The Last Great Alaskan Bucket List Adventure 1: Of Talismans and Shrines

[RE]

I need to do a load of laundry to make sure I have clean underwear, in case we drive the RV off a cliff on some mountain pass, and end up having to be taken to the hospital.

The Parks Highway is pretty flat far as we are going.  The Glenn Highway on the other hand gets nasty almost as soom as you get north of Palmer.

RE

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[RE]

At least for me it is.  Eddie dropped me off at the digs last night and he and his SO went for one last night of camping without the extra cripple baggage, which was starting to wear thin on Eddie.

The trip went more or less like clockwork, although generally a late clock every day.  I had hoped to check in at the various campsites around 2 PM, but we generally did not get to the next one before 6PM.  We also didn't cook up near the selection of Gourmet Meals I had planned.  We managed one set of steaks on the first night.  Eddie made one bacon & eggs breakfast. We made one bagels & lox breakfast (I bought the stuff, Eddie & Wife made the sandwiches).  The best meal was the restaurant meal  at the whale watching venue, excellent seafood.  We had King Crab, Crab Bisque, Salmon annd Scallops.

Highlights of the trip besides the fish restaurant were the Scenic Drive through Hatcher Pass with the RV and the hike along Curry Pass by Denali for Eddie & SO.  My highlight was surviving the whole Adventure and making it back home still above ground.  I basically was parked in the jump seat of the RV for the whole trip and I can tell you I am no fun to cart along on a camping trip.  On the upside I made it to the bathroom on time on all occassions and I ate more than usual.

Now I am going to try and get my Tombstone finished, and then I am planning no further "Last Great Adventures".  These things are just too exhausting and then I lay all this emotional baggage on them and inflate their overall importance to the end of my life.  The fact is here I am tied up & tidied up in my life about as good as I will ever be, I will lay down for one more long dirt nap under my tombstone and then that's it for RE, the story for this go-round walking the earth is OVAH.  The body is fucked up to beat the band and I can't wait to be let out of that meat package.  The brain has given up at least most of its great ideas, which nobody ever paid much attention to.  I am as thoroughly disgusted with the human experience today as at any time in my 60+ years walking the earth and will spend these last few moments as a member of the Still Living just going through the motions of life to in the end just a ticket to the Great Beyond.

My life was not the one I had expected as I became a sentient soul on earth in my early years.  I definitely could have and should have engineered a better one and not been such a perpetual non-conformist.  However no life I led would have made earth any better a place to live over the last 60 years.  As that goes, I lucked into a relatively good perch from which to observe the last years of this type of civilization living.  I personally enjoyed most of the bennies of living during the Age of Oil, had my own carz & motorcycles and flew on jets all over the globe.  Never had to go to war or kill anybody.  Never starved. Ate lots of really good food.  I would have liked a more comfortable path to the Great Beyond, but I wrote this ticket and I gotta live with the results of my life choices.

So now it is back to chronicling Collapse, insofar as I have energy and inspiration to do that anymore, until I finally do make that last crossing across the Great Divide.  I am soooo tired, I want the end to come so much now.  I don't want to be a burden to my friends with my problems; I don't want to end up in a Cripple Hospice getting my ass wiped and waiting to die.  I want to go to sleep tonight and not wake up tomorrow.  Is that too much to ask?

RE

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[Eddie]

We're up and getting ready to wrap things up and head home tonight.

Sorry we slept late and kept RE from accomplishing most of his goals. All my fault...that and the fact that he really isn't up to much other than issuing lots of orders. I'm not good at taking orders, but I made an exception this time. He has no clue how lucky he was. LOL. If I weren't such an old softie, I'd have left him to die out in the woods.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself immensely and I'm glad we got to sit around a campfire one more time. Not sure we'll get to do it again in this incarnation, but if not, maybe the next.

We both have been having a bad case of internet withdrawals, which can now be remedied (careful RE, that's too much bandwidth for a cripple  to eat after fasting for five days.)

