To sprinkle or to squeegee?

Day 67

Holy crap. Lazy. I didn’t leave the house until around 5. I feel like I wrote for a bit, but I can’t figure out what else I did during the other hours.

Then I left. I took Sophia around for a bike tour of Hailey because I’m now 100% qualified to tell people all about the town I’ve been in for less than a week. On the way back from the bike tour it got a little windy and I sneezed 200 times, blowing snot rockets as I pedaled.

We cooled down with some cocktails in Stacey’s backyard - wine for Stacey and Sophia and chips and salsa for me - until it was dark and time to cook dinner. I made some sweet fajitas. It’s interesting eating dinner at 11pm because you can’t tell what time it is when it stays light so late.

** Note: I seem to have chipped my front tooth, and I have no idea how. That’s Idaho for you.

Day 68

It’s Stacey’s birthday, and it’s a hell of a day. Sophia makes some delicious omelets, but since Stacey doesn’t have appropriate kitchenware like a spatula, thereby making it impossible to flip them, they turned into (as Sophia called them) open heart surgeries.

After breakfast was a hike that took us up a hill that gave us a lookout over the entire town of Hailey. After the hike Stacey showed me how to do some sweet exercises, including roundhouse kicks and wacky jacks. And since it was roughly 1 million degrees outside it left me quite sweaty.

But birthday night was quite a treat. It was Hailey Night of Music so there were 10 or 12 bands around town and pretty much everyone in town was out and about. Sophia and I watched Stacey play with her other band, which everyone agrees is an incredibly fun band. We also ran into almost everyone that I’ve met in my short time here so it’s almost like I’m a local now. My friend Matt (who offered to take us out on his boat last week) now offered me pizza and beer. But instead of getting free pizza from Matt, Stacey got some free pizza for playing the show in front of the restaurant, and Billy got us some veggie burritos. Everyone is quite giving. We also hung out with Billy’s dad for a bit (who said funny things like “we don’t see too much of Billy anymore because he’s always rubbing up against that one” and pointed at Stacey), and Stacey’s landlord and family (including her brother Seth, who looks like how I’ll look in 10 years).

Then the night got interesting. We went to the worst bar in town - Hailey Hotel - and met the real people of Hailey. Sophia and I met the Squeegee King (Andy), whose girlfriend is “fat and ugly and pissed.” He is supposedly schizophrenic (rumor), and he definitely acts a little out there, but he’s playing pool and hanging out with a bunch of other really drunk people so it’s pretty hard to tell. The Squeegee King is pretty cool though and offers me a job working with him part time the next day. He asks me if I smoke, and when I tell him I don’t he says at least he doesn’t have to waste more bud. He’s pretty awesome. We also get to meet this guy walking around with a backpack who almost gets in a fight with some kid who previously bit another guy we’re hanging out with, Evan, and who then starts a fight with a taxi driver because he’s upset with the service of that particular company. He was later arrested.

Funny story: a couple of days prior I got to meet Billy’s Dad and Uncle Randy (who has a huge beard and wears cutoff jean shorts), and as we’re talking Uncle Randy tells us what he’s been doing that day. He said “I was out back sprinkling.” I thought this was code for something, but it turns out that sprinkling is another word for watering the garden. And since I need work, what with all the money I’ll be spending on repairs, I tell them that one of my skills is sprinkling (my other skill is digging very small holes in topsoil). So the funny story is that Billy tells me that his dad and uncle were laughing for half an hour, saying “here’s a group of people with $150,000 worth of degrees, and he wants to sprinkle the garden.” The truth is, I sure wouldn’t mind doing some sprinkling.

Day 70

Here’s the conversation I (VanGuy) had with Andrew (Squeegee King) first thing (9:30) in the morning:

SK: “Hello?”

VG: “Hey, this is Seth from last night. Just wondering if you had any work today.”

SK: “Actually, I just had a woman call up and cancel. And I’m pretty hung over, so today’s probably not a good day.”

VG: “OK. Well, maybe I’ll give you a call later this week to see if you need any help.”

SK: “Uh-hunh. Who are you again?”

And that’s the story of how I didn’t get work.

It was Sophia’s last day here, so we had lunch at Billy’s restaurant, went for a walk down by the river, cooked up some dinner, and watched “A Single Man” (not a bad movie). The only problem with the day was that the movie ended at around 1:15. And that was a problem because....

Day 71

I woke up at 5:45 to help Stacey with her vegetable delivery route. I actually had to set my alarm for 5:00 and hit snooze for close to an hour to prepare myself. And we hit the road. But since this whole thing is nothing like what I would normally do I had to come up with a new alias. The result: Mitter Farmbottom, the Critical Systemology Organizing Analyzer, drove around some of the most boring looking towns and open fields in the Idaho area. However, there was some beautiful scenery down in the canyon of the Snake River. I also took a little nap for about 20 minutes, but was rudely awoken when Stacey hit a bird with her windshield. A really bizarre thing that I noticed when driving in the vegetable truck was that there was a lot of roadkill of hawks. Like, a dozen within a few miles. I think that they must have been chasing these little mice creatures that also seem to run around the road and don’t notice the cars coming. But I’ve never seen so many dead hawks.

The picking up and delivering of vegetables was pretty fun actually. And after getting to drive the truck, Stacey left me alone for the last two hours so that she could go play a gig at the Wicked Spud. I got to hand out vegetables with some other volunteers who were stationed at a school in Ketchum.

And I’ve noticed something quite disconcerting out here in Hailey: everyone knows where I’m from. Not in the creepy stalker sense, but in the “oh, yeah, I know Sebastopol sense.” For examples: 1) I bought salsa from a guy at the farmer’s market who used to live in Guerneville/Monte Rio. 2) I handed out vegetables with a guy whose daughter lives in Petaluma. 3) I talked with a guy in the park who used to live in Arcata. I mean, I guess people are allowed to know of places other than the one in which they live, but there’s a ton of people who either moved from or lived in northern California, and it freaks me out.