a tease.

i was kidnapped one time by swiss climbers in switzerland.

dusty old cowboy songs got shit in my eyes again.
got a girl over there waiting for me.
not a hope in hell of prying us apart.
no chisel sharp enough to get between us.
not a hope in hell, no wind strong enough
to blow me of course
willy was right, the parties over.
everybody out, i gotta get going

dust n smoke and a poke in the eye may have blurred my sight..
but my aim is true, and she's way too bright a light
for me to ever miss
not a hope in hell of losing my way
never been lost, it just looked that way.
not a hope in hell, my compass on a river bank
three valleys back.
threw it over my shoulder, just to keep things real.

spin me round and pour another shot you wanna put this to the test.
she's got my heart in a safe safe place
not a hope in hell anyone breaks it again.
a pickaxe wouldn't make it through that girl.
not a hope in hell,  i wouldn't wanna be there
to see you try.
if satan was real, and wanted to take a poke
i'd hafta pick him up, dust him off and say i told you so.

like a desperado waiting for the plane.
i know when to pack and what is important
not a hope in hell i'm missing that girl
nothin in the way that i can't clear
not a hope in hell,
she's got my back
i don't get lost and she don't miss
take my ticket and get out of the way.

serenity mako balaam marsh

I love you sweetheart but when Soo-z asked for a story or a piece of advice for a young lady just turning into a teenager I was stumped. I have nothing useful for anyone at that age as i am still figuring it out myself.
All I can give you is a flash back to the moment you helped me grow a little.
I used to surf your couch frequently, you've seen me at my best and worst and loved me through it all.
You made a stuffed bear for me by the name of mister bear and made sure I had mister bear if I was there in the evening or woke me up with mister bear in the morning if you were in bed when I showed up. One day you told me you had done something terrible and before I thought I accused you of losing him. It was thoughtless and cruel and only half true, you had left him at a friends so and burst into tears when I said that. It took a a big hug and many apologies to dry those tears.
The next day you had made me another bear, mister replacement bear and said I could keep him and take him with me wherever I went so I have. Mister replacement bear has been in my pack around the world and on countless climbing trips. You got mister bear back and forgave me.
That little bear reminds me every time I look at him to think before I speak, sometimes in time sometimes not.
Thank you Serenity Mako Balaam Marsh for the unconditional love of a little stuffed bear, your as grown up now as you will ever need to be and I wish you nothing but the best for ever, amen.

ontario

Eastern canada.


September 2010, left quebec in whirlwind of fall colours and chaotic activity ideally suited to a Hunter s. Thompson novel.

scrawled notes in my old scratchpad i found in my tattoo gear in hong kong transport me back to that day in an old dodge minivan with crazy auntie Turtle at the helm, more stories linked to stories than a person can shake a stick at, best not to get into it right now.

The roads here sparkle, it's not broken glass. Couldn't be, not for this many miles.

The crushed stone of the canadian shield that makes up the bulk of the ashphalt is so high in pyrite and micah that the roads almost glow in the sunshine.

We are rolling thru Ojibway country now, left the Iriquois land to the south yesterday. It's rolling country, looks like lizard skin from the air.

Where the rock has been blasted for road grade it shows it's metamorphic nature clean and clear, folds of one rock and another.

Where the natural surface shows through its moss and scant topsoil coverage it's even more spectacular. Granite ripples stands an inch higher than the sand and limestone base material.

It's a damascus effect on the harsh terrain, scabby dead pine amongs the mosses, lowlands filled with cattails, lakes linked by streams.

Plants have been trying to live here since the glaciers retreated but to no great effect, the rock has soft edges since the ice left. But its not dirt nor will it ever be.

Another day, another couple hundred K.

The obvious Canadian shield land is falling behind, enough dirt to support more trees here. Algonquin national park in the rearview mirror and lake Superior to the south.

Still rugged and rocky, no farmlands for a while. Spruce, pine, tamarac and and mixed decidious colour the hills. Natures palette...

spruce, dark green.

pine, bright green.

tam, a vivid yellow in the fall, the only decidious connifer.

Maple, Birch, Willow, all the softwoods. To many to name, same as the colours they paint.

ROY G BIV. Red Orange Yellow Green, Blue is played by the sky, but the leaves on the hills and in the ditches cover all the others. Even indigo and violet.

Burgandy is the furthest reach of red and could play the part of B but really B is for blue and its a big sky so why argue.

Those are the images as i saw them that fall, saved on scraps of paper then hidden in my bag.

Saved then salvaged, memories from me to you

Feb 23/2011 Hong Kong

goat horns

sliced off tips of chipping hammers
washers welded and quenched
before the fibremetal of my hardhat could react
discontented, disgruntled, unimpressed
welders we are but welding we are not
bone-z says to me
goat you get your horns tonight
as he sits buddha-esque
in the center of an unwelded deck insert
steaming slightly i place my new horns upon my head
not yet! he shouts snatching them away
and smashing the tips against the deck
once, twice, three times they ring out
sparks fly but there is no damage
and satisfied he places the hat with the horns upon my head
boat boy for a decade, its time you grew some horns
scratching paint idly, i listen as norm tells us the nights work
and try not to snicker as he wonders where the tips have gone
off all his chipping hammers.

dear nick

dear nick
i lost your hat in amsterdam
i lost a girl same damm day
we'd been on the road since hong kong
had a lot of smiles on those miles
but our patience was wearing thin


we drank some russian standard
and got to arguing
when we got to camp our stuff was gone
when i woke up the next morning so was she
we lost our cool
and i lost your hat in amsterdam

dear cam
i lost your scarf in mongolia
it had been good
and kept me warm on the steppes
but when i got on the train to russia
your scarf had found a new home

dear dad
i lost your pocketknife in victoria
lost my first girl that very same night
ivory and brass and carved all to hell
i was leaving so we got to drinking
woke up in a cell and your pocketknife was gone

dear mom
i lost my glasses of the watertaxi wharf
you were so mad we went back to look
i dove in the water for an hour and a half
but they were still gone and i was white as a ghost
so they stayed on the bottom that day

dear dion
i gave your dawson creek jersey to chief
the sleeves were gone in thailand
and it really made him smile
we were in norway it had been on enough summits
it reminds him of home and hockey and you

your honor
i lost my cool when i punched that cop
but he was a dick and i can't take it back
i broke his nose and didn't give a damm
so you gave me six months and i learned my lesson
I kept my cool the next time i got mad

dear julia
i lost your heart in amsterdam
it wasn't right the way we were going
but when i think of the miles i can still smile
i know you cried but remember the alps
and the trains and the planes and the miles

dear nick
i lost your hat
and cams scarf
and my cool
ands some hearts
but that's life
and i can still make you smile

"i love my mom" and "it's a pentagram."

