An Invitation to a New Adventure and a Request for Help

Hello again dear readers and followers! I have had SO MUCH fun this summer bringing you out to see the wilder spots of New England! And your responses to this have been amazing! I am hoping you’re still enjoying the journey because I am about to embark on another. You see my life fell apart about eleven months back in a big and serious way. I lost my beloved farm due to circumstances beyond my control and now I want to start a new one in celebration of all that is good and wonderful in New England. And this time it’ll be far better because I want to start it just as much for all you as I do for myself. It’ll be an educational farm and intentional homesteading community. If you’d like to learn more or possibly support my cause please feel free to visit my GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/help-fund-an-educational-farm And if you cannot donate but still want to support my bold ideas please share! share! share!

Thank you again for all your support, your suggestions, and all the beautiful and positive thoughts you have sent my way. May your journey be wonderful and your mind be at rest.

UPDATE: The GoFundMe didn’t fly so I have continued my efforts elsewhere. I have added a donate button to this blog to help me pay for gas money and keep it going and in the meantime I still work towards my homestead with my future farm’s website Through the Looking Glass Farm – there I started a video blog to philosophize the life and a store to sell my art (as well as others) and homesteading creations. Any support means the world to me and I thank you all for following my journey.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

August 31, 2017 0

NYC – Day One

I slept in Elizabeth NJ before going into NYC. I had to take four modes of transportation to get there. From a shuttle bus I found an “air bus” (monorail) and from there I had to take the train to the subway station and the subway to wherever I was going. If you include walking that’s five ways of transportation. In fact there is one kind of person you won’t see in NYC despite all its massive diversity, and that is fat people. They don’t exist here because everyone has to walk or bike everywhere, even to the subway stations which are often up and down a bunch of stairs. Funny enough I think this little trip has changed me. Before leaving home I couldn’t even deal with malls… too many people… I hated them. Now I was in NYC with people rushing by me on all sides and I was fine with that.

I even walked through Times Square. It was a strange experience with the Jumbotron going and flashing obnoxious advertisements on every available surface it was like walking into the internet and getting attacked by rabid pop-ups. Still the people were interesting. I was hearing little nips of every language known to man and seeing all sorts of interesting personalities. Elmo and his three clones were even there. Apparently it’s in bad taste to dare people to tickle them. Not that that ever stopped me… And you know what? Poor Elmo has NO IDEA what to do when you do! Snap a photo and run. It’s the perfect grifting of a grifter…

After walking through Times Square I ended up in Central Park. Now I don’t want to sound too horrible but I honestly thought that all Central Park was was a large swath of trees in the middle of the city where people get mugged and killed at night. I had no idea it had anything else to offer. As I walked in it was as I imagined it… trees with a paved pathway and a few dark archway bridges weaving between them. I stopped to take photos of a hawk someone had spotted and moved on, eventually buying a snack and a drink, before sitting down to enjoy it. There were kids everywhere playing on swings and a guy with balloon swords he was trying to sell for three dollars a pop, basically by giving them to small children before pointing his $3 sign out to the parents who then had to make the choice of taking the balloon away from their crying child or fork over the three bucks. Such a NYC attitude.

I used their dreadful bathrooms. I don’t recommend it to anyone unless you really have to go. I wandered away after that weaving in and out of the park, passing horses with ridiculous feathers jutting out of their heads, dragging behind them swarthy little buggies. I also found a carousel ride which I may have ridden if it weren’t $2.50 a ride per person.

Eventually I found myself in the heart of the park at the Bethesda Fountain. It was surrounded by a beautiful ornate bridge where two couples were taking their wedding photos. A small pond lay beyond and sculptures and stone carvings abounded. I took some photos of each other sitting on the bridge. I was a bit worried I’d fall over so I was merely teetering on the opposite edge. You can tell in the photos as I look rather funny.

Eventually I found my way to the pond where a small Asian woman was feeding crackers to a swarm of turtles in the water. I eventually sat down beside her and watched as the turtles ate crackers and popcorn, competing with a huge carp or two.

