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Staying in Totem felt both homey and odd as normally I stay there because I lacked the basic camping gear to stay elsewhere which I rectified to complete woodbadge last year.  Now, I had the more respectable excuse that I owned the appropriate gear and that I’d even recently stayed in genuine national parks but said gear was in Tucson… and I had the blog to prove it.

My work seems lazy during OA weekends, I usually sleep through breakfast and then tool around a bit and see what odd things I need to do before the patch auction.  This time, I was asked to up with an entirely fake copy of the Bucktail (the lodge newsletter).  I’m quite proud of the list of fabricated facts:

  • Mark was the only gospel apostle to not get Eagle but helped Luke get Brotherhood.
  • Tohickon is the Lenape term for “place to dispose of bodies”.
  • The insulation in Totem Lodge is made entirely of Triscuits.
  • As a prank in 1975, Ockanickon Scout Reservation was sold on Craiglist in exchange for 8 beaver pelts and an antique flax wheel.
  • The Science Center’s basement contains a capstan operated by Ordeal candidates which powers the xenon space laser used to calibrate the camp’s telescopes.
  • The camp’s totem poles are actually ancient Indian cell phone antennas.
  • Bill Mischke is challenged to a duel on average 1.12 times a summer camp season.
  • Ranger Dave Smith is a three-time New York Times crossword puzzle champion.
  • The diesel engine was invented and perfected in what is now the Handicraft Lodge.

The full fake document should be available shortly.

In the OA, besides generating fake content, I do little besides running patch auctions.  Tonight’s auction went frighteningly well with a reasonable start, reasonable end, no cases of me accidentally insulting someone’s sexuality or cursing, and a good selection of items.  I celebrated with a slice of re-frozen cheesecake which I thought was the cause of my insomnia but it turned out to be an observation my subconscious had noted that my active faculties hadn’t: I sold the 2004 NOAC two-piece for $40.

Friends don't let friends pay $40 for this patch.

This patch debutted at $8 for the two pieces and is a simply hideous patch.  The top makes no sense without the bottom, the deer looks like he’s taking a whiz behind the tree, the reference is 10 years late, and using “Brothers” twice is jarring to the ear.  Eight dollars to forty dollars, that’s 61% interest compounded annually…  I disgust me.

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The reason for my flight back to PA was to attend an Unemployment Services Orientation provided by the state of New Jersey which attempts to provide career services. The center provides photocopiers, phones, web access, and some instructional support that’s accessible for a mere $4.00 an hour in parking or via regional rail that’s only 3 miles away and blocked by a divided highway. The orientation itself went over printed out powerpoint slides I could have reviewed at home, phone numbers I will never call, and a litany of career resources that are either horribly below me (getting a GED) or horribly above me (Wednesday networking luncheons for MBAs).

Normally, I’d be angry about these services and I fully expected to write a post about the deplorable farce of this attempt at a public service; but I am not. The entire center and its staff exhuded genuine intent. The computers seemed reasonably up to date with two staff members on hand to offer technical support across from the only time I’ve seen a guide assist keyboard in the wild. The two women who walked us through the machine-readable resume form seemed to know hundreds of job postings off the top of their heads going through an extensive list of alternative career descriptions and aligned fields including mnemonic recitation of odd scholarships and FAFSA loopholes for in-demand jobs. These are people who want to work themselves out of a job and are doing it proudly. I hope I reach that level in whatever career I land.

That said, getting there cost $400 for a 90-minute session and I have no intent on returning for any reason below a court summons.

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There are some little tasks I do around the house that I consider important sorting mail and filtering out things that shouldn’t go into the fridge.  I was worried about these being completed during my time away but returned to see that they’d been done with mixed results:

1) The mail was sorted into two piles: My dad’s mail and everyone else’s

2)The Roomba was on charge and had appeared to run a few times based on the tracks in the carpet but the carpet was dirty.  The operator doesn’t seem to have ever emptied the device.

3) The fridge was very clean.  Partly because whomever cleaned it out threw out the baby with the bathwater in chucking not only the leftovers but the containers they were in.  Also, I’m pretty sure before I left there was 2 lbs of sealed Irish bacon that was nowhere near expiring.  Either something went very wrong with it or something went very right.