It started at the russian border.
Actually it started in mongolia but at the border sounds better. As soon as Julia and i got onto the train and demongolianated in the bathroom sink. We had been hoping for a shower car like the chinese train but it wasn't meant to be.
There we were sitting around minding our own business and figuring out what card games we knew and sucked at when a white fellow stuck his head in our cabin and with gleefull abandon said "White people! You speak english!" half a question mark on the last bit, we were speaking english but it could have been a trap. I do understand how he felt.
His name was Jeff he had been in asia for a fair while and was on the last leg home from his epic overland adventure. Thailand to the u.k. with no airplanes and only a few boats. Well, he taught us to play shithead and we helped keep him fed till he found a bank machine, the funny thing about mongolian Tugriks is that they aren't worth much in mongolia and less than much outside mongolia. Especially in russia...
We had a lot of time on our hands so we got to know each other pretty well, the good stories got exausted and we broke out the bad ones. Then when those ran out we played more shithead!
One thing we didn't have in common was tattoos. He assured me his mom was tougher than a nazi death camp and would kill him, me and everyone involved if he got a tattoo that said anything but "I love my mom" and that there may still be beatings involved if that is what it said.
So we laughed at the mongolian side show on the train platform everytime we stopped, and searched the russian stalls for cash machines, cigarettes, beer and vodka. Plus various foodstuffs to keep us alive, the beer was not very good but did come in 4 litre jugs.
Five days later we were sick of shithead and ready to get of the train, we hadn't seen a bottle of vodka since mongolia and the shakes were getting unbearable. Jeff had decided in order to celebrate properly we should shack up in the same hostel that night. This would make a serious vodka binge in moscow poeticly simple.

 We found our hostel, checked in and showered, which was amazing. Then we went on a mission to find a vodka purveror! It was as easy as following to blokes from the hostel on their food mission. As soon as we entered the grocery store we saw a beer section but a scan of the floor did not uncover vodka. What gives? Then we saw the escalator heading down! A whole floor beneath us!
More food, a wine section, various spirits....Around the last corner, THE VODKA SECTION of a russian supermarket!!!! It was amazing. Wall to wall and ceiling to floor, It was breathtaking. It was a problem when fifteen minutes later we hadn't made any decisions....
And then it happened, a young russian man with a very serious face on, 2 bottles of coke and a couple bags of chips in his cart marched up to THE VODKA SECTION, grabbed two bottles from the middle with a grey label named "russian standard." He put them in his cart and reached back to the shelf for two more bottles, Then two more after that, with six bottles of russian standard in his cart he stood looking slightly puzzled. He pushed the bags of chips aside and looked at the 2 bottles of coke next to the 6 bottles of vodka and then reached back to the shelf and took down one more bottle with a satisfied look that was very close to a smile but still more of a scowl.
As he walked away we looked at each other then the prices of the various other brands, russian standard? It wasn't expensive, there were cheaper for sure though. The name and the young russian moments before sealed the deal. 2 bottles of russian standard!
Now we have vodka and a freezer and food and a night to kill, Jeff asks if we want to see something cool. Of course we do! He disappears into his room and returns with a cylindical object just like the scroll we picked up for my dad in bejing...unrolls it and says "guess what it says?" with a shit eating grin.
"No idea." I don't guess well at all and told him so.
"It says.....I LOVE MY MOM! In cantonese!" He bought it in china from an old man selling his paintings on the street who also spoke perfect english.
"You should tattoo it on my forearm!"
"Can i do that in a hostel?" I ask.
"Of course you can! anything goes in these places." is his reply.
So of we go! as soon as we are set up and the design is on him we break into the vodka and almost as soon as the machine starts to buzz the room starts to fill up with people and the questions begin. whatcha doing? and other no brainers and by the time we are done the room is empty except for us. Next room however has a couple east indians in it waiting patiently and drinking beer...I don't recall exactly what was said but i do know the rest of the night involved riding a big stuffed cow and drinking vodka with russians out loose in moscow with jeff and some punk we picked up along the way, after putting a very drunk julia to bed of course. Vodka is her secret weakness.
The next morning i had a funny message on the computator.

Hey, Joe, i will be coming to the hostel, by 7. I am checkin out of the hostel, got invited to another hostel close by. So, tell me , or if possible, call me when u are back, and u are free and ready to make a tattoo. am givin u my no.

so i wrote back.
Joe Quin March 16 at 12:43pm

hello! we are on the 10 train but will be leaving here by 7 i think. if you get this we are at the hostel now come on by

Well he did and so i did. And what i did was a small red circle with a simple geometric design inside it. And inside that design i also did a goats head. all in red. if i had got to do it bigger it could have been really cool but no small was important. At one point i had to go fetch supplies and julia asked him about his choice of subject matter, the answer was deadpan "it's a pentagram." he likes pentagrams she said when i got back to work.
Then we went to the train and left moscow for st. petersburg, which is where things got a little sticky.

Arjun R Prakashey March 17 at 1:20am Report
hey joe, what do you think about the satanist symbol of tattoo?

I wasn't really thinking when i wrote this.
Joe Quin March 17 at 8:21am
yes you have a satanist symbol tattoo.

Arjun R Prakashey March 17 at 5:55pm Report
am a hindu man, does that tattoo apply to me also? cos i dont follow chirstianism, Or satanism. Now this thing really confuses me. I wonder, how i never thought about this before. What do you think? Am i a member to hell now? A really confusing question, and sorry to be disturbin you, but that evenly disturbs me.
I mean, does this tattoo really infect me as written? Am a hindu, i dont promote, much satanism or christianis, its just that i like pentagrams. :)

Arjun R Prakashey March 17 at 5:59pm Report
I just mean, all that i did, because i like pentagrams, not satanics, yes u can laugh, even i smile at this problems. but thats really confusing you know.. you are my tattoo artist, i thought you wud be the best personality to get consulted. i believe you in this case. Take care and have a happy europe tour. :)

Joe Quin March 17 at 6:36pm
dude im sorry to disturb you. it is just a pentagram and you like pentagrams so wear it with pride. do some digging into the origin of swastikas if you want an example of symbols being corrupted. i am an atheist and have a great big upside down cross tattooed on my back just to screw with the god types.
peace man, as your tattooist i say wear what you want with pride and style.
but do realize some people will judge you based on that little tattoo. i personally deal with these judments as a way to weed out people i didn't really want to know anyways.
you take care and travel safe as well
 
.Arjun R Prakashey March 18 at 7:19pm Report

yeah man taking care. i mean, this tattoo which i am really loving now!! no, am surely not removing it. i read about swastikas though just as you told. and its no disturbance man, its my questions which are disturbing though :\ yes, some people will judge me i  am prepared for that too. bujt branding with this tattoo? doesnt mean am breaking any laws yet? for religions, right? i really need you to solve me up. idk why. talking to u about this lightens me up. cos i dont wanna disturb any others religious activities. and neither do i wanna fall. so if you can answer these 2 questions. PLEASE? *am i disturbing any religion? *and even if i do, does this tattoo automatically pulls me in satanity? No i guess? cos .. i dont promote either. but neither do i wanna disturb any. so.. *Do these laws apply to me also? i really dont think so. A nice topic to talk i guess? lol. please answer man. need and advice, from the tattoo artist as experienced as my age.
 
Our next correspondence was through a chat on facebook so i don't have it in the files. I told him that all the power a symbol will ever have is only what you give it. Oh ya, and that it wasn't illegal to have a pentagram or a swastika or an upside down cross tattoo. In the end he ended up with a pentagram and i never sent him to hell.

mongolia

Not even of the train yet and it's already becoming obvious that my small bag of tricks for survival would not be enough here. To the horizon scrub grass, sand and rocks. Sub-zero temperatures and howling wind are doable on foot if there is enough snow to dig in and build a shelter or there is wood for a fire but this is unlike anything i have ever seen.