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[RE]

1- Cripples bring way more stuff than they need and can't help move it around and set it up.

2- Cripple equipment is heavy, blocks doors and passageways and has to be moved every time you stop to do something.

3-  Cripples can't fix themselves anything to eat or drink in a moving vehicle.

4- Cripples have trouble getting to and from a bathroom and all planning around places you go is "Where's the bathroom?"

5- Cripples spill things and make messes they can't usually clean up.

6- You worry the cripple will drive himself off a pier while touring the local marina.

7-  Cripples wake you up making multiple bathroom trips overnight.

8- Despite being worthless meat packages, cripples issue orders and know how everything they can't do should be done by everyone else.


I am sure there are other reasons bringing a cripple on a camping trip is not a good idea,  Eddie can flesh that out in detail.  But what this really drives home to me is how you CANNOT "adopt a family" if you are an aging, life long loner without family to take care of you in your dotage, and even if you DO have real family to take care of you once you reach sick decrepitude level, the patience of your loved ones to help you has its limits.  This is why the kids stop visiting the Nursing Home after a few years and leave mom and/or dad in the hands of "professionals" to take care of them when they are spreading feces on the walls of the bathroom.

Eddie is about as close to a brother  to me as you can get without being blood related, but by the 3rd day together with me a totally dependent failing meat package, he was thoroughly sick of being my "PCA" (Personal Care Assistant) for the vacation.  PCAs are what we Cripples employ to help us negotiate our daily lives, and these days the going rate for one of these helpers is around $25-30/hour if you employ one yourself.  No special qualifications are required, they just have to be willing in general to wipe your ass when necessary.  Fortunately I did NOT have to ask Eddie to do this task on this camping trip, that probably would have spelled the end of our friendship.  It's why after a few years Inuit have no problem abandoning mom or dad on an ice flow or handing them over to the Bear for disposal once they become worthless meat packages.  A few people have a loved one who will take care of them to the bitter end no matter how disgusting and messy, but I suspect the actual number is quite few.  By the end the only reason your wife keeps you alive while you drool in the wheel chair is to keep getting the full Social Security check.

I wish I had got the opportunity to know Eddie and become friends with him in the years I was an active Homo Sap capable of taking care of his own needs and those of others I was helping.  As it is, he will only remember me as the helpless cripple who came with him on an Alaskan Adventure and was a big pain in the ass to have along the whole time.   This is precisely the situation I do NOT want to be in, but which I find myself in at the moment.  It sucks for the Cripple too.  You sit in your chair and you don't want to ask somebody to get you a cookie, because well you just asked them to get you a coke 10 minutes before that.  So you keep your mouth shut and sit there and smile like you are having a good time, despite the fact that all you can think about is having a cookie.  Since you have nothing better to do you have been studying the maps all day and know the best route to avoid the traffic, despite the fact you are not the one actually stuck behind the wheel for the last 6 hours negotiating the constant rain and wet pavement.  Your suggestions on the next turn to take are not well-received.

So, the bottom line here is that it is unlikely there will be anyone around to comfort me as I take my last hike on the bridge across the Great Divide.  I will go out of this world alone, as I came into it  I just would prefer it with less pain.  Where's my Morphine?

RE

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[azozeo]

Your not alone, you never were... Stop it !

You have your spirit team with you 24/7 365.
You've chosen not to participate in the dialogue with them, that will be discussed at the come to Jayzus mtg. on the other side.
What a hoot that'll be, take vids PA-LEEESE 

Eddie, Saint "Hood" will surely be granted for your Mother Theresa-esque behavior whilst camping with the Boss....

 

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[RE]

Your not alone, you never were... Stop it !

You have your spirit team with you 24/7 365.
You've chosen not to participate in the dialogue with them, that will be discussed at the come to Jayzus mtg. on the other side.
What a hoot that'll be, take vids PA-LEEESE 

Eddie, Saint "Hood" will surely be granted for your Mother Theresa-esque behavior whilst camping with the Boss....

