Dear Recipient of ATI. I received quite a long submission and considered busting it up into three parts like we did with the unabomber article, the compressionism textbook and some of the others, but then I realized I'd have almost nowhere to put parts 2 and 3 since I'm on the road this week. So I've pushed most everything else back for a little bit so you can read it in here as one long textfile. Enjoy, Prime Anarchist Hi!!! & Welcome to ATI, activist trumpeters of ideas. _ || ' < \, =||= \\ /-|| || || 284 - 0107311355 (( || || || \/\\ \\, \\ - Very Few NUMBERS To Run- http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55467 http://free.freespeech.org/xaa/xaa0001.txt http://phrontistery.50megs.com/govern.html http://free.freespeech.org/delacruz http://www.sonic.net/~comix http://platdragon.cjb.net http://www.flakmag.com http://www.anada.net NEWZ - >>From LBC newsletter: >>---Mark your calendars- LBC is gonna >>be on national television. Who would >>have Thought? Friday, August 3rd on >>the Craig Kilborn Show on CBS watch >>us bust out "Bossman" ON THE ROAD 2001 - There and Back Again and Things in the Middle by aaron kreider Prologue Here in lies the account of my second ever hitchhiking trip. My first trip, in 1999, can be read online at http://www.nd.edu/~akreider/essays/ontheroadzineversion.txt. I live in South Bend, Indiana, but this trip started off in Kansas because I was in Owen Sound, Ontario for a family reunion and then got a ride to Kansas with relatives. My goal was to make it to Alpine, WY, a small town on the Wyoming / Idaho border, a couple hours south of Yellowstone. Actually, the final destination was on a forest road twenty miles east of Alpine where Earth First! was holding its annual rendez-vous (July 7 - 16) in the Tetons National Forest. Part I : There I took notes on the en-route trip, which were very helpful in remembering details. The real adventure started Sunday morning at 9am (July 8) when I got a ride with relatives from Newton (Kansas) to Salina (arrived at 10:15am), which is just on the I-70 interstate. The general plan was to hitch north on 81 to I-80, west on the interstate to Evanston, and then north on 89 to Alpine. I got a Boeing hat from my uncle, which served me well given the hot weather that was to come. I had boldly written "NORTH TO I-80" on my sign. The gods were with me and within ten minutes I had a ride, albeit a short one to Concordia. I was picked up by a woman in her thirties with a young boy and girl who were on a long trip in a van without any AC. But so long as I was making distance, that was fine. All was going well and after thirty minutes of hitching in Concordia (or more likely its north side) I was picked up by another woman also in her thirties (with holes in her jeans) and without AC. Unfortunately she was not going far at all and left me off in Belleville around noon. The last and only other time I'd been in Kansas it was just this hot. Today the thermometer was at 95 and the heat index at 105. The fact that it was noon and there wasn't any shade where I hitched on the north side of town made matters worse. Construction work is ongoing to turn 81 into a two-lane road, but at Belleville it only had one lane going each way. I had a good spot, with a decent area for cars to pull over and they could see me for a good distance before they had to stop to pick me up, but after two hours I wasn't getting any bites. I drank most of my water (I only had 1.6 l) and then walked to the nearest gas station to refill and recover from the heat. Walking was excruciating since I wasn't accustomed to my pack and I was suffering from the heat. I got a bag of chips (figuring I was sweating out the salt) and a 32oz Slice with lots of ice. I read the local newspaper at the gas station, including an article about how 3/4 of the town was flooded in 1951. I returned to hitchhike from 3pm-4pm which is about the hottest time of the day. By this time I was sunburnt in spots since I hadn't lopped on the sun tan lotion as much as I should have. At 4pm, I called it quits as I was suffering from heat exhaustion and I headed to a travel information place-store that was the nearest place to crash. There I got some water and then crashed in the shade until 6pm. I was so exhausted that I tried lying on the grass, but it was too hot to lie down so I just sat on the bench and didn't do much. There were very few visitors to the store, mostly older people too, and as I was very tired I didn't try to get a ride. Finally, just resting there I got a ride offer from a talkative man in his fifties whose wife worked at the store. He took me across the KS-NE border to a truck stop even though he didn't have any reason to go that way. He just wanted to help me out. Unfortunately, the truck stop was inactive since highway 81 had been re-routed away from it and it only had two trucks! So I was back to hitching on 81. Within an hour, around 7:30pm, I got a ride to York (a.k.a. I-80) from a very talkative man who was hauling materials for 81's road construction which we discussed in detail. In York I visited the McDonald's bathroom, though I was so dehydrated that even after drinking 2-3 liters I didn't really need to go. The spot right at the on-ramp looked bad (no place to pull over), and I didn't want to risk hitchhiking on the interstate for if hitching is illegal in the area, it'd definitely be