Four nights of gigs in Amsterdam at the beginning of August with Adam Bloom then its fly back to the US and good ole’ North Idaho. Within three days of arriving I’m up in the Selkirk Mountains scampering up 1500 feet of low grade 5 slab granite and for company I have a few small birds, a mule deer and below me and to the right the top of Dane Burn’s head. The climb is called the western traverse and as I move a little way into it a thousand feet or so below me is Little Harrison lake and I have to resist the temptation to dive into the void in an effort to forget the English middle classes that run comedy in the UK and the fools who think attacking the Obama administration in veiled racism will pull them out of the 8 year slump that the previous administration delivered to them. Fantastic light headedness comes free of charge from being away from anything over 800 feet above seas level for the last four months. Gawd bless anything over 2200 feet above the level of most oceans. The next week I misjudge the time for a white water rafting trip down the lower Salmon River by a week and the day after my wife arrives from England I soon learn the next day I need to be rowing a cataraft through class four rapids on a river, in a canyon that thankfully will never see a dam but before that I drive over a mountain pass into Montana to see my old friend Tom Rhodes. He’s honoring what I’m sure was a regretted booking in Missoula Montana and beyond and seeing as I’m a friend I volunteer to go up first, without a proper intro and die on my ass in front of 23 locals and some leather clad hotel guest who are doing their best to pretend to be bikers. Fucking posers. I walk out of there with Tom’s blessing and two bottles of 190 proof Everclear and break the speed limit back to Idaho where thankfully I soon find myself on the river with my good friend Steve Jefferies. Five days and more than 54 cans of beer later (no exaggeration) I’m off the river and heading back to North Idaho. I’m now two weeks in and feel like I need a break from the break but no can do, two more weeks to go. Once back in Coeur d’Alene I scrape, etch, prime and repaint the breezeway, get the 1966 Triumph Bonneville back on the road, pay $427.50 to have the front CV joints on my 1990 Jeep replaced because I fucked it up and hopefully try and figure out what is causing the 1954 MG to not run. Fuel? Electrical? No clue. Feeling a bit frustrated I get my .45 pistol and go out to the local gravel pit and shoot the shit out of plastic milk bottles and bright orange targets with over 200 rounds of overpriced ammo. Thank you wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m enjoying myself so much I don’t even mind that the other folks shooting are firing assault rifles while drinking beer. I know better than to feel threaten because they’re drinking “Miller Lite”. Less calories, more shootin’ time. A couple of really hard but enjoyable mountain bike rides later I’m feeling like maybe I should chuck the joke telling to foreigners and sell carabiners to wannabes at Recreational Equipment Incorporated. But I’ve done shit like that before and it has a tendency to be interesting for about an hour then you suddenly realize it’s just you at an hourly wage working in an outdoor shop hoping for a discount on Patagonia’s overpriced shit while dealing with those who feel they’re better than you just because they have a good credit rating and work under fluorescent lights. Finally the Friday before I leave for limey-land I manage to hook up with Joe and Steve and we head back up into the Selkirk Mountains and finish a route we started on 5 years earlier that I first got on part of 33 years ago. Two days later I’m about to fly out of Spokane International (because they fly to Canada) airport but am confronted by an airport official who comes on the plane and tells me that they’ve confiscated the Everclear I have in my checked bags because it’s a highly volatile liquid and cannot be transported by plane no matter how many times I’m claiming they’ve done it in the past. Now I’m the bad guy. Thank you Homeland Security. Nothing gets by your nine years too late eyes, eh? They take down my name and address and then allow the flight to continue. Good bye USA, hello red flag for future travel. Once in the UK I’m lucky enough to find that my good buddy Mike Wilmot is already here and will be till October. He may be Canadian but at least he has a life of sorts. First gigs back can sometimes set a tempo for months but luckily I’m in such unknowns as Hitchen and to my surprise I remember most of what passes in some places as my act and actually try new stuff. Gawd bless Paul B Edwards and the locals for not just staring blankly. My old acquaintance Doug Stanhope is in London but on the tail end of his shows so seeing as I have no real hope of seeing him nor wanting to really have any run ins with his fans I text him like the kids do and hope he comes back again when the odd taste of foreign travel is just a memory. I doubt he will but who can blame him. Life in that bubble must be good and I’m glad he’s still out there doing what he does. On the horizon is no telly work what so ever, which is neither a bad thing nor my fault really. In between keeping my opinion in public to myself and riding motorcycles too fast I managed to secure some good gigs in good clubs with mostly good people. Just the same I need to get on line and book a return ticket to North Idaho sooner rather than later as I just heard the price of ammunition has gone down because of the troops being pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan and I feel like a few plastic milk cartons need to be ventilated.