the Lloyd: Chronicles of the Travels

(pssst!

It's me, Polly.

I don't usually introduce guest posts but this one seems to require it, so there you go. the Lloyd is cousin to The Dol and Pandora maybe nineteen years old--give or take--and gone hobo. Pandora stole his memoirs, if that's what you call this bare-bones vagabond history, and got his permission to post them here. the Lloyd has promised to be more entertaining next time.

Since the file was text only, and the paragraphs were way to long to be blog friendly, I added as many paragraph breaks as I dared and, in one case, italics. the Lloyd may or may not feel his artistic integrity has been violated.

Whatever.

On with the show.)

I am known by many as the Lloyd, and these be the long-awaited, yet highly condensed, chronicles of the travels which I undertook starting sometime in March and ending about the end of April.

I met a decent-sized bunch of friends last year at the local community college in Redding, and quickly grew very much attached to them, especially the three who appear most in these subsequent tales, which admittedly are quite lacking in detail (largely due to the copious procrastination involved with writing any of this down). These three are, for the purpose of the reader, What, Jester, and Ben, the names they use on the road. We all four decided independently to drop out of school, and upon realizing this, we figured we might as well do some traveling.

We started by heading west on Highway 299.

We had no expectation of all being picked up at the same time, but it happened anyway, first just outside of Redding, then again as I was napping at Douglas City. The second ride took us to Weaverville, where we camped atop one of the tallest hills for the night, and then in the morning we got ourselves the rest of the way to Arcata, by way of "Crazy Leg" Greg, so called because he was missing a foot, possibly as a result of being a Vietnam vet (though I'm not entirely sure), and Julian Real friendly.

Arcata was interesting.

All kinds of people, some fun, some dumb, some utterly ridiculous, and a few worth hanging out with. Anyhow, we played music in the square or the park or both every day, and so every day we ate plenty, and every night we tromped up into the woods to sleep. After a while of that, it came to pass that our buddy Rico was having himself a birthday party on Clam Beach, so Jester and I joined him, as What and Ben had met up with a friend who lives in Eureka and were hanging out with her.

First night was calm, and that afternoon What and Ben caught up with us, and we had more fun with Rico, and then the sun went down. It was a dark and stormy night. Angus was angry, and he took it out on us, pushing and pulling at the sides of the tent so that they would make contact with things inside in order to leave the water which had been outside inside. Sleep did not come easy, and did not stay for one solid stretch.

Once, as it left again in the wee hours before noon, we saw a flickering, as from a dying fluorescent bulb, and upon further investigation realized that it was the static of the sky. It was more than lightning, though not as bright, as it covered the whole sky at once, throwing photons everywhere. It was St. Elmo, setting fires once again.

Simply beautiful.

The storming all ended about two hours after daybreak, so we started a fire of our own and dried everything out the best we could and went back to Arcata for a while longer, just the four of us again.

So we tired of Humboldt, and went down to Mendocino, that is, Willets. We split into pairs on this occasion, so Ben and I ended up waiting a night, which got us frosted, and most of a day for What and Jester, and in the meantime found someone we had met in Arcata, a drunken poet who called himself Sonny D.

We spent a couple more days there, then decided, for whatever reasons, to go to Fort Bragg. Ben and I decided one more day with Sonny was plenty, and decided to head to Redding, so What went with us, and we left Jester to do whatever it was he felt like doing, which turned out to be following us three hours later. Two and a half days and several rides (including one with that guy Dave) later, we were in Redding. We made a trip to Chico and a trip to Shingletown in a borrowed van.

Then, on April 17, Jester and I went on a walk from Anderson (where we had been staying with my parents) to Redding, so we could hit the 299 again. It was the first of three days of an enormous amount of walking, as the riding on the 18th got us to, but not through, Weaverville, and the ride on the 19th got us to the north section of Arcata, but we needed to get to the park. However, we got through it without our legs falling off, and the next day was quite festive, we saw most of our friends from Redding and Arcata and had much fun and merriment, with the only downside being that I lost my harmonica.

Most people were gone before we were, but we and Ben got some rope training for tree-sitting, which we have not yet done, and I possibly never will, as I could just as easily find a tree to stay in that nobody cares about, and therefore not be bothered. But anyway, then we went to Redding again, Ben and I together and Jester with some kid named Dakota. Ben and I stopped our travels at Keswick, where a friend lives, and so on and so forth.

That's all, folks!

It'll be much more fun when I return from New Mexico this summer, because I intend to write things down as they happen this time.

Comments

[The Dol]

This reminds me of the song by Be Good Tanyas, "The Littlest Birds."
Well, I feel like an old hobo / I'm sad, lonesome and blue / I was fair as a summer day / Now the summer day's are through / You pass through places / And places pass through you / But you carry 'em with you / On the soles of your travelin' shoes.

[Alice]

Dear Lloyd,
Please try to find a hot spring in New Mexico that is not a swimming pool in someones backyard, but a hole in the middle of nowhere with mud and critters and hot hot water. And please write down where it is.
Love,
Alice

[Polly Poppins]

Dol, don't forget the refrain:

the little-ass birds sing the little-ass songs,
the little-ass birds sing the little-ass songs.

Or was that littlest? Because if it was, I sang it wrong for a long time.

[pandora]

polly,
llyod has reached 21.
i did mention that he wanted me to come with him, right?

[The Dol]

you're partially right, polly.

it's "the little-ass birds sing the prettiest songs..."

you were close.

[The Dol]

oh, and two snaps up and one in a circle for ramblin' jack and his mad skills with the signatures. word.