illegal on the interstate. So I hitched in front of a Flying J truck stop by a light where trucks would have to stop if it was red, with my sign saying "WEST" which is an important distinction since half of the traffic leaving the stop would be going east (and in this case more, since there were also roads going North and South). There were many trucks. Maybe 45 per hour going west. Finally after sunset, around 9:45pm I got a long ride from a Polish trucker in his late 30s / early 40s who had been driving straight from Chicago without sleeping. He'd immigrated in 1986. He was going to California. We stopped for a short time in North Platte (still in Nebraska) where he spent a long time professionally cleaning his windshield, only for the bugs to mess it up again later. We listened to the radio and Bavarian polka music. He smoked a cigarette about every 35 miles. I got some sleep over the course of a couple hours though it was difficult since the truck wasn't air-ride equipped and it vibrated terribly. I'd lay my head on the seat rest and it could bounce up to six inches in the air. Later he gave me a pillow that helped considerably. Also I'd get blasted with cold air whenever he opened the window to smoke. We ended up for the night at a truck stop just inside Wyoming, ten miles east of Cheyenne. We'd gained over 4000 feet of altitude and were now around 5500 feet "up there". This ride made the day, since I had beforehand I'd only been getting short rides. There he told me that he'd sleep for five to six hours and encouraged me to try to find a ride in the mean time. So I visited the bathroom and brushed my teeth (etc). As it was 4am, it wasn't a good time to get a ride so I sat in the mostly empty all-night restaurant, eating my two orders of hash browns and first cup of coffee that I'd drank this year. I took about an hour to do that and write some notes on my trip so far. I figured that some truckers get up around the crack of dawn, so I started hitching around 5am outside the truck stop. It turns out that few of them do, and that hitching around 7am or so would be a better time but as I didn't have anywhere to sleep, I had nothing better to do than stand outside in the cold and try and hitch. It had cooled during the night, perhaps down to 60 and it was windy to boot, so I put on my rain pants over my shorts to stay warm. This was a smallish truck stop, with perhaps thirty trucks staying there overnight. For the next fourteen and half hours I hitched either by the truck stop exit or on the interstate, only taking occasional breaks. My previous driver had promised to pick me up if I hadn't found a ride, but he either didn't see me hitching or didn't want to pick me up. I suspect the prior, since I think I saw him take the back exit and miss the place where I was standing. That was terribly disappointing. I started off outside the truck stop, but after a couple hours of no luck, I was less and less reluctant to hitch on the interstate. The interstate had lots of traffic. Two lanes and around 240 vehicles per hour. It was possible for many of them to stop, as there were considerable breaks in traffic, though traffic generally piles up and comes in bunches where it is hard for all but the last vehicle in the line to pull over. Another unfortunate factor was that the speed limit was 75, at which point they have less time to see a hitchhiker and pulling over is more difficult (especially for large trucks). For this time and much of the trip, it was hard to figure out whether to hitch on the interstate where there was more traffic or at a truck stop where it was much easier for vehicles to stop. I drank lots of water. It was probably only in the low 80s, but the sun seemed warmer with there being less atmosphere due to the altitude. I ate a pretzel, Pepsi, and tricolor popsicle from the store in the early afternoon to supplement my snacking on the food that I'd brought with me. I dumpster dived two 1-liter bottles to increase my water capacity to 3.6 liters. Unfortunately, I had these 8 pounds of water on the top of my backpack, which was not the best place for the weight. It wasn't all hopeless, though it often seemed so, as I had a ride offer going east (it's the thought that counts) and another just to Cheyenne which I refused since travelling ten miles wouldn't help that much. As evening came, I decided to walk along the interstate up a hill to see if I could see Cheyenne in the distance or scout out a place where I could crash and get some sleep that night since I was very tired. Needless to say at this point in time I was pretty discouraged, not to mention mad at the over a thousand drivers that could have given me a ride. On my last trip, I generally got a ride in two hours, and the worst case wait was about four or five. Cheyenne was actually far beyond the hill (not to mention my limited capability to walk with my pack), but fortunately while walking I got a ride at 7:30pm. I was very surprised to get it and showed it. And it was another woman driver! This trip I got a lot more rides from women than my last trip, when it was eight men and only one woman. She was my first strange driver of the trip. She'd been driving from Michigan, and was returning home. She was very talkative and tended to go off on tangents. Thirty-three years old, had a boy friend who was divorced and scared to marry her, had prior family and