Dear Son:
I am writing this slow cause I know you cant read real fast. We don't live where we used to when you left. Your Dad read in the paper that most accidents happen within 20 miles of home so we moved. I wont be able to send you the address as the last family who lived here took the numbers with them so they wouldn't have to change their address.
This place has a washing machine. The first day I put four shirts in it and pulled the chain and haven seen em since. It only rained twice this week; three days the first time and four days the second time.
The coat you wanted me to send you, your aunt Sue said it would be a little too heavy to send with all them buttons, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets.
We got a bill from the funereal home. It said if we didn't make the last payment on Grandmas funereal, up she comes.
About your father, he has a lovely new job. He has over 500 men under him. He is cutting grass at the cemetery.
About your sister, she had a baby this morning. I haven found out yet if it was a boy or a girl so I don't know if you are an aunt or an uncle.
Your uncle John fell in the whiskey vat. Some men tried to pull him out. He fought them off playfully so he drowned. We cremated him. He burned for three days.
Three of your friends went off the bridge in a pickup truck. One was driving, the other two were in the back. The driver got out. He rolled down the window and swam to safety. The other two drowned. They couldn't get the tailgate down.
Not much more news this time, nothing much has happened. Will write more later.
Love,
Mom

P.S. Was going to send you some money but the envelope was already sealed.
(From a manuscript found in Show Low.)

Lets see...when I left off I believe I was heading to The Trenda Community in Phoenix. I actually wrote the first few pages of the last Trip Tale in the desert before I went to Phoenix. I left for Phoenix on February 13 to watch one of my nieces perform in a gymnastics meet.

The first two weeks there I alternatively wrote the last Trip Tale and rode my bicycle on the network of hiker/biker trails. I didn't hike because I didn't want to be out in the energy of Phoenix very long. The gymnastics meet was on February 27 and my parents flew down from KC the day before.

I was able to stay in my trailer for those two weeks. My trailer is my space/cave/safe haven. After two weeks one of the neighbors complained to the city and I had to move into the extra bedroom in Renee's house. It was nice that that was available, but I missed my own personal space. It was nice to visit with Al, Renee, and Argena again. They are all nice people. We ate a lot of meals together and even went on a picnic in a nearby park. We were the Four Amigos.

I still didn't like the energy in Phoenix. One afternoon I went with Argena on an errand to the area of 75th Ave and Thomas Street. This is a poorer part of town but I did not know that ahead of time. The closer we got to our destination the worse I felt. In the passenger seat I noticed that I had crossed my arms and then my legs and was almost doubled over in pain. It was so bad that I almost asked her to take me home. But I didn't and on the way home the farther we got from that area the better I felt.

I picked up my parents at the airport and took them to their motel. Later we went looking for a steakhouse and were told of one farther north of the city. It turned out that it was where the gymnastics meet would be held the next morning. It was called Rawhide. The restaurant was an Old West style steakhouse and saloon. We got there at 7:30 but still had to wait an hour for a table. But it was worth it. There was entertainment in the saloon while we waited for our table and the food was quite delicious.

Now some of you may find this rather hard to believe but I actually left the next morning at 7:20 AM to pick my parents up at the motel and take them to the gymnastics meet at Rawhide. We spent all morning there and saw my niece perform four times for a total of two minutes. She is a truly delightful now-18 year old young woman.

Afterwards we toured Rawhide, which is a re-creation of an Old West town, complete with eating places, stores and gunfights. However, the gunfighters were either lousy shots or were using blanks, as no one seemed to get hurt.

After a busy morning of watching girls perform for us, we were all hungry. We ate a late lunch at El Encanto Mexican restaurant which I believe is in Cave Creek. The restaurant is modeled after a Mexican hacienda. You enter through a gate. There is seating in and out of doors. All the seating is around a small pond with ducks floating on it and with several trees growing at the edge of the pond. The food was very good and very much. No one went away hungry, nor did any of us even eat all the food on our plates. Nor did I, and this in front of my mother, who no doubt was still thinking of all the starving children in India who would die a horrible death because I didn't eat everything on my plate!

We took Katy back to her group that afternoon. For the next week I was the tour guide for my parents. They are partying people and wanted to see it all! We got some tour books and proceeded to see some sights.

The next day we toured the Catlin Historical District and found a street fair going on there. After seeing what there was to see there, we went to the Desert Botanical Gardens. There we learned all about the 225 different kinds of cactus and other related plants. I had already had personal encounters with several of them in the desert and was very careful around them.

Next on our agenda was Arcosanti several miles north of Phoenix. This is a community started by a famous architect, whose name eludes me, thirty years ago. It is slowly being built by volunteer workers to be a self sufficient community. They use solar heating and cooling, using the design of the buildings to funnel the wind to assist the sun to meet their needs. They have their own source of water and will eventually grow their own food organically. They have a bakery which helps fund the work and are famous for their delicious breads but were out by the time we got there. We did take the tour and learned a lot, most of which I cant remember. I have a rote memory. If it ain't rote down, I don't remember it.
Next on our agenda was to visit some distant relatives whom I had never met in the city of Casa Grande. We visited over a long lunch at a local restaurant. On the way home we went to Casa Grande ruins. These were built by the Hohokam Indians several hundred years ago. Our tour guide was a middle aged woman who told us about the people who had lived there. There are no trees around so those most noble of people traveled miles away to cut down trees and floated them down the river to make the window and door frames for their stone houses. They irrigated sandy soil to grow corn. They used sandstone to grind the corn into flour and of course the sand got in the flour and wore down there teeth so that these poor, poor people often died by age forty. The woman was so extremely melodramatic in her descriptions of these people that I had a hard time not laughing at her. One woman in our tour group apparently could not suppress her laughter and so left the tour with her hand firmly pressed over her mouth. Fortunately the tour only lasted an hour.

We took a trip up into the mountains northeast of Phoenix the next day, enjoying the scenery tremendously. There are a series of dams on the rivers in the area creating some lovely mountain cradled lakes. On the way back we visited the Goldfield Ghost town. This is a commercially operated ghost town where gold was mined in the early 1900s. We took the tour which consisted of a train ride around the area. We ate at a restaurant there and, as always on my parents visit, my Dad paid for all my meals and admission fees. don't you just love parents?! It was nice to spend this time with my parents. I hadn't been with them this much since I left for college. I not only love my parents, I genuinely like them, too.

The next day I took them to the airport. I am not saying that I was glad to see them go, but I needed some rest! I couldn't keep up with them.

I was looking forward to getting back to the desert but had to wait another ten days for an appointment to get some warranty work done on my trailer. Most of the windows leaked when it rained. It turned out that the warranty wouldn't honor the work as they said it was my responsibility to keep the trailer properly caulked. I used the ten extra days in Phoenix to edit and proof read the last Trip Letter and get it printed.

While waiting for the appointment, Argena and I went to the Renaissance Festival. I love going to them. While there I saw the Ded Bob Show. The performer is my brother's wife's brother. He has a skeleton puppet who, as Ded Bob, interacts with the audience. Clark has a hood over his head so he doesn't have to worry about not moving his lips.

Ded Bob puts on one helluva show. He plays to a standing room only audience every time and obviously has many faithful followers as they all shout out the appropriate responses at the appropriate time. He gets three volunteers from the audience to engage in a short play. At the end of the show he has the three people compete to see who can get the most money by passing a hat. Clark makes giving him money part of the show and people line up to give one of the three people money to give to Ded Bob! Children run down to the stage to give money directly to Ded Bob. The show is very funny, very enjoyable and very profitable. He does 4 or 5 of these shows every Saturday and Sunday. Did my brother marry into a smart family or what?

In my last letter I spoke of my Lincoln friend, Lawrence, the ultimate punster. In a deep meditation one day I picked up on one of his past lives. He was a Knight of the Round Table in King Arthur's Camelot. His name then was Sir Punsalot. Bill Clinton had TWO lives during that time. One as Sir Copalot and one as Sir Grabalot. Lawrence was also Repunzel in another past life.

I actually spent a month in Phoenix this time, much to my horror. The highways are more like International Raceways than highways, with people driving 20 miles over the posted speed limit weaving in and out of traffic. Being out in the city with my parents so much I picked up a lot of bad energy. My lower back hurt constantly and if I sat down for more than a minute, when I stood up again I couldn't straighten my back for three or four steps. The same for my knees. Despite my deep affection for Al, Renee, and Argena I was only too glad to depart Phoenix when the RV service center said they could not fix my trailer.

I left Phoenix for Quartzsite on the Ides of March. I didn't realize how shut down and full of pain I was until I got thirty miles outside of Phoenix. I could breathe again. After parking my trailer in the desert outside Quartzsite, I went to see Santarra. She greeted me at the door and told me she had found her soul mate. He was inside and I met him. His name was Mushroom Ick, or Shroomik for short. The name comes from the fact that he used to use the psychedelic mushroom Psilicibin (or some such spelling. I doubt this is in my spell check!) but gave up drugs and now talked to young people telling them not to use drugs.

I got to know Shroomik over the next few weeks. When Santarra was out of the room he would often talk badly about her. He was big into control and I knew Santarra would not put up with this. I said nothing but I gave her soul mate about 3-6 months before Santarra would throw him out of her life. Which she did two months later.

I would spend another five weeks or so in the southwestern Arizona desert before moving north. Because of El Nino the desert was green for the first time that I had ever seen. It was actually quite pretty. The temperature stayed quite moderate for that time and place and I enjoyed it. I concentrated on hiking and sitting outside my trailer either in the sun or the shade depending on the temperature. I had some great meditations this way and actually began to relax. I love doing nothing after a hike and could sit outside for hours at a time after a hike. There is a tree in the desert called Palo Verde. That is Spanish for green friend. The Indians in the area told the early Spanish explorers that they used the tree, whose trunk, branches, and leaves are all the same shade of green, for tea, medicine, carving, and the thorns and bark for sewing. It was a good friend to the native population, hence the name.

I also found out that Kemo Sabe of Lone Ranger and Tonto fame actually means white bastard. And the Hawaiian natives are always saying Namaste to the tourists. That apparently means imperialist pigs. When you travel it is good to know the local languages.