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I had to fly home to Philadelphia to participate in a re-employment services orientation that if missed would result in me forfeiting four weeks of unemployment insurance payments, a trade I wasn’t about to make as the benefits exceeded the cost of the trip by a factor of six.

This was my first time flying solo but as I was flying domestically, had a day of leeway on my arrival time, and had no luggage to check I figured it should be somewhat smooth.  Smooth proved to be an understatement as the total process of being dropped off to being seated in the plane took less than 25 minutes, seemingly an order of magnitude faster than what it’s taken my brother when flying internationally.  The first flight was 37 minutes, short enough that they didn’t offer peanuts but long enough for me to wish I could shoot laser beams from my eyes to silence the lady explaining that her first name was a combination of three holocaust survivors her grandparents met on vacation in Monaco.

The second flight was nowhere near as nice with a single empty seat on the entire plane.  My brother had told me that he’d been approached to pay a fat tax (being required to purchase a second seat which is refunded if the flight isn’t full) and I dodged these on both flights.  I think it’s because my sunglasses are so slimming.

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Steve and I went to the Titan Missile Museum to see a real formerly live Titan missile.

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Steve, recovering from a night of little sleep

All the presentations around the structure focussed on the doctrine of MAD or as they said “peace through deterrence” which sounded almost Orwellian in its historicity.  This contrasted nicely with the tawdry kitsch of the gift shop which had Soviet Threat merit badges and instructions on making an Atomic Martini.  The tour itself was led by a man who went to the Wilford Brimley school of docenting, much as the cryptologic museum docent had.

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He eats for F-150s.

I couldn’t figure out if the site was larger or smaller than I expected or if the weapon was weaker or stronger than I expected, but the security redundancy over-engineering of the shock-resistant facility was hallmark 1950s American construction.

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The door that other doors point to when praying

The missile itself had a level of precision hand-craftsmanship that only exists in very expensive small-lot devices like measurement equipment, prototype computers, and, apparently, nuclear warheads.

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Artisan missilecraft

We topped off this trip with a stop at Fuddruckers which I was excited to learn offers an artificially sweetened peach green tea which was awesome enough for me to down at least five glasses which coupled with a 1/2 lb burger and potato wedges clogged my hosts quaint toilet.  My normal methods of the flush-and-a-half didn’t work and his plungerless bathroom offered no alternate terms of clog remediation leading me to try to stealthily move about his house to find a plunger without alerting him to the fact that I’d laid down suppressive fire on his period toilet.  I eventually found a plunger in the garage and he would have been none the wiser except that in attempting to rinse the plunger I activated the shower head instead of the bath tap and drenched my head and upper shirt in water.  At least his toilet would now flush.

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Travelling west out of Texas was magical.  I had 900 miles to cover in the day and 500 through the remainder of Texas were by far the nicest.  The state route that constituted the first 90 miles consisted of a landscape I’d never encountered with rock formations seemingly grown and a highway straddled by saturated flowers.

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Grown Stone

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They formed a ribbon when passed at high speed.

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A sky that made keeping to the road tough.

The drive was uneventful except for a part where I came within 2 minutes of running out of gas as driving at 85 had changed the distance per tank of my car.  I also hit 100 for the first time in a vehicle I was driving and for only the second time in a car period but my speeding (87 MPH) later got me pulled over by a Pecos County Sheriff.  He asked for my license, saw it was a PA and asked me if I was going home (despite travelling west).  I honestly replied “I need to get to Tucson to catch a flight to PA to take care of something”, a factually true statement which resulted in me only getting a polite warning from the officer who looked like some sort of train conductor.

The drive held another moment of interest as I’d never really seen the sun set over the actual horizon.  Normally, the setting sun is obscured by trees, houses, hills, or what have you but the blankness of New Mexico allowed an long uninterrupted view of the setting only impeded by small hills and the curvature of the earth.  I don’t think I’ll encounter this again until I hit the Pacific.

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Splendid example of the limitations of a camera's dynamic range.

