bluefishofchaos.com

Trip Post 3

2008-04-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

There are a whole lot of mini-movies in this photobucket folder.

My camera is semi-broken, so I can only take movies, but not pictures.

I better hurry, I only have 4 minutes left on this computer. Darn webcomic addiction.

Peace!

Erich

Trip Post Supplemental 2

2008-04-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

I'm about 10 miles from the NC/SC border. I'm feeling good, if a bit sore. I went to a "AME Zion" church yesterday evening. It was neat, it was a really different feel than what I'm used to, kinda "old-time church".

I've apparently lost the card reader for my camera's memory card, so no mini-movies until I get another.

See, this is why I usually don't journal or blog. I don't really have a lot to say.

Anywhoo, peace all.

Erich

Trip Post, supplemental

2008-04-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

Woot. I am at Brown Library in Washington, North Carolina. My camera is kinda broken now, so I can only take silent movies, but not pictures. I will upload them to my photobucket movie folder. Eventually.

Things are going well. I'm making good distance on this nice, flat part of the country.

I might blog a bit later. Peace!

Erich

Part 1 addendum

2008-04-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

the harping workshop I took at the Irish Spring Festival? It was by the Harping for Harmony group, http://www.harpingforharmony.org

oh, and the Friendly Bass and Buck Shop has a website, http://www.friendlybassandbuckshop.com/

Bicycle trip part 1b

2008-04-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

Oh, I haven't posted a picture of myself yet, have I?

Smexy, yes?

Anyway, when we last left our hero, he was climbing tall mountains with a ten-speed bike.

I was passing through Preston County when I saw this sign:

I was intrigued, so I asked a guy unloading wood from his truck what it was. He said it was a woodworking place, that made hand-made wooden spoons and spatulas and such. I eventually got to talking to this guy, Ralph, and helped him unload the wood from his truck. He then took me with him to feed his horses and then fed me dinner (leftover from his Easter dinner). We talked a lot, about politics, history, economics, and whatever else, but I once again forgot to take any pictures. It was late, so he let me camp in his yard, and then I went to the Treenware place in the morning.

Treenware was neat. Here is their website
I got a guided tour, and a free spoon! Here is the owner-guy who gave me a tour:

You can find more pictures at my photobucket account, and a video here

Wow. Blogging takes a lot of time. I'm gonna fast-forward and skim over a few things. See my photobucket account for more pictures.

Cool springs. It was a "Last stop for x miles" type place.

It had a general store/restaurant thing on the inside, and a tractor-theme park and museum outside.

There were several times on the trip that I saw turkeys.

I forget what river this was.

Ah, berm, my friend, how I missed you.

I camped beside the road, there was a nice sunset.

In the morning, I met this guy, he stopped by and offered me coffee.

Jim Hudson was his name. He was returning home from his own little trip. *sigh* Motorized wheels...

This section of the trip had the highest mountains.

Yes, I climbed those. Pushing a bike. Nice long downhills though.

I passed through Maryland, too.

Heh. There's a dirty joke in there somewhere.

Back into West Virginia.

Come to think of it, there's probably a dirty joke in THAT, too.

Hey, I wonder where they stole that from? :p

This was at the beginning of a 5 mile 8 degree slope. It was fun. Of course, part way down I had to stop to fix my front brakes, but it was a fun downhill ride anyway.

Romney, WV, was nice. They had a neat mural in their library

and some nice middle and high-school artwork

I was talking to the librarians, Amanda and Trisa, and Trisa suggested I go to her family's diner, "Shirley's Diner", for dinner. Which I did. It was very good. Afterwards, they said Trisa had picked up the bill for me! Yet another example of the incredible generosity and kindness I've had the privilege to receive on this little adventure.

Romney is also the home of the WV School for the Deaf and Blind.

I didn't even know WV had a school for the deaf and blind.

