This blog goes up to 70 pages and covers the end of 2008 and entirety of 2009 through 7 continents. Enter: “/page/2” (up to 70) at the end of the www.ruralroutenomad.tumblr.com url to skip through. Or, use the archive button above to go month-by-month. Or, use the tags above to go continent-by-continent or country-by-country….
The final puppet movie - “This Little Piggy Came Home” - from up on Chicken Ridge, just outside my hometown in the farmlands of NE Iowa. My mom and dad and I drove around the country roads on this beautiful-day-after-Christmas - my dad working as Locations Manager, pulling off of Highway 13 here after we almost-got-stuck-in-the-snow looking for a different barn I had found hiking-in-the-woods-before-the-snowstorm. My mom plays Verdena the Grass-Fed Cow and me, Elmer, the little piggie who made it home.
For the first 2 weeks I barely moved, sleeping as long as possible in my high school bedroom, eating Mom’s cookies and watching James Bond VHSs from a big-movie-box-my-dad-picked-up-at-an-auction-somewhere (amazing, the lack of language/cultural/currency problems 007 encounters country-to-country). I bought a juicer and a pair of snowshoes, and after the 2-week-slumber, joined Elkader’s fitness center to start getting-back-in-shape. My dad and I sold selected-old-Americana-collectibles from his extensive-collection on eBay (often to overseas buyers) and he gave me a generous commission to add some koosh to my bank account before going back to New York and the ‘real’ world again.
I drove my parents’ PT Cruiser the 42-miles-up-to-Decorah almost-every-week to buy delicious local-organic vegetables at their super-small-town co-op, to meet with people who were starting up a new film festival (the Oneota, which happened to feature many Rural Route classics such as “King Corn” and “Asparagus”), to do some coffee-shop-writing and see Iowa-folkie Dave Moore play a show put-on by more new friends at arts/event organization, ArtHaus. I also took a week in Iowa City, staying between my friend-since-6-yrs-old, Dog (Rodney)’s, and my Uncle Bob’s house up-by-Kinnick-football-stadium-on-the-other-side-of-the-Iowa-River. I got to see all of my old buddies, which kept completing the coming-home experience full-circle-with-fresh-perspective. With a whole week, I was able to meet-up with Univ. of Iowa film faculty and local programmers whom-I-consistently-missed-over-the-years, and get the Best of Rural Route DVD into local outlets like Prairie Lights and Record Collector. And, my final-road-trip was to the Twin Cities for a quiet-quiet-quiet New Year’s Eve with college-and-after-one-of-best-friends-in-the-world/forest-firefighter, Nate Ochs, and his wife, Constance, and their 1+-year-old son, Rudy, who I got to meet for the first-time after sending him all the puppets I used in films-around-the-world.
In the end, I almost didn’t want to leave – it was nice to spend a month-and-a-half with my recently-retired parents in the little town that was my whole world for the first-18-years-of-my-life (Elkader: supposedly the only town in the U.S. with a Muslim name – after Abd el-Kader, the Algerian freedom-fighter, founded by an eccentric banker from Buffalo who realized Elkader as the spot for a new flour mill in his off-Mississippi adventures). I quickly appreciated the completeness-and-simplicity of my hometown again, walked Shadow the black lab w/my mom at the park (which we called “Hoth” after the snow came), visited an aging friend at the care center whom my mom sees regularly, took little trips to Wisconsin, enjoyed nice-weather then snow-which-coated-the-countryside-with-perfection, sorted through my dad’s newer-bargain-collectible finds for cool records, games, knick-knacks, toys and what-not, and helped to make inventory/appraisal of some of the other big-stuff-for-sale. There’s a certain look and feel to things in NE Iowa that stood-out to me more-than-ever/fresh-but-familiar – the people, the scenery, the stores – it’s my next big goal to make a film here.