I also got to go through a US border checkpoint despite being entirely in the US during my trip.  The rigorous inspect involved being asked if I was US citizen, was hiding any non-US citizens in my car, and had any contraband in my car.  Whew, that was a tough one.

My Arizona host bent over backwards to have me even proffering his bed for my use.  I was armed with my inflatable mattress which was so noisy on the wooden floor we’d equip it with a fleece silencer on the second night of my stay.

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Driving South to meet a former OSR staff member was dull with little to look at besides the cavalcade of frontages that lined the secondary Frontage Drive that skirted the highway.  I was afraid of not having any pictures for the day so I pulled over at a Texas rest stop to take a picture and discovered some things.  First, all Texas rest stops offer wifi, which is somewhat impressive in that there’s no real place to use it except for surfing while taking a dump.  Second, Texas rest stop toilets are 3.8 gallons per flush which is 2-3 times what a normal toilet uses.  I timed the flush period and it clocked in at a full 24 seconds.  That’s a hell of a flush.

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Clouds, blown by the force of a flush.

Also, Texas has some peculiar road signs:

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How can it be the law to obey a warning sign?

I met Alex in Austin and we reminisced over girly iced beverages.  He’s happily married and hosts some kickin’ parties as witnessed by the fact that his wife still had highlighter on her.  We chatted about school, work, and the joys of becoming adults and moved on after a few hours; it was good to see him.

My next meet-up was with Ellice Sanchez/Ellice in San Antonio, the land of history and malls.

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Soft light is soft.

The meeting was fine and our nightcap was watching her boyfriend raise 20 flags.

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My Texas host wasn’t available until 11:30 PM and with only a 4 hour drive to Dallas I had to kill eight hours after waking up to arrive at a reasonable time which I thought would be easy in that I was visiting a national park.  I was sadly mistaken.  Hot Springs National Park does have some wooded areas to it but these seem almost ancillary, the purpose of the park is to preserve the hydrology that provides hot mineral water to the historic bath houses, something I have little to no interest in experiencing.  I took the tour of the park proper and there was really nothing of note.

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This could have been taken anywhere.

They had a lovely observation tower that one could climb and look from for a mere $8.

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It did have a nice snack machine.

I blew through the park in under an hour despite my best efforts so had to find a way to kill 7 hours, it required some creativity; every time I saw a brown landmark sign, I did my patriotic duty and pulled over.  These detours included:

  • Army Corps of Engineer Dam Education Area
  • Recreation Zone 7
  • Arkansas Reservoir Museum
  • Texas Cotton Museum
  • Mary Puddin’s, the world’s largest independent chocolatier (a claim that makes no sense)
  • Texas Veterans’ Highway Monument

This only killed six of the eight hours but I received additional assistance from having to take an impromptu stop for some flash flooding on I-30 W but even this and my attempt to keep to the speed limit still had me in Dallas two hours before I could actually do anything.  I pulled into a Starbucks for some free (if you’re using a iPhone) wifi and proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes using my MiFi to try to learn how to fake out the network so my laptop could mask itself as a phone through dicking with user agent options.  My host shot me a message that I could meet his at his restaurant for some free food (woot) so I drove across Dallas to exercise this option.  Dallas doesn’t have streets so much as a network of boulevards with double turning lanes, four or five across expressways and multiple ways of exiting and entering tollways.  Even on a Friday evening, the combination of quickly moving traffic and tight turns allowed Wanda the Wonderbrick to navigate wonderfully and I’m tempted to return just so I can tool around more.

In front of my host’s restaurant as I readied myself to change in a nearby convenience store I received a text message from a team mate that in effect said “we’re under attack”.  Boo.  I pulled into a no parking lane, pulled out my laptop, connected it to my giant portable battery, plugged in the mouse, connected to the MiFi, put on my headset and set to work.  I got a lot of strange looks from passersby who stared at me like I was either the world’s fattest spook or some sort of UAV coordinator on vacation.  A nice policeman told me to move my car so I wrapped things up and having missed my restaurant window, shot gleefully across Dallas to meet my host.

Dallas/Sensei is both a Scouter and highly kinetic and meeting him in person was revealing.

