A view of Stevens County from Kristi's camera

We have experienced some heavy duty traveling in the last week or so. I suppose that one may expect these kinds of things at this time of year if one finds it necessary to move from one location to another. In spite of that, I found surprises in our most recent travels, and travails.

This is from one who has logged thousands of miles on icy highways with the snow blowing sideways across the windshield, blinded behind the wall of snow behind trucks hurtling down the icy highways at 60+ mph, and passing them to find vision once again on the other side.

This is one small example of our driving experiences. We always survived, although there were times when I was thankful that we did.

We almost always begin a long drive with a look at the weather forecast, and we did that. We knew that we almost certainly would be driving in snow at some time or other. I remembered that I could need gloves if we had to put on chains. I actually went back into the house and looked for my favorite gloves. I didn't find them.

We began our trials with a drive over Snoqualmie Pass headed for Colville last Saturday, November 20th. Other than being a long day after a night of playing music the night before, and a night of playing again after driving for 7 hours, it was not a problem. I was a bit crabby when we arrived, but I seemed to get over it before we began to play, and the night went well, in spite of a tiny crowd.

This trip was mostly to visit Kristi's cousins. It is a long drive, and we worked Friday night here in Tacoma as well. We stayed with her cousin Jack, and his wife Jane on Saturday night. This is one of Kristi's many cousins who live in the Colville vicinity. They have a nice house just outside of Colville. Jane is a very nervous little woman who talks constantly, and says she's been diagnosed with a nervous disorder. She is nice though, and I always find it interesting to listen to Jack talk about growing up on the dairy farm with his brothers, or dentistry in Colville. There are plenty of interesting stories. Jack is a retired dentist, and a habitual farmer. He's a friendly guy with no pretense. I always enjoy listening to him talk about his life, as I often do when someone has an experience so different from my own to put forth. They have purchased almost our entire catalogue of recordings. I wonder what they think of all of that? Jane put cookies, and instructions on where to find soft drinks in the room we stayed in. We slept well in the ancient bed provided.

The next morning we met the grandchildren, Gary, and Lane who were visiting Jack, and Jane, and had a waffles and strawberries breakfast before loading the car with computer and guitars and heading down the to club where we'd left our P.A., and loading that before we saddled up the Saturn wagon and headed for Rice, WA. That's approximately where the rest of Kristi's cousins live. Kristi's family used to spend Thanksgiving at the "Esvelt Ranch" every year. It is where her father was raised, and has some kind of a rootedness feel to it for her.

There are three households out there, and currently they all take part in running the "ranch". It is a beef cattle ranch. The son of one of the cousin's (Fred), Ryan, had an accident and broke his back in September. He is paralyzed, and currently living in Spokane so the brothers are all coming together (Bob, Chris, and Fred) to operate the ranch for him.

Three of her cousins live on the ranch, and it provides each of them with their own unique lifestyle. Of course life drives one's lifestyle like the landscape drives a riverbed, and the Esvelt cousins are no exception to those rules. In September Ryan, the son of Fred Esvelt, had one of those huge rolls of hay that look like giant marshmallows when they're wrapped in plastic run over him. It wasn't wrapped in plastic, but it broke his back, and paralyzed him with it's great weight when it rolled over him. It left him in a field for two hours alone, staring up at the sky before he was found.

The medical expenses are literally unbelieveable. He had medical insurance, but he has already run through that coverage. The community turned out for a benefit for him, and with an attendance of around 500 persons (Rice has a population of 300), they raised $30,000 for him. That's a big help, but only a drop in the bucket of expenses needed.

The cousins who live on the ranch are Bob, and his wife Becky; Fred, and his wife Wendy; and Chris, and his wife Patty. We stayed at the home of Bob, and Becky. It's a great house with a view of Lake Roosevelt. Bob & Becky had Fred & Wendy, and Chris & Patti over for dinner so we got to spend some time with all of them. They're all interesting, and warm people. It was a good time. All of the homes of the cousins are great places to be. Fred has built a house on the other side of the road directly above the lake, and Bob has a house that was already existing in an unfinished form, which he finished himself.

Here's a picture of The Ranch Esvelts

We left on Rice on Monday morning in a light snowstorm after a short visit with cousin Bob Esvelt, and dropping by the home of Fred and Wendy Esvelt before we left. The roads were frozen, and it was two hours to I-90 from Rice. You can see what the conditions are by the picture at the top of the blog. We hit I-90 at Ritzville, still snowing, but the highway was pretty much bare, and wet.

