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peripatetic potlatch

webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
My bomblets are prepared. I ride Ocelot, BMW K75C, for the Blue Ridge Parkway early tomorrow morning. Four days camping, three bonfires surrounded by strangers. My ammo comprises.six cans and the one plastic jar. Had to eat a lot of cookies to empty the cans. Here's what my bomblets look like:
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Each can holds three #49 Sungrown, one Dunhill robusto, one Cusano Xclusivo preferido, matches, and a water pillow. Had to study and experiment to figure out pack them just right to get it all in, because the Xclusivo is just a tad too long for the can and has to be cocked caddywampus with the pillow under to make it all fit. But the good part of that is, the stranger who gets bombed will have to smoke one immediately because he won't know how to repack the can. I ain't gonna tell him. Alas, I ran out of water pillows, so the one plastic bottle seen there has none. Gotta stock up.

Stranger beware. Johnny Sotweedseed is afoot. Deal with it.

Comments

  • mmccartneydcmmccartneydc Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,358
    Kinda like playing tetris huh? Looking good! Can't wait to see the destruction!
  • jsnakejsnake Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 5,037
    Nice bomb making skills
  • jlmartajlmarta Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,440
    Just out of curiosity, what would a guy from Delaware know about a potlatch? Northwestern roots?

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  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    Originally from Kali.
    Great grandma was Blackfoot.
    I try to pay attention.
  • jlmartajlmarta Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,440
    webmost:
    Originally from Kali.
    Great grandma was Blackfoot.
    I try to pay attention.


    Well, good. Nice to know someone with Native American ties and knowledge of northwest Indian culture. I'm Italian but I tell folks (tongue in cheek) that I think I was a northwest Indian in a previous life because I love the northwest and the art of the northwest Indians.

    And your planned trip with your bomblets fits right in with a potlatch. Good call.....

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  • jeep edsonjeep edson Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 826
    what is a potlatch. anything like a potluck
  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    jeep edson:
    what is a potlatch. anything like a potluck
    We have a profit based economy. The object is to stack up wealth. He who dies with most toys wins. The American Indian had the opposite notion of commerce. The object was to give away wealth. The man who gave away the most toys, food, you name it won. Pile up the pemmican, stack up the wampum, make more bows, fletch more arrows, gather more food, then throw a big ass party and give it all away. That party is a potlatch. Other names elsewhere, no doubt.

    A high plains Indian might give away everything down to his dog, stone knife, mocassins, then walk out naked and empty handed onto the plains, confident that Wakan Tonka would provide for him.

    Wonderful custom. Kind of like these BOTLs and their bombs.

  • jeep edsonjeep edson Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 826
    wow. very neat history
  • 0patience0patience Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,767
    webmost:
    jeep edson:
    what is a potlatch. anything like a potluck
    We have a profit based economy. The object is to stack up wealth. He who dies with most toys wins. The American Indian had the opposite notion of commerce. The object was to give away wealth. The man who gave away the most toys, food, you name it won. Pile up the pemmican, stack up the wampum, make more bows, fletch more arrows, gather more food, then throw a big ass party and give it all away. That party is a potlatch. Other names elsewhere, no doubt.

    A high plains Indian might give away everything down to his dog, stone knife, mocassins, then walk out naked and empty handed onto the plains, confident that Wakan Tonka would provide for him.

    Wonderful custom. Kind of like these BOTLs and their bombs.

    Well, it is a little more than that. But in essence, yes.
    It is why my wife has a hard time with my "live for today" attitude and my problem with not placing value on a lot of things. Potlatch, Pow Wow, the list goes on and on. Story telling is my favorite part though.
    As a child, listening to a storyteller was always something I looked forward to.

    The best way I can describe it is a native american Christmas, Thanksgiving and Family reuinion all rolled into one event. Generations of wisdom, knowledge, stories and teaching all in one spot.
  • webmostwebmost Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,131
    If I had the bucks, I would live this way and nothing else. Camping up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway, riding my motorcycle every day, hanging my hammock every night.

    Here's where I slung my hammock at the confluence of a crick and a trickle at Willsville Motorcycle Camp near Meadows of Dan. Kinda dark and fuzzy picture because it was drizzling and fog and dusk had set in:
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    Yep. Loads of rain, fog, drizzle, mist, and everything else that keeps paradise so green. Slept deep accompanied by water music. But first, I bombed some unsuspecting. Here is the first poor sucker to meet the wrath of Johnny Sotweedseed:
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    Turns out there was an annual gathering called the BURP at Willsville. Stands for Blueridge Ural Riders' Picnic. Loads of Russian steel. After WWII, see, Russia ripped off the BMW R75 designs as well as all the tooling from the factory, even the workers, took it to almost Siberia, where they still make the Ural. So long as socialism sucked in Russia, the bike was popular, because you had a nine year waiting list for a car but you could outright buy a Ural. with a sidecar. Nobody buys them now because government saved or created jobs regardless of quality so they had 1200 workers making a mere 2000 bikes who could not be fired regardless whether the timing gears were machined out of round (which they were). Government Motors, you know. Any of you modern American socialists listening? Of course you aren't.

    So, anyhoo, Ed got so enamoured of Urals that he even took a factory tour in Russia. He regaled us all with Russian beer named Baltika (spelled in squggles on the bottom label) and with tales of his travels to the Izh factory (2-stroke 350 motorcycle) in Izhevsk, along with bodyguard, tour guide, and horny mechanic.
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    But that's camping, innit? You meet the oddest people round the bonfire. That's a sun grown in Ed's hand. He'd never heard of such a thing. First thing he said was: "Every other cigar I ever smoked was crunchy and dry. I like it this way." I pointed out the water pillow in the bottom of the can. He may employ it in future.

    The creek beside the next camp I slung hammock was a roaring spillway, for cripes sake. Frog-strangling rain. Saw a bumper crop of deer on the way. Once the rain eased, I enjoyed a fresh rolled San Lotano maduro which a BOTL bombed me with weeks back, while sitting in an Adirondack chair beside a brimming pond:

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    Jumping fish. Sprinkles on the water. Conversation. Then the rain began again. At this camp I unloaded three more bombs... but I have to get to work sometime this morning, so enough of this, we'll leave off at Ed and imagine the others.

    Thanks to catfishblues for introducing me to the thrilling sport of cigar bombing.

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