October 5th and 6th

Day Eighty Five: Missoula, MT

After grocery shopping, I hung out outside Good Foods, the local grocery store like Whole Foods, and ate sweets I could hardly afford–I was nervous, working up my guts to play ukulele on the street to earn a little money.
After talking briefly to an employee, who encouraged me to do it, I headed over to the city park, where there weren’t many people and I could get warmed up and get used to playing publicly (I’ve only ever played privately). I leaned my bike on the trunk of the only tree with red leaves. I sat in the tree’s circle of red shade and felt comfortable there.
I got many smiles and one family of listeners, and I earned my first dollar by a man whose wife declared “It’s only because he’s a sucker for the ukulele!”
I packed up and moved into town, where, just as I’d chosen my plot, a kid wearing a backpack, torn and patched jeans, and a worn baseball cap with quarts crystals jammed through the rim, passed by. We started talking and ended up just hanging out together through the entirety of the lunch rush (which was hardly a rush at all for a Sunday afternoon). He’s a traveler via hitchhiking and train-hopping. I suggested he stay at Bruce’s tonight, and we split up, deciding to meet up again a bit later at a bar hosting a poetry reading (that I found out about in the city paper earlier in the day).
I picked a new spot, one I hoped would have more traffic, but there wasn’t any. I only ended up earning four dollars. They were perhaps the happiest four dollars I’ve ever received, though. I remember all of their faces.
I walked over to the Badlander bar, ordered a whisky-ginger and enjoyed the reading. Chris, the backpacker, joined after the first poem and we walked back home (to Bruce’s) together.
(This is where Chris took his first shower in about three weeks and we both did some much-needed laundry.)

Day Eighty SIx: Missoula, MT

Chris and I spent the day together wandering around town.

We visited an art gallery, a book store with unfortunately overpriced books, and then we went out to lunch.

Lunch was on me thanks to generous Paypal donations from Dr. Steve Zimmerman and Peter Dubin. Chris travels without money (and does extraordinarily well like this), so he isn’t often able to get a ready-cooked meal–so this was fun for the both of us.
After lunch we walked around the city park and then stopped in a coffee shop to sip some Mountain Huckleberry coffee and a complimentary treat of huckleberry coffee cake. Scrumptious!
We went back to house and made dinner for the house. We made asian styled brussel sprouts and shitake mushrooms with quinoa. Yum!