I went and asked at Covenant Baptist Church if I could camp out on their lawn for the night, and they of course said that was fine, and I stayed for bible study (it was Wednesday). I did some portrait drawing of the pastor, Rev. Quentin Simpson, and his grandson Bryce. I'm hoping I can become good enough at portrait drawing that I can make money from it when my meager savings run out.

Oh, and I can't forget to mention Reed's drugstore just outside of Romney. They gave me free vitamins, and plastic bags to cover my gloves so they wouldn't get soaked in the cold, cold rain.

Skipping even more stuff... I made it to Virginia.

I made it to Winchester (late)

In Winchester, I met yet another nice couple, at a 24 hour laundromat, who bought me a (very) late dinner and drove me, in their truck, out close to Bluefield (where my sister lives). Their names were Cruz and Katia Alvarado. They have a restaurant on Rt 50, that I apparently passed, that I would like to visit some time.

Then I visited my sister for a while. She lives in a great place for sunsets.

Went to a contra dance, two actually, and an SCA thing with my sister...

Then, because my brother was also visiting, he was able to give me a ride back to where he lives, Virginia Beach. So I skipped most of Virginia. Score!

So here I am, at my brother's apartment, getting all this uploaded, typed, and whatnot. Thanks to everyone I've met along the way! My next task is to email you all. Much love to my family.

Peace and love,
Erich

Bicycle trip part 1a

2008-04-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

Yo. I've completed the first leg of my cross-country journey. I've made it from Sissonville (close to Charleston) West Virginia to Bluefield (close to Winchester), Virginia, now visiting my sister, nice to have a place to take a hot shower and a couch to sleep on for now. My sis wants me to go to a contra dance this weekend, then I will head off to Virginia Beach to visit my brother. Then down to Florida. Then up to Colorado, go down to hit route 66 and across to California. That is the plan anyway. I camp at churches (and get permission whenever I can), or just on the side of the road (in places that would be hard for cars to run me over).

I promised Kat and Kita that I would take lots of pictures, and I did. About 1500 pictures so far (minimum size on a 1 Gigabyte card, with plenty of room to spare), and ALL of my pictures and videos can be found in my photobucket account, here is the first thousand and here is the second thousand. The first thousand are not completely in order because I was still figuring out the mass-upload system, and the second thousand aren't titled because that was taking way too much time.

But anyhoo, I want to do a little summary of my trip so far, so...

My Part 1 Recap:

Yay! The road. Right off the bat I got lost. Woo. Google "no highways" directions. The Google directions and actual roadsigns didn't match up. I eventually just use a traditional paper road map.

Some first-day images of WV road.

I met a nice old lady at that store.

Cooking with my alcohol stove in the evening. I stayed under a church's picnic table shelter.

One random shot of an abandoned house.

Again, you can see more random stuff here and here. But yay for downhill!

I saw many abandoned stores and gas stations along the way.

Cows!

It was a grueling ride, but the scenery was pretty neat... most of the time.

and so on. Again, look in scraps[link] for more.

Horses!

I think they were afraid of me.
It was a nice area though.

I rode through this one area that belonged to the "J. B. White Hunt Club" or something like that. I rode a loooong way without ANY houses and maybe one or two cars went by, and it was getting dark. It kinda creeped me out. Nice sunset light though.

I eventually got back into civilization, and camped by the road. I got a little bit of breakfast at a fishing and hunting store, "Friendly Bass & Buck Shop in Summersville, WV", and they lived up to their name, there was a really nice lady running it, she had just opened up for the morning. I talked to her for a little while.

One advantage to camping on the side of the road. You have a lot of incentive to get up early, so I got to see some nice sunrises, a rarity for me usually.

It turns out, I had gotten lost again! I had taken the wrong road, and ended up south of where I wanted to go. I had to get on a partial-access highway for a little while to get to where I wanted to go. Scary with the big trucks and lots of traffic, but very scenic, and I usually had a good amount of berm to put between me and the traffic.