By the time we got to Snoqualmie pass it was snowing like hell, blowing about 30 mph, and at the bottom of the pass the news was that we would be able to make the pass with just winter tires. That sounded like what I expected to hear, and when I heard it had no intention of doing anything else. By the time we got just below the pass we were pushing 5" of snow on the road (or more), and we were in a blizzard. My windshield wipers got iced up, and I really could only see a blur in front of me. I had tire cables, and had no gloves. It was blowing about 30 mph, and, did I mention it, snowing like hell. I managed to get the cables on, and we got over the pass, but it was still snowing like hell. I opened the windows on both sides of the car so I could tell where I was in the road. I had a tiny space in the windshield that I could see anything through. I could see the blurry lights of a truck that was running in front of me. I could not tell that I was across the pass except that we were going downhill. I suspected, but didn't take that for granted. I consulted Kristi for her opinion, and her opinion was that we were now really headed downhill, and had crossed the pass. That's how little you could see. About the time we hit North Bend, I realized I had lost one cable, and the other one came apart so I stopped in the snow and removed it from the tire. I didn't want to try to run over Tiger Mt. with no help on my tires, so decided to take a chance on Seattle. It snowed all the way into Seattle, but no big deal in the total scheme of the story.

Well, that was the biggest mistake I've made in awhile. Although traveling was easy, there was a lineup to get on I-405, so we skipped that route, and decided to take I-5 back to Tacoma. I hadn't been listening to any news, and didn't know what to expect. Traveling was no problem until we got to I-5. After we passed the old Rainier Brewery building the traffic stopped. For us, it never did start to move again in any significant fashion. We did manage to get to the south end of Boeing Field after about 7 hours. For the last four hours on I-5 the gas gage was reading empty. Well, there's nothing dangerous about sitting in your car on the freeway except maybe getting too excited and having a heart incident, so we sat and relaxed listening to the radio. Eventually we got to the road that runs on the south end of Boeing Field, and managed to ease our way over there and get off the freeway. We filled up with gas and emptied our crankcases, and (silly us) headed back to the freeway. On the way to the freeway we noticed two different cabs that had parked and walked away from the situation. I guess they were from the Middle East or some other place where they don't have snow. As I approached I-5 I noticed that there was lineup, and I was going to have to creep up a small hill to get on the freeway. I decided to turn around and take my chances on the old Highway 99.

It took us nine and a half hours to get to Tacoma from the freeway interchange in Seattle. We had spent most of that time parked on I-5 with the gas tank reading empty. It was surreal. You could see the lights of cars far away up on So. Center hill parked on the freeway. We were at the end of Boeing Field for the longest time. It felt like the flying saucers should come down and start shooting, or the big dinosaur that hatched last spring would come and eat us, car and all. deciding to take 99 was the smartest thing I did all night. We arrived back here in Tacoma around 2:30 am. We had left Rice at 10 am, and we had hit Seattle around 5 pm.

The rental house we bought in Tacoma is almost done. The hot water was frozen here at our house, but the new house has had no such problems, and is being insulated as I write. I think we'll have a party there when it's done. I'll let you know. Steve N.

PS - We went to Skamokawa for Thanksgiving. Kristi didn't want to go, as she was a little freaked about driving, but I talked her into going anyway. She was right. It took us an hour to get outside the Tacoma city limits. We had fun though. There were lots of people, food, and good things to drink. Maybe I'll get to stay home for awhile now. I guess we won't get out on the road again until we hear it's gonna snow, and then we're gonna head straight for Seattle!

We're not very far from home today. That's by our standards. We're in a little town that is near where I grew up. We are in Sedro Wooley, WA. We are here as "Pressure Ridge", a dance music duo. We're playing in the heart of militarism, Sedro Wooley American Legion. I've got to admit that my attitude is less than stellar at times here, or at least has been in the past. The truth is that we are an appropriate band for this venue, and so all I really have to do is be reasonably friendly, play the music with a minimum level of competency, and things will be alright.
We listened to a book on our way here. It was an interesting book. It is the biography of John Lennon. I think it was somewhat inspirational. He was an interesting cat, and not so different from a middle class American. He decided what he wanted to do with his life early on, which I think helped a lot, and he was intelligent, which accelerated his success. It is clear that he was the bandleader for the Beatles, but we didn't finish listening to the book, so I will know more later.
I feel challenged by this trip, as it is a long automobile journey. It was at least two hours to get here, maybe closer to three. That is because there is a bottleneck between Seattle, and Mt. Vernon, although we didn't get slowed down much this trip. These days, when we make a trip like this, I can't help but wonder how much longer we're going to be capable of doing this. We are in a motel until noon today, but after we check out we will have no real option of getting anymore sleep, and we work until 11:30 pm, and at that time make the two hour drive back to Tacoma. We won't be ready to leave until after midnight, and I guess that means we'll be back in Tacoma around 2 am.
We have been working on an old house that we bought. I've been getting up between 5:30, and 6 am most days, which means my circadian rhthyms are out of psynch with this schedule we are pursuing here. The last couple of days I've tried to get back on this schedule, and I'm hoping for the best. I was yawning during the last set last night, but we stayed up for at least an hour more at the motel room watching TV when we got back here.
They have a continental breakfast here, so we're going to go and do that right now. It's a nice motel (for a change), and the price is only $14 more than the crappy one down the road (I say this because we've stayed there). After we get something to eat, we'll hang out here for awhile, and relax. Later we'll go out and explore the Skagit Valley, maybe even go visit a friend. For now I'm gonna get along little dogie get along. This environment may be a challenge to my consciousness. Life might be a challenge to that at this point.