I was camping along Plomosa road several miles north of Quartzsite. There are no hiking trails in the area but there are several old jeep trails made by the gold miners. It was these that I hiked. I had two favorite trails in the area. On one of the hikes I saw five big horn sheep, one ram and four ewes. They ran across the road in front of me and stopped 150 feet away to graze on some grass. But the ram stared at me until I moved on out of his sight. He was obviously protecting the ewes. On the other trail one day I came across two mule deer who ran away when they heard me approach. In all my time in that part of the country those were the only times I came across any wild life.

What also always thrills me on these hikes is the vast array of rocks. Black, red, brown, blue, and green are the colors which predominate. It awes me to think how many millions of years it took to form all of the rocks and rock formations and how many more to erode them to the point they are today.

There are hawks, ravens, crows and ospreys in the area but few smaller birds. But for a two week period while I was camped at a certain campsite I was serenaded all morning by a bird brightly chirping its heart out. My house in KC had plenty of trees around it and there were birds busy chirping year round and I have missed that.

I called Shroomik the Wizard of Ik and decided that Santarra was Sanskrit for Dorothy. I asked them to help me find a brain but that didn't work.

Sometimes when people cuss they say Jesus H. Christ. I asked one of them what the H stood for. Not missing a beat he said, Hallmark, because God cared enough to send the very best.

Cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny.

Some of you got it wrong from my last letter. I am retired, not retarded. Well, okay, so I'm both.

I became disillusioned last Spring. I have long been a fan of the New York basketball team. Being half Irish I found it easy to root for a team called the Micks. They had a lot of Black Irishmen on the team and their star was PATRICK Ewing. But last Spring I found out they are called the Knicks, short for Knickerbockers, whatever that is. Nonetheless I still root for them because they are nice guys and I like to watch them play.

My friends say I have a way with words. Unfortunately it appears to be away from them!

I have a rule for women I date. Love me, love my jokes. I haven had a date in a long time; I wonder what that means.

On April 21 I left Quartzsite for Cottonwood, Arizona. I found a place to camp in the Prescott National Forest a few miles east of Cottonwood. You can only camp in a particular national forest for 14 days and then you have to leave for 30 days before you can camp in it again. I was going to meet my friend, George of the asphalt jungle, in early May in Sedona, which is in the Coconino National Forest. That is why I made sure I camped in the Prescott Forest until it was time to meet George. After a week I moved to a campsite in the Coconino forest and called George to give him directions. Santarra and Shroomik were going to meet us there also. I had to coordinate my move with calling George and Santarra to give them directions but not be there so early that I had to leave before George's week's vacation was up. It was more than the feeble brain of mine could handle.

On my first day in Sedona I was on the phone talking to Argena giving her directions for Santarra to find my campsite. Fred overheard me say Santarra as he walked by. I had met Fred once in Quartzsite at Santarra's but didn't recognize him until he said who he was. He was looking for a place to camp so, since he was a friend of Santarra's, I invited him to my campsite. Fred is a short, slender, gentle man who came to the U.S. from Peru in 1968. He is an inventer and a photographer. He invents machines which allow the disabled to be independent and to be able to work at jobs they otherwise could not do.

I was hoping for a big camping village with George, some friends of his who were to meet us there, and Santarra and Shroomik. It gets complicated here so stick with me. Peter and Gina, formerly of Sedona, had moved to Coeur dAlene, Idaho. Gina had flown down to Sedona to visit family and friends and was going to ride back to Coeur dAlene with Santarra. Shroomik showed up early but Santarra didn't find my campsite until the day she and Gina left for Coeur dAlene (although they made it only as far as Flagstaff, about 50 miles away. Santarra was desperate to get away from Shroomik by this time.) I had my first one on one conversation with Gina for two hours while Santarra and Shroomik divided their belongings. (Shroomik was to meet up with Santarra in a month up in Michigan.) I liked Gina and was quite impressed with her and enjoyed our conversation very much. Before I had always seen her with Peter and Santarra and was never able to get a edwgeowridse.

By this time George was there and at least he got to meet Santarra even though she had no time to visit. George and I had a couple of days to hike and visit during all of this. One morning I was awakened when the trailer was rocking at six in the morning. I thought George was rolling over in his sleep awfully roughly. It happened again while I was looking at him and he hadn't moved. I didn't know what was going on but figured I had better get up and go outside to find out what was happening. By this time George was awake, also. We went outside and found several cows grazing next to our trailer. Apparently when they moved, they bumped into the trailer. We chased them away and they moved on. This would happen again two days later. This was a close encounter of the bovine kind. The Forest Service allows ranchers to graze their cattle on this public land. It was up to us to avoid them.

George's friends, Jim and Miani from Fayette, Colorado, just east of Boulder, showed up on Wednesday. They had to leave Friday morning so we spent the next two days visiting and hiking. Jim liked campfires so we had one each night. Thirty feet from my trailer was a fire circle. There were big sandstone rocks upon which to sit almost in a semicircle, naturally arranged by Mother Earth. It was a fun place to have a campfire. Fred Joined us for both campfires. It was beginning to feel a little like a village.

During one of the campfires we could see a bird flying in a circle above the campfire, occasionally chirping a noise that sounded like ding. Suddenly I realized what kind of bird it was. It was a Dingbat.

Jim and Miani were very nice and invited me to visit them in Lafayette if I was ever in their neighborhood. Friday morning Jim awoke with severe back spasms. They slept in their station wagon. We went to town and called around for a Chiropractor who could take him right away. There is a clinic in the Village of Oak Creek called Mountain Dove run by husband and wife Chiropractors. (As an aside, I had heard them lecture at their clinic several years earlier and liked them. Also, my Chiropractor in Lincoln knew them.) We took Jim there and waited in the waiting room while they worked on him for about 45 minutes. I found it VERY peaceful in their waiting room and was almost reluctant to leave when Jim's treatment was finished. When I left through the door the not-so-peaceful energy palpably hit me and I wanted to go back inside.

Two days after I set up camp in the Prescott Forest outside Cottonwood I awoke with rather severe back pain. It was centered below both sacro-iliac joints. Nothing I could do made it go away.

George left on Saturday, leaving only Fred and myself. Shroomik was camped by himself on the other side of the road. That night Shroomik and I went into town to see a movie. After the movie Shroomik was saying a tearful goodbye to me telling me how he looked forward to seeing me again the next Winter in Quartzsite. This kind of caught me by surprise because I knew that I would never see him again and I probably acted rather awkwardly.

The next day I went for a long hike by myself. When I came back Fred told me that two Forest Service rangers had come by and said we had to leave the next day because we had overstayed our allotted 14 days. Fred left the next day as he had to get back to California since his house, which he had rented out, was five years behind on taxes and would soon be on the auction block if he didn't get back and deal with it.

Since we had only been there ten days I went to the Forest Service office in Sedona the next day to complain about the harassment and assure them that I was not leaving until my 14 days were up. They had me talk to a Law Enforcement Officer, complete with badge and gun. The two rangers who had spoken to Fred the day before were neither armed not badged. I explained the situation to the LEO and told him I did not appreciate being harassed. He said he would check with the two rangers and if they had proof that I had been there more than 14 days he would be out to write me a ticket. In fact he told me that twice. He also told me that I could not spend one night in a National Forest if I were homeless or had no permanent address or if I worked in Sedona but did not live there. Obviously he was not very pleasant. He did say that if they did not have proof that I had been there too long he would allow me to stay there three more days. He treated me like I was a criminal who was trying to steal free camping on his land. Not once did he offer to have anyone apologize.

Later I wrote to the Sedona and the Arizona Chambers of Commerce and the Southwest Regional office of the National Forest Service in
Albuquerque, NM with a copy to the National Headquarters in Washington, DC. Of course I heard from no one. But they left me alone the next three days. (Note: I DO know how to spell Albuquerque. Do you?)

A christian, a muslim and a new ager died on the same day and knocked on the Pearly Gates and asked St Pete for admission. Pete said fine, but each of them had to spell a word. He asked the christian to spell God. G-O-D. He was admitted. Then he turned to the muslim and asked him to spell Allah. A-L-L-A-H. Fine, he could go in. Then he turned to the new ager and said to spell Albuquerque.

See?! There really is useful information in these letters. Information that you may need some day. You may thank me later!

I didn't like the energy in Sedona anymore. There is a building boom going on in both Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek. The energy there feels to me like power and greed. They have Aspenized Sedona. I still like the mountains, the red rocks and the hills, though. The National Forest Service now charges to visit the ruins around Sedona. There is also a charge to hike the West Fork Trail in Oak Creek Canyon. There are also fees to hike and park near many of the popular hiking trails near Phoenix and Prescott. Three years ago Congress passed a law allowing individual National Forests to charge fees for such things. 80% of the money collected stays in the local Forest or Park and 20% goes to the General Treasury in Washington. This is the same law that raised fees in several National Parks. Camping fees in National Forest campgrounds have risen from $3-4 in 1990 to $12 today in most places. They talk about reducing taxes while actually raising them.

There was also a bill before Congress, which must have died there, to outlaw all free camping in all of the National Forests and other public lands. Camping would be allowed only in designated fee areas or in private campgrounds on private land. This is pure and simple greed. Do not allow it to happen.

Speaking of the government (you may want to skip the next paragraph) they keep wanting to put more cops on the streets and build more prisons. Crime is down. The U.S. murder rate in 1997 was the lowest it has been in 30 years. In 1990 New york had 2,245 murders. In 1997 they had 770. That is BEFORE the new cops hit the streets. Crime is down in all categories. don't vote for politicians who play on fear and talk about getting tough on crime. Cocaine and marijuana use has declined by almost half since 1980. The crime rate has fallen by one third since the mid 1980s and burglaries are down by one half in many inner cities.

For those of you who think that whales are the most intelligent mammal on earth, You'll love hearing that whales now have their own radio station. A Vancouver, British Columbia radio station, ORCA 88.5 on the FM dial is broadcasting 24 hours a day from the bottom of the ocean. They want to find out what the whales are thinking so they are going to listen to them.

