Mountain Hospitality

From Fes I rode two days through the Riff mountains, through endless fields of marijuana and olive trees (pictured) towards Chefchawen, a city where you have no freedom of choice in house paint color.  

I stopped at a small cafe in the evening of the first day to get a coffee to push me the final 30km to a spot that looked like good camping.  Apparently by changing my clothes before coming into the cafe I showed great respect (I was told later). I was  Immediately invited to sit at a table where some guys were drinking coffee or tea and smoking hash (as was everyone in the cafe, and every other cafe I passed). through Google Translate we actually had a great conversation, and they were extremely friendly.  The local hash maker gifted me a nice big chunk, and kept giving me more every time he took one of my rolling papers. Eventually the conversation got to where I was planning on sleeping that night, and I told them, although I kind of hinted that I didn't really feel like biking the rest of the way there. Didn't take long for them to figure out which one of them wanted to host me. Said (guy pictured) ended up calling someone from the town that was attending English school to come over and help translate.  Oussama was a really nice young guy, and after all the discussion where I was gonna sleep I ended up just staying with him and his family, which was a really great experience. They immediately showered me with olives and fruit and bread and fish.  Dinner is a late night thing in the summer months in Morocco, so we ended up hanging out, his brothers and father and I, until around one o'clock in the morning. I slept outside under the stars which they didn't find odd at all, in fact the father of the family, pictured, also preferred to sleep outside, and he slept a few feet away from me.  

I made it to Chefchawen  Pretty late last night, just in time to get a nice sunset pic. I somehow got locked out of my phone, so I had to just wander around to try to find a place to stay, which was pretty difficult with the bike, since every street include stairs and is super narrow, and only ment for walking or donkeys. Somewhat out of desperation I accepted the offer to stay in this dudes house.   I was kind of hoping to find a cheap hostel and link up with some travelers,  but this was fine.  I am now taking a day off,  chilling in the hammock,  and later this afternoon I'll bike 25km to a rockclimber's hostel and try to make use of these shoes Ive been carrying around.

Diarrhea persists at a very tolerable degree.    Just enough to remind me this shit is real.  

This is fun

After making  it over the atlas mountains I restocked in "Morocco's Hollywood " and then took a recommendation to head to Finnt, a desert oasis where I treated myself to some Berber hospitality and took a rest day (video of drumming dudes were workers at the hotel).  I left the next evening and had a sunset ride on the dirt road to another undeveloped  oasis where I camped under the milkyway.  The next day I was crossing open and barren desert in 105° heat until I got to the Dadés River valley.  The next day was spent riding through picturesque towns in and out of the Dades Gorge.  I made full use of the cool morning  and evenings and found a nice spot to pitch a hammock during  the afternoon.   

Today, I woke up at the sources the Dades,  and started heading up over the atlas mountains up above amazing canyon landscapes butting against  dramatic mountains.  There was nothing for 60km, and the whole time I was on the "piste" road i only saw the following  people: Three women on foot with heavily loaded pack mules, a couple on a scooter, a car, a truck, three goat herders, camels, a nomadic  family, and another truck. It was a dirt road, but actually I kind if get it now, the whole gravel riding thing.   This road was perfect.   Challenging in all the fun ways without the road ripples and sand traps.   The ascent was long, with the hardest non-stop section climbing 900m over 12km of especially technical gravel roads.  10,000ft elevation at the pass.  The descent was a ton of fun, there were super technical  sections  where I was standing up and and riding the brakes hard (I love this bike).   And there were other times where I was just cruising in top gear on hard clay and gravel, even catching some actual air several times hoping little road bulges.  I even did some semi-technical single track riding on the switchback  short cuts.   Full suspension without panniers would have been a blast, but there's something  pretty  satisfying  about doing it with this rig.  I stopped at the first sign of civilization I saw which was a little  cafe run by some young dudes, one of them spoke Spanish.   I hate and hung out and played guitar for a few hours, then descended the last 16km of dirt roads to the first of a string of towns (and the beginning *spotty* asphalt). These towns were definitely way different  from the ones on the other side of the pass, seemingly  much poorer, and the people looked more turkic.  The people in these upper mountain towns, and the herders and nomads I saw on the pass definitely made the whole thing feel way more foreign then before.  The rest of Morocco has kind of just felt like Europe built out of adobe, with an Arab twist.  Except the desert part... that was nuts.  These mountains felt like a world that the west hasn't influenced at all, a culture that is completely foreign to anything I have any idea about.  Plus lots if kids screemed and chased after me asking for stuff, which is annoying, but I landed a couple of solid high fives.  Now I'm back down to about 7,000ft in the middle of the mountain range, back in the sort of towns I'm more used to.   I'm gonna spend another $20 for a hotel with a shower and meals and wifi.   No complaints here.  5 stars.

