The Frick Winery

Early this morning my dad came to the hotel room I’m sharing with Erin, Josh, and Natalie and said, “C’mon guys, we’re going to be late. We’re all meeting for breakfast.”

“Where are we meeting?” I ask.

“At…

…The Pantry.”

Today we had to drive 6 hours south to Oakland because all of the flights in town were too full. Before cramming in the van with 6 adults and a baby, what did I eat? A huge omlette with hashbrowns and beef from…

The Pantry.

About 4 hours later we stopped in a little town called Willits and I ate a salad like it was medication.

There were vineyards all along the freeway during the drive, and my Dad knew of one where they make “Frick” branded wine.

We stopped in, met Bill Frick, the man who started Frick winery. While the place seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, it was set up like an enchanted secret place that is wedged somwhere in a timeless reality as if the wise-being holding guard is also serving you, and fully understanding that souls only come about to visit once every few creations.

I knocked back a few wine samples until I found out you can’t actually get just a single glass of wine like a bar, you have to buy a bottle. I let mum and dad keep the peace with Bill Frick, and keep-the-peace they did by buying $75 worth in Frick winery merchadise and a bottle of Cinsaut (Sin-SO) Rose.

I still get nervous about wine tasting for fear that I’m not spitting, sniffing, or reacting enough.

The Pantry

We’re staying at the Comfort Inn in Arcata, CA. It was the best deal we could find for the lowest price that 5-stains-or-less could offer.

Across the street there is an eggs-ketchup-&-burgers restaurant called The Pantry. I already had eaten the continental breakfast at the hotel across from ours, but I decided to eat again. My mom got a “side” of fries. They’re so generous at family restaurants.

An hour later, my sister and Tim had just flown in and were hungry, so we headed over to the Greek restaurant across from The Pantry and I ate again. By this point I was getting pretty full.

After eating at the Greek place, we went to my Grandpa’s Rosary ceremony. When it was over, people started talking about maybe getting some food somewhere, we all looked at eachother and somebody said, “I know! let’s go to this place called The Pantry.”

I ate a hot fudge sundae for dinner because I was kind of getting tired of eating the actual meals at The Pantry. After that, everybody sang happy birthday to my cousin Vanessa. Then everybody sang happy birthday to yours truly, because mine was yesterday.

Nobody really wanted to leave The Pantry, so I left early to sip some Jameson with Josh in 106, and cousins caught wind of the party and joined us and we all gave a toast to Jack Frick.

29

Today is my birthday. My original goal was to ride Josh and Kevin’s epic 1200 foot zip line, but plans changed.

I went out with my parents to walk my grandpa’s dog, Daisy Mae. She’s a one-eyed rescued chihuahua/pug mix.

I wanted to mark the day with something, because I like to remember previous birthdays.  During the walk I found this spot:

It was impossible for me to look at the beach and turn around and leave, so my parents left me at the beach while they drove around town to do other things.

The shoreline was further than I thought, so I ran as fast as I could to spend as much time close to the water as possible. At one moment a did an epic, hyper hip-kid leap over a log and kept running. Maybe I was influenced by this song and video that I’ve been obsessively watching/listening to on repeat since I’ve been out here.

It’s been a week since I arrived in Cali. Ceremony for Grandpa Jack is Friday.

Jack.

I’ve been in California the last week. My grandpa (Dad’s dad) started slowing down over the last few months, initially diagnosed as having Dementia. He digressed from walking daily with his dog to having his drivers license taken away to him to sleeping 16 hours a day or more within one month. Eventually he ended up in the hospital after taking a couple of falls, and they discovered a tumor on his brain.

With that diagnosis and declared “days to weeks to live”, I flew out to northern California to see him for the last time. He died today at 11:20 a.m. in his house.

I had the privilege of making some of the most significant memories of my childhood with spending entire summers at his house, wreaking havoc with cousins in and around the surrounding space filled with trees no shorter than 100 feet and the sweet smell of rain and pine.

If there was one thing I can take with me now is his example of developing an enormous appreciation of the simple things, and to be drawn towards those who never have an ill word to say about anybody.

RV Journey 2010 – Parting Ways

Josh is going to move on without me. The RV wasn’t ready. Nothing has gone as planned. I felt terrible about bailing, but there’s too many things keeping me in ABQ and not enough reasons to wait around for the RV any longer.

He’s going to rig his truck so there’s two levels with camper shell, the top part a bed to sleep.

He’s off to Denver tomorrow. And I’m going to try to find a way to get bills paid.

Square.

RV Journey 2010 – Back In Albuquerque

My mom was really confused when she found me at home this morning.