All these turtles were Painted Turtles and one I swear was a released pet because of its odd coloration. I was watching the water as I usually do when I noticed a head pop up that was immensely ugly. I knew immediately it was a snapper, granted a pretty small one, but it was still a snapper. I pointed it out. And then I saw a bigger snapper emerge who slinked through the water and settled on the bottom. He eventually saw a cracker land on the water and leapt towards the movement, accidentally lunging onto the land. With one quick movement he spun around and disappeared into the water.

When I was done with the turtles I wandered back out of the park and then made a hasty retreat to the subway. There was still Antiques Obscura, the shop featured on the show Oddities. It was the last dorky thing I’d be seeing.. When I found the place it was settled in a little neighborhood filled with Turkish bath houses and a hookah bar. The shop itself was perhaps the size of two walk-in closets. Absolutely tiny. However it was filled with garishly bad taxidermy, creepy old medical instruments, likely haunted dolls, and stuffed piranhas. The shop keep seemed rather bored through most of these events and eventually we wandered back into the streets and let him be.

I then found a fantastic little hippie burger joint to eat. They proudly advertised their burgers by saying they were only made using free range cows, something I have always been in full support of knowing from personal experience the vast difference between pasture raised meat and industrial raised. I’m not big on beef though so I opted for their “hormone free” turkey which was delicious – if not confusing… no one feeds turkeys hormones to get them bigger, that’s cows…

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 27, 2011 0

Evanston Wyoming

Evanston was an interesting experience. I had nothing to do that day but had to stay in the area. I had a couple loads of laundry to do so I headed to the nearest Laundromat, which at the time was full with all sorts of people, muttering all sorts of grumpy things in numerous languages. There was a dude with obvious anger issues grunting at one of the machines, a couple of Hispanic women cheerfully folding laundry that obviously wasn’t theirs, and a most interesting family. It contained two teenagers, a tenish year old, and a four year old wearing vibrant red lipstick. The eldest, a boy, reminded me of the apocalyptic children I saw in Joshua tree, same stupid non-haircut and attitude. They were led in by a woman who couldn’t have been more than 35. She was dressed like a teenager herself, smacking gum and talking on her phone like she’d never grown up. She was feeding her kids some sort of junk food she’d just purchased. I thought these kids were her children until the youngest started calling her Nana. The two girls with her were not old enough to have a four year old so I’m guessing this brassy woman popped out her first kid at 14-16 only to have it repay the favor by doing the same and letting her take care of the grandkid. Either way she was doing a miserable job, as both a mother and grandmother. Currently she was doing no less than ten loads of laundry, all personal, which had probably been building up for some time. Even the attendants were asking her if she was doing someone else’s laundry because she was taking up so many machines.

Whenever this very special family failed to keep us entertained we could always look back at the guy with anger issues. He was stomping around the place throwing his laundry around like it had a personal vendetta against him when it fell to the floor. Even when he was waiting he was scowling at the world with an expression so intense one got the sensation he might knock you out if you even so much as batted an eye in his direction. He stormed out of that place like no one’s business.

I waited patiently for the laundry. I was half-asleep and wondering if this horrible place was where I had to wait for two days.

I was about to be pleasantly surprised. I decided to go for a walk down the little strip mall in town. I ended up entering a huge store run by two sweet elderly women, one of which greeted me and told me this place was a boutique, an antique shop, a book store, and a flea market. She also pointed me towards some “unique” jewelry. Oh my were they ever unique! I had never seen real stones used in something so ungodly garish. Then again the boutique had old lady clothes, maybe the jewelry matched.

The antique store was mostly odd bits of furniture and scary dolls, an odd set of hand operated egg-beaters. The flea market just had old crochet things no one would have bought anyway. It was all very… interesting, though I loved the friendly atmosphere. It was the exact opposite of the Laundromat.

Next I went to an adorable little art gallery in a JC Penny’s. It had all sorts of local talent, amazing pieces of wildlife paintings. I admired everything but not being rich had to leave even the coolest pieces there.

