My View From Here photo series has gone medium-time.

I took a stealth trip to Fort Worth, TX back in October and did my usual View From Here schtick, taking a picture of the room as I walked in…

…and another picture looking out the window…

…and then I uploaded them to my View From Here flickr set, as usual.

Someone from Schmap, who I guess was assigned the Fort Worth beat and thus was obviously on someone’s shit-list, saw them and asked if they could use them in their new Fort Worth Schmap. Being the publicity whore that I am, I said yes. So now my Fort Worth pictures can be seen by Fort Worth-curious travelers around the world — as long as they’re curious about the Homewood Suites by Hilton ® Ft. Worth-North at Fossil Creek in general and Room 702 in particular. Check it out.

I’m a little concerned about their presentation of that exterior shot, though. It lacks clarity; I think it’s misleading. Is that the Homewood Suites in the picture or is it the view from the window of the Homewood Suites? We know that it’s the view out the window, but there’s nothing to indicate that to Frau Blücher from Stuttgart, who might decide she wants to stay in a motel with a small parking lot and park right outside her room and would be disappointed once she gets there and finds the parking lot is actually quite spacious and that it’s a hotel, not a motel, and she’ll have to actually park her car in and go inside the hotel and walk down a carpeted hallway and maybe even take an elevator to get to her room. It’s a minor quibble, but it’s important to me that my work be presented with accuracy and integrity.

All concerns aside, though: Woo hoo, go me, I’m a professional photographer! (If by “Professional Photographer” you mean someone whose throwaway snapshots of an obscure hotel that very few people will ever even stay at, let alone be interested in, is used without payment on a web-based travel guide that very few people will ever see.) Next stop: Pulitzer!!!

Zoe’s little cat Ebi died this morning.

Ebi was a sickly cat from the moment Zoe found her out front, tucked behind the saddlebag of one of my motorcycles. She had some kind nasal obstruction that prevented her from breathing properly, so she could only mouth-breathe and always sounded like she was snoring. Except, for her, snoring was never really an option because she never ever really got to sleep — she had to have her head tilted a certain way to breathe clearly, and if she deviated from that then she simply didn’t breathe. So when she fell asleep and her head drooped, she’d stop breathing, and she’d wake up gasping for air about a minute later. This poor little kitten suffered from extreme sleep apnea her entire life, and she also had developed some kind of mucus build-up thing that made her breathing challenges worse, and it was getting worse and worse toward the end.

And then this morning she choked while eating her breakfast. We feed the cats on top of the washer/dryer and I had just given Ebi her breakfast — a fried egg, because we were trying to find a food that didn’t contribute to the mucus problem. A few minutes later I heard a thud — she had fallen off the dryer and was convulsing on the floor, struggling for air. I tried to give her some kind of mouth-to-mouth, trying both to blow air into her lungs or suck out whatever the obstruction was, but it was no use. She never took a breath and her heartbeat slowly faded and her pupils dilated until she was gone. It was a horrible, horrible way for her to go.

She was a sweet little kitten and deserved a more peaceful end. Watching her go out like that was really hard.

Zoe’s at school now. She’ll be devastated when she gets home and finds out.

Ebi and Zoe when Ebi was new to us.

The last picture we have of Ebi. This is from mid-December.

We had to put my dog Billy to sleep two weeks ago on Tuesday, December 18. I haven’t been able to write about until now — and, really, I’m not able to write about it yet — but I wanted to mark his passing here before the year passed with him.

We had him for so long that I don’t know exactly how long it was. Billy was a part of our family for longer than Beth and I have been married. We got married in June of ’95 and I think he was still our “new” dog during the Northridge earthquake back in ’94, so he was with us for at least 14 years. That’s a long time no matter what species’ clock you’re using.