While I’ve been looking forward to getting-back-into-a-routine – working, putting on the RR Fest, biking, playing ping-pong, I’m sure it won’t be long until wanderlust hits me again. I have strong memories of people and places I know I’ll never see again – that’s just the way of life on the road - but there’s plenty of new friends and faraway places I already can’t wait to get back to for a re-visit…
I feel a little like waking-up-from-a-dream, but while I wake I’m experiencing other ‘real dreams,’ insignificant-yet-magical-moments-from-abroad already-randomly-hitting-me like J-Ro and I following that stray dog around Valpo to find the Pablo Neruda house; meeting the Ozzie Trevallion brothers in first-solo-bunk-hostel in Ushuaia then winding-up on the same-boat-to-Antarctica; the airport bus into Rio on Genet’s birthday to catch Ipanema Beach sunset; 4wd ride through squeaky-white-South-Ocean-sand outside Esperance w/Nerissa’s uncle; hitting my head on late-nite-bus-from-hell we shared with the nice guys from Bangalore from hot-Agra-to-Delhi; Korean woman in anonymous streets of Pusan who ran-up to touch my peaking-beard, exclaiming “Mustache! Mustache!;” the old Irish bar-musician who led all-night-sloppy-party on the train-ride-I-thought-would-be-most-boring Amsterdam-to-Copenhagen; playing cards w/Josh at the unmarked-bar-in-a-town-where-we-pulled-over-for-sleep-in-the-middle-of-the-South-African-Karoo; the Ethiopian park ranger who told Amharic stories to Genet and her brother of life-saving-in-the-mysterious-mountain-lakes-full-of-birds; the man in Old Cairo who took us inside a beautiful mosque, up-into-tower-on-top amongst all dust-and-prayer-chanting city; all of those emergences into towns-cities-countries not knowing what-to-expect, experiencing the life-kindness-scams, seeing what-you’re-supposed-to and what-you’re-not-supposed-to, seeing what everybody sees and what nobody sees.
My dad and I hanging Christmas lights on the spruce tree in my parents’ front yard.
On one of my first trips up to Decorah (one of the U.S.’s-best-small-towns), I stayed-late to take-in-a-performance by Iowa folk singer, Dave Moore, at the local Elks Lodge. Here he plays “Old Man Winter”, a foreshadow of weather-that-came-a-couple-of-weeks-later.
Getting ready to ship-out an antique Coca-Cola tray and some ’50s-era Saturday Evening Post magazines-w/Norman Rockwell-cover-art to domestic and international eBay buyers.
I’ll always remember the-day-after-Thanksgiving, watching the Tiger story break-out on CNN in a little restaurant on the Mississippi River in McGregor, Iowa w/my Uncle Bob, Aunt Vic and my mom after a drive to Wisconsin to check for Black Friday deals at some sporting goods shops and Radio Shack. We were trying to decipher the OJ-style camera-from-above-Florida-streets and something about a-car-accident-and-a-golf-club…
My dad, enjoying recent-retirement-from-teaching-art at Central Community High School with a couple more drives in his ‘49 Ford before storing it away for the winter.
Aside from ventures into Antarctica, the Himalayas and South Island New Zealand mountains, I got my fill on snow for the first time in almost 2 years as an overnight storm shut-down much of the Midwest. The snow removal team is about all that’s present on Elkader’s Main Street mid-day/mid-week, scooping through the thick-white-heap.
In-route-to-a-week-in-Iowa City, I stopped in my old college town of Cedar Rapids (Iowa’s 2nd-largest-city at 130,000ish people) for a day to play frisbee-golf-in-the-snow with old buddies, Dog, Freak and Doug. Cedar Rapids has become a hot spot for frisbee golf, recently hosting the nationals and boasting a plentitude of parks-with-courses. It was fun-but-difficult as we kept losing discs. Poor Freak, as 3 of his vanished permanently into mysterious-never-to-be-found-little-slits-in-the-snow.
