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The Maiden Voyage of the Bokeh Maru – Day 10

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Day10_7474Somewhere outside of Livingston Montana

I awoke slowly this morning to the gentle rocking of The Bokeh Maru. The wind was picking up and the low rumble of faraway thunder rushed by leaving nothing but silence in its wake. I listened for the sound of Big Lemons gravelly voice gently coaxing the crew to their morning tasks. I wondered where the sound of ExcuseMe… I mean Candy’s, iron-toed Doc Martins were as she would move down the aisle kicking the late sleepers out of her way, when suddenly I remembered and realized all the comforting sounds of the morning routine were gone, along with her and Big Lemon. The Bokeh Maru was empty except for me.

Yesterday, as you remember, closed with the disappearance of Candace Flavours and Big Lemon Kowalski going into that strange building in Livingston Montana and disappearing without a trace. I jumped up, ran outside, thinking I would find them coming out of the building, sheepishly holding hands and ready for breakfast. But they didn’t of course, they were gone. Everything appeared to be back to normal, there were no flashing lights or strange humming sounds, the doors were all locked and the morning traffic went by on the road into town as if nothing strange had happened here. The only link to last night was that strange storm building to the North. There wasn’t a sign of my last two crewmen and friends. Well friends if I had liked them better. I ran frantically about calling their names but it was as I feared they were gone.

Since there was nothing to be done I began the procedures to get the
Bokeh Maru up and running. Taking one last look around to see if I had missed anything I pointed the Bokeh Maru West and headed towards our satellite facilities in Oregon, where I planned on spending a few days recuperating and conferring with my Department head. I was hoping there might even be the chance to pick up some new crew members if he had staff to spare.

Running the Bokeh Maru alone was a new experience. For one thing the missing weight of 31 crew members upped her speed from 38-39 mph to nearly 70. That was a welcome surprise. I never would have guessed that the wind resistance of those hanging on up on the roof would have made that significant a difference. The quietness was also a factor. Normally there would have been the sound of the many different languages spoken by the various crew members and the sounds of casual curses in everything from Urdu to the various Malaysian dialects ringing through the cabin. It was sad but at the same time I found myself enjoying the solitude. Mostly I missed Big Lemons shiny yellow tooth gleaming in the sunlight coming through the windshield as he quietly polished it with a bit of  emery paper. I even found myself looking about for ExcuseMeMs, but more for the fact that I didn’t like her standing behind me very much.

I began to enter the countryside where The Institute had set up it’s western observatory when the first shock hit me.

Day10_7805remains of our Oregon observatory

Our observatory was a shambles. I had been on an inspection trip just a year ago and it was up and running. Who broke all the glass? Where was my $149, on sale at Wal-Mart super-quality far-reaching telescope? Why was it a crumbling ruin? Where was the dome? That was really expensive. Why was the fence down? What happened here? I would have plenty of questions for my site manager you can bet on that.

I received another shock as I neared our Oregon headquarters. Our regional airstrip where The Institute’s planes were hangered had been reduced to a squalid flight school and sightseeing operation.

Day10_7783the remains of our once proud fleet of aircraft

I was stunned. How could a successful operation that was generating tens of hundreds of dollars fall into such rack and ruin in  less than a year. Heads were going to roll.

I pulled into our headquarters later that afternoon, wishing that I had Big Lemon with me to help educate the local management team when I discovered they were gone, all of them. In their place, living in the Institutes main headquarters, were people I had never seen before. Threatening to evict them immediately I asked them for an explanation. They told me they had bought the place from the guy who lived there before, my manager, the bastard, and showed me the bill of sale he had given them written on the back of a grocery bag with a felt tip pen. Upon conferring with a local attorney it turns out that sales completed with a felt tip pen regardless of what they were written on, were not only legal in Eastern Oregon but irreversible. It was just, “So Sad, Too Bad”, for me.

I did the only thing I could do to salvage what was left of the situation and that was hire the two of them to be my new Oregon representatives of The Institute. They turned out to be a wonderful couple, especially her, and he seemed trainable so I guess we’ll try and make the best of things. The upside is I will need to visit the headquarters here in the beautiful Wallowa valley to check on training and the rebuilding of the Observatory and our airstrip.

