Above The Clouds

So exhausted at this point but self-destructive enough to continue

.

My calves are pleading for mercy so I can only say I am not fit enough to hike 12,000 ft mountains.

Oggy, looking for answers

The sludge of Barbacoa tacos and vodka is no fuel for the active and oxygen deprived gypsy. And I must caution anyone driving a 1969 van to Ski Apache...do NOT do it. Sierra Blanca is forbidden anyway.

On the way up...wheezing like an old dog.

Unless you have recently replaced all your brakes and tested them thoroughly and also rebuilt your transmission then you will have some kind of fatal breakdown, maybe mental also, in that trip. Even

on the way down

if you survive then you have to do the whole thing in reverse...after hiking to 12,000 ft. The Mescalero Apache Gods will have their vengeance for your trespass.

The Little Bear fire of 2012 burned many pine stands here

Maybe a Hairy Woodpecker on a burned pine

Broken Gear

I expected to find a note begging for help in Chinese

Sort of looks intact, but then...

This plastic gear has been chewed up by the fan shaft. The teeth are gone so the fan will not rotate to cool Oggy flesh.

If the worst mechanical problem I have lately is the gearing of my rotating fan (now stationary) then I'm doing good. But I think the design of a plastic gear being turned by a brass coated gear moving at high RPMs was something I'll take up with the Chinese designer. They probably save thirty cents by making this crucial gear plastic but it meant the fan will rotate for only about one year. The fan itself will work because that's a separate motor. This mechanical rotating mechanism all relies on the interlocking gears and since one is plastic it will be eaten up by the brass coated one. Thanks China!

I wonder if I can find or make a replacement gear from metal.

Sober Blues

Music improvised in the van is one of my great pleasures and I hope this is a sign of good things to come as there's a change in the weather and El Conquistador is gazing toward the horizon and wondering what is on the other side of that hill.

OFBS

"Obviously Fucking Bull Shit."

The abbreviation of American life continues and I'm not concerned or troubled as much as I am about the fate of these dental floss picks flooding our oceans. But for the purposes of this rant I will pretend to care deeply.

SCOTUS: This abbreviation angers and repulses me. Like POTUS, this makes it easier for ill-informed voters to pretend to know what they are talking about. SCOTUS means "Supreme Court Of The United States." POTUS means "President Of The United States"
What kind of asshole can not type or say The President or The Supreme Court? The context will reveal of what country you are talking about so the rest is irrelevant. But it bothers me in general that SCOTUS sounds like a disease or maybe a Soviet Union Food Growing Campaign...when it's really just a court. So have some respect and say Supreme Court...even if those assholes consistently betray their intent by voting politically like Fox News has bought them all nice condos in the Bahamas.

busco novia

Hola que busco novia
Para traer a estados unidos
Soy hombre trabajador y sin vicios
Busco algo serio
Gracias 

 

I found this ad in the Mexican Craigslist for some reason in the "For Sale" section. The loneliness of and starkness cries out to me. I feel the pain and I can actually translate this without help since it's by a second language writer. I think it is the making of a sad song, like a dying bird on his final nest singing for a mate who will never come...but at least he's honest. 

 

It says, 

"Hello I am looking for a girlfriend.

To bring to the United States

I am a working man without vices

I am seriously looking (I am looking for something serious)

Thank you."

Who said romance was dead? 

 

This sounds like a Mexican love ballad. The back pages of Forbes Magazine are filled with "Millionaire Singles Matchmaking" services that repulse me with their Yale psuedo-pimp vocabulary. But this man beats everything with honesty and loneliness there in his quiet double wide trailer, a semi driver, maybe, who is never home, always on I-40 between Oklahoma City and Albuquerque. The bars of his small town being worn by the cracked heels of all the pretty women time has ravaged. He doesn't have the money to meet a millionaire. He inspires me to write a song about him...but the heat of the Texas July has descended and my DC powered fan failed the other night. I feel adventure calling and his song may not be completed soon.

I hope he finds a Mexican woman to fill his nights with love.