a trip, meeting people, and a motorcycle
I’ve been wanting to write something for this blog for several days. I’m up in the morning and before long the sun has set and I’m climbing into bed.
I want to catch up a little. After the last dumpstering experience chronicled, I went out again and found a great amount of food. It was up at the university apartments—whole garbage bags full of food. People had seriously just dumped the entire contents of pantries and fridges into garbage bags. It was like looking through the aisles of a grocery store. I think I ended up making four trips, each time filling up a big backpack, a crate on my bike and two grocery bags hanging off the handle bars. We kept a lot of the food and also took a bunch to Food Not Bombs.
Then I headed for Missouri to meet up with my brother. I packed up some of the aforementioned food, a sleeping bag, and some comics for my niece and got dropped off at the closest interstate exit in town. From there I hitchhiked to Columbia Missouri. It was a very good trip.
The first night I camped outside of some small town in eastern Colorado, under some cottonwoods by a creek. On the walk to the creek I found a can of beer on an overpass; it was mixed in with several soda cans that appeared to have fallen from a truck or something onto the side of the road.
The next night I ended up spending the night with a guy named Dave in Kansas City. He picked me up west of Lawrence on his Harley. I’ve never even been on a motorcycle like that and the ride was great! We stopped for a beer in Lawrence and then went on to Kansas City. I was sitting on the back seat that was up higher than the main seat and it put my face above the windshield--much of the ride I was afraid my glasses were going to blow off.
Dave was an exceptionally kind person and I really had a good time meeting him. I ended up getting into Columbia the next day and got a ride to the laundromat that my brother used to work at. I had a couple of hours until he got into town (he was coming from Chicago).
The whole trip was great—I met many really nice people. It would be really long to describe all the encounters but I do want to mention a couple of things. Mostly, some stereotypes were challenged and broken and that’s refreshing. For example, this old school rancher picked me up in his big pickup hauling a livestock trailer. He was a neat guy. He told me all about his farm and his children and how he rode horses all over Kansas and how his family still used horses instead of four-wheelers. He told how, about 14 years ago, he found a man on his family’s land who had fallen from a train as it passed by. This man was from Honduras, bordered the train in Mexico, and was severely dehydrated, almost dead. He picked him up and the family nursed him back to health and ‘adopted’ him into their family. After a while, the young man wanted to go back home, to visit his wife. The ranching family was worried about his safety since he didn’t have papers but he was determined to go. He made it home but was caught on his way back. According to this rancher, who talked kinda out of the corner of his mouth and very quietly and deliberately, his stepbrother, as he called him, was sent to a prison camp (this was the word the rancher used) where he stayed for 5 months. He was then sent back to Honduras. He tried coming again and was caught again. He was sent to prison. Eventually, the ranching family learned of his fate and were able to get him out of there and get him some papers. He moved back in with the family and lived there for years as one of the family. He now lives in Missouri and comes back to Kansas for holidays and other visits.
The rancher and I just rolled on down the highway with both of the windows wide open and a blue heeler pup that liked to jump in your lap.
The rancher gave me his name and told me where he lived and that if I was ever coming through there and needed anything to let him know. He was a kind person indeed. One thing I remember that he said is: "It's a heck of a lot easier to be friends than enemies."
I wanted to continue on but I see where this is headed—paragraph after long paragraph! So, I think I am going to head to bed for now. I want to write more about the last couple of weeks....maybe tomorrow.
I want to catch up a little. After the last dumpstering experience chronicled, I went out again and found a great amount of food. It was up at the university apartments—whole garbage bags full of food. People had seriously just dumped the entire contents of pantries and fridges into garbage bags. It was like looking through the aisles of a grocery store. I think I ended up making four trips, each time filling up a big backpack, a crate on my bike and two grocery bags hanging off the handle bars. We kept a lot of the food and also took a bunch to Food Not Bombs.
Then I headed for Missouri to meet up with my brother. I packed up some of the aforementioned food, a sleeping bag, and some comics for my niece and got dropped off at the closest interstate exit in town. From there I hitchhiked to Columbia Missouri. It was a very good trip.
The first night I camped outside of some small town in eastern Colorado, under some cottonwoods by a creek. On the walk to the creek I found a can of beer on an overpass; it was mixed in with several soda cans that appeared to have fallen from a truck or something onto the side of the road.
The next night I ended up spending the night with a guy named Dave in Kansas City. He picked me up west of Lawrence on his Harley. I’ve never even been on a motorcycle like that and the ride was great! We stopped for a beer in Lawrence and then went on to Kansas City. I was sitting on the back seat that was up higher than the main seat and it put my face above the windshield--much of the ride I was afraid my glasses were going to blow off.
Dave was an exceptionally kind person and I really had a good time meeting him. I ended up getting into Columbia the next day and got a ride to the laundromat that my brother used to work at. I had a couple of hours until he got into town (he was coming from Chicago).
The whole trip was great—I met many really nice people. It would be really long to describe all the encounters but I do want to mention a couple of things. Mostly, some stereotypes were challenged and broken and that’s refreshing. For example, this old school rancher picked me up in his big pickup hauling a livestock trailer. He was a neat guy. He told me all about his farm and his children and how he rode horses all over Kansas and how his family still used horses instead of four-wheelers. He told how, about 14 years ago, he found a man on his family’s land who had fallen from a train as it passed by. This man was from Honduras, bordered the train in Mexico, and was severely dehydrated, almost dead. He picked him up and the family nursed him back to health and ‘adopted’ him into their family. After a while, the young man wanted to go back home, to visit his wife. The ranching family was worried about his safety since he didn’t have papers but he was determined to go. He made it home but was caught on his way back. According to this rancher, who talked kinda out of the corner of his mouth and very quietly and deliberately, his stepbrother, as he called him, was sent to a prison camp (this was the word the rancher used) where he stayed for 5 months. He was then sent back to Honduras. He tried coming again and was caught again. He was sent to prison. Eventually, the ranching family learned of his fate and were able to get him out of there and get him some papers. He moved back in with the family and lived there for years as one of the family. He now lives in Missouri and comes back to Kansas for holidays and other visits.
The rancher and I just rolled on down the highway with both of the windows wide open and a blue heeler pup that liked to jump in your lap.
The rancher gave me his name and told me where he lived and that if I was ever coming through there and needed anything to let him know. He was a kind person indeed. One thing I remember that he said is: "It's a heck of a lot easier to be friends than enemies."
I wanted to continue on but I see where this is headed—paragraph after long paragraph! So, I think I am going to head to bed for now. I want to write more about the last couple of weeks....maybe tomorrow.
posted by matt iv at 2:26 PM
2 Comments:
sounds like fun but i don't know if i'd ever have the balls to go hitch-hiking. what if rush limbaugh picked you up????
don't you ever worry about taking food out of a garbage? I imagine most of the time its okay but I'd be worried about getting some infected food with some nasty shit.
most of the food i was getting was from students moving out at the end of the school year. there was food literally still frozen--it had just come out of freezers, fridges, and cupboards. so, it wasn't food that was being thrown out because it had gone bad. in fact, of the food that was packaged, a lot of it wasn't even opened.
still, though, i definitely check it out first and it seems pretty easy to tell if it is bad. i don't have much experience getting food from dumpsters during other times of the year but i imagine it is a bit more difficult to find such quantity and variety of food.
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