I did find out that my previous manager, the bastard, had succumbed to the temptations provided  by the high-rolling con artist that was producing videos for “Young Girls Gone Crazy” and needed our various off-site locations as backdrops for his videos. The story was the entire production was just a front for hard partying sorority girls and others of questionable repute.

The only way I had to deal with the property loss and damages was to bring in Batchu Sen, my Macau affiliate, as a partner. I gave him the photos, fingerprints, tissue samples and DNA that we take from each of our site managers and he will do the rest. He’s still upset over the loss of Big Lemon and is in no mood to be forgiving. If we didn’t have an understanding backed with various documents in our safety deposit boxes I would be concerned for our own well-being.

I’ll be offline for a day or two as I begin the process of indoctrination I provide all new employees of The Institute. It takes a while to build the bond necessary to have the excellent relationships The Institute has with all of its employees and we work hard  at it.

Then I’ll be piloting The Bokeh Maru through Utah and ultimately home to the World Headquarters of The Institute in Colorado.

The Maiden Voyage of The Bokeh Maru – Day 8 & 9

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Day9_7487building where it happened Livingston Montana

Day 8 Travel Day

Not much happened this day and we were on the road again. Just the four of us, a skeleton crew if you will, all that was left of the brave band of travelers that set out, it seems like weeks ago. Now we are down to Big Lemon, Candy, the former ExcuseMeMs, our timekeeper and me.

Through various mishaps along the way we have managed to lose 28 crew members to various and sundry misfortunes. Read back through the journal if you haven’t kept up and their departures, disappearances and desertions are fully chronicled. Some of those crewmen were sadly missed and some we were glad got eaten by that bear.

We are headed for Livingston Montana and hope to be there soon. Ours supplies are low, we’re on the edge of exhaustion and tempers are a little frayed. We have had to stop several times so people could go outside and scream at the top of their lungs. Candy seemed to need this the most and when I was driving if I saw her coming down the aisle with that look in her eyes I would immediately pull over and open the emergency exit.

I have to end this as Big Lemon has signaled he does not want to drive anymore. So I am closing out this day’s entry and will try to catch up more tomorrow.

Day 9 Terror in Livingston Montana

Holy Moly, holy moly, holy moly. What a day it has been. What a day the last two days have been. To say that strange and unbelievable things have been happening would be an understatement. I don’t why these things keep happening. We must be traveling under a black moon.

After I relieved Big Lemon at the wheel yesterday he went to the back to talk to Candy, who was looking like I might have to pull over again, when there was this terrific commotion with things crashing, people yelling, thudding, inhuman sounds and a steady thumping noise that I soon realized was the sound a fist makes as it is being pounded on the top of somebody’s head.

I haven’t spoken much about our timekeeper as there wasn’t a whole lot to say about him. He kept to himself, seemed to do his job and stayed mainly in the background. His name was Woodrow Boucher, every one called him Wood, and he was a master wood-carver from Minnesota. As this was going to be a long trip we felt we needed someone to keep track of the days we traveled. If you have ever taken a long road trip you know how the days can run together and soon you don’t know if you’ve walked to work or wound your watch as my dad used to say. So we thought it prudent to bring along a timekeeper to keep a physical calendar of our journey.  His job, and it was the only thing he had to do, was to carve a notch in this stick we had provided him to keep a daily record of how long we had been on the road. One notch for each day. What his background check didn’t reveal was that he was extremely nervous around any type of sharp instrument and had in fact been asked to resign from the Minneapolis Wood-carvers Club. Consequently when it was time for him to carve his daily notch in the stick he would be overcome by an incredible anxiety attack. According to the look of the stick and the pitiful notches carved in it, it looked like we had been on the road 311 days instead of the eight or nine actually spent. The tension of the last few days apparently were too much for him and faced with having to cut one more notch in the stick he went into a gran mal seizure.

