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Activist Times Inc. Issue 284
Dear Recipient of ATI. I received quite a
long submission and considered busting it
up into three parts like we did with the
unabomber article, the compressionism
textbook and some of the others, but then
I realized I'd have almost nowhere to put
parts 2 and 3 since I'm on the road this
week.
So I've pushed most everything else back
for a little bit so you can read it in here
as one long textfile.
Enjoy,
Prime Anarchist
Hi!!! & Welcome to ATI,
activist trumpeters of ideas.
_ || '
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/-|| || || 284 - 0107311355
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- Very Few NUMBERS To Run-
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55467
http://free.freespeech.org/xaa/xaa0001.txt
http://phrontistery.50megs.com/govern.html
http://free.freespeech.org/delacruz
http://www.sonic.net/~comix
http://platdragon.cjb.net
http://www.flakmag.com
http://www.anada.net
NEWZ -
>>From LBC newsletter:
>>---Mark your calendars- LBC is gonna
>>be on national television. Who would
>>have Thought? Friday, August 3rd on
>>the Craig Kilborn Show on CBS watch
>>us bust out
"Bossman"
ON THE ROAD 2001 - There and Back Again and Things in the Middle
by aaron kreider
Prologue
Here in lies the account of my second ever hitchhiking trip.
My first trip, in 1999, can be read online at
http://www.nd.edu/~akreider/essays/ontheroadzineversion.txt.
I live in South Bend, Indiana, but this trip started off in Kansas because
I was in Owen Sound, Ontario for a family reunion and then got a ride to
Kansas with relatives. My goal was to make it to Alpine, WY, a small town
on the Wyoming / Idaho border, a couple hours south of Yellowstone.
Actually, the final destination was on a forest road twenty miles east of
Alpine where Earth First! was holding its annual rendez-vous (July 7 - 16)
in the Tetons National Forest.
Part I : There
I took notes on the en-route trip, which were very helpful in remembering
details.
The real adventure started Sunday morning at 9am (July 8) when I got a ride
with relatives from Newton (Kansas) to Salina (arrived at 10:15am), which
is just on the I-70 interstate. The general plan was to hitch north on 81
to I-80, west on the interstate to Evanston, and then north on 89 to
Alpine. I got a Boeing hat from my uncle, which served me well given the
hot weather that was to come. I had boldly written "NORTH TO I-80" on my
sign. The gods were with me and within ten minutes I had a ride, albeit a
short one to Concordia. I was picked up by a woman in her thirties with a
young boy and girl who were on a long trip in a van without any AC. But so
long as I was making distance, that was fine.
All was going well and after thirty minutes of hitching in Concordia (or
more likely its north side) I was picked up by another woman also in her
thirties (with holes in her jeans) and without AC. Unfortunately she was
not going far at all and left me off in Belleville around noon. The last
and only other time I'd been in Kansas it was just this hot. Today the
thermometer was at 95 and the heat index at 105. The fact that it was noon
and there wasn't any shade where I hitched on the north side of town made
matters worse. Construction work is ongoing to turn 81 into a two-lane
road, but at Belleville it only had one lane going each way. I had a good
spot, with a decent area for cars to pull over and they could see me for a
good distance before they had to stop to pick me up, but after two hours I
wasn't getting any bites. I drank most of my water (I only had 1.6 l) and
then walked to the nearest gas station to refill and recover from the heat.
Walking was excruciating since I wasn't accustomed to my pack and I was
suffering from the heat. I got a bag of chips (figuring I was sweating out
the salt) and a 32oz Slice with lots of ice. I read the local newspaper at
the gas station, including an article about how 3/4 of the town was flooded
in 1951. I returned to hitchhike from 3pm-4pm which is about the hottest
time of the day. By this time I was sunburnt in spots since I hadn't lopped
on the sun tan lotion as much as I should have. At 4pm, I called it quits
as I was suffering from heat exhaustion and I headed to a travel
information place-store that was the nearest place to crash. There I got
some water and then crashed in the shade until 6pm. I was so exhausted that
I tried lying on the grass, but it was too hot to lie down so I just sat on
the bench and didn't do much. There were very few visitors to the store,
mostly older people too, and as I was very tired I didn't try to get a ride.
Finally, just resting there I got a ride offer from a talkative man in his
fifties whose wife worked at the store. He took me across the KS-NE border
to a truck stop even though he didn't have any reason to go that way. He
just wanted to help me out. Unfortunately, the truck stop was inactive
since highway 81 had been re-routed away from it and it only had two
trucks! So I was back to hitching on 81. Within an hour, around 7:30pm, I
got a ride to York (a.k.a. I-80) from a very talkative man who was hauling
materials for 81's road construction which we discussed in detail.