After this I somehow wandered into a little Chinese history/koi park. It had a little Chinese gazebo and a plaque stating that the Chinese had been instrumental in building the area, putting down the train tracks that the town settled on, though they seemed strangely absent now. Beyond the gazebo there was a garden and a little koi pond, with two lonely koi and some goldfish. I sat back and watched a little sparrow kvetch at me from the gazebo roof. I wandered from the shade, into the warm sun, and back into the shade before I decided to lie on one of the benches in the gazebo. I was so very tired and my back ached, as I hadn’t slept on anything flat for a month or so now. I lay there until a gardener came out and I decided I didn’t want to accused of being a vagrant and swept off. I walked to the little bridge over the koi pond, until the gardener finally left. He took his sweet time, and I am not sure what he accomplished in wandering around. I decided to go to another fossil and rock shop down the road.

The fossil and rock shop, Antares Fossil & Minerals, was a sight to behold. It had big colorful dinosaurs wandering the tiny yard. I walked past a woman watering the plants at the behemoth creatures’ feet. She soon followed us in. It was a tiny place absolutely stuffed full with pretty rocks and fish fossils. Apparently this place was run by a family who owned their own local quarry and traded fossil fish for other pretty rocks. It was an interesting idea for a business.

The woman I was talking to, Lily, owned the shop next door, The House of Light, something I passed not knowing what it was. She was a free-spirited woman, what I’d call a hippie. Her shop sold crystals, gemstones, metaphysical books, and Reiki treatments, practiced by herself. She led me through the shop trying to explain things. She even showed me her little Reiki room and pointed out some of its elements. I was rather confused by it all but that’s alright, I nodded politely. Reiki is just one of those things I know nothing about, but I have been curious about. She claimed she was a Christian woman by birth, God and Jesus and all, until Reiki showed her there’s so much more to the world. I could respect that.

Before I knew it she told me her whole life story, including her heritage, born to one Indonesian and one Dutch parent. I told her of my own journeys and she in return insisted I take a lucky rock home with me, from a basket of colorful rocks. I picked one that fit my hand perfectly, a nice fidget. I put it in my purse next to my lucky flea-sized trilobite.

To finish my wandering I decided to check out a park called Bear River. They had a paved path alongside the riverbank, paddle boats for rent, and swimming in one of the calm parts. I walked behind a big black standard poodle for a long time before its elderly owner turned around. I didn’t really see any wildlife but it was a nice walk.

I wanted to get dinner after this so I went to the local grocer’s, Smith’s, and ordered an assortment of goo. In their salad section of their deli they had pink goo (Strawberry Cheesecake salad) green goo (pistachio salad) and orange goo (Ambrosia.) I found the texture of goo to be repulsive and stuck to the normal salads. Party pooper.

From here I went to a McDonald’s to update the blog and answer e-mails. I sat there for four hours. I was falling asleep in my seat and not feeling that great by the time I left. This was the longest I’d ever stayed at one McDonald’s in a stretch.

***I apologize for any missing photos and galleries as I continue to work getting Catching Marbles fully migrated to a new host. Please come back soon for restored photos and thank you for your patience!***

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 26, 2011 0

Joliet – Route 66

I decided I should see the beginning of “the mother road,” historic (and now completely renamed) route 66. People in the Chicago area seemed clueless about this and by the time I hit Joliet it was too late for anything to be open except travel centers, gas stations, and a very bleh Wal-Mart. None of these places seemed to have anything. So I stayed in the area… went to the gift shop/museum in the morning. They had what I wanted, finally. I also stopped by the Route 66 park and the ice cream place with the Blues Brothers dancing on their roof. I guess the Blues Brothers was mostly filmed here or something… it was amusing. Even more amusing was the fact that the woman at the gift store said she often got Dutch people coming in there. This makes no sense to me. Why would America’s most nostalgic highway be of any interest to someone living in another country? What an odd concept! Oh well, to each their own. Route 66 is pretty damn cool. Someday I may drive it straight instead of weaving on and off it, backwards…