Words of wisdom from Readers Digest: RESENTMENT IS LIKE TAKING POISON AND WAITING FOR THE OTHER PERSON TO DIE.

My friends tell me I am artistically challenged because I think Elvis on black velvet is high art.

You are what you eat. My friends tell me I eat too much jerky.

Humphrey Octopus said to his girlfriend, Here's looking at you, squid.

I always like cleaning bath tubs. I spray the cleaner on the tub and say, Take that, you scum!

On several of my hikes in the desert after I returned from Phoenix I began to put some things together. I would toss and turn all night, seemingly not sleeping at all except I had dreams; bad ones. They dealt mostly with intense frustration in all areas of my dream life. It was harder for me to wake up in the morning. I was suddenly starting to get up at least an hour later than before. While I have never been a morning person, this was now extreme. Lastly, I began to feel a strong sense of dread after sunset which continued until I fell asleep.

Looking back in my journal I realized these changes began shortly after my arrival in Show Low in September of 1997. I now assumed that the disorientation I experienced one evening while Barb was getting her tires rotated was actually another theft of my energy.

I didn't like the energy in Show Low that Fall and now I knew why. I had become even more sensitive to energies. The energies there weren't any worse, I was just more aware of them. This was very disappointing to me because I had hoped to make Show Low my home base for my travels because of all the wonderful people whom I had met there.

By mid May it was time to leave the Sedona area. My friend in Show Low, Barb, whose husband died the previous November, was going to have a memorial for him in late May, so I packed up and headed for Show Low.

Before I got to Show Low I camped for two nights 50 miles west of town just off a Forest Service road. Sometimes when I sleep one of my joints will relax too much and will be sore the next morning. This happened the first night to my right knee. I had trouble climbing the three stairs to my trailer but could walk just fine. So I took my usual eight mile hike up the road toward the Mogollon Rim.

The Mogollon Rim is the edge of the uplands of Northern Arizona. It runs generally from the northwest corner of the state towards the southeast corner. This is why Sedona is 2500 feet lower than Flagstaff. It is a 2-3,000 foot dropoff. It is just wonderful to stand on the upper edge and watch the mountain tops reaching upwards in the valley below you.

Once back from my hike I noticed my knee was tightening up. By the time I finished my shower, it was hurting rather badly and was very stiff. Once again I cursed my stupidity (I get to do that a lot!) However, an hour later I remembered that Santarra had given me some pyrite and malachite. Pyrite takes away pain and malachite helps the healing process.

Of course, I am too stupid to actually believe any of this. But I did take the small pieces of both stones which she had given me, wrapped them in a bandanna and tied it to my knee. To my surprise the pain disappeared instantly. I was pleased. I left the bandanna on overnight and when I awoke the next morning the knee was completely healed. Believe it or not! Yes! I am a witness. Praise the stones! (Note that is spelled witness and NOT witless. I am not witless. I have at least half of it left, Ill have you know.)

That afternoon I set up camp on the east side of Show Low. Here the trees are all tall bushes and I could get plenty of sun on my solar panels. I set up my satellite TV and settled in. I checked the Weather channel and found out they were expecting rain for the next several days (though it did not materialize.)

The next day I visited Barb and she invited me to camp in her driveway. Being stupid but not THAT stupid I said thank you and did so.

Barb's daughter, Robyn, on loan to us from the Angelic Realm, was taking ballet lessons. Barb invited me and my camcorder to the year-end recital so I could record it. About that same time Barb had the Memorial Service for Dan. Again, my camcorder was invited to join us. It was a beautiful and touching ceremony as people who had known Dan got up and told the rest of us the impact Dan had had on their lives. Barb wanted to record this so Robyn, who was five years old when Dan died, would have something to remember her Dad by.

It was a beautiful and touching ceremony. I don't have to say that because, while I always mail a copy of these letters to Barb, she seldom gets past the first page or two. Obviously she is not much of a reader. But if I called her on the PHONE and read it to her, she would hear every word! Sometimes I think the telephone was invented merely so Barb would have something to do with her time here on earth. Again, I can tease her here because she will never get this far. Unless somebody tells her.

While there I got to visit with 91 year old Milly, my Scorpio friend, who is still looking for a few good men. She is looking for younger men. Men who can keep up with her. She told me about a visit she had with her doctor. Milly had a touch of arthritis in her knees and asked him what had caused it. The doctor, obviously in a jovial mood, said it must have been a dissipated youth. But Milly said she didn't remember him.

The previous November I had been camping in Barb and Dan's driveway and Barb asked me to leave because they wanted to work on their relationship but couldn't with my energy and presence there. Shari had been asking me to camp in her driveway so I moved there. I was there for five days when I began to feel very unwelcome there. It was a very strong feeling. But I stuck it out until it was time to leave, but never mentioned my feeling to Shari.

Barb had decided to move back to New York and complete an Associates degree from her massage school which had now become a two year community college. She had a going away party in the park, complete with food and a band. Again my camcorder was invited but I just recorded select parts of it.

Shari was there and we talked about my feelings of having felt unwelcome when I had camped in her driveway. I like Shari a lot and have the utmost admiration and respect for her and did not want anything to come between us. She said that I had become so negative and judgmental the previous Fall that she hadn't wanted to be around me. She said that Barb and Ruth (who owns the New Age store) both felt I had been very judgmental toward them, also. Now I can easily understand how they felt I had been too negative. I was picking up negative energies like never before and didn't keep my mouth shut or realize, at that time, that it was due to my increased sensitivity. While I couldn't understand how they could feel I was being judgmental toward them, all of whom I love dearly, I had to believe it was true because they all felt it. I apologized to all three and we made our peace. I was much relieved to have it understood and over with.

I stayed in Show Low for five weeks. Every day was sunny with temperatures from the low 70s to the low 80s with low humidity. I couldn't have asked for nicer weather. I hiked the Buena Vista trail most of the time because it was in the neighborhood. It is a ten mile loop trail that has its ups and downs and lots of Ponderosa pines, which I like a lot. There is one part of the trail which has red sandstone rocks and manzanita bushes which reminds me of Sedona. I love to hike to that point and sit on the rocks and meditate and look at the White Mountains to the south.

On one of my hikes I realized why I had felt so bad in Quartzsite the previous January. It was not that the energy of the town had suddenly gotten so bad. I started feeling real horrible the middle of January and had to get out of town for at least two hours each day. All the shows start the middle of January and there are as many as 500,000 people camped in and around the town at that time. It was the sheer volume of energy I was picking up that made me feel so bad. Knowledge is power and that helped me figure things out and would help me deal with the situation in the future.

Often after my hikes I would sit out in the sun and Barb would come out and we would talk for an hour or two. She is a gentle, loving woman and I enjoyed our conversations. Sometimes Robyn would come out and I would have to play monster with her. She could play that game for hours and sometimes I wished I had never taught it to her. But she is so cute and angelic it is impossible to say no to her. One evening I was in my trailer when I heard a knock at my door. I opened it to find Robyn there. She asked me if I wanted to come in and watch Touched by an Angel with her. What better way to watch that program than to see it with a real angel!

I stayed in Barb's driveway for two weeks. John and Kathleen were going back to Wisconsin for three weeks and asked me to housesit for them so I moved my trailer over to their driveway. They lived only a half mile from Barb. They had a deck in their back yard and I enjoyed many hours sitting back there in the sun and doing something the Italian prostitute could never do: let the day go by.

The Rainbow People had their annual two week Gathering shortly after I left Show Low. These occur every Fourth of July. They usually number 20,000 people who come for camaraderie and primitive camping. They are this generations version of Hippies. It is an informal, but well organized, event. It is run by volunteers. The location is put out by word of mouth and on their web site. While I have never attended one, I have met a few of them and had them camp by me on their way to and from these events. They tend to be young, many to a vehicle, and wear tie-dyed shirts. I have always found them to be nice and very likable young people. They were just starting to show up in Show Low before I left. They are easy to spot.

My last week in Show Low was taken up with Barbs move to New York and the prodigious job of packing a house full of clutter (and throwing a lot of it away when she wasn't looking.) The last day before the moving van was to appear we threw everything in boxes without bothering to label them or bothering to see if what we threw in any given box had any relation to the other stuff in there. She would have to play Movers Surprise when she got to New York.

Amy's boyfriend in Lincoln is a Mover so I asked him to arrange the move, which saved Barb quite a bit of money. But the moving van never showed up on Monday. Or Tuesday. At which time I left town. In fact the van never did show up. Which was a good thing because Barb wasn't ready to leave yet. I don't remember what went wrong but it was all in Divine Order because it gave Barb a chance to really get ready for the move which she was still denying because it meant truly accepting Dan's death.

While in Show Low I got to spend time in Ruth's Healing Spirit and meet a few new people. But the best thing, besides visiting with Ruth, was that her store was still clear of negative energy and was doing well. I mentioned in my last letter that we had cleared the store of negative energies which were being directed toward the store by certain unknown people.

Barb had introduced me to her friends Ed and Lisa. They live half way between Barb and John and Kathleen. Ed is a diesel mechanic and agreed to do some work on my van. He put on new brakes, shocks, repaired my rear springs and installed a Power Chip. The rear springs had been sagging since I bought the van. The new ones raised the rear of my van by six inches. They also stabilized the ride significantly. The Power Chip is a computer chip that increases power and mileage. The springs had to be sent to Phoenix for a week to be fixed so I was without my van for almost two weeks. Though it was no inconvenience since I had my motorcycle and the weather was so nice. Ed is also a singer and musician. His band played at Barbs going away party.

Throughout my stay in Show Low my low back pain persisted. Neither rest nor exercise had any effect on it. It was similar to but not as severe as the back pain I had suffered while in Phoenix the previous winter.

Amy, Matt and Erin were coming to Denver from Lincoln to attend the International New Age Trade Show and promote Amy's CD. I had agreed to meet them there on June 26. I took three days to drive there, spending a night in the mountains east of Taos, NM, which is where I first met Barb in 1991. When I awoke that morning my back pain was gone and has not recurred. What it was all about I still have no idea.

