On Wednesday, after mastering the subway map and developing a rudimentary sense of direction, I wandered around Greenwich Village and along the Hudson River, and then in the evening satisfied one objective by dining at the first Indian restaurant I’ve seen in five months.

On Thursday, after sleeping unusually late, I wandered rather aimlessly once again, from Times Square to the United Nations via 42nd Steet, with little detours here and there to browse bookstores and search in futility for a potable pot of tea. In the afternoon, I met up with a hostel tour group to the Empire State Building. En route, they dragged me through such important cultural landmarks as the Trump Tower and toystore FAO Schwartz (the latter selling the most phallicly suggestive water cannon I have ever seen marketed to children), as well as quick passes through or by the Metropolitan Opera House, Tiffany’s (too late for beakfast), and a bunch of other buildings famous only for the brand named crap that they sell more ostentatiously than elsewhere.

Late in the day, we finally made it to the ESB, along with what appeared to be 1,367,479 other tourists. Things aren’t simple these days, and a visit to the top obsevation deck required a ride up one escalator, a queue to get through security, an examination by security that seemed more thorough than those required to board an aircraft, payment of $16, another queue for an elevator, a ride up to the 80th floor, where they photographed each visitor and then herded us through a maze until we reached another queue in order to board an elevator up to the 86th floor. Once on 86, we were deposited, naturally, in a gift shop, where most people seemed to be dutifully snapping up knicknacks.

The obsevation deck itself was as crowded as I imagine FAO Schwartz would be on Christmas eve. It is surrounded in Guantanamo-like sharpened aluminum bars that I imagine are to prevent democrats (as opposed to Democrats) from leaping to their deaths in despair for their rapidly deteriorating republic. Someone recently complained because I only post pictures of bugs, and not people, so here is a crowd to make up for the lack:

Here also is a shot of some old grizzled grump that managed to eke out a vague smile despite the atmosphere (the Chrysler building is illuminated, to the right):

I won’t bore you with the process for leaving the building, which was no less tortuous.

After that, I dined at an Irish pub near Times Square with one of my tour mates, where I paid $32 for a Shepherd’s Pie and a pint o’ Guinness.

On Friday, I spent a good part of the day sitting in Central Park reading, and then went to a Shakespeare in the Park performance of Romeo and Juliet in the evening (a bloodbath, as usual). Not only were the tickets free, but the seats are assigned in advance (hint to Bard on the Beach).

Today I am off to Brooklyn, which allegedly has vaguely Berkeley-esque qualities.

My overall plans are changing once again. As someone asked me to house-sit in Kitsilano for a month, I am taking the train to Toronto on Monday, where I will spend a week visiting Ben and Carol and take care of some business, and will fly to Vancouver on June 19. The house-sitting gig fell through after I made the arrangements, but as Eric is travelling at the same time, I will house-sit for him instead. Late in July, I will fly back to New York to resume my travels.