Biking with 13 year olds

On Saturday I took the most bitchin' bike ride to the Marin Headlands with four young-uns from the Bike Kitchen youth program. The youth were hella stoked and had never biked over the bridge before. We rode up the hill to the left of the bridge and then down this dirt trail into Rodeo Valley, and then back to the Bike Kitchen.

The whole time I was really feeling how pumped up these youth were, and how rad it was that me and my Bike Kitchen cohorts were doing this trip all volunteer status. It was so quasi-official: We had rules, permission slips, sunscreen, first aid; at the same time, we had no bullshit program stuff to deal with, and the kids both looked up to us as teacher types as well as friends. Totally posi saturday--in the words of Good Clean Fun: "Everyone had fun and no one got hurt!"

Who knows if these young people will even remember this ride, or what the fuck they will get into as they grow up. At least for now it feels good to be providing a positive space for some young people to hang out and create adventures for themselves.

I wonder what other kinds of cutty shit we can do with these kids?

Die Party ist sehr bØring!

The adventure was halted in its tracks today at an undeniably wac party, and I've realized that I haven't been to any really awesome house parties lately.

Whats the deal with that? People hella not trying to meet each other, people hella into being hella rude to each other, and girls hella trying to treat me like I'm some cabron-ass douchebag trying to pick up on them (stop flattering yourself) when all I'm trying to do is find out where the rest of the Fig Newmans are at (pretty please?).

What an inane social life. Boring! If anyone found the fig Newmans, lemme know.

The Epic Journey Continues!

Cyberspace! Due to the demands of Mommy Pangburn, DBDeezo, and my own need to document my encounters, I am writing this blog again!

What the fuck has been going on, XjXbxtrXsmkX?

Excellent question, dear reader. In all truth, not a ton. I am thankfully not working at the Cafe Lame-O, having moved on to being a mental health and drug treatment counselor at a residential treatment center. A much longer title than 'half-assed barista.'

I work two days a week, and the job is intense/challenging/mind expanding in many ways. It is really relieving to feel like I'm actually contributing something, and now that I've been there for 3 months I'm starting to get the hang of it and have a handle on it. My coworkers are rad, and although the job is stressful at times I'm really enjoying it and having a good time there. Plus I'm known as J-Bax to the clients, my fellow counselors, and my boss.

Two days a week is a rad schedule but in between work days I'm not up to too much, plus I've been living with the folks, and the result is that I've been spending a lot of time alone.

What are you doing with your time, J-Bax?

Not fucking much! What the fuck? For the first time ever I have a bunch of time, and no idea what the fuck to do. Sheesh. I always have felt like I've wanted a challenge and I've wanted to push myself, and being completely without a schedule or structural obligations has proven to be the most unlikely and difficult challenge yet.

In truth, I've been pretty depressed. My motivation has ran away like my neighbors cat when they neutered it, and at times activities that are normally ultra rad-sauce for me (working at the bike kitchen, playing music, docking) are empty, meaningless, devoid of fun. I have been feeling very blank, silent, and lost.

There is some hope, however. I've been sharing this with all my friends and am now setting up a weekly discussion group to talk about mental health stuff with my friends. I'm also gonna start seeing a therapist regularly, and I've been trying out all sorts of meditation and other mindfulness practices to keep my brain pumped up.

I've also realized recently that I love being lost in the physical sense--taking a new route home, finding myself in a new city and having to discover new things and explore--and I'm trying to apply this attitude to my life. The grand adventure, the ultimate journey!

And the next adventure is...?
Now that I've been applying this attitude to my general existence, I'm gonna try to use this blog to document the adventures that I undertake, to serve as a kind of journal to help me figure out where I am, how I got here, and where I want to go.

Right now I feel like I'm surrounded by a thick fog, on a little boat at sea. I can't see shit and my compass fell in the water. The water isn't to choppy, but as far as I can tell I'm just floating around with no clue about whats happening. At times I'll dock (literally and figuratively...whoa!) and see some coastal city, at times some seagulls may pass overhead, and sometimes I jump in for a dip.

We'll see where this little tugboat put puts off to next. Until then, peace out!

-Dr. Bax

Week 1 in the Yay

Damn, I have had a bitchin' week here in the yay area!

I already have a job, at this goofy little coffee shop on 26th and Geary called Cafe Euro. Read awesome reviews here. Also, the cafe has some pretty sweet regular customers. Peter is this really old dude who never says anything but comes in and goes through five or Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Peppers! (Totes too many flavs in that Dr. P, Bro!) He'll drink one, doze off for half and hour, wake up, and get another. He just hands you a dollar and brings you the can to open for him. There's also this dude who comes in about every 3 hours and order a quadruple espresso or something equally ridiculous, gulps it down, and tosses the cup behind him and walks out. All in all, it keeps it interesting.