 

I am talking about other Homo Sap Meat Packages, not 5th Dimensional energy entities wandering around the ether of the Great Beyond.

RE

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[azozeo]

Your not alone, you never were... Stop it !

You have your spirit team with you 24/7 365.
You've chosen not to participate in the dialogue with them, that will be discussed at the come to Jayzus mtg. on the other side.
What a hoot that'll be, take vids PA-LEEESE 

Eddie, Saint "Hood" will surely be granted for your Mother Theresa-esque behavior whilst camping with the Boss....

 

I am talking about other Homo Sap Meat Packages, not 5th Dimensional energy entities wandering around the ether of the Great Beyond.

RE

Glad to see you have enough piss n' vinegar left to fire one off at me for a change.   

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[azozeo]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ohc9h-e0byA&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/Ohc9h-e0byA&fs=1</a>

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[RE]

One of the things all of us going on the Last Great Alaskan Bucket List Adventure looked forward to was the sitting around the camfire at night part, probably the highlight of all camping trips.  When Bear Grylls, Cody Lundin and Mr. Primitive Technology make a fire to do this, it looks so EZ!  Even just rubbing 2 sticks together is EZ for these guys!  You will notice though that in just about every "how to make a fire" video instructional on Utoob, the fire-mkaing pro does this in nice weather.  Maybe there is snow on the ground, but it is not being done in a drenching rainstorm with wood that is soaking wet from says, weeks and months of rain before that.  Fires in general require a supply of dry wood, just for starters.

All 3 of us like to make fires, and this is one thing I thought I could actually DO on the Adventure, but even this relatively simple task was too much for me, despite the fact I had pre-prepared and brought with me a variety of fire starting methods and materials to make a video instructional of my own on fire-making for the SNAP Card Gourmet video series.  I had Tinder of several types, Fatwood for Kindling, Flint & Steel, Magnesium Sticks, Strike-anywhere matches, Water & Stormproof matches, Bic Lighters, Butane mini-torches, even the latest in Plasma Lighters that you can recharge via USB.  The goal here was to make up for the video where tongue-in-cheek I made my camping & cooking fire by dousing a large pile of wood with about half a bottle of oil based lighter fluid to get it going.

Anyhow, all 3 of us pride ourselves on being semi-competent campers and being able to make a roaring fire under most conditions using the traditional method of building it up from a small little TeePee fire with just a few embers and maybe some newzprint for kindling to something large enough to roast wienees and marshmallows around and tell Ghost Storiez.  We were all humbled by the Alaskan Weather.

It has been raining non-stop for the entire summer here on the Last Great Frontier. and everything is soaked to the bone.  Even the pre-cut commercial firelogs from the wood bins at the grocery storez and campsites protected in little bins were damp enough through & through to resist lighting up until quite well dried out by an already underway bonfire.  Not one of us got  single campfire going without the assistance of the Magic Bottle of Lighter Fluid.  We even resorted to building up a pile of commercial charcoal for grilling and piling wood on top of that to get our campfire going.  By itself, also this wuz not good enough.

These are campfires also, not cooking fires which tend to be smaller and use smaller pieces of wood so you can control the heat of the fire better while you cook.  One of these fires unless made indoors or well covered would have been OUT in minutes over the last few daze here, if you ever got it going to begin with.  Whih answers the question of how our ancestors cooked back in the day before the Franklin Stoves and Cuisinarts.  They did it in GOOD WEATHER!  Until they moved indoors for most of their existence fire was NOT an every night luxury enjoyed by all for cooking and heating.  You had it most nights probably, but the nights you MOST needed it were the nights you didn't have it.  It also takes a BONFIRE to keep one of these going in a fairly heavy rain, the fire has to be enough to evaporate all the water falling on it.  MOST people in the early Ag era as Serfs probably could not afford to burn that much wood every night.  There are legends about kids getting a Lump of Coal in the stocking for Christmas, most were probably HAPPY if they got that.  Read "The Little Matchstick Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen sometime.

