The way up was beautiful. As we climbed the mountain slopes into northern California it got cooler and cooler and then there was snow on the ground and on the tops of the mountains. It was stunning and beautiful.
On the way we stopped for gas and he decided to go into a fast food restaurant, but I dissuaded him stating that we would be at the philosophy café in a few hours and we should eat there. That was a big mistake on my part. We should have ate before we got there, but hindsight being twenty twenty we cruised along into the mountains and up and up and up.
Now the buddy has a GPS system that he acquired when we did our Vermont trip together (only available in The First Book From The Ridge. Buy your copy today!) and it kept at the same time of arrival for us, then began to work it’s way backwards through time. Therefore my buddy, when driving up to the hot springs in Sierraville, can move backwards in time. Cool trick if you can do it. As we moved back in time we continued to percolate our brain with fruity cannabis goodness and chatted about freakiness and different world issues. His ear was throbbing again but he refused to stop as he wanted to get to the hot springs as soon as possible.
We got to the hot springs and went directly to the philosophy café for a meal and some pseudo hippy pithy culture. When we went in though, there was mass chaos and confusion as the woman cooking there was swamped and had been invaded by more people then they had seen in months. In other words she was ill prepared and had no food ready. People had been waiting for half an hour or more for their food and it was unknown whether we would be able to get fed or not. The prices were reflective of the far removed aspect of the diner so for about eleven bucks you get either pizza or pasta. The website said that there were meals between the prices of seven and twelve dollars, though the seven dollar meals were not in evidence. Nor the eight, nine, or ten dollar meals either. So we waited. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited. And as the unconsciousness of lack of sustenance in our stomachs drove us ever closer to cannibalism, they handed us a spinach salad. My head bowed over the salad, and raised a half a minute later with an empty plate in front of me. Now during this entire episode not only did the “cook” complain about the fact that there was business in the diner, odd I must say for a profit run business, she also bad mouthed the burning man culture and the citizens of Black Rock City which didn’t make her any points I must say. She then passed over some cracker thin slices of “pizza” which didn’t really satiate the hunger I had. She handed us four pieces of the wafer thin crackerizza and I had a piece and my buddy had a piece. I shared a piece with a dude that was there looking hungry, I had one, and my buddy had two. The food, if that’s what it can be called of course, satisfied for a few moments, and in that time we went to the meditation pool which was close to where we had parked the RV for the night. As we soaked we talked to a dude in the pool that had some interesting ideas about the world and its current state of affairs, and we moved on to the trailer for some food a few hours later. We had a small bowl of some dehydrated split pea soup, and that’s when the serious freak out occurred. It went something like this.
