Manhole Music Tea Room

I'd like to thank the folks who raise the grapes way out in California
And I'm hopin' this will be their biggest year
'Cause scarlet water's all that's left to keep me hangin' on
That's why I'll try to wine me up each day and night next year

                                                    -Gary Allan

The sun struggled up on the 7th day. God would have rested, but I woke up around 7:00 to hit the showers before they got crowded. Had a pathetic breakfast consisting of peanut butter on a slice of thin, crumbly wheat bread. This was real travelling. Real Oregon trail stuff. The only difference being that we wouldn't have to ford the river in our wagon and none of us would contract Typhus. The great thing about America is that it's all frontier, even now, 300 years on, there's still that feeling of exploration. When you finally get to Oregon, though, don't complain that it's not a land of milk and honey. More a land of instant coffee and peanut butter.

As we continued southward, we noticed signs warning us that the interstate was "patrolled by aircraft." Really, people. They have huge, black, menacing signs of this nature in Virginia that read: "Speed Limit Enforced By Aircraft." I've never actually seen any Apache helicopters using hellfire missiles to take out speeders, but it's an idea. In Oregon they use creepy Cessna aircraft that fly up and down. One flew directly over us, probably 500 feet up, like it was watching us. After matching our speed for a ways it banked to the left and came around for a pass over the north bound lane. I imagined the pilot laughing maniacally like the Red Baron. That job must be fun as hell.

We then stopped at one of Oregon's rest areas. Oregon definitely has nice rest areas. A group called "Bikers for Christ" was passing out free coffee and cookies to weary motorists. Each cup and napkin had various bible passages on them. I got into a conversation with the elderly couple manning the counter. Apparently, both of them worked in the furniture industry, a job that sent them to North Carolina on occasion. They asked me about Moonshine of all things. Do folks assume we just know a lot about moonshine, that we're just hayseed mo-rons with a jug of XXX whiskey in one hand and a blunderbuss in the other? I didn't ask them that... They were polite about it and I wasn't at all annoyed by their question. I'm proud of that redneckyness, baby! 

After telling them about my (mis) adventures in Moonshine makin' and how it made you feel warm all over (imagine how amused they were at meeting a bonafide Moonshiner from NC), I asked them an equally ridiculous -but reasonable- question: "Why do y'all not have self-service gas stations up here?" I mean, they have assisted suicide in Oregon, but no self-serve gas? The old biker's response was: It's the law. Bikers, apparently, are allowed to gas their hogs, but folks in cars are not. Very strange. We talked for a few minutes more on this and that, including my plan to write a book about Southern Jews when I was done with graduate school, and then parted. I decided these were the second nicest people we'd encountered on our excursion (see? Something nice about Oregon!).

We stopped off at one of those full service gas stations. The attendant was a gal, probably in her late teens. "You want me to top it off?" C. looked bewildered. "Yeah..." C., not used to this sort of treatment, got out and insisted on washing the windows himself. A real throwback to the good ol' days, that.

We saw some fun people on the road in Oregon. There was a lady driving around in a car with birds painted all over it. White car, black birds. C. has this thing for ravens, so we pulled up along side and snapped a picture of her (those pictures will arrive eventually. C.'s camera is, ahem, on the fritz or something - dammit.). We also saw some girls who were hitchhiking. Dangerous. Why, you ask? 'Cause they looked like the kind that would stab you and steal your car and take it on a deadly, sinful joyride through the wilds of Oregon - murdering and leching. C. considered stopping, but seeing as how we were 3,000 miles from home, we weren't gonna take any chances. There was also a lady in a Jeep that C. kept trying to make eyes with. He also has a thing for Jeeps and the women who drive them. As we neared the California border, we saw a gal in a Nissan with North Carolina plates. We exchanged nods and she sped on.

Oregon had been fun, what with its bunny rabbits and full service gas stations, but it was time to get some California Love.

