When we last left off, I had set out to find myself by taking to the road.  Along the way I got lost three times.

Being lost is ok. Hell, I stay confused most of the time anyway. Being lost is just an extention of that feeling. And, that is a feeling I have become so familiar with as I have aged that, it is kind of reassuring. It has a homey feel to it.

Beyond getting lost, I have also had my van break down and get hopelessly mired in sugar sand as a plague of biting flies descended to devour me.  But, for this trip, I thought of everything! Well, everything I could think of, anyway.  And, I remembered almost half of that!

One of the things I either didn’t think of, or forgot I had thought of, was insect repellent. Not to worry, though, the mind-controlling, brain-washing, social-engineering, puppet masters in corporate marketing departments had my back.  They had done some thinking for me. They manufactured a handy bottle of this product and packaged it in such garish, eye-catching colors,  then positioned it right on the check-out counter of gas station/food marts around this great nation so, that while I stood in line waiting to pay, hands full of soon-to-be-purchases to the point that I could not flip through my phone while I waited to see what is happening on FB and such,  I would have no choice but to combat the boredom and look around for things I didn’t know I needed and…viola…bug spray!

So, I moved my package of Twinkies up under my chin and ever so gently lowered my jaw to maintain my grip on the fragile pastries, thus freeing up a hand to reach for the bug spray.  I can’t set my stuff down because the guy in front of me won’t slide his 12 pack of Bush Light further on up while he directs the clerk to the exact brand and packaging of the cigarettes that he wants.  Which takes at least 10 attempts. I don’t get that.  Smokers are so weirdly loyal to their particular brand and will never under any circumstances veer from it.  Unless of course, they don’t have any of their own, in which case they will take whatever someone else has.   What’s up with that?

Of course, by now, the bottle of Mountain Dew that I had wedged into the crook of my left elbow has shifted with all of this repositioning I have done to grab the repellant,  but I don’t notice because the cold of the bottle has caused that whole area to become numb and…everything falls to the floor as if I had just opened the bomb bay doors… except my Twinkies, which are now smushed under my chin as I stoop to hurriedly retrieve my stuff because the guy in front of me has moved on and the guy behind is making moves like he is going to jump line.  I’m pretty sure we’ve all been there.

But, the point is, I got the bug spray. Now that it was my turn at the register, I was in no hurry and engaged the clerk in conversation.  He was a young, beefy fellow who wore an unbuttoned dress shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders, and one of those brown camouflaged baseball caps with the mesh netting in the back. It advertised something rural like tractors, or chewing tobacco,  or salt blocks or something.  I don’t remember. His name was appropriate to the setting, Cletus or Jethro…again, I don’t remember.  What I do remember was asking him about the bug spray.

He explained that this was the most powerful stuff that they could legally sell up here on the counter next to his unpackaged, homemade deer jerky, which he pointed at by darting his eyes in that direction as he mentioned it. He seemed solemn and sincere.  He made the sale.

So, when the swarm descended, I laughed at their coming fate as I rummaged around looking for it. Deftly, I  whipped it up, took aim and depressed the plunger!

Of course,  this sleek, futuristic packaging that folks on Madison Ave had spent a fortune designing  in order to draw me in (pic related)…

…also left me at a disadvatage.  I guess the “Sportsmen” part of the brand refers to the “sporting chance” you give your quarry when the hunt is afoot.

The 360° swivel action with no real reticle, gives you a 50% chance of a complete miss, a 25% chance of a direct hit and a 25% chance of a critical failure that takes the form of spritzing the chemical directly into the fleshy part of your firing eye.

When it comes to sportsmanship, I am a purist.

I don’t think we need to run the numbers to know that what I did was assume a disciplined shooter’s stance and inflict myself with some instant regret.

How can I describe the sensation? Hmm.  Have you ever, through blurred vision and weakened grip brought about by illness, squirted yourself on the lip with Chloraseptic? Well, squirting 40% DEET into your eyeball at point blank range is not that.  But it does make you wish for that uncomfortable numbing sensation that Chloraseptic brings. This is more of a burning, stinging, oh-god-take-me-now-and-end-this-agony sensation.

And, to make matters worse, it had an even stronger effect on me because, the consensus is, I’m pretty FLY for an old guy.  Done in by a homophone. Drat.

And, just to compound my plight and give the fates a chuckle, I had to use my non-firing eye and extreme wariness as I pursued those fuckers, and pursue them I did. This was payback for what they made me do to myself by not being repelled when i wanted them off their turf.  But, this slowed my reflexes and left them free to consume my flesh to their hearts content.

I have proven that, indeed, you can’t win them all.

But, as was told in the last installment, I managed to get extracted from the Pit of Despair and made my way away from The Slabs. I paid 10 bucks (on the honor system) to the state of California for the privilege of parking the EM-50 Phantom Rambler along the coast of the Salton Sea and made camp.

Night falling at the rate of gravity

I unpacked my provisions, and having thought of everything, soon realized there is no way I would get it all back in.  But, that was a problem for Future Tommy to work on.  In-The-Moment Tommy set about making a fire and blazing up the grill

My plan was to eat so much food there would be ample room to repack the van.

Now, with room to spread out and get myself reoriented with my mission, I decided to work on another, often-overlooked obstacle that comes with living on the road. Laundry.

