Between the feds and the soil, pot farming here has become a fine art. The feds and their flyover heat sensing study the hot and the cold. Plant concentration, heat signatures, drainage pipes. You have to dig big holes, pattern your plants just right–calibrate. And the soil is so acidic. You have to pour limestone over it a year in advance for anything to grow.

The situation was getting dire in Berkeley. I invested in a school bus. This, it turns out, is a classic mistake. It’s a dream too big and too offpoint. It is like dreaming of becoming a firefighter; the truth is twisted. Poor pay and none of the glory it’s made out to be. Your back gives out when you’re 40. Your knees. Your lungs.

With a school bus, the instinct is just as heroic, but possibly even more misguided. At least in my case. Liquidate those possessions, untie those obligations, and heave the whole load on a ten-foot moneysucker smokestack.  Find a prickly bus driver, ducktape yourself to him. Backseat driving claustrophobia rage ‘freedom’!

Lesson learned.

I was walking off Telegraph two or three days ago, when I ran into Jeff. I’d met Jeff, once, at Umiko’s. He’s in the Network of Awesome. 

It’s a tight network; four blocks later Jeff was coming to Hawaii with me. We went to the library, schemed, then hitchhiked Up North. We’re in (the famed) Garberville right now, picking up his jewelry making supplies. The first night we only made it to Santa Rosa, slept by the 101 onramp. But the next day we made it up. We hit the Walmart in Ukiah, got a tarp and some hobo gear. Hit Willits up for green and coffee. Ran into my itinerant friend Puddles in Laytonville (very tight), reading a book at the gas station. Some oatmeal stout passed the time and we were in Garberville by 10.

Immediately, a perturbed old hippie man pulled over. He was in Haight Ashbury in the 60s. Were we alright? Did we need anything? He gave us some fish oil, a natural energy supplement, and a bag of Fritos. He told us he was glad we were here. He’d searched for the spirit of the 60s after it all ended, up and down the coast. It was still alive! He found it when he reached Arcata. Had we been there? Good town.

 Familiar sights, familiar people. BUT–I have escaped The Berkeley.