In case you are wondering, there are "full access, partial access, and restricted/controlled access" highways. Controlled access means you can only get on and off the highway by on and off ramps. Partial and full access highways have stores, houses, and roads branching directly off the highway. I think you are allowed to walk and bike on full and partial access highways...

This, my friends, is a bottle of urine.

Tossed out by a trucker, no doubt. Just in case you can't tell the scale of this picture, that is a two or three gallon bottle. Impressive. I think I saw two or three bottles like that. Pity whoever has to pick up trash.

Yay, downhill again! An advantage to taking these crazy highways up these crazy mountains, is that you get some crazy-long downhill stretches. Crazy fun.

There was a lone slipper beside the highway! Heh.

Closup!

I do not recommend biking on highways. Probably not very safe (but then, what biking is? There aren't many bike trails where I live, and none for this first part of my journey).

For non-West Virginians, this is how we do roads. We blast large sections of mountain out of the way. Woot.

So, especially on the highway, you see a lot of this sort of thing.

Later, in Sutton, I stopped at a hardware store to get some parts (washers to hold my water-bottle holder on), they had baby ducks! (For Easter. Apparently some people raise ducks for easter. I believe as pets.) They were very cute. (The pics might be fuzzy. I turned the flash off so I wouldn't scare them.)

(more pics of baby ducks here!)

For a little while I did not have a tent. The tent I had at home was a huge 7-8 man tent, way too heavy and big to take on a bicycle, so I took a tarp, until I could buy a cheap tent (which I did, at Wal-mart for $20, and I barely fit in it cross-wise :p). This is one of my better set-ups with the tarp. I used two bungee cords on a fence.

You know those town welcome signs like this?

This is what sutton had on the back of theirs.

Awesome. Hilarious thing to see when I'm riding out.

But not as hilarious as this.

Imagine two really juvenile people arguing.
"You're a gambling problem."
"Your MOM is a gambling problem."
Heheheheh.

Sutton had some interesting shops, by the way. It looked kinda tourist-towney. It was off-season though.

Sculpture shop. Check out the statue sniffing his pits :p

Mini-castle courthouse. They tried hard to be intimidating.

Churchey huh? It is a theatre.

With a one-screen theatre. I'm told that movie is okay.

But anyway

Bye Sutton.

This place processes trees. I have no idea what into.

I might research and find out when I have time.

Lots of run-down stuff. I think this place is still functioning though, and if it works, who am I to criticize?

Awesome. A mini-post office. There were several tiny post offices along the way like this.

Mini-waterfall!

Mini-church!

Huh. Apparently, I'm in Ireland.

Yup, I'm in Ireland. By an incredible amount of luck, or probably God's divine guidance, I was just in time for their Irish spring Festival.

It was friday, and I wanted to get in out of the rain for a while, maybe get some hot food, so I thought I'd check it out.

There were lots of people there. They did, indeed, have hot food and a place to get out of the rain. They also had square dancing with live music.

Because of the lighting, and because my camera is kinda sucky, I couldn't get a good picture of the musicians.

They had several performances. Look for a video of a kid clogging here. Too bad my camera doesn't have sound :(.

I danced! The atmosphere of the festival was very open, and I was encouraged to dance. If you have ever been exposed to square-dance culture, some square dancers get pissed off at newbies who don't know what they are doing. There were very few square-dance snobs here. I tried it, and it wasn't that terribly different from contra dancing (similar to square dancing but much friendlier to beginners).

I danced with this girl several times. Very nice girl. In college, though she looks younger.

More poeple dancing.

It was fun dancing, but it did a number on my knee. My knee was already acting up from biking so much (it eventually got better), and dancing all evening only agitated it.

Lots of green.

Oh, here is a decent picture of the band, plus the "king and queen" of the festival. The people will elect a new king and queen for the next year. I didn't vote.

They opened up their church for me! They were really nice (and impressed, I think, that I danced and participated), and they opened up their church so I wouldn't have to sleep out in the rain. I was very impressed with them. They convinced me to stay for Saturday, because most of the big events were on Saturday, and I really needed to recuperate. I'd been on the road about a week at this point. Very generous and nice people in Ireland, West Virginia, though.