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 12, 2011 0

Wisconsin Cheese Shop

As I was driving through Wisconsin it was decided that the local cheese must be tried. So at one point I woke up from a nap to see a bizarre little main street in all sorts of weird and tacky colors, half the business titles in some language I didn’t recognize. “Where the hell are we?!” I felt like I woke up in a parallel universe. As it turns out I was in Little Norway in its own way. The staff at the grocery store… were speaking Norse… and they didn’t have any cheese specifically labeled Wisconsin so I left. Somewhere down the road I found a place, a little cheese shop/gift store. There I was allowed to try every cheese imaginable. I picked favorites, including a 13 year old cheese that was amazing. Their Gruyere cheddar mix was really really good… I left with a block of chipotle cheese. I don’t like the feeling of my mouth and throat shooting flames but others do and it’s a nice thing to share. This cheese I thought would be OK because it was nice and creamy. I was wrong… instead of eating it in a sandwich I sat in the car taking one bite of cheese and then one bite of bread to calm down my angry mouth. It was kind of funny. I also ate some frozen custard. I also came out of that place with the cutest damn magnet – a mouse eating its way through cheese and I had to restrain myself so I wouldn’t buy a rack full of postcards displaying cute cow photos. I love cows… but I can’t say anyone back home would be impressed to see I was in Wisconsin.. I mean Wisconsin… Really?

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 9, 2011 0

Mall of America – Minnesota

I wasn’t really planning to go to the Mall of America but seeing as I was in the area and it is the biggest mall in the US I decided to go check it out. The place was just as enormous as was expected but what I hadn’t anticipated is the center of the mall, the entire area of which was some sort of amusement park for about three million screeching children. Just like an auditorium the noise amplified and seeped into every corner of the mall. I wanted to get close to the guard rail and peer down to see what was going on down there but I valued keeping my hearing more.

The place was huge. It had no parking lot, just two parking garages which fortunately had a high enough clearance for the encumbered Jeep. I walked into the place from the big Macy’s store on one of it’s corners. The mall itself was four flours of clothing stores and tourist traps. I walked around each level and poked my head into only the stores I took an interest in. Shame I wasn’t still looking for cool clothes, this place had so many options! You could get butt-ugly purses at Guess, dress yourself up as a southern slut at Garage, morph into a highly perfumed cave bat at Abercrombie and Fitch, or actually go for something classy at some of the better stores. They did however have one store that really upset me, I think it was called Spoons Spa for Children. In its lobby in front of the window there was a tenish year old girl, leaning towards the tom-boy side of the spectrum, slouched uncomfortably in a chair, her mother cooing her on. If she could have slid straight to the floor she would have. That was the most miserable looking child I’d seen in a long time, staring at her nails like they were morphing her into some sort of freakish monster. I had two major issues with this place. 1) You shouldn’t be encouraging your daughters to look like tarted up whores before they even hit puberty. 2) You should not be beating into little girl’s minds that they have to be pretty and feminine to be successful. You might as well just tell them it’s nice to have a personality buuuut, the world would like you much better if you just acted like everyone else! Its disgusting and I can’t say I’d ever support it. In any event we were soon walking by anyway.

The LEGO store was packed full of people but the giant Lego statues of a tiger, a minotaur, and a bunch of other things, left me pretty impressed, as did the mix and match Lego stand that resembled a candy stand. Here you could get old fashioned Lego pieces like you saw sold in buckets in the good old days… not gimmicky kits but actual make-it-yourself styled blocks. Tempting. I’ve always been a bit bitter my mother never allowed us to have any as children, claiming she wasn’t going to get us anything of the sort because they were too painful to step on barefooted. She had a point, sort of, but I still think this sort of building toy is great for developing minds… and bored adults alike!

There was a Microsoft store, which was set up exactly like a less sterile-looking Apple store. It was a bit weird, like it was trying but in a half assed sort of way. Some of the stores in the mall had weird dummies, I guess to attract more people. One store had hot pink dummies, another store had intensely realistic dummies in life-like action poses that just coincidentally didn’t have any heads. I ended up in a store called Marbles. It was as if the place was made for this little blog. It was a little store stuffed full with brain teasing games and puzzles, many of which you could play with other people. They were very neat and a salesman was doing demonstrations. Everyone here looked like the kind of people I’d like to be around, and everyone was poking curiously at things, smiling. If I had money I probably would have bought the store out, it was just that neat.