That in itself wouldn’t have been a huge problem, we carry leather restraints, but in his flailing he managed to cut off one of Candy’s braids, a source of great pride for her, and as I learned later, one of the sources of Big Lemon’s attraction to her. Big Lemon became so enraged that he…. well, the rest of this story is a little grim. Luckily there was one of those roadside clinics in the back of a semi trailer they set up to give truckers, physicals for their drivers licenses or something, and they took Wood in. I prudently drove off while they were phoning for Flight For Life out of Livingston, not wanting to give them anymore details than I had to. Big Lemon was comforting Candy in the back as we drove away.

The rest of the trip to Livingston was uneventful and quiet with Candy picking up the pieces of paneling that had been torn loose and Big Lemon using his skills in repairing nets and stitching shrouds closed to stitch up the mattress.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, they didn’t double, they squared, like in weird².  While looking for a place off the beaten path to spend the night in case anyone wanted to ask us more questions about the day’s incident, we came across this building on the outskirts of town. Seemingly abandoned it looked like a place where we could park the Bokeh Maru, to rest, regroup and go over her for repairs if necessary. I was a little put off by its strange architecture but since this was a voyage of discovery we decided to stay and check it out.

The altercation between Wood Boucher and Big Lemon had unnerved Candy but also made her connection to Big Lemon intensify to the point where even I saw that this could only end one way. Later that evening the two of them wanting more privacy than could be found on the Bokeh Maru, left hand in hand to explore the building. The door was unlocked although when I tried it later it wasn’t anymore, and the last I ever saw of them was Candy pulling Big Lemon through the doorway.

I had turned in and was having a fitful dream about alien presences and the unspeakable things they were said to do to the folks they encountered, when later in the evening just before it was fully dark I heard a strange humming sound. It increased until it was nearly deafening. I ran out in time to see all the lights in the building flashing and then the red lights on the tower came on one by one, brilliantly lighting up the darkening sky, and then there was nothing. No lights, no sound, no Candy and Big Lemon, just me and the Bokeh Maru. Everything happened so fast that the only picture I could get was this one right after all the lights went out.

I searched frantically, calling their names, looking for any trace of them but they were gone. They are still gone as I write this. I fear for their safety. I will wait until morning and if they haven’t been returned by then I must consider them lost forever and continue on alone.

The Maiden Voyage of the Bokeh Maru – Day 4

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Antelope Fawns7604
Antelope fawns Yellowstone

Yellowstone Day 4

Yesterday we had a rather difficult day. Getting into the park was problematic. We lost out hot water heater and although we thought we had solved the problem by flipping the breaker switch it seems that there were other problems with the unit besides the breaker. I sent someone down into the hold, which as you know, is located way down in the bowels of the vessel, to check the water heater visually for any abnormalities. So far he has not returned. That was late last night and the debate that is raging on at this moment is whether to send someone else down there to check on the missing crewman, or to simply abandon ship and try and make their way back to civilization somehow. The fact that one of crewmen swears he heard screaming coming from down there doesn’t help any. I fear for the safety of the Bokeh Maru if any more crewmen desert.

Big Lemon has volunteered to go down into the hold to search for and perhaps rescue our missing crewman but I vetoed that idea as I need him up here to maintain order with these mutinous cutthroats I have left. I heard one of them trying to break into the strawberry locker and after sending Big Lemon to handle the situation I find I am down yet one more crewman. Things are beginning to look bleak indeed. If this keeps up I may have to take a turn at the wheel myself.

Even with the mounting problems of maintenance and low morale we have to keep focused with the task at hand which is gathering information that may be unknown to the traveling public and somehow present it in a way that pays for this trip. We’ve tried t-shirt sales with marginal success in another venture we had here in the park. We’ve tried setting up a food stand next to the highway but people began to demand to know what kind of meat we were serving and that led to disastrous results. It seemed like we had reached a stopping point when ExcuseMeMs presented what may be a trip saving solution.