We had our continental breakfast. It was pretty good, apart from the cold hard boiled eggs being a little old and rubbery. There was plenty of sugar, and in America, isn't that what really counts? I had a bagel with butter, and honey, and they had cut the muffins in two. One of the muffins was pure sugar, and the other one had large chocolate chips in it. They had done something smart too. They had watered down the apple juice with sparkling water. It was good, and probably went further than just water would have.

While we were in the lobby having breakfast, the maids began to arrive. The first one was approaching middle age, and latin. I'm not sure she spoke any significant English, but got along great with the other staff who treated her like she was less than them, but in a subtle way. It seemed like they were all great friends, but when she tried to tell the clerk in the office how to say "six" in Spanish the clerk pretended to try to pronounce the word, and self consciously told the Latin woman that she was trying (laughing while she said it). It was a subtle dimunition for sure, but there nonetheless. We didn't pay a lot of attention to this.

We may, or may not be asked to come back here. It all depends upon whether anyone shows up tonight to dance. Last night they followed the band that is regularly on this job to their other gig, and left us hanging. It is an old crowd, and they don't want any change. They apparently will do anything to resist change. It is a strange thing, this resistance to change. The world around them is changing, like it or not. It has been changing. These folks are in their 70s, and 80s. They have seen the world change. They chose to stay in their little town, and perhaps some of them moved here for one reason or another. These little towns do try to resist the winds of time, but in this country, that is impossible. My own hometown has changed so much that it pains me to visit it.

When I was a boy I spent most of my time in the fields, and forests with my dog. As I write this a sense of joy comes over me just remembering the wind in my hair, and the cool pacific rain on my face. We would run through the fields, in a hurry to get to the slough, or the river, or Pioneer Pond, or the creek, or just to linger in the forest listening for the sounds of other creatures, and smelling the plants that grew there.

About ten years ago Kristi and I were coming back from a road trip to the Okanogan area and I decided to take a look at my old hometown, Arlington. We drove to the top of the hill where my parents had built a house so many years ago. The swimming pool at the house was gone, although the house appeared much the same as it was. The striking change there was that when you looked over the hill, the trees that my father and I had planted were now thirty or forty feet high, and obscuring the view of the valley. After looking at that, we drove to what was Murphy's Farm where we would go in the throbbing heart of winter and sled on a hill in one of his fields. He had shot one of our dogs for chasing his cows years ago. Now there were condominiums there, and the creek that ran through the farm was just a muddy trickle. There was certainly no salmon run, and the forest had been cut. I was almost in tears as I looked at this scene. I'm sure it has changed once again since I made that trip.

Actually, we did make one more trip up to Arlington. The last time was with my parents. They were on their last legs, and we made the trip in our car, which was less than ideal because a previous owner had put the plastic film to make the windows a sunscreen on them somewhat badly so that the people sitting in the back seat didn't get a very good view of what was going by. Nonetheless we visited the old house, and now the trees that had stood so proudly in the valley had been cut. The land had been sold again, and the landscape changed. I can imagine that once again it looks different if I took the time to visit. My mother enjoyed that drive that day. If I recall correctly, my sister Veta was with us as well.

If I'm honest, I can tell you that Kristi and I played in Arlington at the American Legion Club there. I tend not to be very sociable when we play these kinds of clubs, as I'm afraid that someone will ask the wrong question, and I'll give them an honest answer. These are bastions of jingoism, and militarism. They don't ask questions, and they send their young men off to be killed and maimed at the drop of a hat, pretending that waving a flag, or getting drunk at the American Legion Club will suffice to atone for the meaningless sacrifices. I suppose that in the end, it tells you just how much of a whore I am. It pays the bills. It also keeps us musically in shape.

This internet connection kind of ebbs and flows here. One moment it will be at optimum, and the next it will be barely keeping us connected. I guess it's like a shower at a motel, although I think that for the most part those kinds of problems with water have been solved. I'm going to wrap things up here. I'm looking forward to getting out in the community here today. I will try to be more open and connective with the people here. As much as I get frustrated with folks, I feel that at some level they could be capable of understanding their world, and would if they could see the use of it. One thing about traveling the world is that you get to know that the species is pretty much the same over the entire breadth, and width of this earth. One should be forgiving of one's fellow humans, although we should not stop trying to find understanding, and spread that around when we do find it. And so this is the hypocrisy of my situation. I am just like the corporations who do what they do to make a buck. Even as the CEO may see the harm to the earth in his actions in his position, he bulls ahead with the purpose of making money. I guess the fact that I'm not able to honestly connect with these kinds of audiences is the same thing in a way. I suppose it's why I refer to Pressure Ridge as the janitorial service of musical performance. It's just a job ma'am. I was just doing my job. I've always said that this kind of performance from us would not go on forever, and it won't. For now it is necessary though.
Steve Nebel
Saturday, October 16th, 2010