Coming back so soon was slightly embarrassing. It’s been a week since we started the RV Journey, and so far there’s been no RV and hardly a journey.

Eventually both of my parents heard about how I cut my hand, and freaked out about the lack of sanitary procedures, and use of crazy glue. So Dad made an appointment for me and had me go to urgent care to get stitched and cleaned properly.

The doctor was actually thoroughly impressed with the tape/glue job we did on my wound. He thought it was a bad idea to reopen my wound to clean it, so he brought in a second doctor to look at it. She was super impressed, too, as they also use Krazy Glue™ to mend deep gashes in the flesh.

I didn’t tell Julia I was back in town and decided to show up to her house during a conversation on the phone while having her believe I was 500 miles away. Then we had Bloody Mary’s with her and her friends and explored various yoga postures.

RV Journey 2010 – Sedona & Flagstaff

Josh and I decided to go to Sedona today. We biked some trails where supposedly an Earth-energy-vortex is located. It is said that there is a mountain (pictured) where the temperature fluctuates and compass needles spin in confusion for whatever unknown reason.

We strapped on the Canon 7D to a helmet and got some cool shots. Unfortunately I have nothing to show for it.

After that we drove to Flagstaff to get some documentary footage of our trip with Josh’s new boom mic, which captured the attention of an elderly New York couple and three older women, also on a road trip, who expressed inuendos of loneliness and desires for its quenching.

We drove to Flagstaff, racing the sun to find some place to make some food and camp for the night.

Minutes after taking this picture, I cut my hand while trying to break apart some branches while holding a knife.

We finished our food and drove back into town, and used the bathroom in Target to fix everything. Josh got a hold of butterfly tape, peroxide, and crazy glue to close the wound. That was the first time I saw tendons moving around inside of my body.

This wound was eerily similar to Tommy’s Wrist Slash earlier in the year.

While back in town, Josh got a hold of his Dad and found out the RV was probably not going to be ready for a while because the mechanic has gone missing.

…so, we drove back to Albuquerque.

RV Journey 2010 – Still In Phoenix

Something I remember only when traveling or being on tour is the enjoyment of finding new music along the way. Music has a way of finding you when you are on a journey, and it can hit you in a way that it could not do had you been at home.

Tucson – Andrew Bird – Tenuousness

Phoenix – Menomena – Queen Black Acid

Around noon, Josh told me that the RV-part was to be in on time to have the RV’s engine put back together properly.  That was the good news. The bad news? The mechanic’s brother had been murdered… yes, murdered… in Mexico and had to suddenly skip town.

As tragic as that is itself, we may be a little more set back in getting the RV out to Arizona. Last we checked, the engine parts and tools were lying all over the place… so we hope the new mechanic can find what is needed to put it back together.

The night ended with meeting up with Jonce and new-to-me-guy named Tim who’s a teacher of many subjects at a local prestigo-school here in Phoenix. The intelligence of humor was quite escalated at this gathering, and political-speak had never been so well-integrated with poop jokes.

RV Journey 2010 – Phoenix

Josh and I didn’t leave on this trip in the best financial standing, so every little job we find helps.

We spent the day fixing John and Paige’s house.

While picking up some supplies, we encountered a “homeless” woman in a Home Depot parking lot. I didn’t want to give her a chance to approach us, as most beggar introductions are quite textbook and cliché, but Josh wanted to hear her story. Her story had illustrated that she had proverbial kids who were proverbially sick and were proverbially somewhere close-by but conveniently out of sight. Of course, she needed money to feed them (as they were very hungry from attending her “mother’s funeral” earlier that day), so we drove off to buy her and her kids some food and fill up a gas can for her. Much to…our…dismay…, she was nowhere to be found when we came back.

Josh and I were then paired with a couple of bags of junior bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s, and also five gallons of gas that we hope will end up in the RV’s gas tank sooner than the Truck’s.

Still no word on if we’ll be seeing the RV soon…

RV Journey 2010 – Tucson To Phoenix

Last night we stayed at Justin and Melissa Nail’s house, 2 more old friends from my 4-month stay in Las Cruces 2005.  They live in Tucson now.

Justin made a Journey to Alaska before. He told us all about it, as Josh intends to go all the way up there with dreams of taking bites out of freshly caught salmon, man vs. wild style.

We’re discovering that the roads to Alaska aren’t exactly friendly to any cars, much less RVs. So a ferry ride may be in the works if we desire to go as far north as Alaska.

We drove to Phoenix today. Josh bought a new boom mic for his camera, and decided to create a boom pole out of painting supplies from the hardware store.

Later, we met up at Josh’s brother’s house to see the whole family.