Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 1
Hi Mom! Happy Mothers Day!
As I look at the map I reckon myself a mile west of
the
I move into the woods, often unfenced in the South, in the late afternoon or early evening, carrying enough water to last the night and morning ride to the next town. I move back from the road until the sight and sound are faint, then I settle into the ground. The poncho comes out of my saddle bags and goes onto the ground first. It’s about 5’x7’, and it’s the foundation of my forest estate until morning. Next, my backpacker’s guitar and come off the bike and onto the poncho; next a lightweight air mattress and a “bivy” (short for bivouac) sleeping sack made of Gore-Tex. (Gore-Tex is one of those high-end synthetic fabrics that keeps water from coming in, but doesn’t keep perspiration vapor from getting out. It’s ideal, if a tad less warming than I would have liked. Next I bring out a plastic school box of tools, then one of toiletries containing vitamins, toothpaste, toothbrush, razor, washcloth mini-towel – I have some Korean medicine Master Yu recommended to keep my shoulders limber – you’ll remember my two dislocated shoulders from riding on my bikes the way Icarus flew with his wings – dangerously. This time I promise to be careful, though; there’s plenty of excitement on this odyssey without needing to break speed records.
I have a library out on my poncho top, comprised of a
Gideon’s bible that a Mexican cleaning lady gave me when I charmed her in bad
Spanish, and a couple of journals, one filled, the other filling up. I had a ball point pen when I left
I can waterproof against downpours on short notice,
but so far I’ve had good luck on the weather since waiting out thunderstorms
and hail a couple of states back. I’ve
slept in motel at least every third night, figuring that a wash of myself and
my clothes every third day would be within the bounds of hygiene. I’m carrying two riding outfits, along with a
pair of khaki shorts and two of Master Yu’s Flying Dragon tee-shirts – on black
and one white – with the school seal over my heart. I wear the black one when I want to be
“tactical” by blending into the shadows of the forest at night; when I’m among
the civilians in town, I want traffic to notice me as I visit Laundromat and
diners, so I wear white. After I’ve
found my answers in
…And I’ve brought a few weapons… There is the above-mentioned cane, a flail (one half knotted cord, or knout, the other half oak), a high-powered slingshot with five marbles at hand, and a canister of pepper spray. I never move without multiple weapons. I left the pistol at home with Gretchen; she needed it more, and I think they’re for sissies anyhow. I can engage canines at 50 yards while riding the bike, a trick I learned by studying the ancient Parthians. Yep: Look, mom, no hands! I can whip out the flail in an instant, sending a swoosh of wood or rope. So far a couple of hounds have merited a warning swing of the rope; one pushed his luck and paid for it. He will be wiser but otherwise uninjured. I suppose it’s good to have dogs to practice against so you can be ready for people, who are a lot more dangerous and treacherous than dogs.
When Gretchen and I rode out to the
I have taken a special health provision: a snakebite and spider bite extraction kit. I think that’s just prudent, given that I’m in the bush; but I move carefully, more like a cat than a normal person, barefoot most of the time I’m off the bike. For the most part I stay still in various yoga poses in the woods, and I see all my woodland friends. A few days back I tried fencing with a tree snake but he would have no part of it. Birds are often oblivious of me, so rarely does man enter a bare hundred yards off his fatal highways. I’ve enjoyed the woods since I was a child, when every scalawag urchin in the neighborhood knew the trails in the pristine wood just beyond the sprawl we were making. I can’t remember if we kids took you there or you took us first, but I remember that before I left for the Army you knew the woods better than anybody, and half the pretty plants in it had children in our back yard.
At sundown each day I call Gretchen, as I promised I
would do each day (cell phone allowing).
I’ve ridden some 700 miles eastward now; dusk settles on me half an hour
earlier than on you all back in
In the night, I don’t use lights, because I don’t want to compromise my position, and that’s a smart thing because, Mama, there are some scary people in this country, and I’ll tell you about them tomorrow [see below]. The sun has set, and my letter pauses ‘til dawn. Your loving son,
Eric
Gretchen gave me a late weather warning last night. A line of thunderstorms was just north of me, extending across several states, threatening to sneak down on me in the night. I played guitar and smoked a cheap cigar, looking north. Flashes, like distant artillery without the report of thunder. It was ominous there in the briar patch.
Lightening has to land somewhere, I figure, and once upon a time it landed on me. A perverse irony of nature: If you’re been hit once your odds of being hit again go up by a huge degree. Yep, according to the old pagan Norse, your oldest boy is a priest of Thor by dint of surviving a strike. I’m honored. I’d like to say the thunder god knocked some sense into me, but I’d be lying to the wrong person, wouldn’t I?