Day 3: The day my perfect stealth camping record was lost.

This evening I climbed a ton of elevation and took some nice long rests.   The days are so hot I thought it might be a good idea to do more riding in the early morning and late evening.   After a great meal at a scenic overlook I did some descending in the cool evening air.   I passed by some potentially decent camp spots but I was feeling like continuing.   After the descent the road immediately went to shit.   Major construction work was being done, and that also meant all the areas on either side of the road were inassessable. Eventually as it was about to be dark enough to warrant getting lights out, I pulled over to look at a potential spot along the river.   There was another guy chilling there on a bicycle and he told me I should go back to the last town I passed and sleep there because the river is dangerous and the road is bad ahead.   I really  should have just kept going...  I told him I preferred to sleep here and then he pointed out another spot, behind a giant rock that was not so bad.   He said he worked security for the town/construction and he would prefer I went back to the town but this would be ok too.  I thanked him and started setting up my tent.  He left.   45 minutes or so later two other guys came, they wouldn't have seen me from the road so they must have been tipped off by bike guy.   They also were security officials (actually just one was, the other came along to help translate).  They also said it wasn't safe here.   Thieves, murderers etc etc. Apparently a couple years ago two Norwegian tourists were killed in a town called Imlil, which is like 40 miles away, also in the mountains.... Bitch I'm from the 9th ward, fuck off and let me sleep.  I told him I feel safe here and I would prefer to stay.   After some back and fourth he called his boss and after taking pictures of my passport they said I could stay here, and apologized for bothering me and for scaring me (they didn't).  "Good night, thanks!"   Then, about another 45 minutes later, after I'm nearly asleep, three actual police came.   I heard them pull over and it took them another 10 minutes or so until they actually found me.   God damnit, y'all are starting to piss me off.   Everyone was very friendly, but still, come on!  They told me it was very dangerous because of the river (no mention of thievery etc)   Apparently there was a land slide earlier today, they showed me pictures, which didn't really look like anything other then construction work.  my guess is it was equally due to the construction and the river.  He said the weather can change at any minute here in the mountains...   It was perfectly clear, and there was no rain in the forecast at all... Plus the river was bending such that if any eroding riverbanks were to be avoided it would have been the opposite side of the river.  This was absolutely not a dangerous spot for anything river related.   I tried reasoning with them for a while but they were firm and eventually I just gave in.  They assured me I wouldn't have to pay for a place to stay.   At this point I just want to go to sleep, and I'm thinking they're going to take me to a room at the police office or something like that.   I packed all my shit up, which isn't that fun when you just finished setting everything up like 15 minutes ago, and rode the mile or so back downhill to the tiny Town, surprised to see it was still bustling, at 11:30pm.   When we got into the town I pulled over and asked the cops, who were following me, where I should go.  They had no fucking idea... Fuck.    Security guy number two was waiting there, and they asked him and he just walked across the road to a little ditch and the pointed to a little area walled in on three sides, full of trash, smelled like piss, completely visible from the very loud road, and clearly a spot where people come to collect water.   You gotta be shitting me.   They said " you can sleep anywhere, is this okay? it's totally safe here!" I said this sucks, but I don't know where else I can go in this town, so if this is what you're going to offer me then I'll take it and leave me alone already.   They had nothing.   I told them to just leave me alone and let me sleep, I was pissed.   Once they walked away I looked around the area for a better spot and there really wasn't anything at all.   I went in to one of the abandoned cement dirt floor rooms which was providing one of the three walls for the original spot.  There was even more trash in there as well as a few puppies.   At least it had four walls and was quieter, and well hidden.   I started moving my stuff there and security guy #2 and a new English speaking guy started telling me that it was bad there because the dogs were dangerous.  Puppies.  Fucking puppies.  Granted, the language barrier was pretty huge, and I don't think they actually meant to say dangerous.   They also said it smelled, but I was so sick of these guys "looking after me" so I said it was fine, but actually it smelled really fucking bad...  So then I jumped up on the roof, where the young English speaking guy was, and it looked like the best option, so I said I would just sleep up on the roof, and that seemed to satisfy everyone.   So now it's 12:30,  and this town is just as busy and noisy, if not buissier then it was when I originally passed through it at like 8pm.   I'm just sitting up on this roof, not going to be able to to sleep... English speaking bro is still up on the same roof, now with 3 buddies smoking hash.  So yeah ...   It's an experience, not fun, but it's an experience.   In all my years of stealth camping I've never ever had any people give me shit... There goes my perfect record.... 

