The Midwest

I picked up a load of sausages from Hillshire Farms (now a division of Sara Lee) in New London, Wisconsin (north of Oshkosh, west of Green Bay). The day was gray and rainy and the air heavy with the scent of smoke and pork flesh. It is not easy to tell the difference, on the exterior, between a food processing plant such as this one, and a plant that produces anything else, edible or not. It is all metal siding, pipes and fans and machines and docks to back into and load up.
I took said sausages to Tolleson, Arizona (part of the hideous Phoenix metro) to a Sara lee "Mixing" facility. A place like this takes products from all the various subsidiaries of a parent company and "mix" them and ship them out to warehouses and distribution centers, a sort of warehouse for warehouses, another middle man, more truck movement.
From New London I traveled southwest on US-151 a route that cuts a beautiful diagonal across the state of Wisconsin from Manitowoc on Lake Michigan (home to Manitowoc, makers of such dissimilar products as cranes and ice machines) through the capital at Madison, across the driftless zone, a relatively rugged area untouched by glaciation in the last ice age, and crosses the Mississippi into Iowa at Dubuque.

The Wisconsin state capitol at Madison.


A road cut exposing "prairie stone" in southwest Wisconsin.


Iowa farmland outside of Dubuque.


More Iowa farmland near Brooklyn.


The (possibly most ostentatious) state capitol at Des Moines.

Ontario, not that one

But rather the one in California.
The one in the Inland Empire, that great swath of the eastern LA metro, just over the first set of hills, where the ground gets drier and the air hotter and the people more hispanic. You could call Ontario the "heart" of the Inland Empire, that is, if the Inland Empire could possibly have a heart. It is where the main airport for the area is, and there's a big mall, Ontario Mills. What is the deal with calling malls "mills?" Is it a misspelling? They can't possibly have anything to do with mills which make something, textiles, flour, gunpowder, feed, puppies. Malls don't make anything, except money.
Anyway, Ontario is where i went to orientation for this new job. It is essentially a big plot of land covered in featureless warehouses and factories that crank out shit, or dole out shit. The only feature of these warehouses is their logo and so you see great white boxes with names like MagLight or JensenUSA (a bike parts distributor) or Fender or Louisville Slugger. Like its neighbors, Fontana and Mira Loma and Rancho Cucamonga, it is utterly congested with trucks.

Winter in the Inland Empire




An abandoned vineyard in a single block surrounded by warehouses.




An Elephant Statue in the Safari Business Park, Ontario, California

Superstition Mountains

Before we get to the trucking a few photos from the Superstition Mountains. When I first got into to Tempe I headed with some friends up to the Superstitions Mountain, a range just to the east of the Phoenix metro They are a popular destination for Phoenicians (?) trying to flee the misery of their awful city. I had a pretty low opinion of Arizona (except maybe the whole Grand Canyon thing) but that is because I am thinking of the (completely unacceptable) urban areas and not of the (completely sublime) rural areas. We headed east on US-60, the Superstition Highway (ohhhhhh) out to Apache Junction and then hit the Apache Trail toward the town of Tortilla Flat, the least populated town in Arizona with a zip code. Essentially it appeared to be a false front western sort of place that was a store and a restaurant and a tourist trap. In a dip just beyond Tortilla Flat the pavement ended and the Salt River (or a tributary thereof), full from the recent rains, flowed over the road. A sign warned against crossing in such conditions but we said fuck it and headed over. The road narrowed and became a harrowing single lane track along the side of a mountain with a scrap of a guard rail that was more a visual barrier than any sort of physical one. Not to far up the road we pulled off and hiked up Fish Creek canyon a ways. It was a scrambly sort of hike and a lot of fun. So Pictures...

again, again, againagain

back on the road friendos.
After delivering produce throughout Western Washington for 8 months I have returned to the long haul. The produce gig was interesting and it was fascinating to see another leg in the journey of our food from farm to table. I delivered produce to supermarkets and restaurants throughout the Puget Sound region. My first routes took me to Top Foods locations in the Seattle metro and after I while i "graduated" to deliveries further afield, typically to Bellingham and Blaine (a town north of Bellingham right on the Canadian border) and on the occasional weekend would make the run to the miserable town of Aberdeen (birthplace of Kurt Cobain) and the town of Ocean Shores to the west. All of these routes were at night, usually starting at 6am and getting off sometime between 2 and 5am. I spent most of the time in Seattle being excruciatingly tired and looking back on that time I was constantly in some sort of zombiefied haze. but it was nice.

It is time now to get back to the business of making money to start this other business and that can't be done making the money i was making at the produce job or working a job where paying rent was required. My initial plan was to switch to a long haul job and spend my weekends alternately in Seattle and Maryland (where the bread oven (and my parents) are) but when I called to finalize plans with the long haul company it turns out they had just instituted a hiring freeze in he Pacific Northwest. Turns out they did not have enough freight in that neck of the woods to get their current drivers who lived in Washington and Oregon home and they were not keen on having more. At first I thought, well fine I'll just change my driver's license back to Maryland and that's that but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be relegated to the East both for the variety and the miles and so, having some friends in Arizona, I "moved" there. I shipped off most of my stuff via mail (i don't have a lot of stuff) and the rest came with me on a motorcycle down the coast and into the desert. It was a nice ride on which I will elaborate later.
I got my Arizona license and a few days later headed to orientation in Ontario, California via the always delightful Greyhound.
I wasn't sure I would continue blogging but at least one person wants me to and in their request referred to this as a "Photo Blog" which made me think, i can do that, just photos. less writing. so here you go.