In York I visited the McDonald's bathroom, though I was so dehydrated that
even after drinking 2-3 liters I didn't really need to go. The spot right
at the on-ramp looked bad (no place to pull over), and I didn't want to
risk hitchhiking on the interstate for if hitching is illegal in the area,
it'd definitely be illegal on the interstate. So I hitched in front of a
Flying J truck stop by a light where trucks would have to stop if it was
red, with my sign saying "WEST" which is an important distinction since
half of the traffic leaving the stop would be going east (and in this case
more, since there were also roads going North and South).
There were many trucks. Maybe 45 per hour going west. Finally after sunset,
around 9:45pm I got a long ride from a Polish trucker in his late 30s /
early 40s who had been driving straight from Chicago without sleeping. He'd
immigrated in 1986. He was going to California. We stopped for a short time
in North Platte (still in Nebraska) where he spent a long time
professionally cleaning his windshield, only for the bugs to mess it up
again later. We listened to the radio and Bavarian polka music. He smoked a
cigarette about every 35 miles. I got some sleep over the course of a
couple hours though it was difficult since the truck wasn't air-ride
equipped and it vibrated terribly. I'd lay my head on the seat rest and it
could bounce up to six inches in the air. Later he gave me a pillow that
helped considerably. Also I'd get blasted with cold air whenever he opened
the window to smoke. We ended up for the night at a truck stop just inside
Wyoming, ten miles east of Cheyenne. We'd gained over 4000 feet of altitude
and were now around 5500 feet "up there". This ride made the day, since I
had beforehand I'd only been getting short rides. There he told me that
he'd sleep for five to six hours and encouraged me to try to find a ride in
the mean time.
So I visited the bathroom and brushed my teeth (etc). As it was 4am, it
wasn't a good time to get a ride so I sat in the mostly empty all-night
restaurant, eating my two orders of hash browns and first cup of coffee
that I'd drank this year. I took about an hour to do that and write some
notes on my trip so far.
I figured that some truckers get up around the crack of dawn, so I started
hitching around 5am outside the truck stop. It turns out that few of them
do, and that hitching around 7am or so would be a better time but as I
didn't have anywhere to sleep, I had nothing better to do than stand
outside in the cold and try and hitch. It had cooled during the night,
perhaps down to 60 and it was windy to boot, so I put on my rain pants over
my shorts to stay warm. This was a smallish truck stop, with perhaps thirty
trucks staying there overnight. For the next fourteen and half hours I
hitched either by the truck stop exit or on the interstate, only taking
occasional breaks. My previous driver had promised to pick me up if I
hadn't found a ride, but he either didn't see me hitching or didn't want to
pick me up. I suspect the prior, since I think I saw him take the back exit
and miss the place where I was standing. That was terribly disappointing. I
started off outside the truck stop, but after a couple hours of no luck, I
was less and less reluctant to hitch on the interstate. The interstate had
lots of traffic. Two lanes and around 240 vehicles per hour. It was
possible for many of them to stop, as there were considerable breaks in
traffic, though traffic generally piles up and comes in bunches where it is
hard for all but the last vehicle in the line to pull over. Another
unfortunate factor was that the speed limit was 75, at which point they
have less time to see a hitchhiker and pulling over is more difficult
(especially for large trucks). For this time and much of the trip, it was
hard to figure out whether to hitch on the interstate where there was more
traffic or at a truck stop where it was much easier for vehicles to stop.
I drank lots of water. It was probably only in the low 80s, but the sun
seemed warmer with there being less atmosphere due to the altitude. I ate a
pretzel, Pepsi, and tricolor popsicle from the store in the early afternoon
to supplement my snacking on the food that I'd brought with me. I dumpster
dived two 1-liter bottles to increase my water capacity to 3.6 liters.
Unfortunately, I had these 8 pounds of water on the top of my backpack,
which was not the best place for the weight.
It wasn't all hopeless, though it often seemed so, as I had a ride offer
going east (it's the thought that counts) and another just to Cheyenne
which I refused since travelling ten miles wouldn't help that much. As
evening came, I decided to walk along the interstate up a hill to see if I
could see Cheyenne in the distance or scout out a place where I could crash
and get some sleep that night since I was very tired. Needless to say at
this point in time I was pretty discouraged, not to mention mad at the over
a thousand drivers that could have given me a ride. On my last trip, I
generally got a ride in two hours, and the worst case wait was about four
or five. Cheyenne was actually far beyond the hill (not to mention my
limited capability to walk with my pack), but fortunately while walking I
got a ride at 7:30pm. I was very surprised to get it and showed it.