1am update... There's still mother fuckers selling cactus fruit....   I guess this is a spot where busses stop to let people out to pee and get tea etc, so everyone here is just waiting around trying to sell shit.   Apparently the busses Keep coming all night until 4am... Yay.  And the honking... every bus wakes up the entire town when it rolls in by honking  like a pisssed off soccer mom.   Oh, and I've seen like a dozen people come take a piss where the cops told me to sleep since I've been sitting up here.

Up until these shenanigans, today was actually pretty great.  I had a chill morning in the hostel in Marakech, smoked some of the hash I bought the day before and started riding out.   Marakesh was cool to ride through on a bike but that's it.  I got creative and fashioned a sunshade poncho thing with the airplane blanket.  I ate some good food. And the hills were beautiful.   I got some diarrhea... I guess I shouldn't be drinking the water they give me at these restaurants where goat carcasses are just hanging up, outside, not refrigerated at all.  Doesn't seem too bad though, my guess is I'll be good to go tomorrow.

Day one: The Chalmette of Casablanca

I've been waiting for the past month or so to get fully pumped.  I thought the excitement would kick in once I asembled the bike and peddled out of the airport.  But it didn't.   I was in a daze, after not sleeping in 24 hours, with the night before that spent sleeping on a bench in the airport.   It took me a full two hours to assemble the bike and pack it all up, and by the time I finished the cool morning had turned into blazing hot summer sun.  Instead of heading 20km north to Casablanca, I headed south into depressing industrial and agricultural landscapes and eventually a small town.  The Chalmette of Casablanca.  Still in braindead autopilot mode I stopped at a bank to change money, and then one of the cafes for an espresso and fingers crossed for some sort of delicious breakfast food.   The friendly waiter brought me over the standard stuff, and then spilled steamed milk on he table and me.   No biggie.  After some sitting and some caffeine I was starting to get my head in the game.  I tried to pay my tab but the waiter refused to accept any money.  As I rode through this strange and ugly town, with no main attractions,  no notable architecture, along side mad-max style motor-trikes, donkeys, and people just going about their days, I finally broke out into a smile, which turned into laughing out loud at how rediculous my situation is.   "What the fuck am I doing!?" I said out loud mid laugh.   I quickly passed the town and with a mild tail wind just got to biking.   Highlights include a tractor pulling a trailer full of people banging on drums, and a little kid walking down the street that reached out for a high five, which landed perfectly.   I'm 50km into the trip.  In the next little town, stopped for lunch at a very disappointing shawarma spot now as I'm typing this.   I'll probably ride another 50km to a river which looks like promising hammock camping.   Tomorrow I'll wake up to this new rediculous life, likely with a smile on my face.   I think I'm going to drink a lot of coffee in Morocco... 