Our first stop in California was instantly made clear, for it was looming ahead of us, covered in snow: Mt. Shasta. C. and I vowed to touch snow before we left on this trip, and it looked like Shasta would be our last -and best- bet. Home of harmonic convergence, Mt. Shasta has hardly been a peaceful place in the last 2,000 years. It has erupted numerous times and remains to this day quite active. I was excited at the prospect of not only touching snow, but walking on my first volcano - not just any volcano, but a 14,162 foot volcano. That's the highest anything I've ever been on. 

After stopping off in the town of Mt. Shasta for information on the volcano, we made our way up the winding road to the parking area. The best thing so far about Shasta: it's free. No fee to walk up to what's right there, which makes sense. We drove up to the highest parking area, an area above the tree line, and were immediately greeted by the sound of Enya's "Orinoco Flow" floating gently through the air. There was a VW van coated in every cliche hippie bumper sticker you could think of, and a scraggly woman sitting on a picnic table, grooving. A ways up the mountain was a crowd of Gaia's children gathered in a circle meditating with the spirit mother. We were definitely in California.

A ranger lady drove up in her SUV and asked C. how we were doing. C., who also has a thing for ranger women, insisted on snapping her picture. I mumbled something under my breath about rangers and how they "was no good." I stand by that, too. Where were y'all at when I was freezing in the cold and bears were picking up my scent? 

The trail started just shy of 10,000 feet. From where we were parked you could see the snow. It was perhaps another 1,000 feet up. To prepare for the snow, I put on an excellent pair of snow boots. I also took my daito, "Black Dragon." A. laughed at me. "Why are you taking that stick?" "You never know when it might come in handy," I replied, "there might be bandits." In addition I loaded down my backpack with food. With memories of last year's disastrous outing at the Grand Canyon still fresh, I was keenly aware of the importance of sodium when hiking. Physical exertion - Sodium = sickness, loss of consciousness, and death. C. brought along some bread and bagels in addition to my jar of peanut butter and box of Triscuits. To supplement this there were at least eight bottles of water for the three of us stowed here and there.

The first leg of the walk was the hardest. After going for several days without a decent walk, our legs and lungs were having trouble acclimating. Not only were our legs all wobbly, but the air was thinner than we were used to. We paced ourselves fairly well going up. We'd walk 50 yards or so and then sit for a minute or two. We passed the group of hippies who were communing with the mountain spirits. One thing they seemed keen on doing was stacking rocks in strange formations along the trail. I'm not sure what this is all about, but it was kinda neat. The balancing acts that many of the formations pulled off were quite amazing. C. had a flashback to the time he was chased by Wiccans. A whole coven of them came after him when he stumbled upon one of their "handfastings" down in the country. Country Wiccans are not your typical Wiccans.

Mt. Shasta is a rugged place, but very beautiful. The terrain is almost totally breccia and grey volcanic pebbles and sand. Here and there are some hardy plants called Pasque Flowers that resemble something out of Doctor Seuss. My favorite flowers, name wise, were the Pussy Paws. We then came to a brook that was tumbling down the mountain side. Tall grass grew around it on all sides. Very beautiful (unfortunately, this is where pictures would come in handy). The water was flowing quite fast. Tired and thirsty, I stuck my head underneath one of the small waterfalls and took a long draught. Delicious, ice cold water. The coldest water I'd had since leaving home in fact. A. and C., after seeing that I hadn't keeled over from some poison, stuck their heads into the water and took long draughts. The water was quite good, much better than the wretched Deer Park we'd been drinking all trip long. We took a long rest there, sitting on tufts of grass and drinking water like primitives.

While my companions rested I scouted ahead. With my daito drawn I looked like some zealous Japanese officer traversing the ash fields of Iwo Jima. I scaled up to the next level and found an enormous reservoir that the mountain water was running into. I dipped my hand into the metal tank. Clean, cool, delicious. Amazing how such simple things can be wonderful when they're in a natural setting like that. Just above the next rise I could see the snow.