I went to a rad potluck at the infamous Bus Stop House, a co-op where a bunch of my buddies live. Upon arriving, I was stoked to hear about a sweet upcoming party: crashing 24 hour fitness at 2 am! Apparently we can get 7 day trial passes for free, which means if we coordinate a fat crew of us can roll in and hit the hot tub, drink champagne, and give each other dumpstered food facials. We're gonna have a fashion show for best work out clothes, with the runway being the treadmill of course. As Mereb put it, its an adult playground.

I've been spreading the idea of a Richmond Vs. Sunset Capture the Flag around, and people are stoked. I'm really excited for the Richmond neighborhood team. Once the Sunset gets of their lazy asses, we can have an epic 4 day capture battle in Golden Gate Park!

I sang Livin La Vida Loca at Karaoke. It was almost as cool as this.

Oh, I almost forgot, Bill O' Reilly put together a really good clip of what San Francisco is really like. I'm so glad I can finally share with all of you who haven't visited what the scene is like in SF.

All in all, I'm super happy and super stoked to be in SF. This rocks!

Much love,
jordan

The trip is over!

Well, I just got back in to San Francisco, officially marking the end of my epic, ultimate, dymaxic journey. What a ballin' adventure!

I will continue to fill cyberspace with descriptions of my deviant behavior in SF, so if you liked it so far hold on to your pants!

Here is a pretty brutalepic picture of me, Kevin, and Guard Dog meeting Joe Biden. Hearts, j bxtr smk

Back in Portland

Well, I haven't updated ya'll in a little while, and I totally wanted to but I just had no time and no energy before the election was over. I have returned triumphantly to Portlandistan I find myself with some respite, and I'd love to fill ya'll in on my jamb.

Here are a few vignettes to fill you in on where I've been at:

Aristocrat Ranchette: Your dream place!

Aristocrat Ranchette was a development that Kevin and I canvassed in the middle of Northeast Colorado. It is all dirt roads with many run down trailers/homes. The definition of trailer trash. I knocked on one door, only to look at the awning and see it filled with wasp nests! Yikes!

Aristocrat Ranchette, also known as Aristoshits, was filled with many animals. HELLA dogs, including a few huskies that would fight randomly/follow me and Kevin around in the streets, all sketchy like. We got chased out of more than a few yards. This, however, was just the beginning of the wild petting adventure that was ready to ensue. On the long walks between houses we were greeted with chickens, horses, cows, a few geese, and peacocks! Maybe this is what happened to Animal Farm after George Orwell stopped writing about it.

Finally, the wierdest thing about this place is that a good 80% of the neighborhood was Obama supporters! So, I guess that makes these people fake americans too.

Meeting Joe Biden

Joe Biden was speaking in Colorado, and Kevin and I got sent to help schlep his luggage when his plane landed. When we showed up, however, I realized that this was an airport, where it is someone's job to schlep luggage. Thus, there was nothing left for me and Kevin to do but be the guys who shook Joe Biden's hand as he got off the plane. Joe is a real close talker, a real charmer, and he spoke with me, Kevin, and Guard Dog for about 10 minutes, no joke! Pretty much awesometown, if you ask me.

GOTV

GOTV means Get Out To Vote, and it is used to describe the last 96 hours of an election. Basically, we bust our ass doubletime during this period because after the 4th it was over. To my disbelief, this meant that we would work harder. 16 hour days became 20 hour days, 20 hour days became 22 hour days, 22 hour days turn into literal all nighters. In the last 4 days Kevin and I collectively had 15 hours of sleep.

Basically, during GOTV we just pump up our voter outreach and make sure we reach everyone. Kevin and I were put in charge of a town called Fort Lupton, and our job was to make sure every person on our list for the area was talked to by a representative of the campaign at least once before the 4th. This list, of roughly 1,000 people, was collected from months of research: by the last four days we knew exactly who had voted early and who hadn't, who was supporting Obama, and who was likely to support Obama. With this info we built incredibly specific lists of voters, and sent our volunteers out to get in touch with them.

Election day itself was the above work ethic multiplied by a billion. The plan was to go through each neighborhood at least twice if not three times. The tightest part was that we were getting updated data from the secretary of state every few hours about who had and hadn't voted. This meant that as the day wore on, our list got smaller. The idea is to be so specific that when people come home from work, there is an Obama volunteer sitting on their stoop ready to literally drag them to the polls.