I got to take a beginner harp playing course. It was neat.

The harpists were part of a circle from... [I'll find this info later].

I did not get to do the road-bowling, which was a big thing for the Irelanders, and a big attraction for the festival. Oh well. I'm told there were a huge amount of people who participated anyway, and it took forever. I relaxed most of the day. But I did get to see Bum the Wonder Horse.

I'm not kidding.
Bum did tricks.

In real life, the performance had a lot of lag time. It was a nice horse though. Very well behaved when you got close to it, and you weren't afraid of getting kicked when you walk around behind it.

He pushed a trike.

He pulled a wagon.

He pushed a trike and pulled a wagon at the same time.

"lol" as they say.

She seems to be having fun at least :p.

Oh, the stone thing.

They had a whole lot of craft things. Which you could buy.

Oh, hey, this lady had a lot of hand-woven stuff made from hand-spun wool.

Angora? What is angora?
Ask and ye shall recieve.

Angora is a type of rabbit. I learned something new.
I bought that headband by the way. We got to talking, and she gave me a nice deal on it. Everything at the festival was reasonably priced anyway, and I was actually able to eat good, hot food and stay within my budget.

Everything was blarney-this and leprechaun-that :p.

They even had a parade.

Though I wonder what it is like when it is NOT election year.

West Virginia has atvs. 4-wheelers. One more use: they make excellent parade vehicles.

That building in the background was where the square dancing, and such took place.

There was a harp concert.

She was really good

Sunday I ate chili and cornbread (for cheap! Really, the whole weekend had very reasonably priced food. But for the Sunday chili and cornbread, you got a lot of food for your money.) There was a gospel music ensemble. They played a very appropriate song for my leave-taking, but I forget exactly what it was.

back on the road again

Ah, this is when I bought my tent.

Funny story. I went in and bought the tent, and a front basket for my bike, as well as a new front tire. (The old tire was very old. The rubber on the side was mostly gone, and the material under it was starting to fray.) So I installed my bike basket, then I thought, "oh, I should probably set up that tent real quick just to make sure it is big enough for me" because I bought the smallest (and lightest) tent they had. So I was setting it up, then the Wal-mart manager came out and asked why I was camping in front of his store! I should have said "Dude, do I look like I'm stupid to you?" but I just explained that I was setting it up to see if it was big enough, since I couldn't set it up inside his store before I bought it. He offered to let me camp (for one night only) behind his store, and I thought that was nice of him. Then I walked my bike around his store and found it was a wet, boggy mess all around his store. Thanks, Mr. Manager. I did find a place close to the loading docks beside some pine trees that was raised and free of sogginess.

Next stop was Weston. I actually stayed another full day here because they had some neat architecture I wanted to take pictures of. Also, they had a library and I caught up on my webcomics. :D

there is a video of this building here

And that brings us to what the Weston natives refer to as "the hospital"

also known as

the trans-allegheny lunatic asylum.

Very interesting, it is worth seeing if you are around the area. I paid a chunk of money to take the tour, and it was worth it. As you can see from the picture, it is a tremendously huge building, it was all lunatic asylum. The tour was very informative. I had a tour guide who had almost fifteen years of experience working, as an aide, in mental health, and he gave me a very different viewpoint on asylums. For example, by today's standards, what they did in asylums back in the day might be downright abusive at times, but that was still an improvement on how insane people were treated before:

being locked in a shed behind their family's house in chains, or tossed into a poorhouse without any care at all, or worse.

Another neat thing about the asylum was the quality of the building materials. A lot of the wood you see painted over is mahogany, many of the walls are marble, and the whole building is made of hand-cut stone. It was very impressive.

