Where's Dan Now?

LAST POST

Hey readers, this is the last blog i will post here as i have a new blog complete with moonlight chronicle pages on it. Many thanks need to go out to Ryan White who helped redesign www.moonlight-chroincles.com and for setting up the new blog. Just click on the Moonlight Chronicle spreads button to view it. See his blog at ryanssketchez.blogspot.com You will be able to leave comments on the new blog too. Thanks for following my work. It's some of the fuel that feeds an artist to continue with the madness! HOBO

PAIN IS GOOD

When was the last time you ran so hard you thought your lungs and heart were going to burst out of your chest? Your head swims in a grey fog. Leaden arms dangle. Legs go rubbery like those bendable characters you see in gift stores. And this is just the result of sprinting to catch a bus or trying to catch butterflies. If you take the extra step and decide it's time to get in the killerest shape ever, your mind will have little arguments with you. Reminding you of the pleasantries of rest. Big hot pizzas. Ice cold beer. You find yourself saying "just two months. That's all i need." If i can weather the complaining for just 8 weeks, then i know my mind will be saying, "Pizza who?'" and "You know you really don't need that ice cream cone now do you?" Every spring it happens to me. I don't like what I'm seeing in the mirror so begin bike rides in earnest. And the running begins too. Up the river, over the hill and around the pond. I lift some weights after that and slowly watch as my body quiets down. Soon the nearby hill just doesn't burn the lungs enough. So i ride several miles out of town to a trail head, stash the bike in the bushes and run up the rocky trail into the wilderness. Clutching a water bottle, leaping over logs and hopping around boulders, i just run and run, a little further in each time. Headphones keep me from growing lonely. The music makes it seem that i am flying over the rough trail. Back home the sauna soothes tired muscles. Then i crawl into my burrow, throughly spent and fall into the deepest of sleeps. Upon awakening at 5AM i can't remember what day it is. Endorphins have stolen my reason. My mind has been opened to new possibilities. The body seeks more and more difficult pursuits. But the following day is a rest day. I am free! The hammock is my friend. All those torn muscles gather together, heal and form endurance. You can feel a strength emerging. All those daily stretchings have left me subtle. A really bad bonk on the head from riding under an unseen street sign scars but leaves no lasting damage. A crash on the Redfish Lake trail leaves a leg gashed and bruised, but it all quickly heals. I begin descents down wickedly dangerous trails. Careening with no apparent fear. Invincibility is within reach. So the mind goes. Where does this drive come from? Is it some lurking gene hidden in a muscle somewhere that drives one on? Or maybe some shared DNA from that All American grandfather? Maybe it's the televised Olympics or all those outdoor magazine photos that cause me to press on to achieve being in the best shape ever.Or maybe it's just that old lifelong quest to become that strong muscular man that i always wanted to be in all my thinness. Whatever the reasons, I am now 6 months in and all days flow with an unheard of magic. Another big hill ahead? Bring it on. Nearby hamburger smell attempting to draw me in? Give me that carrot. . All the stress of daily living? This too will pass. So in the end, all that pain was for the good. It has broadened my world. Made me a bigger person in more ways than one. HOBO

GOING MODERN

Here's a new twist that will get you either loving me or massively perturbed. With all the high costs of everything lately, the folks at Simple and i have come up with a new plan for the Moonlight Chronicles, the illustrated zine we publish about simplicity. The current issue #65 will go to press in a few weeks and be sent out to all the shoe stores as usual, but shortly after that Simple will go "Chronicle Paperless", and begin running an ON-LINE version of the pages i am working on each week! This will save on tons of paper and mailings and allow you readers to tune in each weekend to see all the latest Chronicle pages. I will continue to print and mail hard copy Chronicles out to all my subscribers several times a year and all the back issues will continue to be available. So don't stress about that. The other interesting aspect to this new idea is that i will be able to color some of the artwork! Something i don't do in the regular Chronicles because of high reproduction costs. Plus these new weekly pages will also be displayed at www.moonlight-chronicles.com. So go ahead. Let me have it good. Here's yet another example of the Hobo selling out and going big time modern. Right? Well that may be true, but i think this move will get a whole new group of fans reading the M.C. and all you who have been following this blog will soon be directed to the new pages as i won't have time to be doing both. Watch for the last post on this here old bloggo soon. Adios! HOBO