In the end of course we did get our Campfires going despite the rain and the wet with the help of the Magic Lighter Fluid from the Age of Oil.  One of the endless products we don't realize how much we depend on to live our papered existence as beneficiaries of all the inventions, products and resources that go into making our lives overall quite EZ to negotiate, so EZ even a Cripple can negotiate it, as long as he has friends around who aren't so sick of his requests for help they start ignoring him and disappear for hours at a time to do their own thing.  This experience made me realize that even if I could get together a full size Convocation with several Diners attending, I couldn't go to it myself anymore.  I would be the Cripple at the Convocation, the Dependent One, the Burden who Needs All the Help.  All of you non-Cripples out there think and believe you would have endless Patience to help your Crippled mothers & fathers and wives and children, but you don't.  Everyone gets tired of helping Cripples all the time.  With Crippled Kidds who got that way through no fault of their own, Parents feel particularly Guilty and will do this longer than most situations (even taking care of crippled kids well into adulthood), but even there they get sick of it.

Back when I moved up to Alaska and got together with the guy who I went in on the first Gym program with, he told me "now you are FAMILY", with the subtext that meant that I could depend on him and his family as MY family also, and they would be there for me if I needed them.  But of course, in the end they were not there and he was not there either.  He fired me after all.  You can't fire your family, although people do disown family members and do stop responding to requests for help from perpetual fuck-ups like drug addicts in the family.  For those of you married people out there, you believe your Spouse will take good care of you when you are an oblivious piece of senile meat in the wheel chair, but she won't, she'll park you freezing in the backyard while she collects your Social Security check and entertains your best friend or bizness partner in the backyard with that fabulous lasagna she used to cook up for you.

Hopefully, you get more dependability, loyalty and help from AZ's 5th Dimensional Energy Entity Companions than you do with your fellow Homo Saps as you negotiate your way to the Great Beyond for  a final rest from this bullshit.  Cripples go to the Great Beyond all alone.  That is how it is.  I am all alone for whatever time I have left now.  There will be no more Convocations, no more Last Adventures for RE, other than the Last Adventure of the Imagination I have here with my keyboard.  My life as a part of the society, as a friend to other Homo Saps is OVAH.  Now all I am is a brudensome meat package in need of a rapid disposal into the waste bin of human history on earth.  Just a piece of eternal trash in the mozaic of life in the multiverse.

RE

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[RE]

One of the things I did WAY too much of on this Adventure was buy FOOD.  I bought Salmon and Shrimp and Scallops and Fillet Mignon and Prime Grade Ribe Eye Steaks to cook up on the grill.  I brought every spice in the book and every sauce I could think of to make meals a gourmet chef would be proud of.  I brought all my cooking tools, knives, cutting boards, choppers and pots and pans.  In the end on the trip itself, about none of this got used.

Today while Eddie and Mrs. Eddie continued further Adventures exploring one of the Glaciers before heading back home (now free of the burden of the cripple to drag around), I motivated myself to cook up the Fillet Mignon so at least that @$30 worth of prime beef would not go bad before being consumed by a Homo Sap carnivore.  It actually came out great, much better than the Rib Eye steaks we cooked up on the first night, which were a lttle over-done.

I thought about WHY I spent so much money on expensive food for this trip when really Eddie and Mrs. Eddie would have been perfectly happy with hamburgers and hot dogs for the whole trip, if we even had time to cook that up before crashing for the night in our various campgrounds.  It never seemed like there was enough time to cook anything.

I spent this money and made these plans because I know I am a CRIPPLE  and would be depending on Eddie to help me throughout the trip, and I wanted to do something I could still do in service to repay him for this.  But in the end I could not do it, there was no time or it just wasn't necessary, some cheap chips from the convenience store were enough to assuage the appetite, gourmet foods were not esssential.  It is fortunate most of what I bought has not yet gone bad, but most of it will whether I get around to cooking it up like these Fillet Mignons or not.  It's simply too much food for me to eat in the next week or so timespan where it will remain good enough for me to eat.