I took Jim and Miani up on their invitation to visit and camped for a week in their driveway. Jim works for the NTSB investigating the human cause of plane crashes. He has masters degrees in geology and in social work. John and Amy live a few miles away in Boulder. (A different Amy.) John has a Doctorate in Geology and Amy has a masters in social work so Jim insisted on meeting them. John was in Bangladesh but I did introduce them to Amy while I was there.

Miani is a multi-media artist and has her work in a couple of galleries and on the internet. She has even had an Italian cookbook named after her, such is her fame. While I was there Jim was called out to investigate a crash so I didn't get to see him much, but I did have a very nice visit with Miani.

It was great to get to see Amy, Matt and Erin after a year. Amy was busy promoting her CD and did get it picked up there by New Leaf Distributors. The energy in Denver was very intense and I don't remember much of the two days I spent with them but I do remember that I enjoyed visiting with my friends a lot. We got to talk and visit and bring each other up to date on our lives. The three of them continue to prosper and enjoy life while I continue to roam around looking for my piece of the rock.

Amy did buy a very nice house which suits her needs quite well. There is plenty of room for her two kids and nice space for her massage work. Her back yard, while narrow, is 250 feet deep. Unfortunately she said there is no way for me to get my trailer back there.

After a week in Jim and Miani's driveway I moved up to Nederland, west of Boulder in the mountains. I have camped there before and always enjoyed it. This time, however, I couldn't relax there or clear my head. I felt that I had expanded my sensitivity to the extent that I was feeling the Denver/Boulder energy up there. Oh lucky me.

I thought I had the blues but I was just a Smurf.

The three things I love most to hear:

It's not your fault.

Dinners ready.

I'll take care of it for you.

God said Lighten Up! Not Let there be Light. That is a mistranslation.

OSHA and the North Pole cops made Santa install a beeper in his back pocket as he had already backed over and squashed two of his elves.

It doesn't get any better than this! Yeah, I know. That's depressing.

Someone told me that Bonnie Raitt had appeared at Red Rock Amphitheater in Denver. Her road show transport trucks were called Ego Trips. (This is true.)

I camped at a free campground three miles outside of Nederland. There is water, trash, groceries, and a newspaper close by which is one reason why I always enjoyed camping there. Another is the great hiking. There are several 4-wheel drive roads going back into the mountains and several cross country ski trails which can be hiked. And it is all right outside my trailer. I don't have to drive anywhere.

Nederland is at an elevation of 8300 feet. The population is 2,000. In town is a crystal shop, New Age bookstore, health food store and flower children everywhere. Houses are built on the sides of hills and there is a reservoir at the east edge of town which supplies Boulder with its water.

I got to Nederland on the Friday before the All Star baseball game. The previous summer I had not been able to see the All Star game because I was busy packing to leave Lincoln until late into the night but the next day I was camped in Nederland. Three years earlier I had been camping there and watched the game in a bar in town. As the game went on I felt worse and worse until I had to leave in the seventh inning. I was camping in my van at that time. I went back to my van, laid down on my cot and listened to the rest of the game on the radio because I was too tired to drive the three miles back to the campground. I have since learned to stay out of bars. Alcohol makes people relax and let go of their inhibitions. They emote much more strongly and I cant handle all of the emotional vibrations which are rampant in a bar.

But I do have a fond memory of that game. Randy Johnson is a pitcher who throws 100 mph fastballs but no one knows quite where they will go because he tends to be a bit wild. John Kruk was at bat. He stood two feet back from the plate and made three feeble swings at three of Randy's fastballs and returned to the dugout with a grin and a look of relief on his face at having survived his confrontation with Randy.

So I was looking forward to watching the All Star game on my Satellite TV. But I couldn't get the TV to work. After fussing with it for over an hour I figured out that the fuse was blown in the TVs DC cord so I replaced it. I still couldn't get the Satellite to work. The inverter which I had to buy to run the Satellite didn't work either. The inverter converts DC energy to 110. It was four months old and the warranty lasted for only three.

The next day I did call the company who built the inverter to see if it was something I could fix. They said they had extended the warranty to 12 months. I sent it to them for repair. They eventually sent me a new one. In the meantime I went to the hardware store in Nederland and bought a new one so I could watch the Game. The new one is only half as powerful but I actually like it better. And I paid an extra $15 to get a three year warranty since things are still breaking down on me.

And then I got to see the Game!

It was wetter than usual in Nederland so I had to keep my hikes pretty close to my trailer. Clouds and rain cramp my camping life but I coped. There are some nice motorcycle roads around Nederland. My current motorcycle is a city motorcycle. The salesman told me that but I didn't know what he meant. He meant the seat is uncomfortable and the cycle is only suitable for short rides around town. I miss my long, all day rides into the country. I have explored a lot of beautiful country on my motorcycles. But my current motorcycle does meet the absolute need of being light enough to carry on the front of my van. C'est la vie.

While camped at Nederland I did get to visit Amy Winters a couple of times. Unfortunately John did not get back from Bangladesh until after I had left the area. She was six months pregnant at the time but we still did go for a hike on an easy mountain trail and eat a late lunch in Nederland. She gave birth on October 3 to Andrew John. After a couple of weeks I left for Hot Sulphur Springs (HSS) where I had camped before several times. It was unusually wet here, too. There were a series of fronts that stalled out along I-70 and kept the rainfall coming for several weeks. I found myself a place to camp about 100 feet from the Colorado River. I felt much better here so I was out of the range of the Denver/Boulder energy. Because of the rain there were lots of bugs. I found myself becoming a buffet for bugs. Everyone must know his/her place in the Cosmos as well as the food chain and I found mine. Actually I didn't get bitten as often as others. I assume it was because I don't bathe as often as they do. Being unkempt has its privileges.

In the past I had had trouble with bugs coming into my trailer between the open windows and the screen. I solved that problem with weatherstrip caulk. But the tiny bugs flew right through the screen. I replaced the trailers light bulbs with Quartz bulbs. They use the same amount of power but produce twice the light. They are very hot. The tiny bugs would flit around the quartz bulbs until they actually hit them and were fried to a crisp.

Only female mosquitoes bite humans; and then only after they have had sex. Its like adding insult to injury. They suck my blood and they have had sex and I haven.

While camped at HSS I read in the paper about a windstorm the previous Spring with 100 mph winds which had blown down the trees in 2,000 square acres of wilderness forest. Logging is not allowed in Wilderness areas so the debate was should the National Forest Service allow the logging of trees that were already down. What was interesting to me about the article was if anything would have changed if they were round acres rather than square acres. Since you cant fit a square peg into a round hole, I was wondering if a round acre was the same amount of space as a square acre (or how that relates to a belly acher. It is hard to find things to think about when you spend as much time alone as I do.) Finally I decided I would have to bake a pie and give it to a mathematician and ask her/him for an answer.

Because of the bugs, the fuses and the repairs to my van, etc, I decided to sue God. Then I remembered there are no lawyers in Heaven.

I had to have some work done on my van so I took it to a mechanic for an estimate. He said it would cost a fortune. So I went to a Chinese restaurant and bought him a cookie. (Refer previous parenthetical remarks.)

Did you hear about the shoe maker who always smoked pot before he went to work because he wanted to cobble stoned?

I spent five weeks in HSS. There was a road I hiked most of the time because it was close to my campsite. When it was sunny there were two other roads I occasionally hiked. On one of these roads I saw a wolf. It walked toward me with a hungry look on its face. So, being a liberal democrat, I took out my wallet and threw money at it. Unbeknownst to me a conservative republican NRA member was behind me with a rifle. He shot and killed the wolf, walked around me, went to the wolf and picked up my money and left. So apparently both methods work.

In the early 70s I had to take an accounting exam for the insurance company for which I was working at the time. The company had one of their accountants teach a class to help us prepare for the exam. Early in the course I asked him why they called them debits and credits (too much Latin in high school.) He told me it was called a debit because it was on the left and a credit because it was on the right. Right then I knew that I was going to have to study for that exam on my own.

Ten years later I was taking classes in Metaphysics. I asked the teacher if we could study emotions. Her response was to hand me a sheet of paper the following week which said, among other things, a feeling is an emotion and an emotion is a strong feeling. Likewise, I knew Id never learn about emotion in that class. Several years later I learned something I feel is true: A feeling is an awareness and emotion is the quality of energy generated by that awareness. For example; hurt is the emotion, realizing someone disappointed me is the feeling (awareness.) Always look beyond the emotion for the feeling behind it.

With all of the rain in HSS I learned a lot about two new sports: women's basketball and arena football. Actually I enjoyed the women's basketball much more than arena football which didn't really look much like football.

I don't cook, but I fix dinner. Well, not exactly. I don't really fix dinner either, because it is obviously still broken from the way it tastes.

One day the clouds stayed in the distance. While hiking on my usual road I saw another dirt road take off someplace. I love to explore so I followed it to see where it lead. I eventually found myself at the edge of a bluff overlooking the city of HSS and my campsite. I could even see my tiny trailer and van from up there. From here I could see that the river which I thought was straight was actually a series of S shapes. It was a beautiful sight. I was probably 2,000 feet above my campsite. It was too steep to climb down from there, but I was about one mile away from home as the rope unfurls. As it was, I had to go back the way I had come, which was another two hours.

I wanted to sit up there and look down on the scene for a while because I love being above it all, but the flies were too bad so I couldn't.

After four weeks I was planning to go back to Dr Bobananda in Lavina, MT, but the sun came out so I stayed another week, hiking and enjoying the sunshine. Access to the camping area is by a one lane dirt road. It had rained so much that by the time I left the road was so overgrown I wasn't sure I could make it. But they were bushes, not trees, so my van and trailer were able to easily brush them aside.

Two days later I was in Lavina. I was wrong in my last letter. The county in which Lavina resides is really 1200 square miles (do we need another pie here?). But there are still only 700 people in the county along with one other town, which is the county seat. At one time there were 22 cities in the county all of which had Post Offices, but these cities have all disappeared except for denoting a certain area.