EVERYTHING ALWAYS CHANGES

My dad was a Hell's Angel and i was born on a Harley Davidson sidecar somewhere out on Route 66....... sounds like a country song doesn't it? That of course is not true, but it is true that when i was a teen i raced motorcycles. Wanting to revisit those old days i sped up to Washougal Washington over the weekend to attend a National AMA race on one of the best courses in America. My brother and i used to race there back before we got into cars. Back before we got into girls. Back before... well a lot of things. Upon entering the parking area there was a host of searchers who turned all the cars practically upside down looking for drugs and booze. So that was really different. We used to just drive in, pay $12 bucks to some crusty guy in a little wooden shed, park near the starting line and pop up our tent. Once inside, all that was recognizable was the track itself. Still a twisting, turning loamy trail of luscious dirt that spirals up over a big hill and down into the towering trees below. But inside the track, connected to all kinds of cool underground tunnels was endless lineups of semi trucks peddling everything from t-shirts to power tools for your bike repairs. Things had indeed become quite commercialized since the days of old. Energy drink companies were handing out free samples of their canned speed, and it was funny to see nearly thousands of people drinking the same drink. The bikes too, were totally different beasts that roared in packs up over the hill, sounding like a herd of Union Pacific locomotives on full throttle. Four stroke engines have all but replaced the two-cycle screamers of yesteryear, mostly due to environmental concerns according to some folks i spoke with. So that is pretty cool. But still my questions about Global Warming issues got some strange looks and a few blank stares. Motor heads the world over don't really want to hear that argument is seems. And i can understand why. If you have got the time and money, why not indulge in one of the planets most fun sports. Motocross racing is by any measure the most invigorating thing I've ever done. And like a friend said, we're just going to use all that fossil fuel up eventually anyway. Might as well live it up huh? There's no way that you will ever keep the gas from the people. We are addicted. Maybe they should put red dye in the fumes so we can see all the pollution going up into the clean air. That would get us to thinking. At any rate, the day was really fun (see photos), and this next week i think i will go out and buy a bike and start entering the old timers class....... that was a lie to. But i have to admit, all the way home i fantasized about what if. What if we had become good enough riders to join the pro circuit and instead of being the hobo photographer/drawing person for the last 20 plus years i had been racing on amazing tracks around the world! A gas junkies wet dreams. Guess there's no way to go back to that life now. Dang. HOBO P.S. See Zero Motorcycles for the first ever electric moto cross bike!!!!! I may be riding yet!

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT BEING SINGLE, (and kidless)

1. No one is there to put salve or cream in the very middle part of your back that you can't reach after getting a really bad sunburn. 2. No spooning. Or kissing, amongst a host of other physical niceties. 3. Only food can become your little reward after accomplishing some great feat and wanting to celebrate. 4. Having someone to take pictures of while you're doing cool things, so you can look at them years later and think, "now weren't those the true salad days." 5. No one around to steal bites of dessert from when they are not looking. 6. And in correlation with number 5, you never do go out to eat at a restaurant, because if you do you sit there all alone like some dork with no one to talk to. 7. And sometimes you can find yourself getting too monked out and serious because there is no one around to pull jokes on. Just like the other day. I was up on the hill cleaning out the neighborhood irrigation ditch with a rake before the water flowed. And across the ditch was this waist high tree going perfectly horizontal. So i laid over it with feet and hands dangling down to rest my back. And out loud, without even thinking, i said, "Hey Lynne, what's this?" Meaning who's this person dangling there. And then i say, "Earthquake victim in China!" And i laughed to myself, then realized i was talking crazy-like to myself and making fun in a not so nice way. But i always used to do crazy stuff like that. Especially when the kids were little. Like whenever i would see Shane and Shilo piling off the bus out front of Lynne's house, I'd run to find the hugest knife i could and stick it between my chest and arm and be all sprawled out dead like on the living room floor. Then when they walked in they would always just step over me saying, "Yeah right Pop, sheesh." No shock. No nothing. But i keep doing it anyway. So i really miss getting to joke around like that for sure. HOBO

OVER THE EDGE

Since coming home from Michigan with the new trike i have had the chance to take three test rides. The first was a cold dash through Central Oregon around the time daughter Shilo was having her new baby. The winds were whistling and at one point the temps dropped into the 30's. So that three day ride was not real memorable. Although i did learn that hauling a full load on the new design was not at all easy when presented with big hills. Back home i began to saw off extra sections of the tail end to cut down on weight. The storage area is big enough that i don't really need any other racks. Then i sewed together a waterproof bag from an old army surplus tarp and took off down through Hell's Canyon for a 5-day, 232 mile ride this last week. Again i was confronted with big 5-mile 7% grade hills and struggled to climb them. Got to camp out next to roaring streams, get sunburned legs for the first time in months, watched a deer act really strange digging holes around my tent, raced butterflies through canyons, and endured near 100 degree weather in the town of Richland. Ride number three was from Portland to Eugene though the flat Willamette Valley, about 150 miles i think. The roads were busy but the weather was perfect and i was able to find showers! It's all fully documented in Chronicle 65, due out in August. In conclusion I think we may have to build this size trike out of aluminum or else come up with a design that uses way less steel. In the flat country it works great, but put it on a really big hill and you'll be sweatin' it out come the summit, guaranteed. I have posted some photos of the trip. Just click the photo button above. Keep pedaling! HOBO

