Girls, Girls, Girls and the History of Luminous Motion

Waiting in Edmonton, suburb of Cairns, until the four white horseman of the Apocalypse come to hand deliver my tank. Is it the Apocalypse yet? I'd like my tank please.

Catching up on the bits I ain't posted up yet. This bit, once again, will be long and it's old. Me posting my crap about living The High Life have been all out of order. New stuff will be posted a bunch in the next week or so to catch up. Besides, you're in Christmas mode and won't be reading this until January. And since I ramble, you'll be skipping over most of it anyway just looking for nekkid photos of pub waitresses. Another photo page is coming soon but I still haven't taken any photos of pub girls. I need to cover Cairns to Cooktown to Cairns to Normanton to Three Ways to Katherine to Darwin to Katherine to Broome to Saltfire to Port Hedland to Dampier which is where I'm typing this intro now.

And just in case you're wondering, today is Monday, December 13 and I have 26 more days of anti-seizure medication on me. There's another 60 day supply waiting for me in Melbourne.

Girls, Girls, Girls and the History of Luminous Motion
mid-November to early December, 2004

Waiting in Edmonton, suburb of Cairns, until the four white horseman of the Apocalypse come to hand deliver my tank. Is it the Apocalypse yet? I'd like my tank please.

I'm a barely invited houseguest camping in the backyard. I showed up to meet up with Pat to go on the Bevels and Bullshit ride and pick up my tank. No luck with the tank and after a few days I got the heave-ho because, as They say, "houseguests and fish stink after 3 days". Today is November 24. I want to head north towards Darwin before the wet starts, but that's looking bleak.

Pat is funny in a dry way. He's got a good way of teasing his kids. Ang, his wife, is funny too. She looks and laughs like Kizzy, only she isn't as stacked as Kizzy which as we all know is very important to you. All ya'll for the Southerners. Both are busy. Ang is back in school teaching and studying to be a teacher and Pat was heading off to Sydney for work. No point in keeping some stranger camping out by the pool.

So let's talk about Cairns adventures. I started with the tourist stuff and went to Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park - an Aboriginal tourist camp where you learn about how the Aboriginals mostly got wiped out by Whitey.

The Australians, not being as smart as Americans, didn't pass out small pox ridden blankets. Aussies also weren't smart enough to hunt the local animals to near extinction, start the Klan or make Keanu Reeves a movie star. Insert Ed McMahon "hey-oooooooo" here.

I learned how to throw a spear with a stick. I don't remember the local Aboriginal term for that, but in archaeology courses in the States the stick is called an "atl atl". Went on the Skyrail and took the tourist train back.

The Skyrail depressed me. I think I'll skip out on doing major tourist things alone. It's a beautiful ride in a gondola that travels over the rainforest with a couple stops to gawk at keen looking stuff. It's about a 6-pack long but that's just a guess as I had no beers. But the train ride back takes 90 minutes so make a guess. I was alone in a gondola wishing I was with a girl. It's great seeing neat stuff for the first time, but the tourist stuff isn't for me when I'm alone, I reckon.

I had a long beautiful journey thinking of ex-girlfriends that I shouldn't have broken up with. For some reason that I'm trying to figure out is why I only going out with a girl for around 6 weeks. No, it's not just me trying to get into their pants. I haven't figured this out yet, but at some point it'll sink into my thick noggin.

I'm 34 and there's been two girls I asked to marry. Both said yes. Both relationships fell apart badly. One was the girl I planned on riding round the world with -- think red headed girl and a '52 Vincent. I'm not year specific on the Vincents I want but that's how the song goes.

There's been two others that I probably should've married. One didn't happen because we were both drunks at the time. It was a love-hate relationship fueled on whiskey and chock full o' arguments over if the sky was green or red. She's getting a Ph.D. in nuclear astro-physics or some such nonsense now. But if we did get hitched, I'd probably be in a divorce court instead of in Australia.

The other was me just being panicky, I think. I seemed trapped and it ended. I've got a roaming eye. But I'm just looking, I'm not after another pair of thighs to scratch. I've never cheated on any of my girlfriends.

Who knows what would've happened if I didn't go out with girls for short periods of time -- there could've been others. The horrors... the horrors... And if I had married, the divorce rate in the US is over 50%. I'm certainly no better than anyone else which should be pretty obvious.

But it gives me something to think about on this ride. I wanted a slow bike so I'd see stuff and have time to think about crud. I like calling stuff "crud". The endless dreams of ex-girlfriends ended on this trip after the Skyrail realization. Not day dreams, just the average night dreams (no, not the sticky kind). I guess they came to the front of my mind instead of dwelling underneath.

Lately, I'd been dreaming of ex-girlfriends even back to my high school days. Girls I hadn't thought about in years. At least they don't age in my dreams. It's not like I'm a perv dreaming of hot 15 year old girls. They're not sex type dreams, just us hanging out. It's girls I went out with or knew who, in the dreams, haven't aged, gotten fat or had kids. I've only gotten fat and aged, so I'm two out of three with no desire for the third.