Since we last spoke

Exactly one year ago, 4:15 pm, April 20^th 2010, I turned in my last final exam and finished my college “career”. The 365.25 days since then have been the best 365.25 days in my life.

Some things I learned this year:

• When you do fun and exciting things you meet fun and exciting people, which there are a lot of. 
• There is no such thing as luck, but being open to any opportunity that crosses your path, combined with walking down the right paths, makes you feel like paying the lotto.
• Pushing your body to do difficult things makes you stronger both mentally and physically, and gives you a deeper understanding of your body and what it can do.

Since my last blogamajig a lot has happened. I apologize for not sharing my experiences as much as I had planned. Here is a quick summary of some of the major things I've done since my crash, which seems like years ago.

From S. Carolina I pedaled down to northern Florida, couch surfing at some cool places along the way. I then spent a lot of time working on farms. First was Green Flamingo Organics, where I spent two weeks doing such things as slaughtering chickens, picking vegetables, skinning gators, and eating ramen. Then I spent a week on a cute little herb farm called Maggie's Herb Farm, and from there I met up with a friend from Green Flamingo and biked down to the tip of Florida together to work at Bee Heaven Farm. I spent a month there in a real bed (in a barn) with all the amenities and unlimited food from BJ's. While I was there I spoke a lot of spanish, and kind of felt like an illegal immigrant. I also got to explore the Everglades, which is a place I promise to return to.

After that I biked down to Key West, which was quite beautiful, and looks sweet on my map. I met my family there during “the holidays” and got to catch up with them and live in some serious luxury for the first time in a while. Luxury is overrated and overpriced, (but always appreciated *I refuse to use an emoticon*). From there I back tracked, good thing the wind didn't change directions also. I stopped at Bee Heaven Farm again for New Years, where I taught my 50 year old Guatemalan friend how to play beer pong. I woke up the next morning feeling a step down from so-so, took a large handful of nuts and biked 87 miles to Boca Raton for the next leg of the trip.

In Boca I met up with my friend JJ “The Hunger” Frasca, and together we biked to New Orleans. It was a huge adjustment, biking with a second person, but it made it like a whole new trip. We had some great times and met some great people, and pushed ourselves to extremes. We slept in a tent in freezing temperatures, biked nearly every day for two weeks, and ate more than three normal people combined. Each. Epic is the best word I can think of.

 

We rolled into New Orleans together in mid January, then JJ was forced to return to the lulls of academia, and I got settled into a new city. I stayed in the spacious laundry room of my good friend Petra, and got to know her awesome group of friends. New Orleans really is an amazing city, and Mardi Gras is worth losing your job for. Go, see it, live it, it's worth it. Maybe I'll expand on all the coolness of Mardi Gras and NOLA in general later, but based on my current rate of blogamajigs I doubt it, and you could probably read some awesome descriptions of it a million different places.

After a couple of weeks of partying and all that, I began to get involved and employed with Bayou Rebirth, and Common Ground Relief. My job is to lead groups of volunteers in educational plantings of native wetland grass and tree species, among other things. I've been loving working outside all the time, and getting out in some really cool places. Yesterday I drove down to the very tip of the Mississippi river, took a hour long speedboat ride down into the delta, then transferred to a fan boat to get to where river water and gulf water are separated by only a few hundred feet of sand. Here sediment accumulation is actually happening and we are helping it by planting Spartina altinaflora grass plugs into gulfsaver bags.

