the homeless

Q: What's the difference between Luke and a homeless guy.
A: A credit card

Seriously, for the past week I've been rolling around town looking for jobs and a place to live in the SUV I rented after stepping off the plane. Missoula has it's fair share of vagrants, something I haven't witnessed for quite some time and everyday as I'd pass these folks lounging around city hall or the public library, I couldn't help but think that most of us are just a single catastrophe away from looking disheveled and being hungry.

Does anyone else ponder that?

Tonight I'm writing from what is most likely to be my new home for at least a year. It wasn't my first choice, but after getting jerked around one too many times I decided to just quit holding out for the perfect house/apartment with the right housemates. To be honest, I was so lucky in my last set-up back in Virginia that I was holding out, looking and hoping for something similar.

Interviewing to be a new housemate is an experience all in its own. Basically you are going up to a complete stranger, who you've only been able to filter by cost of rent and desired area of living, and then playing the dating game.

-Hi
=Hello
-So where you from?
=Um....Texas.
-Wow. My cousin's girlfriend's uncle is from (insert obscure small town). Do you know him?
=Sure, we met up to shoot guns and ride horses together once a month. Everyone in Texas does...it's like a club.
-Really?!?
=Sure.

Unfortunately, this mock conversation is not all to far off from one I had just last night. Hat in hand, going from stranger to strangers house trying to see if you fit into their ideal mold of a roommate, only to be turned down or told as soon as you get there the room has been taken can be frustrating, and was for me.

My favorite question during all this was when a younger gal asked me,

"Do you have any crazy girlfriends we need to worry about?"

To which I responded, highly amused, "sister, if you only knew". She didn't think it was funny.

The other new twist to my nw american life is that I'm doing it all as of now by two wheels. The rental is gone and from here on out I'm one of those annyoing cyclists you try not to hit with your side view mirror. It's going to be good for me I think. The ride "home" is up a hill is already making the muscles scream and fat ache.

And if you wondering what bike I'm riding, it's not the nice expensive one I broght back from japan. There one I fretted and wondered what to do with and how to get home...because that bike, betwen all the diferent stops and airlines between here and Tokyo...got squashed. So much so, that I can't fit the wheel in the fork, and as the local bike shop guys said, "There's just nothing you can do about that." Sigh.

But such is life. Sunday there's a symphony in the park. The fair is in town and to top it all off there's a rodeo tomorrow night. So life is at the very least providing entertainment to accompany the melodramatic parts.

I hope you all are well....and Japan, I miss you.