personal problems, couldn't have kids, hitch-hiked until age 22, liked country, and may have recently been "saved". She was driving a pickup truck with a friendly cute black dog ("Bear") in the back. She worked three months per year in construction on power plants, earning over twenty thousand. We stopped in Laramie to get gas, and she also got some beer which had me a little worried as she proceeded to drink one or two of them while driving. After Cheyenne the countryside got very beautiful, though as it was night it was harder to see. For a couple hours we drove towards a very ominous looking thunderstorm, with lots of lightning, but only got a little rain. This was good since I eventually realized that my non-waterproof backpack with all my gear was in the back of the truck with Bear. Fortunately, it only got mildly wet. I slept an hour or two in the pickup and got let out at Little America, 68 miles from the Utah border. Like Nebraska, Wyoming is a... [what, cliff hanger driving you crazy? OK. I'll get you a little more...] ...very wide state. At the end of the ride, my driver offered me some money that I refused since I didn't need any. It was a good ride as we went 300 miles and Little America was a huge truck stop. It had perhaps 100 trucks and also a lot of car traffic. At Little America, the first thing I saw was two hippies and their dog hanging out in front of store. I enthusiastically assumed/figured that they ought to be going to the EF! rendez-vous as well! Whenever I'm going to or coming from large protests I like to try and find people who are likewise involved, though I almost inevitably fail to do so. As it turned out, they weren't going to the rendez-vous, though they at least knew what EF! was and had just come back from the national Rainbow Gathering - which I think they said was in Montana. Anyways, I hit the luxurious bathroom to change clothes and put on pants for warmth. The bathroom was in excellent shape (ex. fancy faucets) and the stalls were like closets, since the walls went down to the floor and up to the ceiling. The unfortunate feature was... HOLY WAH!!! 44k??? I'm not gonna do that to you this issue. I guess I WILL make it 2 or 3 parts for you afterall. I know where I'll put it: http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/ATI/trilogy/thereandback.txt Read the rest there if you don't wish to wait for the next couple issues. And I'm sorry if I put the "...'s" in too much of cliff hangerish places. No I'm not. (but then you knew that, huh?) marco *Appendix* And here's a song spoof I rewrote two verses for that goes as follows: This land's not your land, this land's not my land >From Silicon Valley to Wall Street >From the corporate towers, to the factory farms This land's not made for you and me (need to add some verses here) I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side, I saw ten thousand people Shutting down the IMF and World Bank meeting in DC! This land is your land, this land is my land >From California, to the New York Island >From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me _w_a_r_n_i_n_g_ `b`b`b`b`b`b`b`b_____j_u_s_t__ GATT # ??? (I've lost track. I'll figure it out by next month, promise) My ruminations on the whole thing can be found on my website (http://www.davidrovics.com), one of the first links you'll come to. Or you can go there directly at : http://members.aol.com/drovics/bonn.htm. You've also got to check out the fabulous Rinky Dink at http://www.rinky-dink.org. This traveling bicycle-powered sound system and radio station from England was in Bonn, and we were all glad they were there. The world needs more Rinky Dinks __c_a_u_s_e__ d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^ _r_e_p_r_i_n_t SEGNAHC - SOIBMAC - CAMBIOS - CHANGES 6. Activist Times Inc. (ATI): A diferencia de las otras publicaciones, ATI no se limita a publicar noticias sobre computadoras y/o teléfonos. Sus números incluyen normalmente artículos con comentarios sobre eventos gubernamentales en el ámbito mundial y otros temas de "interés general" (con un gran predominio de notas develando teorías de conspiraciones implementadas desde las más altas esferas del Estado y las corporaciones, tendientes a mantener ignorante a la población). Los artículos de ATI son generalmente cortos y suelen ser escritos por un núcleo de cuatro a siete personas. Al igual que 2600 magazine ATI sólo está disponible en hard copy (impresa en papel) pudiéndose adquirir mediante reembolso postal a nombre del editor que debe ser enviada a una casilla postal en los EE.UU. [ref]= [http://members.tripod.com/fmuraro/organizacion_social_de_los_hackers.htm] my best loose translation is: 6 ati a difference from the other pubs, ati isn't limited to publishing stories on computers and telephony. Their topics include normal articles with commentary about government events and world stuff of general interest. (With a little too much about conspiracy theories of the state and the corporations, etc.) The articles of ATI are generally short and appear to be written by a core group of 4-6 people. Closest similarity to ATI is 2600 magazine but one may be just hard copy while another is just web. See? I told you it's my "best loose." Try babelfish and see if they can't get you even more lost. Thank you, and have a nice day. Shoutz and gr33tz to the lead singer of the band W4IK got feedback? ati@etext.org