About a month ago I moved into the Common Ground Relief volunteer house in the lower 9^th ward where I'm living and working with other long term volunteers working to rebuild people's homes which were lost during Katrina. Every day I'm not working with the wetlands I'm hanging drywall, or laying tiles or something like that.

I plan on staying here for another month and then I fly from New Orleans to Rome, where I'll start a new part of my trip. Although at this point, and actually for quite some time now, I don't feel like I'm on a trip, away from “real life”. This is my life, and yeah, its awesome. Join me.

Scarface

One week ago today I crashed my bike.  Before you read any further know that I am totally and completely fine. Other that a couple of small Al Caponesq scars there is no lasting damage.  

Here’s the long version of what happened:  I left Myrtle Beach Friday at noon and was biking really fast and enjoying myself, despite the fact that the road I was biking on (rt 17) was a pretty shitty.  The reason I was biking on this bike-unfriendly road, rather than the route my new Adventure Cycling maps recommended, was because I had decided to go to Myrtle Beach to couch surf, and from there I was planning on going straight to Charleston to see Phish, and this was the only way to connect those dots.   Side note:  couch surfing was awesome. I stayed with two beautiful girls my age, who had two of their beautiful girl friends staying in the apartment too.  All of them were going to the Phish show, and I had a blast hanging out with them for two nights.  Check out the website they run together about the jam band scene and social consciousness and whatnot www.sparkleberrylane.com. 

So anyway, after about 20 miles the road left all commercial and residential buildings behind and became a non stop highway.  It had a line of grooved pavement (the bumps that wake you up if you fall asleep and drift off the road) over the white shoulder line and then about two feet of pavement before the grass.  Not a lot, but enough.  I had to cross over the grooved pavement now and then, and every time I did the whole rig shook like a mechanical bull.  This road wasn’t the first time I had to deal with these evil grooves, so I knew what to expect.  The grooves are spaced in an even fraction of my wheelbase, which means that the whole bike jumps up and down in sync.  Also, the radius of the arcs of each groove are almost exactly the same as my lovely 27” wheels, which makes them really slam into each groove and jump out with a lot of force.  So, aware of the evil grooves to my left, I just tracked a really solid straight line (something that I’ve gotten quite good at) and got into a good zone (mentally and physically).

As I was entering Georgetown S.C., where I would be able to get off of rt 17 and take some better roads to Charleston, I had to cross a bridge over a big river.  It was a fairly long bridge, with a high arch to it, but not a suspension or truss bridge or anything like that.  It was a really beautiful view, and as I granny geared my way up the first half I really took it in.   The pavement on the bridge was concrete, and there were no evil grooves, although there were lots of metal debris and evil teeth (the joints that prevent a bridge from cracking when it freezes are nasty wheel traps if you have skinny tires).  Coming down the second half of the bridge I went kinda fast, nothing crazy though, no more than 23mpg according to my bike computer.  I stayed within my allotted two feet of shoulder because there was fairly heavy traffic, but as the concrete pavement ended, and the evil grooves returned I noticed there was a large bush and some debris blocking my precious two feet, and a metal guardrail blocking my escape to the right.  I didn’t have time too look behind me to check if there was a car in the right lane, but the traffic was heavy enough to just assume that there was, so I was forced into the grooves.  I thought I would be able to just coast through them like I had done many times before, but something about my speed, and the fact that I was carving a turn made that impossible.  I remember hitting the grooves and knowing immediately that I was going to crash. 

