Rainbow really started as soon as we got into Oregon on the 5. There were tons of kids hitchhiking on the freeway, which is totally legal there.
After the gathering we headed to portland to get back on the five where we hooked up with our newest traveling companion, Ashleigh who convinced us to go north instead of south and brought us here to bellingham. She's also a great singer and I'm eventually going to get her music up on here.
We hung out in portland for about a week, the first three days of which we found it nearly impossible to get any sleep due to the bike cops who come and wake you up all the time. Bike cops are my least favorite type of cop, despite the fact that everyone assures me they all smoke weed. Seriously I've never met a bike cop who wasn't a total douchebag. Since they aren't allowed to carry guns, or drive a patrol car, I must conclude that they are the most imcompetent, hot headed and newbie cops that don't even have respect from the cop community and aren't trusted not to shoot or run over people. These are the guys who enforce all the stupid insulting bullshit laws that don't really matter and shouldn't even exist. Like no sleeping in the park. Let me elaborate on the no sleeping in the park rule. It's not technically illegal to fall asleep while relaxing in the park or sunbathing or whatever, but since they don't want bums to sleep there, you're not allowed to have a blanket. you can sleep, but no being warm. Now since people like to take blankets to the park to sit on the grass, your allowed to have a blanket as long as you don't fall asleep on it. So if you have a blanket and fall asleep, it's a ticket. This law is totally designed to keep bums from sleeping in the park during the day, so you probably don't have to worry about it if you have a job and look clean, (although I did hear of a family that got a ticket while they were having a picnic) but if your homeless you're going to get a ticket. How many bums do you know that pay sleeping in the park tickets? Zero, that's how many! What is the sense in this? So apparently you're supposed to sleep in doorways, where the cops wake you up early in the morning instead. Only problem with that is that the best time to busk is around 11-3am, so you have to choose between making money and getting to sleep.
There's a couple of other laws targeted specifically at fixing the "homeless problem" that I have encountered in major cities, like the one that prohibits selling single beers and 40s in downtown areas. So if bums want to get wasted they have to make enough cash for a 6 pack or a bottle of liquor. That totally makes sense right? Make the alcoholics buy larger amonts of alcohol at a time, that'll stop them from drinking! Laws about drinking in public are intrinsically flawed when dealing with people who don't have any private property to drink on. Give that guy with a beer in his jacket another ticket, that'll keep him from drinking in public next time he still doens't have anywhere else to go!
Why can't all these cops go do something that matters? I had a very rude bike cop in portland tell me and my friends when we were trying to warm up under a blanket on a bench on a cloudy windy day that we couldn't sleep there. When we asked her where we were allowed to sleep, she told us we couldn't sleep in downtown because normal people were going to work this time of day. I think that's the crux of the biscuit right there. These laws are total bullshit to try to force everyone to be a certain type of person, to have a certain type of government sanctioned consumer driven environmentally unsustainable lifestyle.
A lot of people all over the world lived as nomads for a long time, tending livestock and following seasonal abundance from one place to the next. What's the biggest difference between them and the "normal" people in america today? Well, they can't own a bunch of useless shit because they have to carry it around. Which makes them shitty consumers.
Everyone wants land so they can do what they want and be the boss of the little area they own. So the landlord the governement or whatever authority figure won't be able to tell them what to do on their land. So they put up fences and they don't let anyone in. Private property is everywhere. What are the people supposed to do who don't have land? Rent it. Doesn't it offend anyone else that you have to pay just to be somewhere? It's not just at home, you'll find it in public too. Don't hang out around a truck stop too long or they'll politely ask you to leave for loitering. I've been kicked out of starbucks before because I sat down inside to drink the coffee I just purchased. They make up some bullshit reason like the "really strict no loitering policy" that every store claims to have on the books, but never gets enforced unless you look dirty. If you ask a normal person they'll say something like "that's just how life is, it's hard and you have to jump through hoops for the man in order to stay alive." If you contradict them, they'll get really offended and really self righteous, but you can tell it's just because you're threatening the worldview that they alreadly sacraficed their own right to happiness for.