Back home we have all the modern conveniences that come with living in the future. One has simply to discard his clothing where he stands, then, while he sleeps off the lingering effects of a few stress-reducing beers, miniature elves or invisible robots or something, silently make a sweep of the premises, gather the garments, wash, dry, fold, hang, stow and otherwise put away said clothing.  It is amazing how it works. I don’t even want to know. It is like a very entertaining magic trick.

However, one can become spoiled by this convenience because, on the road, laundry is smelly,  time-consuming, space-consuming, expensive, and physically strenuous.

I needed a work-around.  I found one while cruising Amazon before I left. It came in the form of the Wonder Wash!

What will they think of next?!

It is said that anybody can build a bridge that won’t fall down, but to build a bridge that just barely won’t fall down, you need an engineer.  I’m so glad those brainy fellows took time off of improving our nation’s infrastructure to draw up the schematics for this puppy.

I ordered it immediately.   The design seemed so much better than the other thing I found, which looked like a plunger with a bunch of holes cut in it and you had to supply your own bucket.

The Wonder Wash was a one-stop laundromat…or so my imagination and their marketing department led me to believe.  Here is the thing itself. ..

It has about 200 essential parts (SOME assembly required) but only one of them can be classified as a “moving part”.  The rest are designed to fall off as you carry it from your house to the driveway for storage in your vehicle, thus rendering it completely useless except in taking up valuable space (note the missing cotter key).

It is roughly the size of R2-D2 but with none of his whimsical charm or usefulness.

It is said to pay for itself after only a few loads. But, more accurately,  what it does is,  after a few loads you no longer mind paying for public laundromats.

It is brilliant in its simplicity.  Here’s how it works:

You have a seemingly spacious drum that serves as the washing area.  You fill it with dirty clothes, then add water and detergent.  You assemble the stand and the braces, and the crank handle, pressurized lid, then you look for the missing cotter keys, can’t believe your luck that you actually found one. Then you go buy some thin gauge wire to hold the other end in place and crank the handle like an organ grinder (though you feel more like his monkey). Immediately you notice that something seems…off. and, it isn’t just the sheer weight of the thing, which is impressive for something that started out as hollow plastic.

Nothing seems to be…tumbling.  you open the pressure valve, remove the lid and do a visual inspection with your one good eye. The clothes have absorbed all of the water. There is nothing flowing freely.

Next, you feel the slight tug of panic because it dawns on you that this is going to take a lot more water than you had first calculated.  You are on the beach, but this is California. The water is about 600′ away and they don’t have sand like where normal people live – they have beds of tiny, sharp, tubular (in shape, not surfing lingo) sea shells that work their way into your shoes in a matter of a few paces and begin cutting your delicate feet to ribbons.

You put your thinking cap on. It is no shade from the punishing sun, but you do realize that, if you somehow make it across this gauntlet and to the water’s edge, you will still have to make it back across while carrying your weight in water – a substance, much like myself, by virtue of its fluidity, has an unpredictable center of gravity.

As difficult as it is to admit, you hear yourself quoting Kipling, “…you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din”. I have zero chance.

I subconsciously re-calculate my laundry water needs against my drinking water needs.  I factor in such things as, this is the desert, when you pour a bottle of Aqua Fina into the Wonder Wash you only get about half. The other half falls victim to an invisible sluice that is the dry, desert air and you can watch it turn into gaseous form and flow upward in a seperate stream as it comes into contact with the atmosphere.

But, like with most things, you have waited until the absolute last minute to perform this essential task and you must sally forth at all costs.  You pour in more water. The clothes absorb the water. You pour a bit more. It is absorbed.  Soon, you are standing like Aquarius dumping all of your life-sustaining supplies from every vessel on hand into this stupid little Wonder Wash (pic related)

naked,too, because all your clothes are filthy

Eventually, your T-shirts and socks have reached maximum saturation and expanded to the point that, even if they weren’t too heavy to crank one full revolution,  there would be no space left to get any real agitation going.

So, you pull out some of the load. Then some more…aaaand some more.  About when you get it to a workable amount, it occurs to you that one of these garments sucked up all of the detergent. But you have no way of knowing which one. Even if you sniff them, all you can smell is DEET, still.  So, you add more Tide.

Pleased with your grit and determination you proceed to crank the handle.  The drum spins (that is the moving part…the now 200 lbs drum). After a few revolutions, when you are teetering on the brink of complete exhaustion (and you refuse to think about how many times you will have to repeat this process to get the single small load done) you decide they are probably clean enough for hobo life (even though there is no way they really are) and stop cranking. You hook up the attachment that allows the soapy water to drain out of the bottom and THAT is when you realize you didn’t save any water for the rinsing cycle.  All you have is soapy clothes that need to be wrung out by someone with more wrist strength and enthusiasm than you now or ever will possess.

You release the pressure, open the lid and inspect the damage.  You have three “clean” socks – one white, one black, one gray – two undershirts and a pair of cut-off sweat pants (shorts).  You look around for something to kick that won’t hurt your foot. You find nothing.

You decide that you are a natural delegator, and that this will be another perfect assignment for future Tommy.

It takes an uncommon mind to draw up that design, but dammit, they nailed it…but just barely.

Speaking of uncommon minds…I miss me some Trixie.