Anyhow, in my mind's eye going in to this adventure, Eddie and Mrs Eddie would appreciate my great meals so much that this would make up for the pain in the ass it is to drag around a CRIPPLE on a camping trip.  Which maybe it might be if you have enough time to cook up all the shit during the trip, but does nothing to help in this regard if you don't have time to cook it up and enjoy eating it each night.  So basically Eddie and Mrs. Eddie resented me more every night on this trip, and by the end of it I was a hulk of worthless flesh they could not wait to get rid of so they could actually go out and ENJOY themselves.  Cripples put a real big ice cube on your enjoyment pile if you have to drag one of them around with you.

I am so sorry I had to inflict my crippled self on Eddie for this trip.  Now he will just remember me as a Burden, the decrepit cripple he shipped around Alaska not the fun and athletic guy I once was who could have gone climbing trees with him or scrambling up soggy mountains on the Kenai Peninsula.  Eddie will never know that RE, he will only know and remember the old cripple he shepherded around for a couple of days on his way to the Great Beyond.

I hate what is left of my life, I hate what I am left with here now, I hate who I am. I want to die soon, the sooner the better here.  I want to leave the earth before my friends that are left hate me for my dependency even more than they hate me already and I hate myself.

Advice:  Don't BBQ up a big Fillet Mignon to eat on your own.  You won't feel real good after consumption.

RE

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[Nearingsfault]

One of the things I did WAY too much of on this Adventure was buy FOOD.  I bought Salmon and Shrimp and Scallops and Fillet Mignon and Prime Grade Ribe Eye Steaks to cook up on the grill.  I brought every spice in the book and every sauce I could think of to make meals a gourmet chef would be proud of.  I brought all my cooking tools, knives, cutting boards, choppers and pots and pans.  In the end on the trip itself, about none of this got used.

Today while Eddie and Mrs. Eddie continued further Adventures exploring one of the Glaciers before heading back home (now free of the burden of the cripple to drag around), I motivated myself to cook up the Fillet Mignon so at least that @$30 worth of prime beef would not go bad before being consumed by a Homo Sap carnivore.  It actually came out great, much better than the Rib Eye steaks we cooked up on the first night, which were a lttle over-done.

I thought about WHY I spent so much money on expensive food for this trip when really Eddie and Mrs. Eddie would have been perfectly happy with hamburgers and hot dogs for the whole trip, if we even had time to cook that up before crashing for the night in our various campgrounds.  It never seemed like there was enough time to cook anything.

I spent this money and made these plans because I know I am a CRIPPLE  and would be depending on Eddie to help me throughout the trip, and I wanted to do something I could still do in service to repay him for this.  But in the end I could not do it, there was no time or it just wasn't necessary, some cheap chips from the convenience store were enough to assuage the appetite, gourmet foods were not esssential.  It is fortunate most of what I bought has not yet gone bad, but most of it will whether I get around to cooking it up like these Fillet Mignons or not.  It's simply too much food for me to eat in the next week or so timespan where it will remain good enough for me to eat.

Anyhow, in my mind's eye going in to this adventure, Eddie and Mrs Eddie would appreciate my great meals so much that this would make up for the pain in the ass it is to drag around a CRIPPLE on a camping trip.  Which maybe it might be if you have enough time to cook up all the shit during the trip, but does nothing to help in this regard if you don't have time to cook it up and enjoy eating it each night.  So basically Eddie and Mrs. Eddie resented me more every night on this trip, and by the end of it I was a hulk of worthless flesh they could not wait to get rid of so they could actually go out and ENJOY themselves.  Cripples put a real big ice cube on your enjoyment pile if you have to drag one of them around with you.

I am so sorry I had to inflict my crippled self on Eddie for this trip.  Now he will just remember me as a Burden, the decrepit cripple he shipped around Alaska not the fun and athletic guy I once was who could have gone climbing trees with him or scrambling up soggy mountains on the Kenai Peninsula.  Eddie will never know that RE, he will only know and remember the old cripple he shepherded around for a couple of days on his way to the Great Beyond.

