August 6, 2016

I just colored my hair. It's the first time I've done it myself on the road. I had to think it about how I wanted to do it. The kitchen sink and the shower stall are made of porous materials, so I didn't want to use either at the risk of staining them. I didn't want to use the park's shower because I wanted some privacy. I used BOB's outside shower and a bucket to catch the dye water and it worked perfectly.

The ribs were great. They came with a "smoked" baked potato with bacon and sour cream, and a side of coleslaw which was really just cabbage with sauce and eight fucking raisins. Raisins are OK in oatmeal cookies if they are accompanied by walnuts, but I typically use dried apricots and roasted pecans in my oatmeal cookies which are far superior. Raisins are OK in trail mix, too, but raisins are NOT OK in anything else. Carrots are NOT OK in anything except cooked in a beef stew. Carrots are ONLY OK raw with Ranch dressing. Shredded carrots in a salad piss me off beyond belief: sure, the orange color is pretty but they suck the flavor out of the rest of the salad. And, whoever invented frisée should have it stuffed up every orifice he or she has: if I wanted a mouth full of feathers, I'd eat a chicken that wasn't plucked.

The park's restaurant closed at seven last night and is doing the same tonight. Usually it closes at eight which is the time I start cooking dinner. According to the woman who sold me the ribs, they are short-handed and therefore tired. I planned to do laundry this morning but I didn't have any quarters. I burned through $20 of quarters doing laundry last weekend, and I didn't refill my supply before departing from Polson. I waited until nine o'clock this morning before going to the office/restaurant to buy quarters. There are neither office nor restaurant hours posted on the park's map or website, but eight or nine o'clock is the typical time for parks to open their offices. The office was closed at nine. It was still closed at ten. I ran into a couple who said the office was open at 11 last night checking in Rvers. I guess the staff decided to sleep in this morning. Incomprehensible. While I had all day to do my laundry, I wanted to do it as early as possible to cross it off my list. Sometime after 10:30 a new camper pulled into a site, so I knew that the office was open. I got my quarters and said nothing about their failure to understand that they are in the hospitality industry.

​I am systematically ruining my clothes. It started at Kim and Kate's house in Delaware: their water is so hard that the minerals in it must bind to or be suspended by in the emollient in sunblock. All of my white clothes have turned orange around the neckline. Bleach works, but either it is ephemeral or I keep encountering hard water - probably the latter - and the orange stains return. I wear a uniform of a sort: either a linen shirt or a cotton/linen v-neck sweater (with a cotton tank under both) and khakis. A couple of the khakis will be threadbare by the fall, so I just ordered some replacements. The combination of making 10 weeks' of RV park reservations yesterday and doing laundry today have made me think about changing over my uniform for the fall. On my way east in October, I'll pick up the clothes I left in Columbus, Ohio and take them to Providence where they will join the rest of my homeless possessions. I'll extract in Providence what I need for the winter.