Mongolia, the vastness of these steplands is undescribable. The horizon is broken every once in a while with a chunk of rock stickking up, sometimes even low hills with some snow sitting at their base, enough for water but not shelter. Every once in a while there are horses, small ones but sturdy looking and they would have to be the key.

Without a horse there would be no way to pack enough gear for the nights, no way to range far enough to find fuel or water or food.

After thailand with it's jungles teeming with animals and birds and insects, not to mention millions of people it's a pleasant change. It's easy to see how there are so many people there and not here. Survival would present some challenges but with the amount of raw materials at hand, no big deal. fuel to boil water even the dangerous animals are at least built of food it would be easy and a lot of people are proof. Here there are no people. at least not in comparison, a village every couple hundred kilometers, ruins of old houses once in a while but still the scene from the window is desolate more often than not.

The train pulls into a small community and i check the itinerary. We are in Sainshand, in the gobi desert. No wonder its like this. Sunrise was a spectacular affair, clear and warm feeling thru the window but the odd pony’s frisking along the tracks with their manes whipping and thick thick fur tell a different story. So does the frost in between cars thick next to the door on the jam side and feathering away, falling to the floor and crunching underfoot.

While we were stopped i stepped out in the flip flops inside the door of the cabin. It’s not that cold out, i tell myself but in the direct sun is always a different story. At night it got cold and out of the sun it’ll be cold. As the train pulls away i see a low mound of dirt with a chimney, the givaway that it’s someones home comes in the form of a taller mound of dirt with a hole dug in the ground at the far end, in the hole against the mound is a door. A wooden 4 panel exterior door on a mound of dirt about 60 feet long. Curiousity is killing me.

Breakfast, the dining car is different now, we must have changed it at the border last night when the wheels got changed for the difference in tracks from the standard to thicker russian system. Cryrillic signs and a menu with soups and beef pancakes and cigarettes and a dozen kinds of vodka as opposed to 3 kinds of chicken, sweet sour polk and meatball in brown sauce.

More snow now and hills, 10:30 and Ulaan baaar by 1:30. The temperature outside is -15 according to the thermometer in the dining car, the north slopes of the hills are bright white in the shade. While we eat i see a carcass against the fence alongside the tracks, it’s picked clean and bleached white. A Small cow or horse lying there legs tucked under it, head down as though it just laid down and went to sleep. Peaceful, serene the scavengers didn’t even dare disturb it. Just picked away till they got it all and left the bones in silent homage.

Ghengis or chinggis? Does it matter? However you spell it the people he came from and then left in his wake surely help lend credibility to the tales. Nomads in an incredible harsh surreal world, not believing in breaking the ground or leaving behind proof of their passage the single greatest testimonial to chinggis is the great wall that china built to keep him out.

Vodka for breakfast, vodka for lunch. For dinner, dumplings filled with mutton and onions and potato. And a bottle of vodka. When the dinner is done and the bottle is empty and we have sat for a bit our host sabina finally breaches the subject. “maybe another bottle of vodka?” in her heavy german accent.she’s been here 8 years and speaks mongolian like a native but i can’t help but wonder if they can hear the accent too.

we go out into the star filled coal scented night leaving julia with sabinas children and husband. We are in the gher district of Ulaan bataar where houses and fences look like relics from centuries past with the odd satelite dish just to keep things in this era. Rusted sheet metal and crumbling plaster and rotting wood of the stuff that doesn’t belong, then in every yard a squat round gher covered in heavy felt, we only go three yards before we stop and start banging on a steel gate. After a couple rounds of banging and shouting finally a very tall mongolian comes to the gate and lets her in, me he looks at suspiciously and i start to get the feelinging that this is going to be an adventure. Sabina barks some german mongolian at him and waves her arms around then we are in. Out of the night into a low ceilinged warm as hells kitchen little hovel just like the rest of them. And our host motions us towards the bed, his single peice of furniture in front of the tv other than a coffee table.

our mission to find another bottle of vodka has us three doors down from sabinas home in a gher-like house with a strange mongolian man serving us beer and sausage. Sabina explains that liquor resale is illegal and it's not polite to get right to business anyways. "take whats offered, it's custom." she says.


Then to explain further "Your safe inside the gher. You don't have to take anything you don't want too, but in the past if you didn't accept a host's hospitality when you left he could kill you."

Three hours later we have finished four litres of beer, one large sausage, a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka. our host is cooking some form of liver and noodle dish and has shown me a map of canada and pointed out toronto where his cousin lives. Things are going well but i am sure julia is going to be pissed having been left in a strange place in a strange land with some strange people for far longer than expected. And we haven't even negotiated a bottle of vodka for ourselves.

Just before the food is ready i make a break for it. "I have to go get my girlfriend, it's been hours and i am sure she's worried" I say then head out into the night.

It is so clear and cold i don't even feel drunk heading down the alley. Stars and snow and the sulphur smell of coal smoke in a totally alien world. When i find the correct house and bash in through the door Julia is asleep on a low bench and responds exactly as i thought she might. "i am so pissed with you...." "i know, you have to come help me drink vodka, i will explain on the way." Is all i have to offer her.

You don't have to accept everything they offer, and your safe as long as your inside the gher....

These words echo for the next week, we go to the countryside with sabina to visit her relatives there and learn more about these wonderful wild crazy people.

Rule one. gifts are important, some food. usually mongolian noodles or rice and potatoes, sweets for the children and cigarettes or vodka, preferably vodka.

Rule two. pecking order, sabrina married the eldest male in the family so what she says goes. We stay first in a gher belonging to the sister of her husband and her husband. They cook what she wants and we sleep as guests and family in their beds. If they don't do as she says she is allowed to bash them in the head, as she explains this she gives a male relative who will later be known as shithead a couple test bashes with a balled up fist on the top of his head. sure enough he grins and bears it. then does as ordered.

When we arrive there are 2 goats heads simmering in a large steel wok set into the fireplace, they have been expecting us.The oldest child is a 12 year old girl who's name means falcon in mongolian and within minutes she is tieing julia a friendship bracelet, holding the cord ends in her teeth and trimming the ends with a rusty cleaver from  the floor. with that done and the gift bottle of vodka drunk with the elders it is time for some treats. She picks a jawbone each for us and sets about scraping what meat is left on the heads into a pot along with the eyeballs. when our jaws are picked clean she splits the heads on the concrete floor with the cleaver and scoops the brains into a plastic cup then serves everyone a spoonfull in order starting with julia and i until they are gone.

The water the heads were simmering is is now used to cook rice along with some potatoes and onions and it is suprisingly good, while it is cooking the gher is uncomfortably hot so the children and i go outside and take turns sliding down a packed hillside on pieces of plastic from water jugs and garbage bags. there is a wooden sled as well and i take the youngest girl on my lap for a couple runs, later i find out that all children under 4 are girls.

Male children attract bad spirits so until they are 4 or 5 they don't get haircuts, are given female names and dressed in girls clothes. when it is time they to get there first haircut the family seeks out a monk who will tell them when the correct time is and who the correct family member is to perform the haircut. Very serious business indeed.