It was great to see Robert again. He had really come up in the world. He was living in a new house that had more than one room! It was, indeed, quite a nice house having a kitchen, bathroom, living room and a real bedroom. When we left Dr Bob last year he was living in a one room house on the prairie so I was very impressed. The house was owned by the School District and he did odd jobs for the school in exchange for rent. If you knew Robert you would understand why they wanted him for odd jobs.

Occasionally I would see Robert put on some glasses to read while at other times he didn't use glasses to read. I noticed that the glasses had a lot of scratches on the lenses. So I asked him about why he used glasses with so many scratches. He told me he only wore them when he wanted to read between the lines.

I set up camp in his side yard. This house was on the other side of the highway from his other house, so I was able to explore the town from a different perspective. There was even a sewer connection next to my trailer so I could dump my waste water.

I waited until mid August before arriving so I could avoid the heat, but it waited for me. It stayed in the mid 90s until a week before I left at the end of September. A small price to pay to be in Big Sky country.

Roberts 50th birthday was coming up in the middle of September and he was going to have a party to celebrate and invite most of the town. In fact he did have about 60 of the 167 people who live in Lavina show up, though some were imported from Billings and Roundup.

The big event was a pot luck and entertainment show. Several of Roberts friends got up on a stage we had built and sang songs, played musical instruments, read poetry and told jokes. I did a stand up comedy routine about aging but the audience told me to sit down and shut up. I had to lock the door to keep them from leaving. I told them that you are only as old as you feel, so I felt a lot of young women. I got slapped a lot. But on the positive side my cheeks did appear to have a healthy glow.

The party was to be held in his building. Unfortunately the building had no floor. Fortunately I was there to help him mix and pour concrete. Lucky me! The part of the building which needed a new cement floor was about 150 feet by 70 feet. We did it all by hand with the help of two electric mixers. It took all of five days with off days in between for us to drive to Billings and get more cement. Roberts truck could haul just enough cement to make one days work. The gravel and cement were already there. Robert was able to pay for the materials for the floor by selling velcro gloves to the sheep farmers in the area.

Then we got to rest. We got to talk and we listened to Mark Mcgwire hit home runs 65, 66, 68 and 70 through Roberts Internet connection. In July I had felt that he would hit 70 home runs. But with two games left and only 66 home runs in the book I was a little worried. But he hit two homers in each of his last two games to make my prediction come true.

While in HSS Robert had told me about this new woman in his life, Nancy. He had never felt like this with any woman before. They were an item. When I got to Lavina they were no longer an item. She wanted to be just friends. I never met her as she was in Oregon working most of the time I was there. We talked a lot about Nancy between Mcgwire's home runs and cement runs.

I am skipping my usual time line here to make a long story short. Shortly after I left Lavina Robert drove to Virginia Beach to give a couple of talks to medical/healer people at the Association for Research and Enlightenment Foundation. While he was on the east coast he decided to drive up to New York and visit Barb. Barb fixed him up with a friend of hers. A month before they met in person they were E-mailing each other on a daily basis. I was afraid they would fall in love, get married and break up on the Internet before they had even physically met each other, such was the intensity of their E-mails. But it lasted until he got there, they met and fell in love. She bought a house in Lavina and they lived happily ever after.

They are currently in New York where they have been living since last December. Ginger just bought the house and handled all of the transactions by phone and mail. She had seen the house when she visited Lavina last Thanksgiving. They will move there early in June. I already have Gingers permission to camp in the back yard when I get to Lavina in late May. The house is the infamous 123 Main St house.

Wow! I think that is it. You, too, can find your soul mate on the Internet at BARB.Cupid.

Okay, now, close your eyes and relax. We are now back in late August/early September in Lavina. You feel rested and alert. Send me money.

After we finished the floor of the building we took a trip to Mitchell, SD, boyhood home of Dr Robert McNary. He had to pick up some tools from his Dad so we took a trip. And on this trip we went through Sturgis, SD, home of the annual Harley Davidson motorcycle rendezvous. I was going to buy a six pack of Harley Beer 1998 but at $4.95 it was a bit too much for something that would just piss me off. BUT...now I have been to the hallowed grounds of Sturgis, so when bikers ask me if I've been to Sturgis I can say YES and I can be accepted as a real biker!

I got to meet Robert's brother, Tom, and his wife, Jan. They are both nice people. Tom took us on a tour of Mitchell, population 14,000. It is home to the world famous Corn Palace which has a mosaic on the outside of the building made by different colors of corn. The mosaic is changed every year. The James River runs through Mitchell and is the longest non-navigable river in the U.S. While I was there they renamed it the Jim river in honor of my visit, probably because my brain is no longer navigable.

I don't remember much any more. In fact I cant remember...well, whatever. Refer Trip Letter #5, op.sit., op. ed, con. ed..

The Yellowstone River which runs through Billings and originates in Yellowstone National Park is the nations longest undammed river. Much of the movie A River Runs Through It was filmed along the Yellowstone River.

Wild Bill Hickok was killed in Deadwood, SD (I think in 1876.) He was playing poker and, unusual for him, had his back to the door of Saloon #10, or The Old Style Saloon as it is known today. The poker hand he held when he was shot in the back of the head has since been referred to as the deadman's hand. It was Aces and 8s. The actual hand was both black aces and both black 8s with the nine of diamonds. Tom McNary found out this info for me by calling Deadwood, SD.

On our way back to Lavina from Mitchell Robert took me to Joe, MT, otherwise known as Ismay, MT. When the football player, Joe Montana, came to play for my KC Chiefs a disc jockey in KC called several small towns in MT until he found one which agreed to change its name to Joe. To find Joe, MT you have to drive five miles down a dirt road from the highway. The town consists of railroad tracks, three silos, a couple of houses, and an all purpose building which houses the volunteer fire department and is the community/senior center. Back in Lavina the Stock Market dropped 850 points in two days. I felt so bad I wanted to jump out of a window but the only one around was the one in Roberts house and it was only two feet off the ground so it seemed pointless. Robert said I would have to go to Billings to find a higher window but I was too depressed to drive the 45 miles, so I am still alive.

One thing I always enjoy seeing in Lavina is the Milky Way. It is so bright there. There is this big, huge river of light right in the middle of the sky.

Rose and Tom had sold their cafe and moved to 80 acres (square, I assume. Have you ever wondered why pie are round and cake are square?) south and east of town about 15 miles. Once a week or so Rose and I would get together and have these fantastic conversations. I cant remember what we conversed about, but Rose said they were fantastic. The acreage is hilly and treed. Rose says she is the caretaker of the land as she feels the land will be needed one day.

Rose must be famous because she lives on the same road with Charlie Brown, Helen Keller, and Robert E. Lee.

After several weeks of cool, wet weather in HSS, the weather in Lavina was hot and dry, staying in the nineties until I left the end of September. Kay, the math teacher at the local school, told me that on average the weather I experienced all summer was quite nice. I was glad to have that clarified.

One evening Robert and I attended the Lavina High School Girls basketball game in Rapelje, MT. He and I had spent the afternoon in Harlowton, about 45 miles west of Lavina. To get to Rapelje Robert said we had to go down a dirt road about ten miles. Twenty miles later we still weren't there so (tapping into past lives when we were female) we stopped and asked for directions. Five miles later we found the town, which wasn't much more than the school (K-12). There were two paved roads in the city but there are no paved roads leading to it. There are three roads leading to Rapelje from different directions, all about 25 miles long and none paved. The teachers get paid an extra $3,000 per year because of the isolation. But our girls won so it was okay.

One of Robert's friends, Gary Larsen, invited us to dinner one evening. Gary lives in a place which used to be a town called Cushman but now consists of a cluster of buildings, some of which are inhabited. Gary is an artist from Santa Fe who bought a few acres of land and some of the buildings. He had lived in one of them over the summer while he fixed it up. It did have electricity.

His refrigerator was a root cellar under the kitchen floor. For water he had a 5200 gallon cistern (brethren need not apply) which had not yet been filled with water from his friends well two miles away. The bathroom was a wooden outhouse in his back yard. For cooking he had a wood burning stove, with which he did bake us a rather tasty loaf of bread. The BBQ chicken dinner was cooked over a wood fire in a metal wash bucket in the back yard. In all, it was quite an experience.

I had to be back in KC before October 2 as my older brother was being inaugurated as President of Rockhurst College that day. So I left Lavina in late September. I drove through Deadwood, SD, but did not stop. I camped just south of there in the Black Hills. The Black Hills are very pretty and didn't disappoint me on this drive. I drove them north to south. They gradually disappear into the grasslands of NW Nebraska.

Somewhere between Chadron and Alliance, Nebraska all my vans gauges suddenly swerved to the far right and then gradually fell back into the normal range. That had never happened before and I thought nothing of it. But starting the next day I began getting 7 mpg, down from the ten I was getting with my new computer chip. I was getting eight and a half before I installed the chip. Nonetheless the chip no longer worked and was out of warranty and I had to remove it as it was now stealing mpg rather than adding to it. I still don't understand what happened. Much later I called the chips Technical Support number and was told that I needed to reset my computer by unhooking my battery for an hour. I did so but it did not correct anything.

The second night on my trip to Lincoln, where I would stay for a few days before going on to KC, I spent in the Nebraska National Forest. This is an artificial forest planted by Nebraskans almost one hundred years ago. They planted trees not native to the area and they are dying out without regenerating themselves. The debate now is whether to replant or allow the land to go back to its natural state. The forest is located in the famous Nebraska Sandhills, which are just that: sandhills covered by grass. I arrived there two hours before sunset so I went for a hike. At the end of the hike, close to where I had camped for the night, I came to the end of the forest. It was weird the way the forest just ended, like a farmers wheat field, and the grassy hills took over again and not a tree was in sight unless I looked backwards.

I spent a few days in Lincoln, Nebraska visiting with my friends. It was good to see Amy, Kay, Matt and Erin, Heather, and Lawrence. I went down to the insurance company and visited with Rodger, who is the nicest boss I ever had. I also got to chat with sweet Christy, Karen, and Martin, my friend from England.

