Much as I loathed the idea, I decided to regroup by slurping a double shot from starbucks. Over at the local shell station a friendly cashier was working (much nicer than the pimply teens at starbucks, texting their friends). Diane is a long time local and her friends drop by to chat before heading home for the night, because that's about all there is to do. One of her friends, whose name I didn't catch, has two boys, 18 & 19. They regularly walk the length of the town and back, four whole miles. They help the straggling homeless folks find spots to hide from the cops... How many homeless people are you going to run into, in a town of 10k?
Bob rolls up on his bicycle, leathered from the sun, long gray hair in a pony tail, an overgrown fu-manchu and an unopened bottle of Jim Beam grain alcohol peeking out of his back pocket. He was stumbling, grumbling and I was expecting him to step on me. Getting Diane and her first friend to talk was pretty easy, but opportunities to interject were far and few with him. When he noticed a local cop getting coffee at the starbucks he told us that's where charges will be detonated, I chuckled. With a frightful jerk he began directing more energy my way.
Poor Bob has been stuck in Cloverdale for the last twelve years, because he was voted out of his previous domicile. In his unrelenting bitterness, he tells me, "I shoulda pulled a Hitler and stayed." His two cars, motorcycle and atv are stuck in his driveway because three counties suspended his license... But he won't run? I don't know what he won't run from but he's staying put. He's not going to be chased out of this one horse town by Opie and his band of idiots.
Bob knows of camping spots around town, the difficulties hitching out of Cloverdale and the tracks that run next to the freeway. When he mentions the tracks my ears perk up... Fifteen miles to Hopland, the next town up. They've got their very own Indian casino there! According to Bob four stops north on the freeway it's a new county and a new world... Milk and honey dribbling down the golden slopes of lonely rickety hickity California. To hear Bob tell it you'd think a small mob of suburbanites left Marin County, skulked northward, and wound up stranded in northern Sonoma County... Clogging the roads with their stuffy airs and mid-ranged cars. Just on the other side of that invisible line, it's the wall that stopped a hundred mortgage brokers, Mendocino County. A mere four miles north of Cloverdale, everyone's disposition changes... But, why? I assumed it was the bright lights and loose morals of the casino scene.
I can see myself walking those fifteen long miles. As I near Hopland a glitter on the horizon, the bright lights of civilized salvation... High rolling hippy freaks, hotels, masseuses and rejuvenating foot baths. Cheap stucco plastered onto edifices melting in the summer heat. The Santa Anna winds chipping away at the earth toned buildings... Paint chips and dirt dancing in the gusty pink dusk. Grateful hippies rolling their battered vans up to valet, strolling in, bandannas and head scarves wistfully flowing behind them. Cheap eats and easy slots.
After a day or two recuperating I would easily find a ride and finally explore the Redwoods. Vegas and Atlantic City, casino cities, informed my expectations. The city-state, Sho Ka Wah Casino, is an oasis like so many other native gambles.
Geographically and generally incorrect as it may be, this spurred me on.
On the tracks I can expect to run into homeless folks, feral dogs and tunnels... Bob might even meet up with me on the tracks, get me stoned and give me some alcohol. Bob is now becoming an ominous figure, is he trying to help me or himself? Meet me? On the tracks? He'll take his atv, so he can catch up. Now he's chatting with a friend, picking up a 6-pack of MGD... I shook his hand, thanked him and set off, imagining I'd noticed a sneer of contempt on his face.
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