After that, I don’t remember much.  However, based on my CSI like forensic investigation of all of my cuts, road rash, and damage to my bike I’ve come to the conclusion that as I was turning back into the safe part of the shoulder my front wheel got airborne for an instant and turned to the right to become perpendicular to the ground.  When my front wheel caught the pavement it tacoed and my bike fell over to the left and I fell to my right (probably with a lot of forward momentum too).  My bike received some scrapes to the left brake lever, my rack got a bit bent, and the front wheel was totaled (although I kept the hub) but other than that it was fine.  The big man little man is a beast.  Meanwhile, I gracefully braced my fall by catching the steel guardrail with my face.  I received a deep cut next to my ear, just below my temple, and another one on my chin as well as a good amount of road rash on my face, shoulder, arm, back, and leg.  The blow to the noggin left me completely unconscious, which honestly was probably a good thing since I don’t remember being in any pain at all.   The highway patrol found me out cold in a pool of blood.  I know this because the officer called me a few days later to tell me.  I slowly regained consciousness on the ambulance and was very confused, I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t answer any questions about where I had come from or how long I had been biking.  I still didn’t feel all that much pain though, and I enjoyed slowly remembering all the details of my bike trip, and sharing them with the EMTs.  It was like remembering a dream.   In fact, I remember telling the EMTs some pretty funny stories, but my bleeding face probably took away from my witty, off the cuff humor. 

Once I got to the hospital I was fully conscious, but still pretty dazed.  I felt like I was on drugs, and perhaps I was, I don’t know.  I had no idea how badly hurt I was, I could feel pain but it was more like a vague “everything hurts” kind of pain.  I was strapped down to a stretcher with my head immobilized, stuck in the up position, forced to stare at the florescent lights zip by as I was rushed somewhere.  It reminded me of a scene from a movie, and in my dazed state I made sure to note the trippyness of the experience.  I got a bunch of CAT scans and X-rays and was then sent to a specialist ear nose and throat doc.  The CAT scans suggested that my cut had penetrated my ear canal, but luckily it didn’t.  Instead my ear canal was only slightly torn from the stretching that happened when my face took the blow.  The other lucky thing was that the deep cut just barely missed my facial nerve, which, if severed, would have caused my whole face to become paralyzed.  Instead of that I just have some tingly feelings and numbness above my ear, and that is rapidly improving.  So yeah, I got really lucky.

As my wounds were being cleaned and my cuts were being stitched my parents were notified.  I got to talk to them soon after to quell their panic, but they were still freaking out.  My dad booked a flight immediately, and met me at the hospital around 1am.   It would've been really hard to do anything if he hadn’t flown down to meet me.  I could barely move my head, I had no means of transportation, and nowhere to go.  My bike was “towed” (I use the word “towed” because I was charged a $160 towing fee) to a local redneck car shop, and I had nothing but my torn spandex, phone, and wallet with me.  Trying to recall the chain of events with my dad, again, felt like remembering a dream.  In fact it took a while to convince myself that certain snippets of memory were not a dream, and it was only because of logic that I accepted the memories as true events that happened.  The earliest snippet still feels like a dream, if not a dream within a dream.  I remember the mosquitoes were swarming like crazy around me, and as I was woken up and put into the ambulance all the mosquitos followed me into the ambulance, continuing to feast.  I remember trying to make small talk with the EMT by saying “these mosquitoes are insane”.   For a while I didn’t notice all the bites, probably masked by the road rash, and I truly believed that memory was from a dream I had a few nights earlier while camped out in an equally heavily populated mosquito city.  It wasn’t until I noticed the mosaic of bug bites all over my body that logic forced me to accept that memory as fact. 