Billy was a really good boy, but he did have his idiosyncrasies. He was not a brave dog, for example. He may have been at one time, but the Northridge quake changed all that. That earthquake really did a number on him, totally scrambled his brains. Everything scared him after that. I can remember one time when a drawing Zoe had done at school that we had taped to the refrigerator came loose and slowly wafted to the floor like a leaf on the wind. That paper scared the ever-loving shit out of Billy and he ran as fast as he could to get away from it. Unfortunately, he was on the hardwood floor when this happened, so he ended up running in place like Scooby Doo, claws skittering on the floor as he scrambled madly away from the dangerous toddler crayon artwork, going nowhere fast.

He wasn’t terribly bright, either. He and Suki (another of our dogs) got out of the yard one day and disappeared for several hours. Suki finally showed up at dinnertime, but Billy didn’t come back. So I went out looking for him, riding my bike all through our neighborhood, certain that I was going to find his dead body in the gutter of one of the busy streets surrounding our neighborhood. When I didn’t find him I went to the local animal shelter to see if he was there. And sure enough, there he was, looking sheepish and forlorn and, yes, scared in one of the kennels there.

I didn’t take him home right away, though. You see, I had gotten Billy from the dog pound in the first place, so I sat down there on the ground outside his kennel and we had a little talk about where he wanted to live. I reminded him that I had rescued him from the pound once — and spent quite a bit of money doing so — and now here he was back at the pound again. So he had a decision to make: live with me, or keep coming back to the pound? Because him leaving my perfectly good home to come back to the dog pound made me wonder if he really wanted to stay with us. We sat there and I waited while he thought about it, and I guess he decided he wanted to come home with me because he gave me a Ha ha, really funny, make jokes while I’m in jail, can we just go home now? kind of look. So I bailed him out and took him home again.

Billy also had a particularly disgusting eating habit – his favorite bed-time snack was cat poop. Every night as we were closing the house up for the night, his last stop before lying down on the floor on my side of the bed was at the catbox, where he would root around looking for what we called “kitty truffles.” He’d clean the catbox for us, and then curl up next to the bed with kitty litter still stuck to his nose. He absolutely loved cat shit.

But Billy was getting really old, and the vet thought he probably had liver cancer, and he had really bad arthritis and was always in pain. By the end he’d gotten so bad that he could barely walk and he couldn’t stand up on his own at all. We have hardwood floors through about half the house and he simply could not navigate them at all — he’d slip and fall down and then couldn’t get up. We put carpet runners down to help him with the traction, but he needed our help getting up at the end — he’d just lie there and bark until someone came and picked him up, and then he’d totter off a few steps and fall down again half the time. He simply couldn’t get around on his own anymore, so we knew it was time.

Our vet agreed to come to the house so he wouldn’t have to go through the stress of going to the vet’s office — something that always gave him a lot of stress. We spent our last evening with him pampering him and loving him and cherishing our last moments with him, and we took the pictures below with him that night. When the vet came we all surrounded him and held him and petted him as he went to sleep for the last time. I think he felt safe and loved at the end. I hope he did.

His ashes came back from the pet crematory on Friday, so Billy’s home again. We miss him a lot.

I got “Merry Christmas”ed today — and not in a nice way. I was on the bike at the local mall, navigating my way through the maze of idiot drivers on my way out of the parking lot. As I approached an intersection of sorts where pedestrians were leaving the store and crossing in to the parking lot and cars entering the lot were trying to turn left down one of the parking lot lanes, there were a couple of guys directing traffic.

Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly working as a team.

As Parking Monkey #1 stopped traffic and motioned me to proceed forward, Parking Monkey #2 waved a car to go ahead and turn left — directly in my path. I stopped and waved the car through.

I said to PM1, “You guys need to get on the same page.”

PM1 ignores me, again stops traffic and waves me forward again, and this time PM2 waves a pedestrian across — directly in my path. I stopped and waved the pedestrian through. Then I just sat there until I had both PMs looking at me and said “Are you ready for me yet?”

PM1 waves me through, I start rolling, and — you guessed it — PM2 starts waving another left-turning car through. What an idiot. I gunned it and cut the car off, and as I passed PM2 I said “You need to pay attention to what he’s (PM1) doing.”