Rattle and lurch, 5 days of chasing the sun westward from mongolia, asia is in the east now where it belongs. On european soil and moscow time the 5 days spent amongst the mongol hordes seem a continent away.our wait at the train station was a vodka blurry goat smelling feat of stoic patience broken only by the occasional prayer for a shower on the train. The chinese train to UB had showers.....This is a mongolian train full of mongolians, and not the dirt poor kind we had just spent 5 days with but the upwardly mobile moneyed kind. which meant they had all just been to bejing and spent as much as they legally could on cheap chinese crap. this turned the train into a bizzare travelling circus slash bazzar slash flea market.
 
blankets and track suits, bras and 3-D jesus placemats. every new station is an excuse to get of the train and sell sell sell for 15 minutes. as we fill out our entry forms for russia the anything to declare section stops my eye and sure enough it is the middle of the night when we reach the border and at the mongolian border a mad shuffle occurs. The provodnitsa or train attendants are in on it too! ours hurriedly hangs 3 black leather purses in our room, one for each of us, and they match! 15 kms later the russians board the train and order every one out into the hallway 3 seperate times. once for a search by the border police, once for a search by a dog, and the last one for a search by a very very tough looking female soldier complete with pistol and 3 foot long mag light. I am sure she had a kalishnikov leaned agains the train somewhere outside but refused to carry it inside to keep things sporting. Later we hear from the only other english speaking passenger that in his car a mongolian was caught with too much stuff and all they did was search him a fourth time. when he re-entered his cabin he had less than he was allowed and all was well.

and that was mongolia in a nutshell. russia was a whole nother story for a whole nother day.

art fag

Art fag


I had a conversation with a good friend of mine, Karl Matson. We had a conversation about people like you, and me, and him.

If you don’t have a real honest god fearing job, a 9-5 construction or trades or even office slash supermarket slash burger flipping job and you aren’t on welfare, you’re probably an art fag.

Even if you do have one of these jobs you may be an art fag. If you come home from work tired and find yourself unable to sleep until you have given life to the images behind your eyes. A voice to words you have never read or a melody to the song you’ve never sung before.

You are an art fag.

We had this conversation after work a couple nights before the Sweetwater 905 festival 2010. A yearly affair his family puts on out at the Matson’s family farm on Sweetwater road, Rolla B.C.

What started as a brainstorming and bitching session by me (I don’t have time or space to paint or create this year Karl) well why don't you get on stage and read? you've been writing. (cause it’s scary...ok I’ll do it.) So I did, and scary or not it was good and I grew a bit that evening, a bit art faggyer.

The year before he approached me a month before the show and said “hey your an artist, you should make something for the show this year!” so I did. He said the key word was monumental so after a couple days and some sketches my idea went from a sketch of a painting of a metal moose to a real metal moose to a real metal moose that drove around. His name was Gary and he was good. In an art faggy way.

And that is what drove our conversation that night to art fags.

It’s not easy being an art fag, it’s not friendly or fun or cool. Our loved ones have a hard time understanding sometimes... a lot of the time really. But how do you explain what you can’t understand till it’s done?

I need to build something. What? I don’t know yet.

What are you drawing? I don’t know.

I hear stories in my head and they won’t let me sleep until their told. I tell Karl this and he says “I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN!”

it’s like being driven, or possessed, or something even worse This thing I see, it has no colours or shapes, I don’t even know how big it is how will it ever fit on this canvas? We don’t do it for anyone else, not fame or money, good luck getting paid for what we do is the most common symptom of art faggotry. This passion and stupidity that drives us try’s the people around us as surely as it tries our own sanity. But to stop? Unthinkable.

The night wound on and the conversation grew quite animated till his lovely blonde haired blue eyed daughter distracted us in most 4 year old way. She was up way past her bedtime already so it just made sense to indulge her little play pony tricks and feed her fruit that her pony could have too. Before long we had a race course with hurdles set up around the house and we were all racing ponies and spinning stories about the ponies we were racing, by the time Inge-jean came home there were paints and pens and ponies and drawings of ponies and hurdles and empties spread from one end of the house to the other.

One time Karl put his canoe and his lovely wife Inge-jean into the creek in his backyard and they rode in that canoe till they reached the Hudson’s bay some 2500 kms. North and east. Their longest portage was 30 kms. I think he made a movie of it; he’s also made documentaries in India. He paints and welds and creates and couldn’t stop if he wanted too.

He is an art fag.

I wrote this at 1 a.m. in Chungking mansion on Nathan road in downtown Hong Kong. It’s a cheap guest house in an old mall complex about a city block long and 15 stories tall. B block 3rd floor room 316. My girlfriend is snoring next to me and there will be no sleep till this story is out of my head.

I am an art fag.

To quote the Ramones, “we accept you, gabba gabba we accept you, one of us”

My buddy jay Balaam likes to think of himself as an art thug.

He is an art fag.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sitting on the porch of a jungle bungalow in Thailand sweating with nothing to do, seems like the only way to cool of other than another cold shower might be to think of cold. Really cold.

The cabin at the end of the road is halfway across the world and cold as hell right now. I know I’ve been there.

2010 December sometime. We had finished the summer before and used it for climbing trips but it hadn’t seen any winter use yet, insulation and a stove went in that fall as temperatures dropped but that was when the road was still open. In October probably.

Now that the road was closed and the snow thick in the mountains the thought of an overnight trip to the cabin seemed like a really good idea, Jarrett and I, Dave Tuttle and his girl Bobby Ann, with her 5 month old foetus. The Fellows, Gary and Johnny. A good idea indeed.

The plan hatched and agreed upon several weeks prior, all seemed go until Jarrett decided to get a vasectomy, 3 days before the trip. He was still in but his wife didn’t really think it was smart, and then the weather forecast for the weekend came up. -35 C. Pretty dam cold, but still doable. Pig headed fools that we are the plan moved forward. Jarrett agreed not to ride like an asshole and we all agreed to smack him if he did, that didn’t really impress Brandi but it did get a go ahead, she’s his wife and the boss when push comes to shove.

Husky gas station, north end of Dawson Creek 6:00 a.m. Saturday, -35 as promised, two trucks with trailers full of snowmobiles meet for fuel and coffee. Go time. Bobbies belly gets some fun poked at it but she’s been riding and seems confident. With 2 and a half hours to daylight and only 130 kilometres to cover till the beginning of the trail the plan is a go.

Tumbler ridge, 100 km. From Dawson we stop at an oil and gas camp for breakfast, Gary and Johnny’s mom is in charge of the kitchen and feeds us up as if we were all hers. The sun is coming up and although the temperature is steady at -35 it’s still early yet. We push on to the beginning of the trail. Where the plough stops on the road into the Monkman Park is a wide spot with a stop sign and turnaround. From here we have 50 kilometres to ride to the cabin.

Unload the machines and get them fired up, hitch skimmers behind the biggest machines and strap jerry cans to everyone else’s backpacks and gear on. Everyone is very careful to cover exposed skin neck warmers and scarves and balaclavas all around. The temperature isn’t bad at rest but with wind-chill frostbite is a very real concern. Checks and double checks complete we head out into blazing blue skies and a sunrise that pictures can’t describe.