I ended up walking through several Minnesota gift shops, none with anything at all interesting in them. I ended up buying a few postcards. After this I wandered around, eventually walking all four floors. There seemed a strong lack of little novelty shops and of course being a mall it didn’t have any of the shops I appreciate, you know the rock and fossil shops, Goodwill, antique stores, art galleries…

The mall was easily walked and had a killer food court with everything you could have possibly wanted. That was quite possibly the biggest highlight of my visit today – that and the ensuing battle over the Jeep’s parking space when I left.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 9, 2011 0

Ulrich’s Fossil Gallery, Kemmerer Wyoming

After Fossil Butte I passed this sign that said, “Fossil Fish Gallery” and of course had to stop. It was someone’s house, granted it was a large one. Out front there was a huge set of dinosaur footprints and some petrified wood. This promised to be interesting.

Going in there was a huge slab on the wall with dozens of fish on it. I climbed the stairs into the shop and saw a teenage girl tending counter. There were fish everywhere, big ones, little ones, delicate ones, all beautifully displayed. There was an absolutely enormous gar, its scales still visible. Not long after entering another woman appeared and started talking with us. She had the brash fast-talking ways of a Yankee, but claimed to be homegrown here in Kemmerer. She told us that she grew up near here on a ranch and that she never knew what treasures she was sitting on top of, stating as children she would lob the fossils like Frisbees at each other’s heads. She claimed many thousands of dollars of fossils got ruined in this fashion. Now she made a living off them, saying her husband was part and partial to setting up Butte National Monument Park itself, and that is why they were allowed to keep the massive gar. (State legislations require all “rare” fossils to be surrendered to scientific institutions.) She was a funny woman, showing us around, and showing us the difference between the fossils in the “18 inch layer” and the surrounding layers. Then she told us she took people up to the quarry seven days a week, from 9am to noon to dig, for a fee slightly higher than that of Fossil Safari. She had nothing good to say about Fossil Safari. She brought us to her basement where she had a number of fossils dug up at fossil safari. Apparently a couple people had come in the day before with these uncut, mediocre fossils they had dug up at Fossil Safari. She said she wasn’t even sure if they provided tools for these people but they didn’t provide any means of cutting them down to size. The fish dug up here were in better condition, they were at the dead center of the ancient lake, and preserved by petroleum seepage. They did not look like the silhouettes of fish that were sitting sad and neglected in this basement, donated for the young children to find in the rubble pile out back.

Penny, the woman answering all the questions, turned to me and inquired if I was always this quiet. Pretty much. This should be taken as a compliment, I found the conversation hat fascinating. Before I knew it I was booking an appointment with “the boys” to go to their quarry. It was slightly more expensive but way more personal, with only four people going up with each guide. And to add to the charm I was put in a group without children as, “There must be a reason you don’t have children!” What a funny comment.

I had to wait two days for the appointment and after the dig I bought a little “grade A” kit from them. It contains a fish fossil so deeply embedded in a piece of rock from the 18 inch layer that it has to be neatly and carefully chiseled and scratched out to see it. This sort of tedious work has always relaxed me. I very much wanted to try it.

June 21, 2011 0

Seattle Washington

I was asked what Seattle was like and I didn’t really have an answer. It always struck me as a sort of yuppie city, famous for coffee and sour dough bread. Also I heard it rained a lot. So what’s in Seattle to see? I don’t know, the Space Needle?

The Space Needle is one thing but what else is there? I had no idea so I asked my phone. It told me of a troll living under a bridge… so I went to check that out. I don’t think I expected a giant troll grasping a real Volkswagen Bug in its hands. I had some teenagers take a photo and then I wandered off to see what else was in the area (besides the overwhelming stench of a local tomcat.)

I ended up in front of a bunch of eateries. Before coming here today I realized the budget could no longer stand up to eating out every few days and I decided to stop this and go back to the PB&J sandwiches, which by the way do not fill you up and after awhile instead train your belly on a constant grumbly aching for real food. However there was a place here selling shawarma, and the idea of something I normally cook at home being served here was doubly tempting… Shawarma is a dish usually made of lamb or pork, shoved in a pita pocket and drowned in garlic sauce. It’s a Turkish/Dutch dish and I had made it a few times using turkey as a substitute. It’s pub food, what can I say? Filling and delicious. I walked by but not with much conviction.