I wish I would've figured this out sooner, not that I have it completely settled now. One ex said in a bitter sarcastic way when I left, "so you're off to find a wife in another country" which isn't true. But it twisted like a knife in my back so maybe there's a bit of truth in there. Know any single girls with a motorcycle, wanderlust and willing to live cheap? This trip is a thought clearing process. I like to be in motion. This post is part of my history of luminous motion.

I've got goals for this trip. I hope to become more outgoing which will sound weird to most of my friends and will make sense to really good friends. I tend to shut up around people I don't know well. I remember most of my stories and I want to hear other people's stories so no point in me yammering on. I wonder if I could meet a girl sober. I have before but it seems like its been years. And if I did, would me being quiet spouting random chunks of sarcasm help or hinder?

I like to be in motion. Cars are good because you can have conversations with people in motion. I don't have the money or the desire to do this in a car. It's like I've isolated myself with a motorcycle. That's not true: I'm just writing that because I had to set up camp in pouring rain instead of just pulling over. Motorcycles give you time to think. I used to have a silver tongue but now I stumble looking for words. I need time to think of the words that I'm trying to think with -- if that makes sense. It's easier to understand something once you have a word for it instead of having words that lead up to it.

An example from my visit in the ICU. I wanted a sandwich but I couldn't think of the specific word "sandwich". I was describing what I wanted to eat by saying, "one of those things that you eat by having eating stuff in between other eating stuff". Someone said "sandwich" which was what I wanted to say. It's pretty fucking annoying to not be able to come up with the word "sandwich". So when you think of things as "eating stuff in between other eating stuff" instead of the single word "sandwich" it takes longer to reason things out if you catch my drift. Now I can ride, get frustrated trying to think of a word, spend plenty of time to figure out what word I want, and by the time I've ended the ride and set up camp, I can type out what I mean with minimum stumbling. Sidetracked again here but you're bored at work, aren't you?

Old motorcycles are good because they attract friendly attention. Good for me because I'm not used to talking to strangers. I'd make a horrible salesman. And I'm not greedy or competitive, so as I age, instead of being "Death of a Salesman", I'd be more of "Last Exit to Brooklyn".

Which is a long way of saying, that's why I'm not going to visit The Great Barrier Reef. I need a girl with me to share it with. I'm sure my attitude will change at some point. I'd hate to not walk 5 blocks to see The Great Pyramids because there's no cute girl around for me to tease on the secret climb to the top.

I feel I'm running out of time for a trip like this. If you've been reading my posts, there's a bit of a concern that instead of my mildly inconvenient "seizure free" epilepsy, it might turn into the regular seizure-matic epilepsy with the standard loss of drivers license that seizuring up the joint brings.

After words:

This was written in the area around Cairns about a month after I left. It was early in the trip and I was feeling homesick. I thought about what I'd be doing if I stayed in Sacramento and "more of the same" doesn't sound too entertaining. That cleared up most everything. I had an email conversation with an ex about the hows and whys everything fell apart which helped me out a lot. Hopefully it's done some good for her. Everything is settled right now as far as I'm concerned.

The History of Luminous Motion is a book given to me 14 years ago from a roommate who's name I don't remember. Angie Davis, I think. Lainie, is that her name? Am I confusing her with Angela Davis? What's she up to anyway?

The book is mediocre but I like the title so I re-read it every few years. It's about an 8 year old boy who rides around Central California with his mom. It's nice reading about an area you're familiar with in a book. His mom cheats men for money, and then moves along while the kid reads college textbooks. Some sort of bored super genius who acts like a creative writing grad student pretending to be 8. Not nearly as good as Doug Allen's Steven comics. Instead of a cactus yelling, "I NEED SOME SAUCE!", this kid croaks some guy with power tools after he gets involved with a Satanist cult done by another 8 year old. It has the stuff to be a black comedy but the schmuck who wrote it didn't mean it to be a comedy. But anyway, I like the title.

Speaking of Masters Thesis books pawned off onto the unsuspecting public, I gave up on Rites of Spring and bought Thin Red Line. I looked for anything written by F. Scott Fitzgerald or Evelyn Waugh but no such luck. Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler, James Joyce and nothing. I wish I had a list of The Library or whatever the list of books read by The Well Read People is but I don't. The bookstore had such a lousy used book selection that I would've even made another attempt at Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but no luck for that (probably thankfully). There was a new book about Gallipoli but I don't have the money to buy new books with. I wasn't going to read VC Andrews, a romance book or anything about The Royal Family. I decided to beat my head with Rites of Spring again but saw Thin Red Line. It'll make a nice comparison against Catch 22 which hopefully I won't bore you with unless I come up with some sort of crazy explanation that would be entertaining even though you probably haven't read either. "It's better to live on your feet than die on your knees". -- Joseph Heller, Catch 22.

Happy Birthday to my niece Sophie. And also to Jason Patrone, Dave Hart, Bill Lonsdale, Ann McAndless and Tom & Stacy. Man, who did I forget?

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Posted by DaveSmith at December 13, 2004 04:33 AM