Chico and Paradise.

The title sounds like it could be a Hollywood movie! "The Adventures of Chico and Paradise; How the West was Lost!"

My time here has been quite leisurely and uneventful. I took a ride up the Skyway to Paradise and a bit beyond the other day. There is a canyon on the way up that is quite impressive. A local told me that it is sometimes referred to as "The Little Grand Canyon." I'll post a few pictures. I spotted a fire truck on the side of the road and stopped to ask if the firemen knew of any local places that would be good to visit. They directed me to a fire lookout on top of a small mountain but when I got to the dirt road that led to it, I found it was WAY too muddy for my heavy street bike. I slid in a gob of mud deposited in the main road by a previous visitor. So, I just rode back to Chico.

It rained quite a bit yesterday so I mainly just hung out in my tent and worked on the computer, meditated, and visited with the cats. I actually was blessed to be the bed of one of the cats for about an hour. A lap-cat! How cool is that?! To me, that is a local version of Heaven. Toward evening, I strolled downtown to get a bite to eat and be around people. Of course, the place I chose to eat at had no customers but me. You guessed it: I had Asian food. Pad Thai, to be exact. T'was the smallest portion of food I've ever gotten in an Asian restaurant. What food there was, however, was awesome! As I was walking around town, I spotted a Stone Cold Creamery and decided to treat myself. The Universe decided to treat me to an ice cream in the form of the manager gifting me the treat. The power of joyful balloons!

Tova, my hostess, decided to come stay at the apartment last night. We chatted for quite some time. A very pleasant, intelligent woman. I, of course, stayed in the tent. I enjoy sleeping in the cold, but I think my body is getting too stiff to enjoy sleeping on hard ground. So today my adopted sister, Francine, gifted me the money to purchase a high-quality sleeping pad. It will have to wait until tomorrow, unfortunately. PayPal doesn't deposit the money directly into my bank account but takes a few days to show up.  But I'll get the pad tomorrow.

I've been noticing the cliquishness of the downtown areas of the areas I visit. Bellingham, Wa. and Chico could be sister-cities as far as the caution inhabitants display toward those they don't know. The street people are friendly with the street people. The collage kids are friendly with other college kids and the couples are somewhat friendly with other couples. However, few will extend their friendliness beyond the borders of their own clique. This isn't something that I've noticed just toward me, but it's the general behavior of almost everyone downtown. Approach someone with the idea of asking for directions and one can easily see them gird themselves for fight-or-flight.

I somewhat dislike the idea of speaking about politics, but I've been asked so here goes. It has been my experience thus far that the phenomenon I described in the above paragraph appears to be the ideal of the Republican party, especially so when speaking of the Far Right.. "Everyone to their own class and help only those within your own family or clique...and only if they are actively working to help themselves." I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, but it does seem to be the rule. The elephant seems to wish for "survival of the fittest" whereas the donkey wishes for all to be equally happy and healthy.  Am I incorrect about this general assessment?

More specifically, what I find interesting about this particular election season is that Obama did what he did in the face of a Republican-led Congress that did everything they could NOT to work with him...yet not once did I ever heard the possibility of racism. Maybe racism didn't play a part, but isn't it interesting that there is not one black Republican congressman presently serving? Regardless of the reason, even the Pope needs his bishops to work with him to accomplish anything of note. If they were to decide en masse not to cooperate, there really isn't much he could do on his own.

It seems to me that Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi were all democrats. (Please note, I am NOT a political person. I think anyone that is elected will be favored at first and later rejected. It ultimately doesn't matter who is in office, America is in trouble and the next administration isn't going to do much but slow down or speed up the decline.) They all asked their followers to care for all of their fellow man, not just those who are related.

So, what do I believe regarding politics? From my limited understanding: We don't know what information the president gets each morning so we are not in a position to judge the effectiveness of the sitting president, whoever he is. I know that, if I help those who need it, I feel better about life. So I'll keep doing that. I believe that the pursuit of the almighty dollar has replaced the pursuit of community, or even God. I believe that a great way to build a house is to get the whole community involved. Isn't it interesting that America is very low in the studies conducted of general happiness and most poor countries scored higher in those same studies? Why is this? Because of the sense that everyone in the country is a part of the same family and if one fails, all fail.

But of course, this is America...