This place must have been the artsy neighborhood. It was filled with weird art everywhere including unexplained works in the making and a crazy bum wielding a guitar while talk-singing to himself and telling the Laundromat off. So that’s where people get their chips installed these days… I always thought that was the dentist…

There were college students everywhere here, in every eatery, even the Vietnamese hot noodle place. I walked back to the car only to have my hunger hit again. I wandered around the neighborhood looking for a place to park but there was absolutely nothing. Now I was starting to see why everyone here seemed to be riding a bike or jogging. Even the middle aged people, potbellies and all, were seen jogging down the streets with an I-Pod and a step-o-meter on their hip with an expression of, “Why am I doing this to myself??” I failed at finding a parking space and left, ending up at Green Lake.

Green Lake is a nice little lake with a two and a half mile track around it which cyclists, joggers, and dog walkers go around and around on. It was flat, perfect for this sort of activity I wasn’t feeling all that great and was hungry to boot. I walked back to the car after finding the lake had nothing particularly interesting in or around it. I made one final note about the people here… they all seemed to have dogs… old muttly dogs which looked like they’d been in the family for twenty years… now that’s some dedication!

I left the city hungry and found a grocer’s nearby. I had gotten there a little after the deli counter had started to get ready to close shop. The woman there was not in any mood to deal with me and despite her name being Angel she was far from one. She pretended I wasn’t there… for ten minutes… and when I didn’t leave she yelled, “WHAT YOU WANT?!” I cleared my throat and answered as best I could which caused a great deal of muttering. She was either reciting a hex or cursing me out in a foreign tongue. Either way… little weird. I had to dodge the turkey and cheese as she threw it full force across the counter, continuing to curse. WOW. Paying for these choices took another twenty minutes at the counter as most of the registers were completely abandoned and the one that was open for some reason only wanted to deal with everyone but me despite the fact I was in the queue….?? Yup. One of those days.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 16, 2011 0

San Francisco California

After seeing all the other Californian cities before San Francisco I was a bit desensitized. Still, San Francisco was historically more interesting than the other cities, It was no LA that’s for sure! It’s quiet, its cute, and its full of 90 degree hills, it’s lovable in a 3-D sort of way.

Though I do know various tidbits of San Fransisco history I wasn’t really sure where to go myself. I knew I wanted to check out the Haight and go down Lombard street just to be the ultimate geeky tourist. I headed towards Haight-Ashbury, the former and apparently now reestablished hippie mecca. Had one of those bizarre moments when I knew I was getting near because I recognized one of the houses. Took me a couple of hours to figure out why. I think I recognized it from some old news footage in Tom Brockaw’s (spelling?) 1968 documentary. This is one of the handful of documentaries I play whenever its on, which is often…

Anyway, I knew when I hit the Haight. There was a sudden burst of psychedelic colors washing out over the windows and buildings. Murals were everywhere. So was tie-dye T-shirt shops as well as a lot of other adorable little fashion outlets. When I initially parked I wasn’t sure if I could because there was a sign on the meter that said something about construction and no parking. there was a burly hippie dude in the front of a music store and when asked if I could park here he said nothing, just approached the meter, ripped off the sign, threw it in a nearby trashcan and announced, “Is now!”

I walked into the music store. It had beautiful instruments but having no musical inclinations I had no idea about any of them. I did hit a few record stores as well which had an absolutely delicious selection of things, the most variety I’d ever seen. I didn’t look too close. I probably would have bought half the store if I could.

I stopped in at one of the artsy looking stores. There were wood carvings here that blew my mind. One piece of wood carved into two tangoing dinosaurs with exquisite detail was the first thing I saw. The second thing was an entire wall, including a bedframe with cabinets, all a conglomerate of tiny carvings. It was amazingly 3-D. Of course there was a big wooden Buddha people had left coins on and a Ganesh I couldn’t help but petting. He’s the Hindu protector of travelers after all…

Another interesting store I stopped by was some sort of freakish antiques and bad taxidermy shop. It had not just jackalopes but a squirrel riding a bunny rodeo style, several finch headed necklaces, squirrels dressed up as dolls, a fancy rat poised over a trap, and other very badly taxidermied little things that just looked dried up, twisted, and weird. If animals weren’t your thing they also had a shrunken head and the tiny severed foot of a Chinese woman from back in the days when binding was practiced. Oh and there was also a pickled tattoo of some sort… and funny enough a book about the Mutter Museum. Upstairs was a gallery of scary art and a deep purple embossed velvet child-sized casket, very Victorian looking.