And it was another woman driver! This trip I got a lot more rides from
women than my last trip, when it was eight men and only one woman. She was
my first strange driver of the trip. She'd been driving from Michigan, and
was returning home. She was very talkative and tended to go off on
tangents. Thirty-three years old, had a boy friend who was divorced and
scared to marry her, had prior family and personal problems, couldn't have
kids, hitch-hiked until age 22, liked country, and may have recently been
"saved". She was driving a pickup truck with a friendly cute black dog
("Bear") in the back. She worked three months per year in construction on
power plants, earning over twenty thousand. We stopped in Laramie to get
gas, and she also got some beer which had me a little worried as she
proceeded to drink one or two of them while driving. After Cheyenne the
countryside got very beautiful, though as it was night it was harder to
see. For a couple hours we drove towards a very ominous looking
thunderstorm, with lots of lightning, but only got a little rain. This was
good since I eventually realized that my non-waterproof backpack with all
my gear was in the back of the truck with Bear. Fortunately, it only got
mildly wet.
I slept an hour or two in the pickup and got let out at Little America, 68
miles from the Utah border. Like Nebraska, Wyoming is a...
[what, cliff hanger driving you crazy? OK. I'll get you a little more...]
...very wide state. At the end of the ride, my driver offered me some money
that I refused since I didn't need any. It was a good ride as we went 300
miles and Little America was a huge truck stop. It had perhaps 100 trucks
and also a lot of car traffic. At Little America, the first thing I saw
was two hippies and their dog hanging out in front of store.
I enthusiastically assumed/figured that they ought to be going to the EF!
rendez-vous as well! Whenever I'm going to or coming from large protests I
like to try and find people who are likewise involved, though I almost
inevitably fail to do so. As it turned out, they weren't going to the
rendez-vous, though they at least knew what EF! was and had just come
back from the national Rainbow Gathering - which I think they said was
in Montana. Anyways, I hit the luxurious bathroom to change clothes and
put on pants for warmth. The bathroom was in excellent shape (ex. fancy
faucets) and the stalls were like closets, since the walls went down to
the floor and up to the ceiling. The unfortunate feature was...
HOLY WAH!!! 44k???
I'm not gonna do that to you this issue.
I guess I WILL make it 2 or 3 parts for
you afterall. I know where I'll put it:
http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/ATI/trilogy/thereandback.txt
Read the rest there if you don't wish to wait for
the next couple issues. And I'm sorry if I put the
"...'s" in too much of cliff hangerish places.
No I'm not. (but then you knew that, huh?)
marco
*Appendix*
And here's a song spoof I rewrote two verses for
that goes as follows:
This land's not your land, this land's not my land
>From Silicon Valley to Wall Street
>From the corporate towers, to the factory farms
This land's not made for you and me
(need to add some verses here)
I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side, I saw ten thousand people
Shutting down the IMF and World Bank meeting in DC!
This land is your land, this land is my land
>From California, to the New York Island
>From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
_w_a_r_n_i_n_g_
`b`b`b`b`b`b`b`b_____j_u_s_t__
GATT # ???
(I've lost track. I'll figure
it out by next month, promise)
My ruminations on the whole thing can be found
on my website (http://www.davidrovics.com), one
of the first links you'll come to. Or you can
go there directly at :
http://members.aol.com/drovics/bonn.htm.
You've also got to check out the fabulous
Rinky Dink at http://www.rinky-dink.org.
This traveling bicycle-powered sound system
and radio station from England was in Bonn, and
we were all glad they were there.
The world needs more Rinky Dinks
__c_a_u_s_e__
d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^
_r_e_p_r_i_n_t
SEGNAHC - SOIBMAC - CAMBIOS - CHANGES
6. Activist Times Inc. (ATI): A diferencia de las otras
publicaciones, ATI no se limita a publicar noticias sobre
computadoras y/o teléfonos. Sus números incluyen normalmente
artículos con comentarios sobre eventos gubernamentales en
el ámbito mundial y otros temas de "interés general" (con
un gran predominio de notas develando teorías de conspiraciones
implementadas desde las más altas esferas del Estado y las
corporaciones, tendientes a mantener ignorante a la población).
Los artículos de ATI son generalmente cortos y suelen ser
escritos por un núcleo de cuatro a siete personas. Al igual
que 2600 magazine ATI sólo está disponible en hard copy
(impresa en papel) pudiéndose adquirir mediante reembolso
postal a nombre del editor que debe ser enviada a una casilla
postal en los EE.UU.
[ref]=
[http://members.tripod.com/fmuraro/organizacion_social_de_los_hackers.htm]
my best loose translation is:
6 ati a difference from the other pubs, ati isn't limited
to publishing stories on computers and telephony. Their
topics include normal articles with commentary about
government events and world stuff of general interest.
(With a little too much about conspiracy theories of the
state and the corporations, etc.) The articles of ATI are
generally short and appear to be written by a core group
of 4-6 people. Closest similarity to ATI is 2600 magazine
but one may be just hard copy while another is just web.
See? I told you it's my "best loose." Try babelfish
and see if they can't get you even more lost.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
Shoutz and gr33tz to the lead singer of
the band W4IK
got feedback?
ati@etext.org