C., upon seeing the snow so close, took off like a child. The snow was wet and fairly new. Unfortunately it had been melting all day long. It was probably six or seven inches deep at the lowest level. C. fell into it up to his knee in one area, instantly soaking his pants leg. We tramped around in the snow for a while. With my snow boots I was able to ascend a 45 degree face that was covered in snow. While the others walked along on the trail, I decided to ascend the snow face using my daito as a pick. It worked remarkably well, and I was able to scale a good 100 or so feet of steep snow in August. Walking on a volcano was cool enough, but climbing snow in August was worth the trip.

After stopping for some food, A. revealed that her heels had been stripped of the outer layer of epidermis. The brand new boots she was wearing were slipping in the heel and causing her skin to be stripped off. I was led to believe that A. was in very good shape. She's a scrupulously regular gym-goer and eats healthy all the time, but for some reason the air just wasn't flowing into her lungs like it should. I wasn't particularly bothered by it, despite some shortness of breath. Well aware of how fast her condition could worse if she carried on, I asked if we should turn back. After thinking it over she decided to sit it out while C. and I climbed the next rise - which was the top of the caldera. After that we would turn back.

The last 100 feet were quite gruelling. At this point my gear was beginning to weigh on me and my legs were starting to ache with lactic acid. The trail vanished into a sea of breccia and stones. We just made our own path. In an insane move we took a steep route up a rock face in order to cut time off of our ascent. At the top, the last hand hold was the hardest. The wind whipped across the cliff side, sending sand into my eyes. For a moment I felt gravity attempt to pull me down and dash my brains out on the rocks below, but I was able to scramble frantically up and onto the top.

The top of the caldera was a somewhat flat area of grey pebbles and piles of snow. Here, for some reason, the snow had been dyed red. C. and I guessed that perhaps it was iron in the rocks. At the top of the cliff was the remnants of an old lodge that had evidently been destroyed by an avalanche. Huge telephone poles just snapped like toothpicks. All that remained was a concrete foundation and a couple of poles. We stood atop a toppled phone pole and eyed the summit jealously: another 3,000 feet, but much steeper and covered in snow. We resolved to come back next year and climb to the top.

The way down was so much easier. I simply ran down the side. With my sword I kinda looked like this guy while running down the mountainside. One dude who was walking his dogs up the mountain, probably thought I was going to kill him - until I smiled. A. had to go much slower. After resting at the spring again we made our way down to the truck and had ourselves a good stretch. Upon closer examination we found that A.'s foot wasn't as bad as we thought. And damn did it feel good to walk on even ground! What a treat we have in even earth! Next time you walk across your living room floor, enjoy the flatness of it.

From Shasta we drove and drove to get as close to Sacramento as possible.

Around midnight we saw a sign for a state park near the town of Williams that had a campground. After driving for what seemed like five miles off the interstate we came to a run-down little camp area next to a train track. Oh, great, more train tracks. Who are you sadistic asshats who put campgrounds next to train tracks? The price was 17.00. Since no one was there and we didn't have exact change, we decided to wait until the morning. If someone showed up that could give us correct change, then fine. If no one showed up, then so much the better.

The campground was filled with locals. One tent was obviously chock full of drunk folks. Another tent swayed back in forth in the dark. One fella was propped up on a picnic table downing what looked like a forty of liquor. That was the seediest campground I'd ever been to, and that's saying something. As we pitched the tent we noticed a strange moaning was blowing through the air. We strained our ears. It was a man singing. There was a karaoke bar not far away on the other side of the train tracks. It was Elvis' "Suspicious Minds," which is one of my favorite songs. Unfortunately, this guy was butchering it. The singing went on for at least another hour.

We soon discovered the showers were pay showers. I didn't discover until I was totally undressed and with a bar of soap in my hand that the showers only took quarters. After rummaging through every single article of clothing I had and every single pocket on my bags I managed to scrounge two quarters. 50 cent = five minute shower. I was the lucky one. Neither C. nor A. had any quarters. A. was forced to fill a jug up with water and use that as a shower.

When everything quieted down and the drunks stopped making noise we quickly went to sleep.

On the morrow: San Francisco.