The medication is meloxicam, and it's great for arthritis, or as folks call it, Art. I understand it is good for dogs. I was out bouncing around the roads, looking for a story and a good time, and I found one in Wayland, Michigan. I had intended to return to Wilboterria for sleep, food, meds and a change of clothing. However, my daughter tweeted me that she was free Saturday and that altered my plans on the fly. I could drive back to Wilboterria, but why? Driving back to the lodge, sixty miles. Driving back to US-131, around forty miles. So instead of rolling one hundred miles, I used Priceline at 10 PM to book a room. I can pick up three pills of Art Meds at a Walgreen pharmacy since my script is online. One stop at a Salvation Army Thrift Shop or a Goodwill, and I have a fresh change of clothes. I keep a set of, ahem, male furnishings in my car trunk for this purpose. In my briefcase, often full of blues, I keep an electric razor and a toothbrush. Booking a hotel inexpensively is a luxury, and most hotels have soap, shampoo and even razors, shaving creme and toothbrushes if one asks. My mother washed my mouth out with soap when I was a saucy boy growing up, and I learned to like soap and its taste. People, these are jokes. Whilst backpacking, I learned that many backpackers employ soap to brush teeth, toothpowders or gel unnecessary weight. I always have my laptop in my car, and I've done a morning's work from it, thanks to hotel wifi and virtual private networks. I am a productive drifter, vagabond, Wilbo the Hobo.
No matter how frugally I travel, I'll never match travel practices learned by German apprentices in preparation for their journeyman travels. The guild prepares them with the trade uniform and a song. Wearing that uniform and singing that song, a journeyman can charm locals into food and shelter. I was driving north out of Los Angeles California on the coastal highway, and great winds made tracking forward and straight a chore, forcing me to keep my hands tightly on the hill. I saw a blighter on a bicycle fighting these winds right where the highway turns inland towards Lompoc and Santa Maria. About a mile up the road, I stopped at the rest stop, for rest and to enjoy the view of the stark rocks of coastal mountains. The bicyclist made his way to the rest stop, and I took pity on him. He looked like a decent person, so I offered to throw his bike in my trunk and drive him up to any point on the way to San Francisco. He was just pulling his hand lettered cardboard sign out of this rucksack. In the car, he shared sandwiches and cookies a family in Malibu had packed up for him. Bims, not his name, had become a journeyman in the ship joiner trade. In other words, give him a place to stay, a supply of wood and hardware, and he would build you a wooden houseboat. But he's probably booked solid, as anyone who delivers old world craftsmanship is booked. He had worked on a boat recently in the harbor of Sydney, Australia, living on the boat and enjoying gifts of meals from people who understood his lifestyle or heard his song. He met the great love of his life when he walked up to her in his uniform and sang his song. The pair traveled the earth together, as unmarried German couples will, even living on secluded islands in the Pacific for indefinite periods of time.
The ultimate shame, as it seems to me, is to be caught on the road and go broke. One of Bims friends ran aground monetarily in India because no one would honor his traveler's checks.
I want to write about Bims again, especially since I live in Muskegon, one of the greatest towns for sailboat repair in the world. I've blind carbon copied him this note, but the email address hasn't produced a response since 5/7/2007, when I was about to drive up the California and Oregon coast to Portland and then over our continent to my home, then in Royal Oak, Michigan. That truly rated as a Double Wilbo. All stops documented in a Moleskine notebook. A double Wilbo is an open-ended road trip with no required arrival time but a definite destination. I plan on circumnavigating soon, which I'll call a Quadruple Wilbo, to be done before I require a quadruple bypass. From the Ultimate Wilbo, I might not return and my affairs will be in order before I set out. It will be a Ulyssean journey. This doesn't mean death on the road, but I will be looking for Bilbo Baggins and singing old songs at top of my lungs. Pixie led? Not worthy. Today and Sunday is merely a half-Wilbo.
Bims and I parted ways in the wee hours, on an outrageously moonlit night singing over the San Francisco Bay. He had me pose before my truck, parked on the road into Sausalito, before the moonlight and bay. It was a fabulous picture but his laptop malfunctioned and I've never seen it but in his viewfinder. I learned later he rolled out his sleeping pad amongst tents for the Sausalito Art Fair, near the houseboats, where he had friends. A small call to a friend up somewhere in the area called the Redwood Curtain, and he had a lift and a place to stay for a few days. And probably plenty of shipbuilding work.
The Ulyssean Society
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