Within the first 5 km. Jarrett’s pulled over.... his machine is overheating, steam billowing from under the hood. A check of the coolant shows the catch can full of green ice with the coolant lines running to the tunnel stiff with ice as well. Someone forgot to replace the coolant from last year’s ride where he cooked it till it boiled then replaced what boiled with snow melt. Someone being him. Blame be dammed it’s time for a fix, and as luck or fate would have it on one of the skimmers is a 3 foot section of stovepipe for the cabin. An afterthought to help the woodstove draw a little better by getting its end above the roofline.

To work! We all start chopping or sawing, dragging wood next to Jarrett’s machine. He carries a hatchet under his hood and all our shovels have saws in the handles so in no time we have a smudge of smoke then open flame next to his machine. Fire the stovepipe into that and prop it under the tunnel pointed at the cooler and the fix is on. We keep dragging wood from the bush and he keeps the fire crackling and fans the flames up the pipe. Lots of laughter, who brings a stovepipe snowmobiling? Just in case? We do! Every couple minutes he fires the engine till its warning beeper sounds, getting the heat into it from both ends.

It’s going to work, and we are all quite pleased but a new development comes to light. Bobby’s belly is getting kicked from inside and she’s not very happy with it. In fact she’s obviously pissed right off. She’s not a very girly girl and the thought of going back has her downright mad. However, to her credit she’s also not stupid, better now than way out there so while Jarrett Johnny Gary and I deal with the dud sled Bobby and Dave Dave decide to pull the plug on her ride, she tells Dave not to worry if he loads her sled with her she will drive home alone and he can keep riding, it leaves us with one more sled to haul on Jarrett’s truck and trailer combo but we all agree it can be done.

Dave and Bobby head back and we carry on with the big thaw. Finally the reluctant sled fires and runs without beeping and the temperature has come up t a fully acceptable -20. Dave’s not back so we race back to the truck. And I do mean race, with a 130 horsepower under the throttle lever it’s really hard not to want to go fast.

Bobby’s sled is loaded and we get back to the truck just in time to say goodbye then it’s time to make serious miles, Dave and Jarrett are both lugging skimmers so it’s up to Garry, Johnny and me to break trail through the fresh snow and for the first 20 km. There is a track to follow, someone has been out here in the last couple days but their track disappears at the turnoff to Kinuso falls. From there it’s 30 kilometres more through two feet of fresh powder on top of another 3 feet of packed snow. Drifts and the rough road underneath make for some pretty epic riding but not really easy to keep a straight line through, add in the urge to race factor and Garry and I make a dogs breakfast of what should be a decent trail.

In the last 10 km. The worsening road underneath the snow has my machine dropping out from under me and then launching skyward every 20 meters, it’s fun but takes some heavy exercise to control finally the constant full throttle fun catches up to me, the machine drops out I chop throttle till I feel the next jump point uphill and when I squash the throttle to launch up instead of the pull on my arms everything stops moving, a brief panic rev and my bodies momentum carries onward. A perfect graceful front flip over the bars and I’m upside down on the hood of my machine.

Gary pulls up and whips his helmet off, “Dude that was awesome! I think you blew a belt.”

No shit Gary, hood up start pulling the rat’s nest of belt shrapnel out from the clutch side of the motor. The rest of the pack shows up and starts giving us shit. What the hell kind of trail is that? A messy one that’s what. Do you know how hard it is to follow you two when you do that?

Chastised but unrepentant.... belt fixed and reefers burnt. We plug on, the going has been slow but we make it out to the cabin with an hour of light left and bushwhack our way to within a couple meters of the cabins backside. Time to fuel the machines and cart our groceries inside.

Home sweet home! A summers worth of hard work and an epic ride to relive round the woodstove, bobby sent a dozen homemade chicken pot pies with Dave and they may just be the best thing ever...Till Jarrett starts making tortellini! A mad orgy of eating, drinking fireball and smoking reefer ensues. Gear is spread out everywhere round the stove drying, and the bench racing is getting out of hand in the best way, did you see when I did this? Or what the hell was that in the bush you where chasing? I wasn’t chasing it I just ended up out there!

We carried a lot of wood in when we started the fire and in the loft space it’s almost uncomfortably hot, but by the time people start nodding, it’s obvious it’s getting really cold out, the floor is still chilly to the touch and the woodpile is almost burnt inside. Johnny the ape-man is first to bed and as he starts snoring the discussion turns to him sleepwalking. If he wakes with scuffed knuckles we’ll know right? His brother Gary loves this topic and it carries almost to bedtime for the rest of us. The snores stop and snickers begin. “Very good Joe....” is his final sentence.

There is room for everyone in the loft but someone has to stay below to stoke the fire, it’s burning a full box of wood every 45 minutes and if it goes out life is going to suck. I have the best sleeping bag and agree to stay below, head by the fire feet toward the door. Every time my feet start to get cold I wake up and stoke it. Must have woke 25 times that night, Jarrett goes for a pee and comes back in shaking,”my weatherdick says it got to be 45 below man”

When we wake in the morning the first light reveals the truth of the matter, a frost line a foot up the walls and carpeting the floor...when we get home we learn it hit -50 that night, killing cold.

By the time breakfast and coffee are done and the sun is shining on our sleds its come up a bit but still, its firkin cold out there. It takes 3 fires to get 5 sleds going, mine is the oldest and although it took close to a hundred tugs it did finally run without fire, Dave’s is the only fan cooled machine and brand new, also ran sans fire.

The ride out is slow, my sled won’t go fast without the carbs icing up and everybody else is running into issues as well. Not the least of which is just plain uncomfortably cold, the wind chill creeps into every chink in our gear and the next day we all have a black spot or two somewhere. My neck has 2 small hickies and Gary has raccoon eyes from his goggles before we even get to the truck.

Dark is falling fast as we reach the truck and a whole nother mess is there to greet us. We knew the truck was going to be frozen solid. The plan was hatched midday to get there and start falling deadwood.

What we didn’t expect to see when we rounded the last corner was a small SUV buried a hundred yards up our sled trail with 2 men shovelling furiously using the sheared of stop sign from the end of the road. As we get closer it turns out there are three off them, one inside the still running vehicle warming up and the other two with only one winter jacket between them. Holy dead men batman!

The questions begin and the answers follow. They are German tourists who thought they could drive out on our trail to see the falls. They realize now that there is no cell service out here and if we hadn’t come back to the truck today they would be popsicles tomorrow. And yes they are hungry? Garry and Johnny both have mini stoves bolted to their exhaust with pizza pockets and garlic sausage in them. They sit in the car and warm up as we hook three machines onto their bumper, then we tug and they push and their soon back on the ploughed road.

Back to our own problem, a turn of the truck key and nothing, we pop the hood and job boxes and start rounding up gear as Jarrett explains to them in no uncertain terms their obligations now. “You don’t leave till our truck runs.” They pull alongside and we hook our jumpers up. Will that work? Is their next question, but no one is sitting still to answer. A tarp is being stretched over the hood and trees are dropping in the bush beside the road.