Both of them called after me in unison, “Merry Christmas, sir!!!” and it was pretty obvious that they were using it as a euphemism for “Fuck off, you asshole.”

Nice.

So with that in mind… Merry Christmas to all two or three of my readers. Watch out for parking monkeys in the new year.

We lost one of our cats today — The Dude. We got him from the pound about a year and a half ago (check his arrival here), so we didn’t have him for very long. He was an old guy when we got him, so we knew it was going to be a short time, but I didn’t know it’d be this short.

He’s been losing weight for awhile and getting old and generally just getting more and more decrepit, until this morning when he was in an obvious bad way. I took him to the vet and we put him to sleep this evening. It was kidney failure, we think. The doc was maddeningly vague about his condition and whether or not it was time, but it was pretty clear that putting him to sleep was the right thing to do.

He was a cool dude. He made a place for himself among this madhouse of animals and fit right in. I’m going to miss his insistent tap-tap-tapping at the dinner table as he begged for food, his blatant jumping up on the dinner table when the tapping didn’t work, his falling asleep face down in my lap while watching TV at night, his drooly kisses in bed when he’d want to rub his nose against my mouth and I’d always complain to Beth that “Goddamit, honey, my cat is such a fag!” I’m going to miss The Dude, period. He was my cat and I loved him.

Here’s The Dude with Beth and Zoe this morning when we all pretty much knew how the day would end but we hadn’t taken him to the vet yet.

He was loved. He’ll be missed.

Goodbye, Dude.

The Writer’s Guild is on strike, as anyone who pays even passing attention to the entertainment industry knows. Being a (struggling) writer myself, I am 100% behind the WGA and I’d be on the picket line with them if I were a member. But being that I live here in L.A., I’m in an uncomfortable position.

On the one hand, I fully support the writers. On the other hand, though, quite a few of my friends work on several TV shows as cast or crew or drivers, and they’re going to be out of work when the town shuts down. Most of them can’t afford to be out of work.

On a related note, I can’t afford to be out of work. But I also don’t want to cross the WGA’s picket lines. That’s not going to be an issue for me most of the time, since I do most of my training at various business units not involved with production, but it will be an issue occasionally. Like tomorrow, when I’m scheduled to train on the studio’s lot, which is currently being picketed by 100+ writers.

I’ve worked it out with my boss, at least temporarily. A co-worker else is taking my classes on the lot for me tomorrow while I work back at the office, so I won’t have to cross the picket line. But the longer the strike goes on the more this is going to come up for me, and I think the more it comes up the less accomodating my boss is going to be. This is a very temporary solution, but at least it’s a solution for now.

Go, WGA.

I love my wife. I’d do just about anything for her. She’s always on me about my health, so I quit smoking for her a couple years ago, and back when we were trying to get pregnant I quit hot-tubbing because the doctor said the hot water was cooking my spermies. So I make sacrifices, see?

Especially in my TV viewing. When she’s not in the room I watch guy stuff like World Poker Tour and Ultimate Fighter and World’s Wildest Police Chases — you know, quality viewing. When she’s in the room it’s ChickFlick Central: Top Chef and Project Runway and Grey’s Anatomy. Sacrifices.

But last night… Last night was big. The Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, Private Practice. I’ll admit it, I’m not proud: I watched it. Sacrifices. Big ones. But a man has limits. Sometimes you have to put your foot down, draw the line, take a stand. Well, this is it: I will NOT watch that steaming pile of Shondaland ever again.

And Dancing with the Stars is right out, too.

I look at where we are, at what we’re becoming, and two verses from the Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime runs through my head:

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

and

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? …am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!…what have I done?

This is not my beautiful country anymore. Like I said last year: They’re Winning.

Day 5
Estes Park, CO – Cortez, CO. 517 miles.