Martin taught me how to cuss in English. Now I am bilingual in cussing. Bloody L! Gosh darn...oops, there I go, showing off, but it is great to be able to cuss in a foreign language.

Matt and Erin graciously let me camp on their five acres of land at the east edge of Lincoln. Unfortunately it was still hot and I needed my air conditioning. Robert had left Lavina a few days after I had on his way to give a talk at the ARE Foundation in Virginia Beach, VA. He caught up with me in Lincoln and spent the night in Matt and Erin's house. It was fun to introduce him to my Lincoln friends.

For some reason I was still having trouble with the energy in Lincoln, especially as I approached downtown. The closer I got to downtown the more strongly I wanted to turn around and run away. This always surprised me as there are so many wonderful people who live in Lincoln.

I have started reading the Letters to the Editor page in the various newspapers I read. In the Lincoln paper the letters consisted mainly of the Christian left railing against the Christian right and vice versa. Intolerance big time. Then I remembered several years earlier that Planned Parenthood wanted to build a new building. It took them two years to find a contractor from Omaha to do the construction because the Christian right threatened all of the Lincoln contractors that they would never work again if they built the Planned Parenthood building. Such active religious hatred creates a horrible energy and I now suspect it was that which I felt there.

I spent about ten days in KC, beginning with the Inauguration. That was a lot of pomp and circumstance. I had no idea it was to be such a momentous occasion. About 100 other universities sent official representatives in full academic regalia to attend the ceremony. I was totally impressed. As part of the ceremony my brother gave a speech. It was obvious he was not giving a prepared speech, but had a topic and was speaking from his passion. It was a very powerful speech and was well received by all. My brother is very well qualified to be president and I know he will do a dynamite job. Rockhurst College is very fortunate to have him.

It was good to see all of my family again. Most of my remaining time there was spent with them and getting rid of my remaining worldly possessions which were stored in my friends, Phil and Stacy, basement. (You'll have to work with me on this one. I'm not sure where the apostrophe goes; just after friends or after Stacy, also. And you think it is so easy to write this stuff. You have no idea of all of the problems involved!)

Phil and Stacy were nice enough to offer their basement to me for storage when I left in 1990. I expected to be gone only a year. I had no idea I was going to make a career out of it. Anyway, they are building a new house and I had to get my stuff out of their basement.

To make a long story short, I gave it all away except for my books and a few personal mementos. Which brings me to Y2K, the computer problem. I first read about it in 1995. The article said that if you weren't already working on the problem full time, it was too late. I am not going to get into it here, but if you are on the Internet, look at garynorth.com for details. I personally think it will cause some very real and major problems. I feel there will be disruptions in certain sectors of the economy in certain sections of the country for between three and thirteen months. Europe and Asia are from six months to three years behind the U.S. in fixing the problems. 40% of our oil is imported from third world countries. Many of our component parts are made in Asia. Think about it. Worldwide ramifications could be felt for over a decade.

I went to two Ford dealers in Arizona and asked them if my 1988 Ford van would work on January 1, 2000. They said the Ford engineers in Detroit said they didn't know and they couldn't fix the problem ahead of time. Beginning with the 1995 model year, most cars have been Y2K compliant.

In Show Low, AZ the local electric company has already told its customers that if there is a shortage of electricity in Phoenix, they had to send their power to Phoenix and Show Low would be without power. In the event of a problem, all available electricity on the Grid will be sent to the large cities, leaving the smaller communities without power.

Just in case, I recommend a ninety day supply of food, water and cash be kept on hand. Assume at least one gallon per day of water per person. If nothing happens (which I truly hope) then you can eat the food and spend the cash. But be prepared. Even the Red Cross is recommending you have a seven day supply of food and water and candles on hand. If there is no electricity, there is no water or natural gas or gasoline either.

In a worst case scenario Martial Law will be declared. In that event those of you who are to be beamed aboard the spaceship should report to your assigned locations two days prior to the declaration of Martial Law. This is the only warning you will be given. If this does not apply to YOU, then this paragraph will not appear in your copy of this letter.

You want to hear something funny? What do you get when you cross Scrooge with a sheep? A baaaaah Humbug. (Still want to hear something funny, don't you?) One way to get ahead in business is to practice the new psychology of Suckotherapy. I have a great sense of direction. I always screw UP. Hickory, Dackory, Dock; three mice ran up a clock. The clock struck one and the other two escaped with minor injuries.
In the middle of October I left for Show Low. I stopped in Wichita to visit my good buddy Rod Winter. It was great to spend the weekend with him. I got lucky because the next Monday he left for Georgia to work for the next two months. He has since been transferred there and has sold his house in Wichita.

While in Wichita I was struck by the bad energy there. It wore me out. Again on the Letters page of the newspaper I read about how the Lutherans hated the Methodists who hated the Catholics. One writer said he had just moved to Wichita from Texas and was surprised how much each religion hated the other religions. That explained to me why I felt so bad there.

Fear and hatred are the worst vibrations for me to feel, followed by anger and resentment. These energies tear me apart and are why I don't go to cities if I can avoid them. They are to me what Kryptonite is to Superman and do cause me extreme pain.

Just outside of Wichita I stopped for a brief visit at the home of Royce and Susan, whom I had not seen since 1991. It was a joy to see them again. It was Susan who introduced me to Barb who brought me to Show Low where she introduced me to Robert who brought me to Lavina. It is amazing to think how many people are downline from Susan. There are dozens of friends I wouldn't have if Susan had never introduced me to Barb. Thank you Susan!

Again in Show Low I stayed in Shari's driveway. I remember almost nothing of this two week visit. George was to camp with me in Sedona in early November. He was going to bring a group of his friends with him, but the group dwindled to Sheryl. George and Sheryl met me at Shari's on November 5.

But I do remember that while I was in Show Low I hung out at Ruth's store a lot. One day I asked her for a reading. She can ask her Guides a question and hear the answer in her head and this is what I wanted. But she read the cards for me instead. What she told me was kind of true on some level but it didn't mean much to me. When she said that I received a lot of spiritual guidance I told her that in fact I didn't receive any. So she asked her Guides and they told her that it was true. I received almost no internal guidance. They said that it was part of my mission but would not say when it would end, nor would they tell me anything else, although I asked several questions.

We recorded the session. Later I listened to it because I knew that I would be able to glean more information by the way Ruth phrased her Guides rejection of my questions as what they said came through Ruth's understanding and interpretation. But the tape was blank. We had turned on the microphone and I had pushed the record and the play buttons as instructed by Ruth. The tape did indeed move but nothing was recorded. Her Guides were one step ahead of me. Frankly I was pissed but there was not much I could do.

In my journal I did write about the session. In it I wrote that they did say that beyond this mission of being cut off from spirit and getting no internal guidance, I do have another mission, but gave no hints of what it might be or what I was to do about my current situation.

We left the next day for Sedona. We had passed Payson and had turned on highway 260 heading into Verde Valley when we came across a wreck which had happened seconds before we got there. An older woman in a mid 60s car had gone off the road. Her dog had jumped off the seat onto the floor under her feet. She reached down to pull him out and left the road at 55 mph. She flew off the road, down an embankment and came to a stop 60 feet later.

Her car flew between two large pine trees so close that she scraped paint off both sides of her car. She hit a sapling pine which brought her car to a halt. She was not wearing a seat belt and did not sustain so much as a scratch or a bruise. There was no way she could have had that wreck and lived through it. I touched her to make sure she was real and she was solid. That had to have been a miracle. Sheryl called 911 on her cell phone and we stayed with the woman until the Highway Patrol got there and then continued on our way.

George and Sheryl only stayed for three days. We did a couple of hikes and a campfire or two and, of course, ate at the Coffeepot Restaurant, home of 101 omelettes. Their stay was too short so they promised to come visit me in the Spring in Quartzsite.

The next two months were a living hell, both internally and externally so we will skip them.

Early in January I was ensconced on the desert outside Quartzsite and had reconnected with Santarra, who had arrived the end of December. The weather in the desert this winter was about as average as it can get. With the exception of the big pre-Christmas cold front which hit the whole nation, it was perfect weather. It only rained three times and the temperature was generally between 65 and 75 degrees for most of December through March. This is why all of us old retired folk go down there.

As is my usual routine down there, I spent most of my time hiking and sitting in the sun watching the air flow by. The desert is a very male place; you are always in danger of being pricked. Every vegetation has either thorns or pointed, prickly leaves. If they didn't the animals there would eat the vegetation before it got a chance to grow. So Mother Nature gave them thorns so they could survive since there is so little vegetation which can survive the harsh desert environment. Quartzsite averages only three inches of rain per year; Yuma 2.65 inches; and Phoenix 6.75. This lack of rain makes it the perfect place to spend a winter and have lots of outdoor fun.

Quartzsite, at 800 feet of altitude, is in a valley between two small mountain ranges which run north and south. ALL of the mountain ranges in the U.S. run north and south except for the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, east of Salt Lake City, which run east and west.

There is lots of wind in the desert in the winter time also. One day my trailer was being wracked by 40-50 mph winds and I was beginning to get seasick. I heard on the radio that winds in the L.A. area were clocked at over one hundred mph and tractor trailer trucks were being blown over. Then I didn't mind my 40-50 mph winds so much.

The Phoenix City Council passed an ordinance requiring background checks for all men and women who work in Strip Joints. I thought it would be much more efficacious if they were to require background checks on all City Council members, especially to see if they have brains.

While sitting in the sun on the desert I had lots of time to think and rest. I realized that once you do every thing that is wrong, whatever is left is right. I figured I should be getting pretty close. Gary Anderson, a kicker with the Minnesota Vikings football team went the entire regular season without missing a single field goal or extra point. He is the only kicker to have ever done this. I thought that was an incredible feet.

That old number PI is generally rounded off to 3.1416. Some computer buffs have had their computers take on the challenge of finding out if there is an end to the decimal places. So far they have run it out to five trillion decimal places and are still counting.