All and all I left the Haight happy, happy enough to take a crack at Lombard street, which by the way is a one way street, and which our navigation at first brought us to the wrong side of. Another foil in planning when I got back to Lombard I drove it for quite awhile without seeing the characteristic eight hairpin turns lined up one after another. Back to the phone. It told me Lombard street’s crooked section was only one block and it told me where so off I went. When I first saw what the Jeep was in for I patted it’s dash and told it I was sorry. It groaned in return but made it just fine past all the turns! No one else was keeping entertained with this street as I was and the pedestrians seemed to think the Jeep was too fat for such a stunt, they looked on with an expression of delighted horror. After this three small cars appeared and followed suit.

Today was a good day for a little bit of ocean fun so I headed to Pier 37. I didn’t know what it was but it was listed as a tourist destination in the brochure I got from the Salinas campground. As it turns out Pier 37 it is a boardwalk full of fried foods, ice cream, little tourist shops, corny entertainment, street performers, and restaurants. I watched some break dancing and perused some magnet shops before making my way to the actual pier where rumor had it that there were seals. I wasn’t disappointed. There was a group of fat seals all sitting on the docks barking at each other and lazily basking in the sun. It was a nice end to this little trip to the sea front.

After leaving Pier 37 it was decided that the Full House house should be found for the appropriate shits and giggles. I looked it up and in another dorky excursion checked it out, snapping one photo to the complete befuddlement of the car behind us.

It was after this I just happened to stumble across an amazing surprise called the Fine Arts Lagoon. When I read the sign I thought of an art gallery in front of a big black body of water, possibly filled with monsters. It was nothing like that. Instead it was an enormous structure of Greek columns nestled aside a good sized lagoon, absolutely filled with red-eared sliders and big scary carp. Ducks also lined the shores and one swan watched me walk by, politely not beating me to death with its wings, as swans are prone to do. This place was gorgeous and serene, something I had never heard of, yet it was such a treasure! I walked all the way around the lagoon and through the columns, decorated with stunning Greco-Roman styled ornamentation including large vases and absolutely perfect figures of women. We read the signs, and found out this place was built in the 20’s as both a wildlife refuge and a testimonial to art itself. I had a couple Asian women take a photo in front of it.

Finally I decided to go to Golden Gate Park to get a photo in front of the Golden Gate bridge. I found another Asian family to take the photo. I was asked to get up on the wall but I yelled, through the phenomenal sound of gusting wind, “I can’t! My skirt is blowing everywhere!” This made the two Asian women in the background giggle to each other. I am glad I amused someone… I was having a Hell of a time with my ankle length, very light weight skirt. I was holding it in bunches with both hands to keep it down and I was failing. I was happy to be back in the Jeep.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 14, 2011 0

Roswell New Mexico

I ended up in Roswell New Mexico because I’m just that fucking adorkable. I didn’t expect to see much but apparently main street has turned into an adorable alien mecca. There are clothes stores there who have alien masks fixed on their dummies and doleful looking wooden alien statues sitting out on the side walk. There was even one place who had little green alien footsteps running up the sidewalk. People had constructed their own little crashed UFOs and gift stores abounded. There was also a museum, however like most small towns everything closed at 6 and I drove in at 7. Only one gift store was open so I checked it out and awed at all the cuteness and fluff and geekery. It was too much – I had to come home with something. I ended up with a T-shirt reading, “fly it like you stole it.” That amused me way too much. I also ended up with a bumper sticker reading, “Buckle up, it makes it harder for them to suck you out of the car.” I mean… how cute is that?

I left laughing. It was such a dorky place to stop but so amusing. Even the local McDonalds was sporting aliens on their advertising and their parking lot and the bank as well! I like to see a town with a sense of humor.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

May 30, 2011 0