Do you honestly believe that you should have to pay to be where you are, at all times?
You should have to pay to sleep?
You should have to pay to be able to grow your own food?
When I was a kid in elementary school, my teacher taught me that you need five things to live: air, food, water, shelter, and space. They only thing on that list that people generally agree that everyone has a right to get for free is air. So four out of five conditions for your life require dollars.
Do you really think people need money to stay alive? Since when is the government's job to be the "eveyone should be working at all times"police? When did the american dream become "I wanna get shitloads of money so I can have tons of cool stuff.
Do you really think you need all that crap? What do you think people did before most of the entertainment that people spend so much of their time consuming was invented? You think everyone who lived life a hundred years ago had boring depraved lives because they didn't get to spend a few hours a day watching tv? No, instead they spent time talking to each other. Humans are social creatures, like everyone always says, but no one has time for each other anymore. everyone's living on the clock, working 8 hours a day 5 or 6 days a week, getting home to tired to spend time doing anything but vegging out. And all for the money to either buy new shit or just pay the rent if your in the low paying job bracket.
Those of us in the know remember the american dream had something to do with freedom to make your own way in the world, to do meaningful work to provide yourself and your family with the things they need and to be able to practice your own beliefs in such a way as to live a life that makes sense to you. Now so many people subscribe to the view that life is hard and shitty and pointless. Too many of them think that someone seeking happiness or understanding of their life are just indulging in cloudy minded idealism, but is it really so idealistic to want to spend more time doing the things that actually fulfill your spirit rather than chasing your tail for rent month after month?
How long can you let the concept of normal being shoved down you throat everyday rule your life?
If you think that all bums are lazy alcoholics who don't want a job, dirty hippies who can't face reality or poor families that can't afford homes, you'd probably be suprised to find, after talking to a variety of homeless people, that the thing that unites the homeless isn't the inability to live a "normal" life, but actually the unwillingness to sacrafice the greater portion of their lives to a machine that doesn't work and no one likes. These are the same people who realize that we only get one life, and if you don't live yours you lost the game. We are the non-conformists, the ones who were so repelled by the system, that we would rather shit and piss outside, sleep in the rain, get kicked out of places, yelled at from moving vehicles, ridiculed, hated by people who don't admit to themselves why. We know our time is not worth any amount of this imaginary dust personified by paper, the extra substance in between you and and what you need, that the government uses to control the populace.
Oh yeah, and our carbon footprint is smaller than yours. You may view bums as parasites on society, but when you think about it, we eat your leftovers, we recycle your garbage, we live off the spare change you realize you don't really need. Most of us don't drive, and the ones that do tend to carpool. (You'd be surprised at how many people you can actually fit into a four-seater, let alone the big old vans that rubber-trampers tend to mob around in.
By the way, picking up hitchhikers is environmentally friendly and despite hollywood's popular portrayls, the vast majority of hitchhikers just really need a ride somwhere, and aren't actually interested in killing you. I mean, come the fuck on! How wrapped up are you in your awesome little self that you actually think the dirty sweaty guy out there in the 103 degree heat on the side of the freeway actually just wants to randomly kill you. News flash, the hitchhiker is actually a lot more likely to get picked up by a freak or a rapist than to actually be one. Also, there's a lot easier ways to get ahold of someone to murder or rape than by having them pick you up hitchhiking. You think a rapist is going to stand around on the side of a freeway all day in the heat or rain with his thumb out instead of just going to a bar and finding some naive drunk chick? No way. Gimme a break and be honest with yourself, you don't really think you're going to get murdered by a hitchhiker, so what's the real reason you don't pick us up? Is it the smell? Is it that you're afraid the conversation will be awkward, that we have nothing in common? Maybe your car will be crowded? All that gas you waste driving your giant SUV around by yourself would be much better spent taking me and my friends somewhere. You got to admit, the slight discomfort you may have to endure is nothing compared to the great favor you would be doing getting us out of that abandoned hell-hole of an on-ramp. Karma comes back around, as you may already have noticed and if you dare to perform a random act of kindness, you might be suprised to find out that we're really fucking cool. Probably cooler than most of your friends.