Dan Quayle was playing golf one day and was struck twice in the head by lightning because nature abhors a vacuum.

Sitting outside so much that winter I came to experience Transcendental Vegetation.

Deep in a meditation one afternoon I was given my Spiritual name. So far I have told no one what it is and I do not yet wish to be called by it. Though some people seem to know what it is and they occasionally do, indeed, call me by it. When I tell you what it is you may understand why I do not wish to be called by it. It seems that my Spiritual name is Asshole.

Here is a pop quiz. Do you prefer Coke or Pepsi?

I did spend some time with Santarra that winter. She and I went to Mexico several times to a border town called Algodones. It is ten miles west of Yuma and one mile south of the highway. You can cross the border there with no hassle. You can buy most prescription drugs in Mexico over the counter and at a price about one third the price in the U.S. I stocked up on drugs there for several of my friends up North. You can also bring back one quart of alcohol without paying import tax on it so we always came back with a bottle of liquor also. They seemed more concerned with how much liquor we had rather than how much medicine.

Parker, Arizona is 35 miles north of Quartzsite. Santarra makes and sells ear cones (or candles). One of her customers is a health food store in Parker. While there one day I noticed a product called Gas Up. Apparently it is supposed to give you more energy, not take the place of eating beans. However, there was a curious warning on the bottle. It said: This is not to be used as an alternative to illicit street drugs. So I guess that you are supposed to go on using your illicit street drugs while taking this herbal product. I could think of no other meaning to the warning.

Jon is Santarra's 30 year old informally adopted son. He is Native American from the Ojibwa tribe in Michigan. He had traveled with her three years ago when I first met him and again this year. Both he and Santarra make and sell Native American crafts, like drums, rattles, walking sticks, ceremonial pipes and hatchets. Jon does exceptionally fine work and is especially talented. He has very good energy and is quite likable. He and I hiked together a couple of times and I think we respect each other. Jon, like me, tends to be quiet and not talk about himself so I cant say I know him very well. But what I do know I like and admire a lot.

The Quartzsite area is a very rocky place. Due to the Law I moved around quite a bit, camping in several different places in the desert 15 to 30 miles from the city of Quartzsite. I am always amazed at the variety of rocks I find on my hikes. The colors range from black to red to brown to green to blue. There is, of course, a lot of quartz in the area. In the western part of the country gold is often found alongside quartz so there are many abandoned and active mines in the area.

I spent most of the winter, at one time or another, camped just outside the town of Bouse, which is 26 miles northwest of Quartzsite. The police apparently don't patrol this area for campers who have overstayed their allotted two weeks as I saw some campers who were in the same spot all winter. 40 miles north of Bouse in the desert General Patton trained his tank troops for battle in North Africa. There is a memorial to this in the town of Bouse. During the war the townspeople were told not to talk to anyone, ever, about this tank encampment. 40 years after the end of the war they were officially told that they could now talk about it. But to this day there are those in town who refuse to breathe a word of it to either an outsider or even an insider.

This last winter was a tire-ing one for me. I had to buy two new tires for my motorcycle; my first spare tire for my trailer (just in case); and a tire for my van to replace a blowout.

Sheryl and George returned in late January. Sheryl flew out a few days early and George drove. Sheryl flew in to Phoenix. She arrived late one evening. I went to Phoenix early that afternoon and got to spend several hours visiting with Argena and Renee, of the Trenda Community. Al had moved back to Cordes Junction and Argena had gotten married so Renee had to let the house go as she could neither afford it on her own nor find any other roommates. But both women looked as pretty and undaunted as ever and we spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening visiting.

Sheryl and I spent our time hiking and talking and getting to know each other. When George got there the three of us went hiking and generally had a good time.

We did go down to Algodones one day, stopping in Yuma on our way back. Two miles from our camp is where I had my blowout. It was the right rear tire. I pulled off the road to the right. My van was so heavily loaded we couldn't jack the car up. However, we were able to stabilize the axle with the jack. To get the tire off we had to dig a hole in the sand under the tire. Another motorist stopped and shone his headlights on our operation. It was late at night on a seldom traveled road and this was the only car we saw. The whole thing took about an hour.

The previous Fall I had started stocking up on canned foods that I like which were on sale at either Safeway or Bashas, the two main grocery stores in Arizona. I was saving these in case Y2K disrupted the food delivery system. Thinking about this over the course of the next few days I realized I had too much stuff in my van, including food, and therefore too much weight and that is why the tire blew out.

I had probably a three month supply of food in my trailer already. I was storing more food out of fear. I want to do nothing out of fear. I realized I had been knocked off course by what happened to me to cause the bad two months which I skipped. I know who I am. I am supposed to be alive on this planet for many more years yet. All I need to do is take ordinary precautions and all will be well. My inner spirit will provide. This insight helped me get back on track.

Since the loss of more of my energy which I suffered last October, and it was a major one, I have not been able to find my energy anywhere. I feel myself and can not find anything which feels like Jim Kinerk. My body is still suffering from some of the sequelae which are a consequence of the new energy, or lack of it. It usually takes several months for my body to adjust to the new energies which I pick up. At least some of the things have healed up and none are or were life threatening. Nor did I get sick. The problems were mostly with the structure of my body.

After Sheryl and George left it took me a couple of weeks to get back on track, as my energy was so lost. But I made it. It is so hard to do because my energies are so lost and scattered it is hard to remember who I am and what I have been doing, especially when other people have spent so much time in my own personal space.

With the wealth of sun and low humidity I decided to make some beef jerky. I prepared it in the usual way and then set the electric dehydrator out in the sun. Three days later I had my jerky. Later I made another batch, but by this time the flies had returned. So I had to lightly cook it first and then marinate and let it sit out either in my trailer or my van to let the low humidity dry it out. It was both fun and tasty.

A week after Sheryl and George left the grey water tank came in and I had it installed. That cost $535. The tank had fallen off somewhere between Sedona and Quartzsite and was one of many things which went wrong during that two month period. I had been letting the grey water (from the bath and kitchen sink) drain directly on the desert. While not harmful or toxic, it is illegal in that area. I always found places to camp so the water would not be easily noticeable. Every two weeks I let it drain onto the desert anyway but do so at night so that all signs are evaporated by morning. Peter and Gina whom I had met through Santarra when they lived in Sedona came to visit her briefly in Quartzsite. They now live in Coeur dAlene, Idaho. Santarra and Jon were going to visit them in Coeur dAlene for a month and I decided to go along with them. I had always wanted to see northern Idaho and also to get to know Gina better.

On April 1 we left Quartzsite. Santarra wanted to do some wholesaling around Sedona so we set up my trailer at the Dead Horse Ranch State Park in cottonwood, 16 miles west of Sedona. In 1973 Arizona State Parks bought the Dead Horse Ranch. A provision of the sale was that they keep the name. It was named thus because when the family was looking for ranches in the area to buy they bought the one with the dead horse on it.

The day before we left Quartzsite was the second Blue Moon of the year. A Blue Moon is the second full moon in the same month and a Blue Moon only happens once every several years. This year we had two Blue Moons. The last time we had two Blue Moons was more than 80 years ago and the next year with two Blue Moons will be in 2018.

I have not always known how often Blue Moons occur. Back in 1976 I was going to play tennis with a friend whose wife was a nurse. He cancelled at the last minute saying his wife had to work that weekend and that she had to work weekends once in a Blue Moon. Later I found out that she had to work at the hospital every other weekend; so for many years afterwards I thought we had a Blue Moon every other weekend.

On April 1 I set up my trailer and let Santarra and Jon stay in it and I continued on to visit Shari in Show Low. It had turned cold and cloudy that day and as I drove to Show Low I encountered several inches of snow on the ground and some flurries, though the highway was wet but not icy. But the next day at Shari's we had 24 inches of snow. Boy! was I surprised. The Weather Channel had called only for cooler temperatures and a chance of light showers for that area. Since we were snowed in we talked, ate (Shari is a great cook) and watched movies which Shari had bought. My favorite was As Good As It Gets. I don't think I have ever laughed as often or as hard at a movie before.

We did get to go visit Ruth at her store the next day. Because of the snow there were no customers so Ruth had plenty of time to sit with us and visit. This was lots of fun as usually she was too busy to join in the conversation. Shari is a nurse and was off work for three days, which were the three days I visited. I left the day after Easter for Cottonwood.

On the way out of town I stopped to visit Kathleen, for whom I had housesat the previous June. Her husband, John, had passed away in February. She was dealing with her grief quite well and was getting on with her life. While she claims she is old enough for Social Security I have never believed her as she looks 50 and acts even younger. She has gone back to college to get her degree and this did keep her busy. We all miss John, though. He was a healer and a fine and good and spiritual man.

I got back to Dead Horse Ranch State Park that evening. The three of us stayed there in my trailer for three days while Jon and Santarra continued wholesaling. That Thursday they left early to wholesale up close to the Grand Canyon. I got the trailer ready to travel and met them in Flagstaff that afternoon. We traveled to Page, Arizona by Lake Powell where we spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

We toured Lake Powell Dam the next morning and then were on our way. We stopped in Kanab, Utah early in the afternoon for lunch, gas and for Santarra to wholesale at a couple of stores there. One store loved her and Jon's work and bought a lot. Kanab is about 4500 feet above sea level and has the same red rocks as Sedona. It is very pretty and I want to go back there to camp and explore sometime soon.

We drove on through some snow and found a campground outside Bryce Canyon National Park. We played tourist the next day, seeing the wonders of Bryce Canyon, which isn't a canyon at all but a ridge with the sides eroding into some very pretty formations and spires. There are several National Parks in southern Utah but we had time to visit only this one. We were camped at 7000 feet. The highest part of the Park was 9100 feet. It was cold but we were dressed for the weather.

We drove all the next day and spent the night in Twin Falls, Idaho at an RV campground. The next morning we visited a couple of waterfalls from which the city gets its name. However the twin falls no longer exist as the power generating plant blocked one of the twin falls to force all of the water into the other one. There are two separate falls in the area, however, and both are quite beautiful. The bigger of the two produces the most beautiful rainbow as the water falls down to crash against the water below creating a rainbow in the mist.