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Philmont shirt, I approve

He has joint custody with his ex-fiancée of his cat, Muffin, the most resigned cat I’ve ever met.  Normally, I’d describe such an animal as lazy, calm, or docile but the blank knowing stare of this cat bordered on nihilism.

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A kitty Sartre, or Camus if he dies young.

I wonder if any other animals have the ability to present this type of ennui.

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Driving to Fort Smith, Arkansas from Tulsa, Oklahoma has confirmed a long-held suspicion of mine: suburbs, regardless of location, are essentially identical once one controls for accent and climate.  This is by no means an insight and was probably first discussed by Montesquieu or Voltaire but confirming evidence as to my assumption of the monotony of urban purgatory is (dis)heartening.

Fort Smith is the second-largest city in the state is between 150-200 years old depending on when you tart the clock.  This is just enough history to name things after figures that’d reached mythic status but with little actual body to them.  The commercialization behind such is a new phenomenon in my mind and I’m curious to see how the zeitgeist develops as it moves from kitsch to history, should such a thing even be possible.  My host in the area was Ed Portman/SquareMEal who let me use his shower and then we talked about his ambitions as a scenic designer.

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One of 8 people to have a TI shirt.

He’s caretaker for a surprisingly active cat that possesses the rare ability to take a stationary ball, strike it, and then chase it which could be interpreted as either idiocy or the height of play.

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Hypercat

We met with Ed’s mother for dinner and then I got a quasi-tour of Fort Smith.  I saw the mighty Arkansas river:

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Big Rock Candy Mountain Reject

I also got to see the fake carillon that apparently has bells but plays music over speakers instead.  As a side note, my mother says “carillion” rather than “carillon” and I’ve not met another person who’s done this.  One day I think I may challenge her on this as I should have done to that guy who insisted that “perspicaspity” was a word.  Regardless of the projection type and my standing tiff, the tower was imposing:

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Incapable of playing "toot toot, you're a bitch"

I left for Hot Springs National Park intent on staying over there for $12 but discovered after driving 80 miles through banjo country that they don’t offer 24/7 check-in like every other national park I’ve been to.  Downtown Hot Springs was a strange mix of 3-5 star hotels, biker gangs, and surprisingly cheap gas stations ($2.51 in a few cases) but these elements didn’t mix well at 11 PM on a week day.  With no reasonable way into the park and not wishing to risk a night at the “King’s Stay Inn”, I drove out a bit until I found a $50.00 motel and plopped down for the evening.

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I left Columbia not knowing if I was going north or south, instead waiting from a call from a somewhat down on his luck fellow that lived in upper Missouri.  I had two hours before I had to choose but he politely called shortly after my departure.  Missouri’s state roads are lettered instead of number which led to some odd pictures:

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Like some sort of giant outdoor library

Missouri was the first area I’d consider specifically rural on my route, having towns with populations under 2000 and normally defunct places like Esso gas stations or Western Auto.  All of the general stores had 7-Up signs that were originally sold in the early 1980s as part of a marketing campaign and a few other vestiges of old time I rarely encounter except for in vintage stores or when making odd detours on road trips.  The cars seemed to be about 10 years older on average bringing back memories of my 1983 Dodge Ram Charger and my father’s string of Jeep Wagoneers.  Finally, there was the haphazard distribution of livestock standing as neither the lone dairy cow nor the proper herd but a clutch of 8-25 on a 40 acre plot.

I met Mathew Krieg/Blitz at his home and listed to his tale of woe brought on by his ur-bitch ex-girlfriend.

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Blitz/Krieg

He has a dog, Chloe, and a cat, Zoe.

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She needs a haircut

I gave him stickers, and talked, got a Hy-Vee diet cola and headed south.

Driving to Oklahoma involved crossing Kansas which, while flat, I thought would be flatter.  I suppose there’s a different profile north/south rather than east/west but I was looking for infinite grassland nothingness and was met with just enough dips and inclines to confuse the hell out of cruise control.  I arrived in Tulsa, Oklahoma and prattled like a schoolgirl with Rev until 3 AM under the glowing light of his TV which is never to be turned off… which I did.  Foreshadowing for the next day.