I hate what is left of my life, I hate what I am left with here now, I hate who I am. I want to die soon, the sooner the better here.  I want to leave the earth before my friends that are left hate me for my dependency even more than they hate me already and I hate myself.

Advice:  Don't BBQ up a big Fillet Mignon to eat on your own.  You won't feel real good after consumption.

RE

That is a tough nut to crack. When my wife was alive once in a while I would be left alone in the house kidless and with no responsibilities. On those nights i would have a steak, a pork chop, or some lamb ; foods that seemed like carnivorous comfort foods to me and did not appeal to my reformed vegetarian wife. Today I have one of those sleepaways a week but can't be bothered to do any of those dishes. I settle for eggs and toast or some other simple thing and wait for my kids to come back the next day.
I hope you cook up all the food you bought and portion it out for freezing. Getting value back from it will feel better then throwing it out and dwelling on the loss.
Best regards,  David B.

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[Eddie]

It's tough watching somebody you know and like grapple with declining health. And it's tough taking their show on the road in a small RV.

But, RE, I've known you for five years, and I remember a time when you were doing much better.....getting around fine and able to take care of yourself. So I'll remember that RE, and I have great memories of our week at Dome School, and our convo at the stead and the second one in Saluda. And even this trip. Not so bad.  You did a great job of planning a decent itinerary. Great seafood down in Seward and I wouldn't trade that or the boat trip, although I know it was a little tough at times.

I forgot the drive up over Hatcher Pass. That was pretty cool.

It takes a lot of courage to go through the part of life you're experiencing now. You just have to take it one day at a time. I think you ate a lot better this last week than you've been eating, and I think the CBD oil and the little oil sticks from your local dispensary can help you get through what you're dealing with. Less alcohol and more cannabis is my sincere suggestion, but  I know you'll make up your own mind.

Starting the last leg home from Denver. Looking forward to seeing the dogs and getting  some sleep innmy own bed.

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[RE]

But, RE, I've known you for five years, and I remember a time when you were doing much better.....getting around fine and able to take care of yourself. So I'll remember that RE

That RE was already a Crippled RE who needed help and was not independent and fully mobile.  I was a Cripple then also, and that is all you have ever known of me, and all you will ever remember.  I am the Crippled Friend you had at the end of our lives walking the Earth.  That is all I will ever be in your memories.  I am so sorry for that.  It is something I will leave this life with and always regret.

RE

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[jdwheeler42]

There will be no more Convocations, no more Last Adventures for RE, other than the Last Adventure of the Imagination I have here with my keyboard.  My life as a part of the society, as a friend to other Homo Saps is OVAH.  Now all I am is a brudensome meat package in need of a rapid disposal into the waste bin of human history on earth.  Just a piece of eternal trash in the mozaic of life in the multiverse.

Only you can determine how much you can take physically, but don't discount the contribution you are making to society online.  It is still a lot more than quite a few people in the prime of their lives.  As I look towards a remaining lifetime of chemotherapy, I am hoping regular visits to an active Doomstead Diner will continue for a significant fraction of that.

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[Eddie]

There will be no more Convocations, no more Last Adventures for RE, other than the Last Adventure of the Imagination I have here with my keyboard.  My life as a part of the society, as a friend to other Homo Saps is OVAH.  Now all I am is a brudensome meat package in need of a rapid disposal into the waste bin of human history on earth.  Just a piece of eternal trash in the mozaic of life in the multiverse.

Only you can determine how much you can take physically, but don't discount the contribution you are making to society online.  It is still a lot more than quite a few people in the prime of their lives.  As I look towards a remaining lifetime of chemotherapy, I am hoping regular visits to an active Doomstead Diner will continue for a significant fraction of that.

Your contribution here has been quite substantial too. Just sayin'.  Glad to see you're able to drop in.

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