Bill Stratton

sinfrenos

Bill Stratton

Oh stop.




North America » United States » Texas » San Antonio August 2nd 2011

Good, I'm glad you're here. Get comfortable and we'll get started right away. No no, I haven't been waiting long at all. It's fine, really. You've missed a lot, since we last checked in. I left Los Angeles on Saturday and arrived in San Antonio yesterday, ready to conference about some curriculum. Woohoo! Curriculum! I've got curriculum fever, and the only cure is more meetings about curriculum. So the trip was fraught with peril and adventure, and I'd love to tell you about it. First, on my way out of California there was an incident involving my new iPhone gadget and my own clumsiness. What happened was, I was just east of the Palm Springs exit on I-10, loping down the road at 75 or so in the left lane and bopping along with whatever pirated ... read more
Dusty & Stormy
The Milkbear


Well it looks like my time in Los Angeles is drawing to a close; I'm leaving tomorrow morning for points east. It was a busy past couple of days! Yesterday morning Jake and Gordon and I went to the L.A.P.D. Academy Diner for breakfast. For some reason the Police Academy has a diner/commissary thing that's open to the public so we went to eat some cop eggs and a cop burrito. Please let's no one make a joke about bacon, it's been done to death already. A few of those go a long way in polite company, I was advised. Anyway it was a fine breakfast, maybe even L.A.'s finest breakfast. Wheeeeee I got jokes! Crackin myself up over here. To Protect and Serve Breakfast All Day! Zzzzzzzing! I'm sorry. Going again people, everybody safely back ... read more
LAPD Diner
A Milkbear Goes...
Look at the ocean.


Well I just wrote a whole big thing but then my awesome computer logged me out and now the whole thing is gone. Gonna start again, from ^%*&# scratch. Still in L.A., still having a blast even though here at the keyboard it seems like we haven't really done an awful lot. So far Jake and I have: -gone out to lunch a lot; noodles and sandwiches and pizza and a hamburger -hung out in the yard and gotten in lengthy arguments with Jake's cat, Edward James Olmos -taken a short moto-ride to Gordon's house -hung out down the hill by the workshop, with short breaks to mess with my bike. Yeah there's some content! My bike! After being here in the very Mecca of the ratbike for a few days I've decided to take all ... read more
This is actually
Stairs in L.A.
Tony's laser cutter;


Well it looks like my theory about how I'm invisible to radar may have been incorrect. Officer Hyrdiek...Hrydeik...Hrdyke... Officer Jerry got me just below the California state line, from an overpass where I didn't even see him. He thought I should have, and was chagrined that I didn't slow down and that it took him a few miles to catch me up. After he'd calmed down and was reassured of my wholesomeness he told me he thought I was trying to rabbit. I wasn't at all, I was just enjoying the mountains and the long sweeping curves and was 100% focused on what the other vehicles were doing. (Driving 24mph in the left lane, was mostly what they were doing.) There's still hope for the radar theory, though; he said I was going 90 but he ... read more
Wheee!
Sup bro.
Wheee...

North America » United States » Oregon » Grants Pass July 21st 2011

Ah, Oregon. I made it to Grant's Pass last night, an hour or so from the California border, and I've come to an important conclusion about Oregon. Oregon, see, is the embarrassing hillbilly cousin of the otherwise delightful west coast. Washington and California, those are fine upstanding states whose scenery is matched by their charm and civility; Oregon, though... This whole state is the green room for the television show "Intervention." I'm from east Texas, and I've never been in a sadder, more meth-y place. Even the women here are too rough-looking for me, and that's kinda my thing lately. The scenery is low-key lovely, but all the fulsome hills are scarred and pocked by ad hoc logging cuts; need some money for Junior's new false teeth? Well let's cut a mess of them trees for ... read more

North America » United States » Washington » Vancouver July 20th 2011

OOOOOOOOOMFG I just spent the funnest 80 miles racing a big fast Audi from Olympia to Vancouver, WA. I thought I was going pretty fast before that shiny grey thing flashed my rearview and streaked past me; for some reason it seemed like a pretty great idea to wick it up a bit and let him pace me. I'd keep up with him no problem in knots of traffic, and he'd walk away from me when it cleared, then I'd find him again in some more traffic. I'm sure there are faster cars out there in the world but as long as I've been riding this bike of mine I've not met one. It wasn't a race in the normal sense, I guess. He'd slow down to 100 in the clear stretches so I could stay ... read more
Look at the tree!
Rust
Glacialicious.

North America » United States » Idaho » Mountain Home July 15th 2011

Wow today was pretty exciting! Despite getting hardly any sleep in the crap-hammock, I got a good start out of Moab, maybe at 10a or so. The ride was fantastic. I'll go ahead and say it: Utah is freaking gorgeous. Straight out of Moab it's these wonderful pink rocky canyons that you get to carve through, then it bleaks out a bit till Price but even the bleak stuff is pretty in its own lunar-hellscape way; no curves on that stretch though so we'll go ahead and call that 60 miles the low point. But after Price? Hijole. From there till the Salt Lake metrospazz is just one jaw-dropping tear-inducing postcard vista after another, with the green meadows and the snowy peaks and the rivers that crash alongside the highway. Utah's very considerate, too, because they've ... read more
Don't make fun.

North America » United States » Utah » Moab July 15th 2011

This hammock-tent business is a huge scam. What a piece of crap. I don't think I got 30 minutes of uninterrupted sleep last night. It kept trying to buck me out of it, and once I woke up with the thing all topsy-turvy and me all cocooned-up in the mesh part on the side, which is where no one should wake up cocooned. Stupid hammock-tent. Such big promises, such tremendous shipping-container loads of fail. Reeeeeaaally could have used a heads-up on this one, guys. Thanks for nothing, jerks.... read more

North America » United States » Utah » Moab July 14th 2011

Gather 'round, haters and skeptics: this is a message for you! I'm in Moab, the sun is setting, and the rocks are glowing pinkly and towering over the soft green cottonwood trees of the little valley where I've set up camp. There's a stream, too, that's currently babbling and burbling alongside my little temporary homestead. (You get 10,000 blog points and a free t-shirt if you spotted the little pun I made above) Anyway you know what else is great here in Moab? The hammock-tent is. That's correct, the hammock-tent is strung and it's glorious, rocking and swaying in the evening breeze and patiently waiting to hammock-tent me off to dreamland. So guess what, hammock-tent doubters? Y'all can suck it! Nay, y'all MUST suck it. We live in a democracy so I won't tell you what ... read more
Tha Mean Streetz.
Thursday night;

North America » United States » New Mexico » Santa Fe July 12th 2011

Oh. It's you. No no, by all means please do sit down and read. You just...startled me, is all. You're looking fabulous, by the way. Me? Oh nothing, really. Still in Santa Fe, still enjoying pretty much everything here. The winter before last, when I was here working on the vampire movie, I decided that my reward for suffering through all those long, freezing nights at work was to be a summer back here in northern New Mexico. Seriously when I was thigh-deep in that river in the mountains, at 1:30 in the morning, ambient temp. 7 degrees, the full green trees and the flowers here in the backyard were exactly what ran through my mind to keep me going. So here I've been, taking my reward. It's pretty great, but I'm getting antsy to be ... read more
Horale!
Here,
Don Juan Street




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