It’s been a loooong day today. I was up at 6:00 and on the road by 7:00. I decided to backtrack over the Trail Ridge Road again because it’s such a great ride and I thought it would be cool to see it again in reverse. And it was. I stopped at one of the scenic overlooks and snapped the best picture of the entire trip:

I took some other nice pictures coming through the park too. You need to remember that for most of these pictures, I took them while riding one-handed and pointing the camera in the general direction of something worth photographing and sort of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best as I hit the shutter button. Sometimes it paid off.

At the base of the Trail Ridge Road is a town called Grand Lake, where I stopped for breakfast at the Bear’s Dean restaurant, where I had a very generic chicken fried steak and underdone hashbrowns.

When I got back on the bike, either I or my GPS unit lost its mind. I had programmed a great route into my Zumo that backtracked over the Trail Ridge Road again as I said above, then went off to cover new ground further south. The plan was to work my way down through Colorado to the Durango/Cortez area, covering new and hopefully interesting ground as I went, with the Four Corners monument being my ultimate target.

So I got on the bike, turned on the Zumo, and either I hit the wrong button or it went nuts or something, but the bottom line is that it told me to go “that a way” and I did. For about 120 miles. And as I was riding along, backtracking along roads I had already ridden on my way out to Colorado, I kept thinking “Wow, I didn’t realize this route backtracked so far.”

Along the way I passed the elk roadkill I had seen three days earlier and got a good look at what three days in the summer sun can do to an elk carcass. It’s probably fortunate that I have no sense of smell, because if the number of flies are any indication of just how much something stinks, then this elk was definitely ripe because the flies were out in force. Interestingly, the carcass was about 15 feet down the hill from the road from where it had been originally, and there were parts … missing. I think a bear had been doing some midnight snacking. I took some pictures because I’m twisted that way, but I’ll exercise some discretion and not post them. (Here, at least. I did upload them to flickr.)

Rather than rotting roadkill, I’ll thrill you with a shot of my bike a few miles on from the roadkill. There wasn’t another car for miles when I stopped to take this shot. I hung out there for a good 10 minutes with my bike parked in the middle of the road, just listening to the wind.

When I got to Glenwood Springs, where I spent the night on the way out, and the Zumo told me to keep heading west on the I-70 when I had specifically planned a route to the south, I figured something was off. And it was. I don’t know what happened to the outstanding route I had originally planned, but I wasn’t on it anymore. So I improvised — I told the Zumo to cancel the current route and find me a new one to Cortez. Considering how the Zumo had led me astray this far it may have been a bit naive and optimistic to let it lead me once again, but I did it anyway.

So the Zumo pointed me south (finally) on Highway 50, and a little way along I passed a turnoff to Highway 141, which a friend had suggested was a great ride, so I went that way. Man, what a ride that was. 150-some miles of 2-lane back roads that twisted and turned through a gorgeous desert landscape. It was incredible, on par with Zion National Park, even.

Then the GPS messed with my emotions. I’m already wound up enough with being up here to scatter my dad’s ashes and going to flood memorials and whatnot, but then the GPS led me straight to the town my dad lived in up until he had to go into assisted living. I knew I was going to be in the Dove Creek area and hadn’t made up my mind yet whether or not i thought I could handle it, but the GPS made my decision for me.

I gassed up at the general store my dad always went to (I asked the cashier if she had known my dad. She had and she said he was a really nice man and that everyone really liked him.), and on the wall outside was a listing of all the area campgrounds, which was convenient since I was planning on camping tonight. I picked one and plugged it into the GPS and headed for the outskirts of Cortez…

…where I got pulled over by a Cortez Sheriffs Deputy for speeding. I was apparently doing 57 in a 30 mph zone when he passed me going the other way. I watched in my mirror and when I saw his lights go on and he started making a U-turn to come after me I just pulled over and waited for him.

Fortunately, he was a nice guy. I was courteous and apologetic and when I mentioned that I was headed for the campground he told me that I should go to a better one and gave me directions. Then he gave me a warning and sent me on my way.