Within minutes Jarrett has a fire going beside his trucks bumper. And we are all dragging wood not just to feed the fire but to keep warm as well. It’s a killing cold and in order to live there are tricks. By the time the fire has produced enough coals to fill a scoop shovel it’s so cold that a jug of motor oil turned over the coals doesn’t want to pour. If the oil was hanging six inches out of the spout and the jug righted it would just retract like a snail’s eyestalk. But when the oil hits the coals it produces serious heat so we keep on the track, it will work we just have to get the engine oil inside the motor thin enough to let it turn over.

And sure enough it takes two hours but the truck does run and everyone gets home safe!

Wives are unimpressed Jarrett’s balls are sore and we all have frostbite scars to remind us, but every time I think of this story I also think of a bumper sticker I saw in Squamish once

“Your worst nightmare is my best vacation”

The end.

corea

once upon a time in a far away land called corea a beautiful young virgin bride was drowned offshore of a small fishing village. Her husband was not able to swim out in time to save her and after the tradgedy the fish catch in the area began to decline.
Steadily the catch decreased in sinnam, this lovely little fishing village was helpless without the fish that they lived on and sold inland for their livelyhood.
one day a fisherman had to empty his bladder and he did so into the surf  from up on the rocks, that day he caught more fish than he had in weeks before.
remembering the unfulfilled young brides tragic end, he assumed that the girls death had cursed the area and unless she got what was denied the curse would remain.
and so the story of sinnam and its penis park began. i don't know how long ago but judging by the numbers and variety of styles it must have been a long long time back.
today you can go to this little village, which is still small but visibly thriving, the racks of squid and fish drying will attest to this. and if you pay a small fee of 8000 won, ( about 8 dollars canadian) you can enter the park and see just how important making this girl happy was to the generations that followed. the hillside has a all the asian park necessitys, gnarled pines and cleaned stone paths with a rugged shoreline below. the first thing at the entrance that tells you its not just a park but a story is the bundles of  sticks hanging in the trees. all carved to resemble phallic symbols.  then the sticks standing from the ground at chest height, bell ends with faces carved in the shafts these are all obviously old, very old. around a corner you meet the next generations, a giant bronze dick juts from the middle of the path, above that a black stone dick on an axle so it rocks up and down with 3 more erect above it. granite and wood ornate and simple every generation has added an erection. literally hundreds around the countryside.
And at the top of the hill a diorama, lifesize korean fishermen with their dicks to the wind. Halfway down the hill is a fishing museum with aquariums and boats and gear explaining how important the fish are to the people.

In fact if you spend any time looking around this country you will see how much history means to them, when the japanese ruled for 35 minutes in the 70's they wrecked as much as they could to break their spirit. and when they left the korean people rebuilt. painstakingly. they kept the new spelling, when japan took power they renamed corea, the letter k is further down the alphabet than j so that was how the new spelling went. you will still see the old spelling on old buildings and signs.
i met 2 old men in the ancient fortress city inside suwon, who assured me that it was a very new city in relative terms. started in 1796 and finished in 1797 it had artillery emplaceents and was a miracle of modern technology. both men mr. kim and mr. park knew of canadian history which they learned in high school. mr park seved in the korean airforce for 28 years and thanked me personally for all that our people had done for theirs during the korean war. Mr kim sang to me a song about the rocky mountains in the morning, with perfect pitch. he forgot the words halfway but carried the tune anyway.
All in all it was a surreal country to visit, i recommend a visit to anyone with a sense of humour and respect for history.

backyard climbing. DIY

2008. dion mitchells back yard, my newest climbing partner and long time riding partner and room mate is climbing a tree.literally.
  as always it started innocently enough, we spent the weekend in the pine pass snowboarding at powderking. I was sneaky and packed an extra bag of gear, saturday night in the chalet after a full day of epic powder and digging a snow cave to camp in that night i spring the trap.
 "want to go climbing dee?" is all it takes.
So dion got his first climb that night. On ice. At night. it was good and we went back and bribed alex the groomer operater for a ride to the top of the mountain and went to sleep in our cave. after a couple more beers of course.
  The next day was sunny and bright and we were both sore and a little slow so when we stopped for lunch i suggested we maybe go do dairy queen again in the daylight, dion was game till we got to the bottom of it. then he pinched a small fit!
"you made me climb that?"  "it's terrifying. And tall. And scary...." I got the impression he was impressed.
So i made him do it again, different in the light. At night you climb in a 6 foot bubble, just what your headlamp will reach.
  On the way home with the fear fading we started planning to do lots more. You know they build ice climbs in banff for competions?
  Boom idea is born! We should do that, with temperatures around 40 below for weeks on end it would be easy. It wasn't as easy as that but pretty dam close.the first year we hung pallets from the poplar trees in his back yard and made a very short climb. 20 feet maybe in total if you counted the top section the water never froze to.
  the second year we borrowed 3 tiers of scaffolding from Jarret, and set them up in the center of the backyard surrounded by snow covered bmx ramps and then leaned the shitty old ladder up against the structure on one side. wrapped a bunch of chicken wire the the top and stuffed old pizza boxes behind the wire. Dion for some reason collects pizza boxes, i think he intends to build a gaint out of them one day.
 armed with last years mistakes we laid pvc plumbing round the top edge and drilled holes in the bottom every couple inches. this spread the water evenly and allowed it to chill much faster. Presto! no melty streak for the first 3 feet, an actual wall of ice began to form almost instantly. within hours we could tell it was going to work.
  Getting the volume of water right was crucial and there were mistakes made, too much and it would still melt the top, not enough and the water would freeze in the line. more than several time we would check the ice wall only to discover crunchy hard line froze right back to the window it was run out of.
  One morning while enjoying my coffe i discovered the hose was froze, pulled on my boots and helmet grabbed my axes and started up the wall to untie the line.Our neighbor next door was out in the yard with his dog and didn't see me till i was halfway up, the climb had been up for over a week already but the sight of me in my houserobe and climbing gear was the straw that broke his poor back! Chuckles quickly turned to loud out of control laughter, i kept a straight face and finished my chore and im sure that just fanned the flames of outrageous humor.
  he had seen us ride the ramps with little bikes ride the trampoline with little bikes ride the ramps with little quads and motorcycles, combine the ramps and trampoline. fires and fireworks live music and ramps in the garage during winter months when the snow kept us of the outside ramps and never uttered a word.
Years of carefully concealed guffaws burst thru. I coiled the hose and carried it inside without letting my mask crack. "I think we finally got him Dion!" I said as i pulled my boots and cramps of in the entryway.
He turned and looked at me and cracked too.
 "The hose froze and you went and got it down like that?" not really a question more an accusation. "That calls for a lap on the wall" mock mad that i would do something so obviously needing punishment by being forced to climb. grab a hold in the hallway, traverse past the bathroom into the boulder cave and start doing laps until we fall.
indoors or out the mountains are in our blood.

Step out for a smoke. There’s an old guy outside smoking on the motel porch next door and I ask him if he’s here hunting. it’s a no brainer as he’s head to toe camo and he says “ya, a bit“.