“Why don’t you try taking pictures. Maybe you could sell some.” See that’s why it’s good to have more than one brain working on a problem. What a great idea. We have a camera. We have the opportunity. We have the desire. It’s like a natural solution. When you sink into the morass of your everyday life and are struggling to keep your head above water and whatever may be floating in it, you sometimes forget that the simple solutions are often the best. When it looked like we finally had a way out of our dire predicament a ragged cheer rang out from our bedraggled crew. At least what was left of them. ” Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah” rang weakly through the cabin as they attempted to lift ExcuseMeMs to their shoulders and march around in celebration. She wasn’t having any of that however and Big Lemon had to step in with his truncheon to help them regain their decorum. I’m beginning to change my opinion about ExcuseMeMs and think she may turn into a valuable member of the crew yet.

It’s easy to have a plan but difficult to implement unless you have strong leadership abilities. Where to start? What to shoot? I immediately set lookouts fore and aft to report if they saw anything alive. Soon reports began to drift down to the control room of live things that could have their pictures taken. The excitement was palpable as report after report of wild animals sighted here and there arrived. Many of them had to be discounted as they were sightings of mosquitos or road kill or people dressed in animal costumes walking along the road, but soon we hit the motherlode.

Every spring in Yellowstone National park a strange ritualistic event happens. Animal groups or more specifically female members of those groups, spontaneously begin to divide in two producing exact copies of themselves, apparently just because they can. Here is an example of this process, well, the aftermath of the process, the dividing thing has already occurred. This female is obviously experienced at this as she has been able to do it twice at the same time. The image above shows two of these clone-like small creatures doing what appears to be their main activity. They run back and forth constantly until they return to the mothership for what appears to be a refueling  operation, then they run some more until they fall exhausted to the ground to rest. Then they begin the process all over again. This is an endless occupation for them.

NursingFawns7535

antelope fawns nursing

The adult is shown cooperating in another part of the process by providing an unknown substance to the two offspring. Not much is known about this process, at first we thought this to be some kind of simple refueling process but it appears to be more than that and we intend to look into to it further at a later date, but we do know that it involves the transfer of a liquid that the young appear to accept readily. Do not be alarmed they are not hurting her. This is apparently a natural act.

We are not sure how well-known this phenomenon is but we intend to introduce it to the general public as soon as we return to the Institute to see what the reaction is. If it is favorable we’re going to slam them with a full press campaign. T-shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads, bumper stickers (“Got Milk?” No wait that one has been used already.) Anything that will pander to their voracious need for souvenir lust.

Exhausted with our efforts of shooting these small but cute creatures we feel that we have completely exhausted the opportunities for photographs in Yellowstone National Park and are preparing to move on the morning tide to other places that may have exploitable events. Ringing the Get Aboard bell so those scavenging out in the fields can get aboard we make ready to begin a new adventure tomorrow.

P.S. As we were leaving this guy flagged us down and asked to be included in our presentation. We weren’t that excited about him but he gave us two field mice and a vole so we took his picture. He seemed so depressed we didn’t have the heart to reject his offer.

RedFox5324Red Fox

Everybodys Doing It

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EverybodysDoing It1638Bluebird Yellowstone

It’s that time of year again. It’s warm out. The rust bucket has been sitting in the driveway all winter and it wants to get out on the road and burn up some of those petro dollars. Places that you’ve been dreaming about all through those long snowy, cold days are softly calling your name and you need a break.

In my case there wasn’t any softly calling business going on. It was flat-out bellering with some high-pitched screams thrown in for good measure. So very shortly I am going to load up my faithful vessel, the 20′  “Bokeh Maru” my new, kind of salty, land yacht, and set sail for points North. Yellowstone, Idaho, parts of Montana are on the agenda and I will join all the other lemmings in their trek to the cliffs edge and get back to work again. I know you guys are tired of me hanging around the house so I get the message. I’m out-a-here for a while.

Just like the Bluebird of Happiness in the image above I’ll be on the road again and just like Jack Kerouac, Charles Kouralt, and Willie I got places to go and people to see. Don’t wait up, I’ll be late.

I will try and post intermittently while I’m off but it will depend on where the Wi-Fi is, and whether I’ve got anything to say, so take some time to search through the archives to see if you missed anything. I’ll be thinking of you.