The hospital was functioning until about 1995. I forget all the details, but here are some pictures from my tour:

the faces carved by the Irish stoneworkers to ward off evil spirits

this was my tour guide!

many sections of the building were closed off, because they were not stable. (I had to sign a waiver to take the tour.)

more mahogany

these things folded out into window covers. (Notice the bottom one is missing. A lot of things have been stolen from the asylum.)

The doctor's apartment's balcony

(doctors are the royalty of a hospital)

yup, this is mahogany too

as is this

Notice the double doors, so they could be locked in during the night

I thoguht the laundry shute looked cool.

I believe this was the visitor' room, to protect visitors from the paitents when they visited their interred family.

and this is one of only two places left in the asylum that show where they, in the olden days, used to chain up the insane that they couldn't control. (The caretakers really did try to do good, but they had to balance out the practical problems of dealing with crazy people who try to hurt or kill them every day. Besides, after the hundredth time of getting bitten, beaten, and hurt by people you were trying to help, how would you feel?)

Heres the other faces!

These were visitor and staff rooms, I believe.

This is a balcony view of the theater and rec room

And that is the asylum. I have more pics here. It was a really nice building, that just needed to be cleaned and re-painted, with a little structuaral work here and there...
Except for the part that they had held their halloween party at last year.

It was an educational experience. I learned some history and gained a new perspective on the insane and mental asylums.

Back on the road. The rainy road. With lovely, lovely country scenery.
769

Eventually, I had to get back on a highway-ish part for a little while.

In Clarksburg, I stopped at a church and asked, at a little house that was on the church's property, if I could camp there for the night. These fine people:

are Pastor Bob and Susan Phillips. They were from Louisiana, and not only fed me a fine Cajun dinner, but opened up the church's gym so I could sleep indoors and take a shower! (It was raining too, and I hadn't taken a shower in a couple days, so I really needed it.) They were really nice and went out of their way to help me.

By then, the setup I had for my bike had stopped working. I was hoping I could buy some "paniers", those bike-saddlebag type things, instead of strapping my loaded backpack to my rear rack (it wobbled horribly, and eventually bent the rack supports, until I had to carry my backpack on my back), but the only bike shop between Charleston and Winchester, was "Holy Moses'" bike shop in Clarksburg, and he did not have any.

I didn't like this "Moses" guy. He told me in a not-very-subtle way how much of an idiot he thought I was. Sure buddy, if I could afford to stay in hotels every night and eat at restaurants every day, then no I wouldn't have to take so much (heavy) camping and food stuff with me, and if I could afford it, sure I'd get a top-of-the-line aluminum-titanium aerospace-designed featherlight bike (that you happen to be selling), and sure, if I had a good job and my own place to live, then I wouldn't be going on a bike trip during this cold and rainy time of year for an indefinite length of time. He also didn't want my trashy presence making his store look bad. Prick. (Sorry folks, but he really pissed me off.)

I did get a new rear-rack from him, and a rear light, but since he didn't have what I needed for my bike, I made what I needed! View my upgraded bike.

Too bad I don't have a "before" picture. But I attached the old rack to the front, bought two smaller baskets for the front and two larger baskets (just like the handle-bar basket) for the back, and attached all of them with pipe-clamps and a few zip-ties. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It distributes the weight better, and keeps the weight low and close to the center. The zip ties in the back are just to keep it from wobbling.

Upgrading my bike took an afternoon to find all the parts I needed and a day to assemble everything. I was in a huge shopping area, with a Lowes and a Wal-Mart, which was convenient.

But on the road again...

Ooh, a Winebago.

All along the way, there was junk like this all over the place. Election year. Yay.

Heh, Duckworth.

This section of my trip was kinda harsh. The road was narrow and had no berm, but the really bad part was that the drivers were insane. I was told, too late to change my course, that I took the absolute worst way over into Virginia. This section

was the worst part (because of crazy drivers). The section that everyone warned me about wasn't actually that horrible.

Hills, yay.

Route 50, from Clarksburg to Winchester, though a terrible way to bycicle, is very scenic.