The night air out here in the mountains is a crisp glass of water for the lungs and every diamond star has carved its own perfect hole in the night sky.
I ask him if hes got anything yet and he grins and shakes his, “hell no” with a chuckle “sure been nice though”
That’s a style right there. we laugh and small talk about the grandness of it all for a bit over a smoke and a beer then turn he turns and retires as I finish my butt. “Take care” is all he says as he leaves.

When I climb I climb for the top but ill be dammed if I’m going to let not getting there ruin my day. To try again is sublime. Another kick at a spectacular can that many never even consider to dream of.
It’s the same when I ride, anyone who’s ever walked by a skate park has seen the kid there flipping out and throwing his skate or bike and yelling obscenities because he didn’t land the trick. That’s not me, not ever. Win lose or draw ridings riding just like climbing or making out with a girl. Its all good.

Which brings us to style again. This style in particular. It’s not an easy one to master and its not for everyone, to be able to see thru this moments bullshit and keep a cool head. To appreciate. Truly, the beauty , the lesson, the magic behind every moment. So your down to your last 3 bucks with your head behind a dumpster high as fuck on crack and life sucks. What did you learn? That sucks don’t do it dummy! You just learned a lesson and if your smart you’ll be proud and move on and learn more lessons.

Then, when summit day turns into a tent climbing session you may just learn to make a truly excellent soupy pasta casserole with shredded beef jerky. File that one for later you just learned something new.
Super 8 motel desk girls are a notoriously soft touch if you really need a blanket tonight on the side of the road. But not always so keep that one when you get it.
And for gods sake now that you know you may need a blanket go buy yourself a good sleeping bag as soon as you can afford one. That’s part of the style, a little investment and or preparation go a long way.

Buy a pocket knife, it’s a million tools in one. And when the import beer you bought to impress the girl turns out to not twist off? Learn to pop it with your pocket knife.

Do you know what the big dipper looks like? The two stars that make up the side furthest from the handle point almost directly at the north star about 3 fists away from the top of the dipper. Presto your able to orient at night anywhere in the world.

Sometimes things may really seem to suck. I know I’ve been guilty of it, grumpy bitter mean and spiteful when things aren’t going exactly right. That’s where if you’ve been paying attention you will knuckle yourself on the head and remember the style. Fix what you can, accept what you can’t apologize to whoever you may have pissed off. Move on and learn or be doomed to repeat.

Ask directions. And don’t be shy about it. Even if you don’t think you need them you it cant hurt to check against what you think you know. Plus you just met someone.
Share. Food and drink. Money, your bed your life. No more than you can spare and don’t be shy about saying no. But if you can spare a dime do it. Sometimes it comes back and let me tell you it feels really good when it does. When a dude chases you down in the ferry terminal, gives you a twenty and says “this is for the fiver you gave me 3 years ago. Thanks man.”

Style

Wear it with pride



Learn to cook, everywhere and everything.

Chicks dig it.

another love story

I fell in love once. Or twice....
Ok, you got me. I fall in love at the drop of a hat, and this is a perfect example.
i was hitch hiking south one spring solo. at the time this wasn't really ordinary for me, i had hitch hiked south from dawson the year before with my tattoo apprentice and sawmilling and general all round buddy Andrew Treibel to go climbing in squamish. This year i was on my own, first long distance trip solo on the thumb.
Epic times really!
When me and andy went we got stuck in hundred mile house and caved in, bought bus tickets south and so missed getting out in cache creek to stretch our legs. Not me this time. I got out of a car in cache creek and a tumbleweed tumbled past in the scorching sun. Real lazy like...after coming from snow and ice all winter it kind of blew my mind and i gawked then pointed and said "tumbleweed!" to no one.
 Spences bridge was the next stop and my ride there was a  bald redneck guy who said he only gave me a ride cause i was bald and white. Couldnt be too bad with credentials like that by his reasoning.
He was driving that canyon road fast and cursing slow traffic and we were bullshitting bout who and what we were and from where till i asked if he burnt reefer.
 "Hell ya boy!" was the reply.
So we burnt one and he went polar opposite. slowed to 20 under the speed limit and began to curse and finger the drivers piling up behind us. Pretty damm funny i thought and then we turned of into spences bridge. right onto the bridge actually. and dropped me of o the far side of the river in old town on the main drag there. Pointed south and said the road ran right back to the highway just down there.
Turn, look south. High noon. Or thereabouts, shoulder your pack, rudiculously heavy with camping gear, clothes, rock rack, shoes and rope, water bottle and sundry stuffs.
 Take it in, a sunbaked dirt main street. Wooden side walks. False front stores and goddam tumbleweeds.
Crazy redneck in a blue chev pickup waving and cackling into the distance.
I settle my house on my back and take a couple steps.
Then it happens, a girl steps out of the saloon onto the board walk and turns my way.
Her hands are full with grocery bags and a small child is strapped to her side hanging over a shoulder.She has so may bags in both hands the muscles in her shoulders are clearly visible but she looks solid with the load and ready to travel. there is no denying she's beautiful. A classic look that never gets old. Tall and dark with long dark curls and dark brown eyes. wearing a simple slip of a dress and sandals and groceries and child.
She looks at me, up then down and up again.
Smiles and says "you look like your packing almost as heavy as me. you should come in for a meal."
Right now i should mention that im an idiot.
I had eaten A&W in cache creek just up the road. and filled my canteen. and was determined to push thru to squamish that night.
I told her id just eaten. she said "its hot out maybe you should come in for a drink?"
I told her my canteen was full and thanked her for the hospitality but i had miles to make.
I am an idiot.
It gets worse, as i walk past the swinging double doors to the place i see inside behind the counter, drying a glass her double. Twin sister or or mother or cousin or unrelated doppleganger whichever it may have been i walked past and kept on going.
They were beatiful and friendly and i kick myself every time i think of them.
Idiot
Made squamish that night, got of the bus at the climbers campsite, first campsite full of freaks the mohawk playing gituar jumps up and shouts at me. "hey JOE!! your moms in the site next to us! welcome home!"
Life carries on and that girl stayed with me. i told this story to a friend on an epic journey once and we stopped in spences bridge but the saloon was a cafe now and no girl was in sight so we crossed the bridge and fell in love with the red headed firecracker at the log cabin pub named shale.

shoo that little dutch boy with the finger away from the leak in my minds dyke
see the stream of ideas begin to spray out the hole, eating away at the wall
growing and gaining strenght with each passing moment
feel the winds of change gather at my back
filling sails stretched taut on the mast of my body my spars spread right to the fingertips
grasp the helm firm and point my bow towards the vast unknown
leap into the stream and let it carry me to the sea
run thru the fields and leap cross the ditches
chasing the jackrabbits of inspiration
take a compass bearing on the highest point of the horizon
and gain elevation with every step
till the world spreads its pearls of wisdom across the horizon
to do what with i know not

smart things stupid things and just things people said to me

ive had some pretty smart people say some pretty stupid things to me.
and some dumb motherfuckers say some pretty smart things too.
thats what lifes about i figure, seeing what there is in front of you and never mind the source.
sometimes things get said that bare repeating thats for sure, and im going to try and recall a couple
right now, for you.

morgan jean, the bmx machine. A simple man of simple wants and few words.
still a blonde hair blue eye farmboy of doom on wheels after a full decade of riding together. " want to know the meaning of life?"
"want what you do joey, and do what you want. you'll be fine"
Silence, for hours. he can do that like that.
MJ quit racing when he was 14 because it was getting in the way of his love of riding.
On pain, "Pain is how you can tell your alive." "right now im super alive!"
"Running out of pop joey." Pop is what makes a little bike go up. Running out means time to go for a soda. Put some pop back!
Morgan Jean firmly believes that a beer left untended is a beer unloved and so undeserved. his guideline is ten seconds roughly. he's so good at rescueing these unloved soldiers that his friends all call it morgan jeaning a beer. or mixed drink. or what have you.