Come 4 or 5, the rule is that everyone needs to split the office and hit the doors to make sure every last person goes out and votes. Needless to say, Kevin and I were exhausted to the point of delirium at this stage. However, this was also the last chance we had to change the election--if it was a close race, those last minute votes could count ( look at how close the Al Franken race is in Minnesota right now. )

So, dead tired, I grabbed a neighborhood with about 40 doors in it and started sprinting, literally sprinting, from door to door. "Is such and such home? Have you voted?" "Sorry ma'am, your son might not have voted, the secretary of state says here that they haven't." "You need to go the polls? Lets roll!"

I don't know where the energy came from, but it was a huge release, the total end of the campaign. I ran from house to house for 3 hours straight until 7 PM when polls closed, and I was all but keeled over when Kevin picked me up and we headed back to the main office.

The Big Bang


Kevin and I started hearing results the second we were done on Election day. Pennyslvania, then Ohio. We were giddy, excited, but we hadn't clinched it yet. I figured it would be many hours before we figured out what happened. Suddenly however, someone in the office said, very calmly


"Barack Obama's the president."


Silence. All heads turned, and saw a CNN website that pointed out how Obama had clinched the race as soon as the west coast polls closed. For a split second that lasted an eternity, we all stopped. For me the whole month of campaigning passed between synapses firing in my brain. For others it was two whole years in that space between recognizing and acknowledging and believing the ultimate.

And then it hit us. I can't put it into words; I can only say that I sprinted 10 blocks to the bar where the party was, covered my entire torso, face and glasses with Obama stickers, (pictures coming ASAP) and couldn't stop screaming "Barack Hussein Obama motherfuckers!" for about 4 days straight.

Cloud Ten

There is a cloud ten, and I now inhabit said place. Ever since the moment that I realized Obama was the prez, my whole world was flipped over. I am now in the souther hemisphere, ya dig? Everything is possible, and I've ( as well as all us other young fools) have many decades to create even more ultimate realities now.

I'm going back to San Francisco on the 18th, where I will get an awesome 4 day a week job and spend the rest of my time playing hella music and living in a balling co-op house.

Join the fucking party

-j bxtr smk

Surfaced!

Phew! holy shit I have been hella busy in Colorado the last week. The deputy field organizer job is cool, because we are just getting paid for what we did already. basically we get up, knock on hella doors, make phone calls until 9 pm, enter pages of data from the door knocks and the phone calls into the computer, make maps for the next days door knocking, and go to bed. I kinda dig this busy lifestyle, and the people on the campaign are pretty fun to hang with. Some canvassing highlights from my and Kevin's exploits include:

*Bite/Hump combo attack on my leg from the tiniest terrier I've ever seen,
*Meeting an 88 year old woman who called Sarah Palin a "slut,"
*Being told that Barack Obama fits the description of the antichrist in the book of revelations,
*being informed that everything Barack Obama says is "straight out of the Communist Manifesto,"
*meeting a woman who won't vote for Obama until he makes public his birth certificate and health records, and,
*"How does Barack Obama feel about getting pets spayed and neutered?"

I also got to speak on a radio show at the University of Northern Colorado with a very DJ who stated: "Hey man, do blaze? Cause I blaze and I'm totally down to blaze with you...I've got a digital vaporizer and I'd totally smoke you out." The show was relaly fun but was only broadcast in the dorms at UNC, which is probably a good ting: after I finished takling about Obama's economic policy, and trying to sound hella profesh, he commented:

"yo dog, this shit is mad crazy. So you heard my man Jordan: vote! get off your ass and prosper. Word."

He told me to "unwind" with him after the campaign, and hopefully that will mean celebrating on November 5th. I find myself having a lot invested in this campaign as I go door to door and talk to all these people in Colorado who are genuinely undecided about who they're going to vote for. One of my field organizers found it ridiculous that the fate of the free world may be literally decided by these people who aren't sure if Obama is a Muslim or not, but for me its just a continual huge wake-up call. Look at how everyone else lives! Portland and San Francisco are such bubbles, we are so fucking different from places like Greeley. What a great gift our prosperity has delivered us.

Anyhoo, I'm gonna try and catch some shut eye, I wish I could disseminate my thoughts in a more detailed way but there isn't enough time or energy to sound like anything but a stuck up, west coast, tax and spend and take guns away from people liberal.

from the lions mouth,
-j baxter smoke