I stopped at a "T&L Hot Dogs" chain, it was kinda neat.

Huh, I did not know that West Virginia had a National Cemetary.

Apparently I missed Pub I.

The birthplace of Mother's Day? Who knew?

Oooh, historic.

Nice enough place.

See that black stuff on the sidewalk and road? That is coal dust. (More like coal pebbles.) We're in coal country now.

I've only seen these motorcycles on on pictures from the internet.

Too bad there aren't fast children playing.

A historic staircase in Grafton.

There was an old abandoned house there...

There were some books just inside a doorway there!

Some of the books looked interesting. I asked an old man passing by in a white van, and he said the house was condemned, and that all the stuff inside was going to be thrown away (including the books). He thought it would be fine if I took some of the books. I had to be careful, because there was broken glass all over the place, and the floor a couple feet from the door was caving in. I stayed in the doorway and reached in to get a couple of books. Here are a few of them:

I was going to camp at this church in Grafton, but a guy passed by and invited me to stay at his house. So I did! But I forgot to take any pictures :(. We talked a lot though. He had had an interesting life. He smoked a lot too, and my lungs hurt after I left the morning after :(. He was a really nice guy though.

On the road again... hey look, Pub III!

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but it snowed. A guy said I could stay in his "truck box" for the night. (One of those multi-purpose boxes they can put on trains or trucks). He was using it as a storage shed.

No more snow! Just some pretty clouds.

It was Easter Sunday, and I stopped at a church to attend. (I usually try to attend a church on Sunday morning at least.) A nice family invited me to Easter dinner! It was really good.

Up in the mountains, many people had goats and sheep instead of cows.

Even for pre-spring, it was scenic.

This blog post is getting huge, so I'll finish writing this up in part 'b'.

Peace and love,
Erich

Link of the day: Purgatory Tower (a webcomic) needs a moose character.

Sharpie Experiment 5

2007-02-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

I have mixed feelings about this piece. I was pretty haphazard choosing my colors, and it shows. I need to work on my expressions, too. Her "angry face" looks too much like a "constipation face" :p.

I have a job now. At McDonalds. Meh. The manager seems like a nice guy, and it will probably be nicer than working at Ellen's, at least. I'm looking into apartments right now. I'm still hoping to get this other job, at Pro Graphix, making signs and customizing cars, but this is a slow season and they don't need anyone for a couple months.

Peace all,
Erich

Do not adjust your monitor...

2007-01-29T18:36:00.000-08:00

I created this monstrosity with a 24-pack set of Sharpies. I like the lineart, at least, and I've figured out that sharpies don't blend very smoothly. I can say I know how to do "psychadelic" now. So it isn't all a loss, at least.

That's about it. Still applying for jobs. Still waiting for call-backs.

Peace.

2007-01-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

Sharpie Test 3

This is my latest pic. I was experimenting with a cheap set of colored sharpie markers. This one turned out alright. The colors are a bit garish. You can see Test 2 here if you want. If they had grey and something I could make fleshtones out of I would like them a lot more. Also, they smell bad, and the ink doesn't stop smelling for a day or so.

It's cheap though, and you can blend without 'tainting' the marker tips. I might look for more online, to see if they have a better color selection.

First post (Such an original title!)

2007-01-23T15:29:00.000-08:00

Just testing out this new bloggy thing. That's cool that you got a boat, Jes. You will have to show it to me sometime.

As some of you might know, I'm currently job-searching. I have one very promising prospect that I'm pretty excited about, working at a place called Pro Graphics here in Charleston. I will be doing some graphic design work (making signs for businesses), as well as some car modification work like pinstriping and adding spoilers. The only problem is that I am going to be replacing someone who is leaving, so they don't need to hire me for a while yet. Still, this would be a great job to get a foothold in the graphic design field.

I'll post some of the personal artwork I'm working on right now in a later post.

Hey Jes, how do I embed this on my webpage?

Peace all,
The Fishy!