Brian Starling. welder and fisherman. good man alround said "It all comes out in the wash"
meaning ill  buy beer today, i'll buy beer tommorow. your turn will come around and even if it doesnt it'll still come out in the wash and we'll still need beer.

J. berg boss cousin and climbing partner. "Roll it up motherfucker!"

Evil wop. pete maggoria. "old age and treachery will overcome youth and vigour every time."
obvious what that one means.
Also, "Too fat to fly-Too windy to pile rocks"  Meaning time to go for a soda. Or beer. Or whiskey.
Also: use this first. then that...and then....only then use those. pointing first at the head, then trigger finger and finally balls. Im pretty sure he meant think your way out before you shoot your way out. And only after those options are exhausted can you fuck it all up.

Boss. Norm Wicketts on fuck-ups at work. "Make it go away"
didn't care how just as long as when the sun came up whatever it is was, wasn't.

Ron Gallagher. Remembered and would tell stories of when norm was a wet behind the ears kid.
He taught me to call in feeling well if it was that nice out. Norman never forgave him for teaching me that before he died. Norman and i and the boys had a rip roaring time at rons wake right down to the fistfight outside with a sponging junkie relative just there to see what he could swipe.
His daughter shelly danced on the table with me and was the spitting image of her father when push came to shove with the unwelcome guest. made me feel right at home giving him the bums rush.
Every time i look sideways at a person and say "mischief?" with a question mark i swear its him getting his favorite word out through me.

Captain Dan from the movie Forest Gump. Lashed to the mast screaming at the storm "Is That All You Got?!?"  Jarrett tries to kick me every time i scream that one into the weather. It has bit us a couple times but its never been enough to wash the deck of us.

and last but not least. i forget who said this but its good
"Be the change you wish to see in the world"

chapter 2

an idea is only so good without action. actually its no good without action. ideas come and ideas go and if you dont act neither will an idea.
  So the cabin at the end of the road began as a pile of leftoer lumber and house parts. We discussed it and ideas were tossed round then out but the action would have to wait till spring. The trip where the idea was born was the last one for the summer and as we left storms and snow and ice descended on our little end of the road paradise.
 J. berg, the jarrett in charge with the piles of wood is a dynamo. one spring day while discussing the possibility of the road being open into the mountains declared he had all the parts piled up and was going to start cutting and labeling them if i felt like comeing by and helping. well holy shit thats a far sight further into it than i had figured, a couple nights of that and we had a car trailer full of parts and a plan just waiting to spring into action.
 When we sprang, it was not a graceful spring. We loaded the car trailer and the death star as full as we dared. 1 full lift of fiberboard sheeting for the roof and walls 2by12 for the floor system 16 inch fabricated wood i beams for the a frame roof sheeting for the floor, doors, windows, nails, glue, all in all we figured about 3000 pounds on that trip alone and no room for shingles.

 

goat

there is a faint tap in my head, a trip, trip, tripping of dainty cloven hooves echoeing one level above my conscious brain. the further west i get, the deeper into this trip the clearer he seems to ring.
 he comes and he goes, was gone for a while and like a goat sometimes wasnt welcome when he was here.
i imagine him roaming steel decks and void tank spaces in the barges and ferries where he was born bleating quitely just to here his goaty voice echo.
 The goat came to be suddenly, yanked from thin air into existance with one sentence. not even a sentence, an expletive. "Hey goat boy!" from across the shop floor a couple years into my shipbuilding career.
 I had done some steel work proven myself among the old men with scars and mustaches and dinge and stories. a few of them took real liking to me and amongst them my first friend and coworker in this tribe of shipbuilders was Brian Starling. he introduced me as the kid. "Hey this is the kid i been telling you about!" 
He wasn't around when Brent johnstone called me goat boy on my second morning as an aluminum fabricator for the provinces flop of a fast catamaran project. but enough people where there that it made it back to him. Hes still pissed 15 years later that he didn't get to nick name me. but he didn't. brent did. and would live to regret it almost instantly.
 I've never been really good at the snappy comeback thing and always kinda shy but it was obvious he was fishing and i had to say something or forever be trod upon. still it was a suprise to me even when i piped up with a question.
"Are you calling me goat boy because you know i'm from saltspring and your too chickenshit to call me a sheep fucker?" just 22 and not stupid, jaw drops and stuttering begins. Goat boy is born.
  It stuck like glue. i was goat boy for years, then the boy got dropped. bosses would introduce new guys to old guys they would be working with. you are with brian starling, you, pete maggoria. you go work with steve sharp. and you can get in the manbasket with the goat!
startled sideways looks, questioning voices. "umm....the goat?" which is where i would be expected to go baaahhhhh...
 Poor brent, he was a prick to everyone and he tried with me but i had him from then on. I really did feel sorry for him from time to time because he obviously never met goats before. I know goats.
 We had milk goats when i was a boy on saltspring. They are good people for the most part and pretty much anything they do to convince people otherwise is just in the nature of the beast.
 goats will survive on anything but they seem to actually relish the stuff others wouldnt know how to approach. roses. goats love to eat roses, and thistles! but roses never seem to get grown for food. so when the goat eats every last rose bush down to the mean spiky stem in the dirt someones gonna be mad.
 goats like to see around them and can climb very well, hooves on car roofs are never appreciated...
likewise eating clothes of the line, which brings us to another goaty point. getting mad at a goat is fine. if you like being mad. kicking a goat is a sure way to break your foot.
 So i lived a goaty existance it wasn't hard. the shipyards are a great spot for a goat. we worked hard and we played hard and sometimes the two would overlap to the point where living and working where the same and playing was something you did at both.
 The night i got my horns was like that.

steep as hell

We tiptoe in the shadows of giants


Steel claws bite the snows crust

Skirting headwall after headwall

On ever steeper slopes

The sun beating down and reflecting, searing flesh on the bone

...Snow blinding fear seeping through

Our armour of experience feels pitifully thin up here

Standing tall on front points, pretending everything is alright

With the glacial wall standing taller

Right in our faces, close enough to kiss

If the giant should cough

Shrug his cape of snow off in response to the suns caresses

These fleas who are we would disappear

Like a waking dream

In this steep as hell world


We face our dreams

And make love to our fears

sitting in a motel room with the ghost of tom waits
sunset outside thru the window and deepening fall colours
remembering the flavours of montreal next to this erie canal
flavours and aromas and textures and long shivering kisses
trucks lit up like christmas rumble past as my fish and chip dinner settles
another layer of my self peels back
landing softly on cat like feet and slinking into the night
and i decide i like whats been exposed
its got a whiskey and smoke flavour
a real patina, the blues practically seep from this place