Driving north from Boise we entered the mountains of Idaho. The roads all follow snowmelt streams through valleys. There is just enough room beside the streams for the road before the sides of the mountains reach again for the sky. I love driving in places like this because it is like being cradled in the arms of the Earth. I did the best job I could of driving with one hand while videotaping with the other. The results I've not yet seen.

The next night we spent in a small RV park in Riggins, Idaho which was nestled next to a river in another gorge. It was a very pretty and bucolic setting. We had planned to spend the night 40 miles back in McCall, Idaho but it was at 5000 feet and still under several feet of snow.

Before we left the RV park the next morning I was going to empty both of my waste water tanks. While doing so I noticed that my grey water tank had fallen off again, though this time, instead of being lost, it was perched between the back bracket and the axle. Jon and I pushed it back into place and tied it on with rope and bungee cords. We were due in Coeur dAlene the next day so that would have to do.

Because of that problem we got a late start and arrived at Peter and Gina's house late the next afternoon. I parked the trailer on the street that night before moving a few miles away to camp in the backyard of a mutual friend, Lynn. Lynn rents a house with a big back yard with several pine trees in it. She lives at the northern edge of Coeur dAlene so it was very quiet and peaceful there.

It remained cold and cloudy the four weeks we were there. Most of the days were in the forties and low fifties (normal was low 60s) with lots of clouds with little rain but lots of brief sprinkles. I took it personal because this prevented me from hiking and riding my motorcycle. After a warm and sunny winter in Arizona I suddenly felt like winter had caught up with me with a vengeance.

The area there is truly beautiful. The altitude is 2100 feet. Every acre not cleared for houses or farming is covered with a pine forest or a lake. Gina did take us around in her car to see a bit of the area but I was never able to explore any of it on my motorcycle, which is the only way to explore the great outdoors. They had a Miss Ebonics Beauty Pageant but only 49 states were represented because no one wanted to wear a banner across her chest saying I da ho.

It took a week before I could get someone to fix my grey water tank, but the man who did it was a certified welder and he promised that his welds never broke, which was why the tank fell off two times; the weld broke. The dealer in Quartzsite promised to send me a check for $150 to pay for the repair but as yet I have not received it.

During this time the weld which holds my gas tank onto the frame of my motorcycle also broke. So I was trying to figure why I was having so much trouble with welds breaking. The only thing I could figure out is that the letters in weld also spell lewd and there must not be enough lewdness in my life. God knows that's true.

In Lynn's back yard I could not get my satellite TV to work; for the fourth time in a year. After ninety minutes of working on it I had to replace two fuses and the battery on my remote control. It seems that every time I travel long distances I have trouble getting my TV/satellite system to work. Why this happens I have not yet figured out, but I do carry plenty of fuses. It was nice to go to Idaho, home of famous potatoes, as I wanted to get back to my Irish roots.

Speaking of mathematics (we were, weren't we?), statistically nothing can happen. Think about it. What are the odds at the time of your birth that you would meet me, specifically, get on my mailing list and be reading this letter? The odds are so overwhelming that it cant happen. Yet you are reading this letter so there must be something else at work. You must have incredibly bad karma.

In Coeur dAlene I spent most of my time hanging out with Santarra, Jon, Lynn and Gina. Peter is an extremely successful real estate salesman so I didn't see much of him. Gina loves to cook and is an excellent one, so I was well fed. I kept showing up around dinner time and knew that Gina was too polite to not include me in the meal (as a guest; not as an ingredient.) Gina and I had a couple of brief conversations but never seemed to find the time to just sit down and talk to each other. This disappointed me because one of the reasons for going to Idaho was to get to know her better. I guess Ill have to come back.

Just before I left, Lynn and I bundled up and did go for a motorcycle ride one afternoon. We went to a town north of Coeur dAlene called Bayview. This is a small community on the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille (Ponderay). The lake is very deep here. The U.S. Navy tests submarines here because of its depth. The trees and the mountains rise straight out of the water for thousands of feet. It is what Northern Idaho is all about: trees, lakes and mountains.

Gina teaches a class based on a series of metaphysical lessons every Wednesday. I attended these while I was there. There were about ten women who attended this class each week. Several of them are teachers at the school in Athol (my computer isn't lisping), fifteen miles north of Coeur dAlene. They were all sweet women with caring hearts. There were also several artists in the group. I got to see some of their work and was impressed. Because I was the only man in the group I pretty much kept to myself and didn't say much. But I thoroughly enjoyed the energy of the group.

Someone in the group told us something rather interesting which I want to pass along. If you have allergies, eat honey produced in the local area which you are allergic to. The bees gather pollen from these plants and eating the honey produced from these plants will help you become immune to the adverse effects of the plants pollen. Actually it makes perfect sense. In some ways it is similar to the way vaccines work.

Because of the cool and wet weather while I was there I wasn't able to hike but three times in a month instead of my usual every other day. I wasn't eating any less and was concerned about gaining weight. I stepped on Gina's scale to see what it would say. It said, Come back when you are alone.

On one of the few nice days Jon and I went for a hike on a trail along Lake Coeur dAlene called Mineral Trail. The trail took us up about 1000 feet above the lake and allowed us to look down on the lake to the west. We were on the eastern edge of the lake, though most of the lake filled a valley to the south. It was gorgeous up there. Again, we could see the tree covered hills coming right out of the water. The shoreline wasn't straight, being pinched here and there by the flow of hills. Being above it, we could see it all.

I love being above it all and looking down on the earth below. It makes me feel in the world but not of it. I find it very peaceful to do this and have had some of the best experiences of my life while doing this. I sit on a rock or the trunk of a downed tree, look down on the land below and just be; exist without thought. Afterward I feel devoid of tension and much lighter as I walk down the side of the mountain.

The first weekend in May I took a side trip to Zillah, Washington to see my friends Sharon and Mike. This was part of the equation which decided that I come up here. (I cant believe how mathematical this letter has been!) They live on a family owned orchard but no longer work on it. They have an office in Yakima in which they do massages and teach classes on Yoga, Tai Chi and other healthy movement techniques.

I hadn't seen Sharon since Ft Collins in August of 1994 and Mike since I was last in Zillah in 1990. I only had two days there but had a great time. Sharon and Mike are wonderful people and I like them very much. They took me back to the Trout Lodge for an early dinner. It is 30 miles up a mountain pass west of Yakima. I had been there in 1990 and requested to go back. It is a delightful small rustic restaurant along the side of a stream that flows down the mountain pass. The motif is your basic rustic wood which I love. The people who work there are all nice and the place has a most peaceful and relaxing feeling. The restaurant is long and narrow so that almost every table looks over the stream. I ate very slowly to draw out our time there.

While I was there Mike did this really cool thing. He went out into the orchard and picked asparagus and morel mushrooms that grow wild there between the trees. I love being able to go into your backyard and pick my dinner. That is so down to earth. So if I come visit you be sure to have plenty of food in your garden, as Ill arrive hungry.

I got to their house late Saturday afternoon and was going to leave Monday morning but I was able to successfully beg Sharon for a massage late Monday afternoon. I teased her as I do all massage therapists that the first thing they teach in Massage School is how to make a one hour massage seem like thirty minutes. I think they speed up time so the clocks go twice as fast and they only have to do half the work. But, Sharon, I did realize at the time that the massage lasted well over an hour and a half and I sincerely thank you for that. But I had to tease you anyway, merely because I never want the massages to end. I hadn't had a massage since the previous October in Lincoln from Amy so I was in dire need of one. Sharon helped my body tremendously and it hasn't been nearly as stiff and sore as it had been much of the winter. I urge all of you to treat yourselves to the healthy delights of a massage. You will never regret it.

The day I got back to Coeur dAlene it was 38 degrees with snow/sleet showers. Four of my last six days there would be that way. My hike with Jon and my ride with Lynn were crammed into the one decent day that week.

Santarra and Jon had to be back in Michigan by Thursday, May 13, so we left on Sunday morning. We hit some heavy snow going over a mountain pass at 6000 feet but it wasn't sticking to the highway. We also hit periods of sunshine and rain showers. Our destination that evening was Lavina, Montana. I wanted my friends in Lavina to meet Jon and Santarra. They spent the night and I am still here. They met Rose and Terry and Glenna who were all quite impressed with Jon and Santarra and took an instant liking to them. Rose had a nice meal waiting for us and we celebrated Santarra's birthday which was the next day.

The cafe didn't open until 8 AM so Terry and Glenna invited them for coffee and an early breakfast before they left the next morning. It was too early for me so I slept in.

Roberts new love, Ginger, bought Terry and Glenna's house. They closed on April 19th. Terry and Glenna are fixing up a school bus to make it into an RV and are living in the bus in Gingers backyard, which is where I am also camped. Robert and Ginger are expected back to live here about June 7th. This is the 123 Main Street house about which I wrote in my last letter.

In my previous stays in Lavina I had only been around Terry and Glenna with Robert and Rose and others. I am very much enjoying spending time with Terry and Glenna and getting to know them better. They are very lovely and wise New Age people. And since they are living in their bus it is like we have this New Age Community campground which is something I have always wanted.

I have tried with no success to convince Rod and George to take early retirement, buy trailers and join me on the road. If I had half as much money as they do I would live out my life on the road in the lap of luxury. But I am still working on them.

Well, this is all of the stuff that's fit to print so Ill leave you with two knew authors whom I have discovered in the last year. Diana Gabaldons Outlander series is a delight for any one who enjoys historical/adventure/romance novels. Each is thick and there are several. She tells a whale of a story (but NOT like Herman Melville.) The next new author is Terry Goodkind. He has written a fantasy series of, so far, five books. I read the first four books one after the other nonstop. It is a great story with personable characters and each chapter teaches you something about yourself and the way life is.

In the last several years I have noticed that the most important people have only one name; such as Madonna, Arnold, Michael, Magic, Newt, Billary. I also found that the more important you are the harder it is to read your signature. Henceforth I shall be known as just Jim. So, without further adieu, I bid you to do.