I didn’t sleep well. All night long, every cool breath of air woke me with the dread of a murderous bolt of lightening or a screeching pillar of wind…, but it didn’t happen. At dawn Thor came wandering in, but only to take a piss: He showered lightly for an hour. I pulled the bivvy sack over my head and sealed it, then slept soundly until the tap of the drops stopped.
My household goods came off the foundation of my poncho, placed carefully into the panniers (everything has its place), and I worked my way out of the woods toward the highway. Amid a clump of pine I found the remnants of an old still, and dozens of empty gallon jars. Business in the illegal manufacture of white lightening must have been good back in the old days of Prohibition; it’s even better nowadays with the white lightening of crack. I am as wary as a deer with every step as I make the transition from pure nature to impure mankind.
The animal kingdom takes its occasional bite at the wanderer, and there is always the wrath of some god or another with His rain, flood, wind, hail or lightening. There is the perpetual adversity of insects. I must revert to my Baptist rearing and damn them as cousins of Beelzebub, lord of the flies. I wear bug juice like a teen splashing on aftershave before the school dance. I can handle Nature and the God of Nature, though; it’s the people I have the most trouble with.
There is the Crack Head Clan, present where poverty and despair reign over the people – which is to say in about every other town I see. They are predatory, and constantly size me up as prey. I have resolved to make my way around them warily, because I don’t want anyone’s blood on my hands while I’m on a sacred mission, nor do I want them to draw mine – I give the devils their due for murderous ability. The way I see it, there’s been plenty of blood to go around with the war, so I’m in a truce with mankind.
There are the motorists, who frighten me more than the crooks, because their advantage in power is far, far greater. It’s a rare man who can make a hostile move within ten feet of me and not be dead or broken in less than a second, but I have absolutely no answer to the blind brawn of automobiles.
Often there is no shoulder on the roads I travel, so I do a fatiguing dance with traffic. Though I am entitled to a lane on any but interstate highways, I seldom receive the treatment I am due.
You’d think that I would be safest on the highways if I rode on the far right side of the lane when there are no shoulders, thereby giving traffic most room to get around me. Not so, though. If I ride on the edge of the lane the speeding traffic behind me won’t go around me. Nine-tenths of the vehicles barrel right down the middle of the lane, buzzing by within a yard of me at sixty, seventy, eighty or more miles per hour. It’s all mind over matter in this perilous passage: They don’t mind and I don’t matter.
So I hold the middle of the lane, as the law allows, forcing traffic to go around me. I watch them approach in a rear-view mirror, rather like a dentist’s mirror, that attaches to the front left of my helmet. Once I see them drifting left to pass me, I drift right to allow more room. I always wave after they’ve gone by to show my appreciation; sometimes they wave back. Forced to acknowledge that there is a human being in the middle of their lane, they decline to commit willful homicide; given a human being on the edge of the lane, they will not hesitate to risk negligent homicide, though.
Things are at their worst when I have to climb uphill and have no shoulder for safety. My speed goes down for a jog until I’ve crested the hills – sometimes this takes a minute. The law of the road, known to every 16-year-old in Driver’s Ed classes, says that the double line dividing outgoing from incoming traffic means no passing. Any vehicles behind me have to should, by law, simply wait the extra few seconds for me to finish the climb. On the other side they will have the right to pass, and the vision of oncoming traffic to make it safe to do so. But they don’t obey the law. They usually expose themselves by breaking into the oncoming lane to get around me. The mile-a-minute club doesn’t like to be delayed. About one in ten will pass me without budging an inch from the center of the lane; they curse me, honk or shoot the finger for my inconvenience. About one in a hundred actually moves right to pass me at deadly speed. It amuses them.
Yesterday I was riding into
Cars bring out the worst in people. If you want to know how someone really is, watch them drive to work. Most folks are playing passive aggressive games by impeding others, failing to yield, crowding front and back; then there are the out-and-out maniacs who hot-foot it from lane to lane, overtaking the next vehicle ahead like predators pulling down prey.
Come to think of it, maybe cars don’t bring out the worst in people at all, they just bring out the people in people. Hell, the first couple betrayed their one law the first time they thought it over. One half of the first brothers turned became a homicide, fallen to his fraternal homicidist. I’ve gotten out of the habit of holding it against humans that they’re more odious than skunks. I figure it’s a Manufacturer’s defect.
Am I being blasphemous again? That would account for the lady in the suburban… Did I mention that the last sight I caught of her was the Jesus Fish on her tail gate? Do you think she was a Baptist angel on a mission from God? “Nope,” rejoin my Baptist brethren, “if she’d been an angel from God she wouldn’t have missed.”
I finish my letter as I began it, in the briar patch
again. I’m in
Happy Mother’s Day, mama. Say hi to dad for me, and tell Phil happy birthday.
Love, Eric