So here I am now in the KOA Kampground in Cortez, CO, and let me tell you KOA is THE BOMB. They have showers. They have a laundry room. They have a pool. They have campsites with electrical outlets that can power things like laptop computers. And they have wireless internet! Who knew?!? So I’m sitting in my tent writing these notes, checking email, and surfing the web, and all for $28. I’m doing this more often.

Here’s my campsite:

And here’s the obligatory Room from Here shot:

…and the View From Here shot:

But I’m doing with a different tent. Early on in these notes a thunderstorm hit while I was writing and I had to hightail it into the tent with all my gear. So I’m sitting in here with lightning flashing and thunder crashing and rain coming down in buckets, and I’m here to tell you that this tent is NOT waterproof. It has a nice big leak right at the entrance, which just happens to be where the head-end of my sleeping bag is. So I’m going to have a soggy night ahead of me.

But at least I can stay up surfing the net…

Day 6
Cortez, CO – Los Angeles, CA. 763 miles.

I was up at dawn the next morning, and as I packed up to get back on the road I started rethinking my basically non-existent travel plan for the day. The only firm thing on it was to visit the Four Corners Monument about 50 miles away, and after that I really didn’t have anything planned.

I’d been thinking that maybe I’d check out the Grand Canyon — but I wanted to spend more than just an hour or two. I thought maybe I’d stop in my brothers’ birthplace of Winslow, AZ just to say I’d done it — but then I realized I didn’t really want to do it. I considered spending a day wandering around in Utah and enjoying the desert scenery — but I’d already done that on the way out, and it’s hard to top Zion National Park. So then I started thinking about making it all the way home in one shot.

The more I thought about it the more attractive it sounded. I was missing Beth and Zoe, so getting home quicker would be good. The 500 mile days I’d been a little concerned about as I planned the trip had turned out to be cakewalks, so I wanted to test myself and see how much further I could make in a day. And finally, I was really just kind of tired of being out on the road and I was ready to be home again. So I decided to go for it.

But first, I had to stop at the Four Corners, one of the biggest, dingiest, cheesiest tourist traps I’ve ever seen. And I played tourist to the hilt — I asked strangers to take my picture, I bought cheap-ass Indian jewelry for Beth and Zoe and my mom, and I bought a Four Corners T-shirt for myself. What can I say? I like cheese.

But once I’d had my cheese ration it was time to make some miles, so I mounted up and headed west with purpose. From that point on I tried to stop only for gas. Tried, I say. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before, seeing as how I’d spent the night getting dripped on in a leaky tent, so I had to make a few wake-up stops along the way as well.

One of the stops was here, at the Blue Coffee Pot Restaurant in Kayenta, AZ. The special of the day was mutton stew with Navajo fry bread. The stew was really just soup, and I’m not fan of soup — soup is a beverage, not a food. And the fry bread reminded me of naan, which is also Indian fry bread, but Indian from India, not Indian from America. My sleep-deprived brain thought that was really fucking clever at the time.

When I got to Kingman, AZ, which was just about the halfway point home, I was really dragging ass. I was half asleep, hot, sweaty, and felt like crap. I really wanted to get a room at the local Hampton Inn, jump in the pool, and then sleep for a few hours. But on the other hand I also really wanted to get home.

So I did the most logical thing possible: I went to Dairy Queen and had a banana split and a cup of coffee, and that did the trick. With all that caffeine and sugar in my system, I felt good to go again, and go I did. I blasted for home, stopping only for gas the rest of the way.

I finally rolled into my own driveway around 9 pm that night after clocking just over 750 miles on the day. Six days, two thousand five hundred fifty two miles had all gone by in a blur and I was finally home again.

All told, it was a great trip. It was my first long road trip on a motorcycle and I loved it. Now I know what I and my bike are capable of, so I think I’ll be doing more of these road trips. They’re exactly as much fun as I thought they’d be.