FINDING THE LOVE YOU NEED

Last night i fell in love. She appeared out of a mist it seems. A sleek narrow necked princess with pink flowers in her hair. I stared. She stared. I was instantly smitten, moonstruck, head over Simples. And what seemed so unusual was that she didn't seem to mind my steady gaze. And i, the shy Hobo, usually speechless around beautiful women, was remarkably captivated, gone gaga, became mad about and sweet upon this flower-laden goddess. That ruinator, self consciousness, did not raise it's scene stealing head and wreck the moment. Let me explain further. She's obviously no ordinary lady. First, her lips were pursed in an endless kiss and red as rubies. Never have i had to restrain myself so, the urges to paste kisses not only on that bright red rose bud, but up and down her sensuous neck as well. Her curving eyes seemed just slightly oriental, which contributed successfully to a roundish face that protruded forth in a pearlescent glow. Those were the eyes of a queen, possibly in hiding, looking for a new life, possibly one with the common people. She was utterly calm, obviously enlightened. This being, young as she was, had obviously been to the wise mountain and returned to spread her bliss among us mortal monkeys. Endless flowers and tendrils festooned her jet black, snakey locks, a mass of noodley epidermal curls that tressed about her little chewable ears and went oddly down around her neck, like spindly tattoos that eventually morphed into her similarly colored dress. A closer look revealed that the henna colored vinage rising upon her neck did indeed match perfectly with the multilayered lines on her dress. And the flowers in her hair were the exact same color as those inhabiting that luscious garment. And the strange thing is, that i, being of monogamous nature, and having already spent a lifetime loving, being loved, then having lost love, then loving again, only to lose it yet again for the last time, am not inclined in the least to be out and about searching for more heartache of the female kind. And yet this somehow all felt very different. Wheels began turning inside where no wheels had turned before. Unremembered sensations abounded. Distinctly so in the lower regions of my body. Here was a woman whom i could fantasize fantasies about. Holding hands as we strolled through some far away dusty third world city. Chasing each other down long sunny beaches. Snuggling in heaps of down comforters as the snow blew in over the night. Even that one especially personal vision, of a sparkling sunset, surely in my future but strangely of a distant past. This person could fit nicely there, by my side, quiet and wondering, as i too would be, thinking, so, this REALLY IS the end. Without words. Those lips still pinched in that eternal kiss. Eyes nearly asleep. I carried her home and gently lay her on the soft rug near my bed. Now and again glancing over, confident that yes, this is the one. My own speechless beauty. One that i can finally live with, dream about and travel to the end of my days with. Thank you Ana Juan. Your painting is out of this world beautiful. HOBO (see her photo on my Flickr site above!)

RAIN ON THE PRAIRIE

I was huddled under a huge paper birch tree. You know, the kind that has bark peeling off the trunk that looks like it could be used in a pinch as typewriter paper? I was on my bike and heading for the cemetery. Still i got drenched and spent the next hour laying in the hot sun at the tool shed trying to dry out. Then one time i was in the belly of the volcano on the island of Maui and thought it would be hip to just stay in that sacred place overnight, in my little tent. Which i did, and was blown to pieces by all that sky, all that heaven just right there, so close it felt like you might just get whisked away any instant by a passing UFO. The next morning dawned cloudy and a heavy rain came in, making the long upward slog out to the parking lot at 10,000 feet a freezing, wet affair. Boy did that rental cars heater feel great on the way off the mountain to the warm waves far below. Next was the time i was pedaling down the California coast and the morning drizzle soon became a noontime deluge. The temperatures were mild so i kept on pedaling till a friendly looking Motel 6 came into view and i lounged in the luxury of that no star accommodation enjoying the Super Bowl and soaking for hours in the bathtub of hot water. Another day i found myself on the road to nowhere when a rain storm swooped in from the chilly north. With no shelter in all directions i walked onward, my Simple Barney boots getting wetter and wetter until they felt like two buckets of dishwater attached to my feet. Having put in nearly 20 miles for the day i headed off a hill to an enticing meadow below that bordered a small stream and cow flops here and there. Soon i was sound asleep in the cozy tent in a change of dry clothes from the backpack. Later that afternoon the summer sun returned, drying out my socks, pants and shirt that were hanging in a nearby tree. Steam rose from them. A woodpecker thunked a tune high above. Then of course the worst time rain comes is when you are locked onto a speeding frieght train heading for some unknown destination out there somewhere. You could see it long before it hit. One of those low lying, dark and ominous clouds that roll across the prairie like a Mac truck and slam into you saying, "Here I am. Are you ready for a good old wash down pal?". And washed i was, but luckily again an afternoon sun blazed in, chasing the cloud away and warming the hills, the train and me enough to dry things off within the hour. A friend of mine who climbs all the big mountains on this side of the world once commented that human skin is waterproof! That made me realize to never be afraid of the rain. Just make sure you have the right clothing. Like yesterday. Yet another day of rain? Unbelievable here in our relatively dry country. But, down it came. So to hell with this, i said, pulling on the rubber boots, rain jacket and gloves and went out to rebuild the Nanking Cherry bush enclosure anyway. Still though, it's hard to live through. Endless down pourings. All my shoes are soaked. The lawn squishes when you go down to the river. The squirrel eats his cones on my hobbit hole door, showering the entrance with the remains. It makes one wonder where is all that water coming from anyway? And will it ever stop? I've got adventuring to do! The high mountain passes await my snow shoe laden feet. The far away roads of Oregon pine for the spin of the trikes three wheels. Until then, I guess I'll just read another book. HOBO

