Stabbing Eastward

MADISON, WISC. -- Well, I'm back on the grid, after a couple of blissful weeks without electricity, phone service, email or running water. No, I haven't been living in a shack on I-80. My exit from Berkeley was immediately followed by a couple of weeks in Northern Wisconsin, recovering from moving and gearing up for unpacking.

My last California meal was an avocado, sliced in two, sprinkled with sea salt and pepper and scooped out with a spoon. I ate it on the plane. Yum.

Adiós, '93 Honda

You were a good car. Your trunk leaked, and only a few days ago did I finally figure out the trick to closing your hood completely, but you were reliable. You always prompted mechanics to ask "Is this car from the Midwest or something?" with your rusty exhaust system, but those same rusty pipes always let my dog know I was coming, so she would get off my bed and pretend like she'd been sitting quietly on the floor the whole time I was gone. Your antenna didn't go all the way up, so only when I drove a friend's car for a few days did I discover that the Bay Area had about 10 times as many radio stations as I'd been listening to, and it made a funny thwapping noise, but my nephew called that antenna "Auntie Sara's an-tuna" and others referred to it as the seal in my trunk slapping its tail. You can't create comedy like that.

Apparently your clutch was loose, but I didn't notice, just like I didn't care that you only played tapes, because where else was I going to listen to all those mix tapes my friends made me in high school and college? Once your fuel gauge dropped below a quarter of a tank it was completely unreliable, but when it comes to testing an almost-empty tank I'm as conservative as Dick Cheney, so that didn't really bother me. You had a half-moon scratch in your windshield because one of my wiper blades got misaligned and I didn't notice for months because I didn't wash you very often, but that just gave you character, like a funky tattoo. You sported a John Kerry bumper sticker until you got stolen and the bastards who stole you ripped it off and also left their shoes and Subway wrappers in the back seat. So when you were recovered a few hours later with only a busted ignition I put a KALX sticker on you. You got me to Oregon and L.A. and Wisconsin and strange little towns in Nebraska and up the steep hills of San Francisco and through the jutted back roads of Point Reyes and Solon Springs.

You were a pillar among cars. You will be missed.

S'more oysters

This week I went camping on Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington's Puget Sound. It was beautiful and rustic, a quintessential camping experience. That is, with one exception: while my hosts, the Kents, were snacking on s'mores, I was digging in to the local oysters I picked up at a nearby gas station for $5.50 a dozen. Following the advice of some guy who was walking by as I filled a bag with these enormous mollusks, I steamed them over the campfire.

They were, without a doubt, the best oysters I've ever had. Briny and delicious. I ate eleven of them.

Moving Green

SEATTLE, WASH. -- As many of you know, SKBK is nothing if not an advocate for green and socially-conscious living, to the point of guilt-tripping the rest of us into toting around reusable coffee mugs and powering our hybrid hairdryers with soy-based fuel cell proteins (animal cruelty and chlorofluorocarbon-free). But of course we all know now that she's way ahead of her time, and I've been trying to put together as "green" a move to Amherst as I can.

What's in a green move? Boxes from Usedcardboardboxes.com, who delivered clean boxes that have only been used once (by weird pharmaceutical companies, it seems) for half the price of new boxes. For packing material, I'm putting to good use all the old cable bills, medical documents, top-secret SJB personal files and canceled checks that I've amassed over the last few years-- all that shredded detritus will line the bottoms of my used cardboard boxes quite nicely. My old electronics -- including a prehistoric MP3 player that approximates the weight and look of a bright blue brick -- are headed to the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, where they'll either be fixed and reused or recycled. The junk that was left over after I made a haul to Goodwill went out on the curb, accompanied by a Craigslist posting ("Pile of free stuff") offering its whereabouts. Goodies like a broken director's chair, a 45 of "Smooth Criminal," a box fan, videotapes of Ken Burn's "Jazz" series and a random assortment of bookmarks were gone within the hour to loving new homes. And, instead of pouring the contents of my liquor cabinet down the drain, I'm drinking as many Long Island Iced Teas as possible in the coming days. Just trying to do my part!

Also, in accordance with the advice of SKBK's book, "Green Living," I have decided not to fall into the trap of the "disposable-pet syndrome" and I will be recycling my dog into smaller gremlin-like furry animals that are easier to pack. I will name them EcoAddisons 1.1 through 1.14.