Entries this day: Dream ashley_bye bikes images

Dream

9:06am CDT Thursday 8 August 2002

(dream)

Peering over the edge of some rough clay bluff (about 20 feet tall) I witnessed the process of life as ants were attacking a velvet ant. I climbed down for a closer look and saw more ants chewing on a butterfly or something. I really really wanted to help the butterfly by picking it up, but I just sent it positive thoughts with my mind and encouraged it to have the strength to fly free.

It flew up out of the ants reach and then there was another different color butterfly in the same predicament who also flew free after a bit.

They had gotten away from the ants but were now in a dank cellar that didn't seem to be the best place for butterflies to be. The second one was closest to me, so I put my finger out that it my climb onto and it (the butterfly) clawed me with one of its claws and I was like yeow and pulled away from it and left it to fend for itself.

The other butterfly was on the floor and had used its wings to cover itself up like in a box. I saw that its skin had the slightest gold tinge over it like a sheen of gold paint, or like the chrysalis of some types of butterflies. Its box opened up and the butterfly woke up as if from a deep slumber and it looked like a small human figure, like a muppet butterfly might look with little fuzzy face and two arms and two legs and little boots except one of its legs had broken off at the hip and I was like, "oh god" cause I had roused this butterfly from its final slumber, it knew it was time to die and had built its little coffin, and when I woke it up, the butterfly tried to put its leg back on like a pulling on some tall boots and it was just so tragic I cried cried cried in my dream until I woke up.

ashley bye

9:52am CDT Thursday 8 August 2002

Ashley just left to get her stuff at Chez's house and then presumably go home to OKC. I slept on the couch last night and Ashley gave me a hug on her way out.

"Have fun in far away places," she encouraged.

"I will," I smiled. "Thank you."

"I don't know if I'll see you again..."

Eeep. That monsterous beautiful process of life raises its head again. "Um," I said, for I was tired, "I have an email address that will be good for a really long time."

"Okay."

"Do you know my last name?" Not all my youth do.

"Nugen." she said in a way that she knew it was correct, but didn't know what was the point of the query.

"My address is rob at robnugen dot com."

"That's easy."

"If you write me, I'll write you back; I just don't know how long it will take."

"Of course."

"Thanks for being so great."

"You're welcome?" she assured me. "Thanks for being so fun."

"You're welcome." It's the greatest pleasure in the world to be an advisor for YRUU. "See you later."

bikes

10:39am CDT Thursday 8 August 2002

Sean and I are about to go ride bikes.

11:24am

Drove to his dad's house to get Sean's soes and backpack. Now he's filling his camelpack with water to drink on our adventure.

3:48pm

Wow. I'm back. Sean is at Hart's house. Our adventure took us to White Rock Lake, to the water treatment plant near the spillover. Rode along the dam (this time on the horizontal surface designed for bikes instead of the slanted surface designed for water) to the spillover and though I was ready to climb the fence into it, Sean didn't seem so gung ho about the idea. I trusted his concern and we just rode around the perimeter, where lots of signs said we were forbidden to walk, swim, wade, anything near the spillover. Fine.

Rode along the lake to a dock, and then to a tree that, from the dock, appeared to be on a penninsula. Then continued around the lake and saw a guy sitting on the back of his truck. He wore a dirty blue mechanic button up shirt and blue jeans and his truck was pretty well dented. Waved to him and he waved back; I decided to turn around and talk to him so we did. Turns out he's 70 years old as of March 1st, and has lived in Dallas area since 1968. When he was younger, they didn't know what they didn't have so they didn't want for anything. There were no TVs and radios advertising to buy all this stuff. So they were happy with just a rock and a stick.

He served in the military (he didn't mention any wartime service) and was in San Francisco or something and then moved to Dallas. In 1972 he was working on his air conditioner outside, and an air conditioner mechanic was at the neighbor's house, offered to look at the unit for free. Our friend said naw, and just put some WD-40 on the unit, and he told his wife to turn it on, "the fan jumped so high into the air, it was over the roof. Cost me 1700 dollars to get it fixed." It was near the end of the summer so they were going to sweat it out, but that lasted about 1 day and his wife said, "we're getting it fixed tomorrow."

We rode on and made it all the way around the lake. Oh, we ate a sandwich each in there somewhere, and looked through a binocular telescope thing set up near the lake. Looked at downtown and birds and stuff.

Sean chose to go home and hang out with Hart, so I continued alone. Rode along some unused railroad tracks (I could tell they were unused because the rails had been removed) and that was nice and flat and straight, but the gravel took up a lot of energy from my wheels and legs. Found a real railroad track crossing over my missing tracks and ascended the incline and rode along the tressel of this other track (that was actually a bit scary) with tar and oil on many of the ties, and bone shaking bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbump along the enire thing. The tressel ended and I maintained my speed in gear 3 - 4 or so and bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumped along the tracks around a curve until I arrived at Highland (Drive Road | Street | something) and noticed that my left pedal had shaken loose again. D'oh!

I asked a mailman how I could get to Mockingbird and 75. He didn't really know cause this wasn't his normal route. I went sorta back toward the direction from which I had come and saw a woman out watering her lawn. I asked her if she had an allen wrench. Turns out she did have one, but it was the wrong size. He neighbor wasn't home, so she pointed me back along Highland to Fergusen, where I could find some mechanic type shops. The first one had nothing, the second shop helped me tighten it a bit with a screwdriver, and I rode down Fergusen to I-30 and found a gas station that had the correct size allen wrench. Excellent! Tightened the shit out of my crank and filled up my water bottle, tipped the guy a dollar for his help. Rode along 30 for a bit and then took Samuel up along Tin-something Memorial Park and then toward highway 75 (therefore toward the Bibby's house).

But first I recognized the neighborhood where Janette's work is located, so I went in to say HI to her a bit. My bike got a light dusting of white paint as I parked it near where Angelo was painting some white fence looking things. HI to Janette and got directions from her to get to her house.

By the time I was near her house, while on flat ground I was in gear 2 2 or 2 3. up a hill I was in 2 1. Tired tired.

Glad to be back and thankful for such a grand adventure!

images

6:43pm CDT Thursday 8 August 2002

I'm about to move all the images in my journal directory. For a while, images will be even more messed up than they've been for a long time.