My dad and I checked into a hotel and after dealing with getting my bike back and bringing it to a bike shop, we actually had a pretty good time in Georgetown.  We got to see a historic wooden boat show / town fair, and I got some really good meals.  Since I could barely open my mouth I was really able to savor each tiny miniscule bite.   It also felt … interesting… looking so messed up while interacting with society.  After a good father son weekend my dad went home and checked me into a cheap, but surprisingly clean motel, where I have achieved my full snorlax / dulfus potential by watching rediculus amounts of TV and lying in bed all day.  Yesterday I saw the ear nose and throat doc again to have my stiches removed and my ear checked out.  I’ve completely regained the hearing in my right ear after all the blood clots were removed.  Good as new.  The stiffness in my back, neck and jaw are much better now, and today I emerged from my snorlax den and jogged / walked 15 miles to get my bike from the bike shop and rode back to the hotel in Georgetown, along rt 17 the whole way.  I stopped to examine the crash site on my way there, but after about 30 seconds the mosquitos got too insane and I just kept running, it didn’t look like anything happened anyway.  On my way back the fact that this trip is inherently and unavoidably dangerous sunk in.  I definitely don’t want to crash again, but other than avoiding roads like, this its hard for me to come up with a concrete lesson that I can learn from this crash.  As I biked over the bridge again I looked over my shoulder and safely merged into the car lane then back into the shoulder at the first gap in the grooves, like I would have done the first time if I had carefully examined the area from a few hundred feet away giving me enough time to make the merge.  Tomorrow I’ll be packing up all my stuff and on Sunday I’m hitting the road again.  I certainly have a slightly elevated level of fear, but I’m still looking forward to biking again, and I think after a good day on the road I’ll be feeling back to normal.

Pee Paw's Scramblies

From the beginning of the trip I thought it would be cool to find a band of hippies living off the land and join them, a la Easy Rider.   Wwoofing at Old Oak Homestead fulfilled that desire.  I “wwoofed” (see www.wwoof.org) at Old Oak for three weeks, giving me plenty of time to get to know the other people at the homestead, and some people from another homestead, as well as getting a good feel for the nearby town.   Old Oak was a fairly small property, with one house, a barn, and two small huts, trailer, 10 chickens, a vegetable garden, greenhouse, and an awesome dog named Buster.  When I arrived I was greeted by the other wwoofers, Matt and Meg (and Buster).  They showed me around and got me situated in the loft in the barn, which I shared with Matt.  Meg lived in the old trailer which was abandoned by a bunch of hunters who stayed here for a few weeks a few years ago.  It still had wheels, but it wasn’t going anywhere.  After a cold outdoor shower, and an equally cold beer, I got to meet Barb, Kenny and Joe. 

Barb (Barbra Trent: Academy Award winning documentarian) owned the place, and was more or less our “boss”.  She was more than a little bit crazy, but we all loved her.  I’d say she was in her mid 60s, and she was still living in the mid (19)60s.  The first thing that struck me about Barb was her sleep schedule:  Awake by noon, in bed by 3am, perfect for life on a farm.  She would often come mozey over to our outdoor kitchen/living room/patio with a martini in hand at midnight when we were getting ready to go to bed and start talking about our plans for tomorrow, or sometimes just wanting a snack.  She was certainly knowledgeable about organic gardening though, and she treated all the crops, and even the pests, with great respect, like she had personal relationships with every plant.  Actually she did, she told me all about them.   Barb also partied more than anyone I knew at college (except for freshmen year), and she could put all the tam-tams dancers to shame with her groovetastic shakes jiggles and twirls.  The other wwoofers seemed to get a bit annoyed with her nonsensical requests and never-ending presence, but I thought it was just hilarious.

Kenny was the other permanent resident at Old Oak.  He lived in a small hut which he was still building while I was there.  Kenny was a master of wood:  Lumberjack, carpenter, fire tender, and collector.  Kenny respected wood in all its forms, and despite being in the business of felling trees, he would often refuse to cut a tree down if he felt it wasn’t right.  Hanging out with Kenny I learned how to split wood, and use a chain saw, and had a lot of fun doing it.   Kenny kept all of his tools in perfect condition, and truly believed that if you show your tools love, they will show you love right back.  One of the best days there was when Kenny and I biked into town for the Carrboro music festival.  To tell the story properly you first need to know what Carrboro is like:  Hippie Heaven.   Everything was local, organic, fair trade, and vegan, and everyone in town seemed to somehow have enough cash to support all these crazy businesses.  Imagine if everyone in Vermont won the lotto and started speaking with a southern drawl, that’s what Carrboro was.  Also, everyone seemed to have awesome bikes like this one http://yubaride.com/utility-bicycles-models.html.   The Carrboro music festival was a pretty big deal, and although it started raining mid day and all the outdoor venues were shut down, there was still a bunch of music going on.  Kenny and I went to pretty much every venue, and at least three times Kenny accidentally walked back stage with the band, I guess he just looked so much like a musician that nobody questioned him.   We saw some shitty bands, and some decent ones, but my favorite was a sick ska band (whose name I forget) who played at a really cool venue named Cats Cradle.  After a long day of drinking, rocking out, etc., I was ready to try to find a car to throw our bikes into, but Kenny had his heart set on biking back, so we did. 7 miles back to the homestead in the pouring rain at midnight along dark, misty country roads with only my tail light.  It was awesome.

