August smolders to a rapid finish, ignites in September's burning man.

A letter from Bernie. The chickens have taken over his mind. He sees cock fights and gizzards everywhere he turns. He spent too much time in the coop. He says Ramon reminds him of one of his chickens trying to get a lizard, fighting the other chickens then smashing the lizard's bones so it'll go down easy.

The key to the road is never to stop. Corvallis feels like a cul-de-sac and I the tractor trailer truck that cannot negotiate a turn. At least Bernie writes. And Phillip. And Che. And Penny. The story must go on. The ticket has been bought. I must make it to the show..

I've started in on the Sangria wine coolers and my brain is a post-coital mush.

I'll say. Found myself asleep just now, staring at the computer screen. I sleep a lot on the road. I'm narcoleptic. That's why I need a driver.

Seven lives a weird life out here on the road. The rest of us get occasional automotive reprieves at the houses of friends or people we meet along the way. But Seven can't get into those places as easily as we can. Case in point: here at Jill's there are two steps into the house, so Seven spends most of his time in the garage gluing toys. It's a good thing he found himself a good toy connection. My buddy Jim likes him and has been loading him up from his trash & treasure store downtown.

Seven's whole world is vastly different than mine, the kind of differences that are damn hard to overlook. Sometimes you can forget that other people, no matter how close they are to you, have vastly different perspectives on things. But it's not hard to imagine that Seven looks out at a world far different than yours. For one, he's always sitting down.

Some chick in Portland told him that his friends treated him like fertilizer. Well, I don't know quite what she meant by that, but for sure he is treated different. I would have expected people in the caravan to treat him extra nice because of his disability. This wasn't the case. By the time I'd come aboard, it appeared that a heavy impatience had already kicked in. People were tired of being asked to do this and that for him. And the itinerary setters were fuming with him constant questions about what lay ahead and will it be like this and where is that. I was abhorred by everyone's short fuses toward him. But then I caught up.

He is needy. He does require a lot of assistance and awareness of his lack of mobility. And worst of all, he asks questions all the time that would require an omniscient intelligence to answer them, like "how much do you think it'll cost to camp" at a place we have no prior knowledge of. But I don't care. The way I see it, Seven is facing one helluva challenge taking his paraplegic ass on the road for two and a half months, and if I can't rise to the occasion to help him out a little bit, I shouldn't be traveling with him. And frankly, I like traveling with him.

His strong-arm style of soliciting donations is not my style. His angry, combative style with the police is not my style. His tendency toward negative expression is not mine. But so what? We get along. We make it. He knows stuff about art that I'll never know. He's been in combat in Viet Nam, an experience I've never had nor do I ever want to have. But he was there.

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Last update April 1, 2004