WHEN THE MOON RISES FULL

Home sweet home. My friend asked me in the sweat lodge the other night why i travel incessantly if i love the meadow so much. I was at a loss for words. I guess in retrospect all i can say is that i love it all. The road is such a strong adventure. Filled with days of discovery and serendipity. Home is a mantra of days that flow into each other like a dream. Each additional year spent in the meadow seems to slow me down and give me more and more appreciation for the minute details. After working on the various projects on those 2 tiny acres i sit back in the wooden beach chair and just stare at the deer, the new leaves, the grass pushing itself out of the damp ground. It is a joy just to be in such a pristine, undeveloped environment. And the mix of activity ( last week i rebuilt the trike shed, set up 3 tipis up town, cleaned out the neighborhood irrigation ditch, set up the water pump for sprinkling the lawn, shingled the tool shed, finished MC 64 and got it mailed out, and washed the clothes!), went by unconsciously. Those days were just a blurr of contentment. Each task melding into the next. Then after a hot sauna, dropping off into a deep, deep sleep. Isn't this how life should be lived? It took nearly 20 years, but it seems that i have somehow finally learned how to live in almost complete harmony with life. Gas is nearly $4 a gallon in our secluded valley. Food prices seems to rise and rise. The news continues to speak of airline closures and failed businesses. Yet living a simple life seems to exclude all those concerns. Long ago i came to the realization that really all a human needs is food, shelter and clothing. And food is something that is generally grown. So maybe there really isn't anything to worry about. All we need to do is learn to live in a simple shelter that protects us from the weather, grow as much food as possible in the climate we reside in, and keep some clothes on our thin skins. Then spend our free time reading books and becoming wise. And fishing. And using bikes to get around. It could be a solution to all man's problems. What do you think. HOBO

HOW TO BUILD A GAS FREE VEHICLE

We're all a both of spoiled wussies. There. That should set the tone for this entry. Maybe a little harsh, but unfortunately quite true. So many of our modern day technologies are leaving us overweight, unexcercised and weak in the knees. But can you envision a nation navigating around only by pedal power? If the gas prices continue to rise, say to $5 or even $10/gallon, many more people will be dragging their old unused bikes out of the garage and putting them to good use. Because my trike was built lightweight and for seeing how fast one could go on three wheels, (comon, admit it Jack), i decided a while ago to rebuild the rear end to haul more cargo. Not only for touring long distances down the road but to also transport the sauna propane tank up town for a refill and for getting a couple weeks of groceries on one 12-mile round trip to Safeway. If you'd like to do the same thing, here's what you will need. One pretty good welder (check ebay), they make them really small now, so don't be gettin' intimidated. And learning to weld isn't any big deal, welders even come with a book on how to do it. Okay, then you'll need a small hand grinder. That's for grinding off all your crappy welds so they look smooth and professional. Get a grinding disc and one metal cutting disk, as it's way faster to cut your pipe with the power tool than an old dull hacksaw like i used for 3 days! Then order up several pieces of steel pipe the same size as the tubes on your bike. Then sit down, have two beers, and start to draw up your plans to stretch that baby out. Two is the number because you are actual going to destroy your bike by chopping it up, before you put it all back together again. And that is like sorta scary. The idea is to create more hauling space of some kind. That way you won't be one of the wussies who always make up a million excuses as to why they are driving instead of pedaling. Draw carefully. Go online and Google "homemade bicycles" for endless ideas. Some people have big baskets in front, some in the middle and some make trailers that simply hook to their existing bikes. Okay, were the beers good? Do you have a fairly good idea of what you'd like to do? Well have at it, and remember, no welding in the kitchen and don't be using the wife's cutlery for tools. The screwdrivers. hammers and other needed items are out in the garage. When you're done email me a picture of your new ride. We could have a contest to see who came up with the coolest design. Prizes could be a pair of Simple shoes or some Chronicles. Whatddaya say? HOBO