The other wwoofers, Matt and Meg were my age, and we got along well.  They were both really chill, and fun to hang out with.  Matt was really smart, and knew a lot about pretty much everything, especially organic gardening and bees.  He was living a debt free life by not going to college, not owning a car, not paying rent and not paying for food, and he was really making it work.  Meg was a really nice person, and really funny too.  A lot of our humor was like the blue color comedy tour, only in a sarcastic hipster kind of way… if that makes any sense.  Meg also worked at a hippie grocery store in town, and every time she got back from work she would bring all sorts of amazing treats home, diverted from the trash (actually Weaver Street Market composted its expired food).  We ate really well, mostly because of Meg.  We ate Scramblies for every meal, just like Pee-Paw used to make.  Scramblies consisted of whatever vegetables and greens we harvested from the garden scrambled together with rice and beans from Costco, and sometimes served with fancy bread from Weaver Street.  Our best scramblies was when Meg brought home a pound of fresh alfredo sauce and homemade pasta which we mixed with sweat potatoes, okra, tomatoes, jalapeños, string beans, and some other stuff.   We imagined opening up a food truck in Carrboro which sold nothing but the daily Pee Paw’s Scramblies, and the fact is, it probably would have been successful.  The only thing about eating at Old Oak was that I ate more than Matt and Meg combined, which got kinda awkward at times, but I simply explained to them that I will never let food go to waste, and therefore, out of precaution, I will just simply eat all the food before it has a chance to go bad.

The small community surrounding Old Oak was very inclusive.  Everybody knew everybody, and everybody was pretty cool.  Joe was a guitar teacher who lived down the road and left his dog buddy with us every day.  Nearly every night when Joe got back from work to pick up buddy he would come by with a 6 pack and a pipe to share.  He carried around a ukulele and used it to play name the tune / stump the band all the time.  He also sang songs with an Elmer Fudd voice extremely well.  Very close to us was another farm which I had applied to wwoof at, called Picards Mountain.  It was owned by a multi millionaire who designed an environmentalist's mecca.  It was a really cool place, and we got together with the wwoofers there to cook pizzas in their earth oven and hang out a few times.  The two people I got to know best there was Rachel and Daniel.  Daniel was a dreadlocked vegan, who drove a purple Caravan, fresh out of highschool and learning how to live completely off the land.  He and Rachel both knew pretty much every wild plant and if it was edible or usefull or not.  The three of us had a great walk in the rain one day identifying herbs and such.  Daniel was the only wwoofer I met who actually had a solid life plan: Go to California and grow weed, make weed butter, and use the weed butter to operate a gourmet catering company for rich potheads.  Everyone else, including me, had no idea what they wanted to do with their life.  In fact, none of the other wwoofers at Old Oak and Picards Mountain knew what they wanted to do after wwoofing.  Rachel was a really cool down to earth person, and she ended up biking with me for two days after I left.

Moral of the story is wwoofing is great, and I plan on doing more of it.  I basically spent about $30 for the entire 3 weeks, and that was entirely on beer.  I met a lot of cool people, got some experience working in an organic garden, and did a lot of chilling out.  I already made some contacts with some farms in Florida.