Chopper Hostel

I used to take a lot of acid and hang around with hippies. Then I grew up or at least older. I really thought that these peace mongering, free love potheads had the line on some secret right that all of us should enjoy. I was wrong, they’re weak, base their lives on feelings, smell bad and need to learn that life doesn’t care about you or how you feel.

It’s a lifestyle that just doesn’t fit these times. What flew in those simpler times back in the 60’s just don’t take air 60 years later. Those were simpler times, these ain’t them Starchild McFadden.

Innocence drove the original hippies. Raised in a time of limited media, there were only three television networks, and the airwaves were still dominated by AM radio. Simpler times left room for an antiestablishment movement based on drugs, peace and free love.

In these crazy times there is no innocence left. Back then Pat Boone’s music about teens first love crackled across the airwaves and now we have Cardie B and her Wet Ass Pussy endorsing presidential candidates.

Don’t come at me with your peace, love and magic crystals. These are different times, people don’t want to get along, they want you dead…Allah said so.

Shit man, gettin’ by is good enough, just set your course and fight the weather as it comes at ya. It’s been rough but at least I knew what was comin’. If the day before sucked and the day before that did too and that was ushered in by a few years before that also sucking you can probably gather that tomorrow will suck too.

I wake up in the morning, feet spinning in anxious motion as all the days worries flood into my pillowed head. Years upon years of suck just piled up and you have to put on your big boy pants and get on with things. The morning worry is what pushes you forward, anything just to get out of your head.

This morning, my foot wasn’t spinning. The news was still red, and I found myself relieved and maybe even a little hopeful. Sure, some feelings might have been hurt along the way but fuck feelings, they ain’t worth what I pay for gas.

What the fuck is gender studies and how is that goin’ to reduce my food bill? This kind of foolishness got us to where we are and four more years of bathing in the blood of it ain’t gonna fix anything. Two bathrooms and lower taxes is what we need and if that offends you nobody cares.

What the fuck do I know, I’m just some out of touch troll livin’ in a hole with a thing against tie dyed, dirt worshipers. All I know is that I have a glimmer of hope in my heart, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I’ve been knee deep in surviving for years now and I’m not one to rush towards the light (Carol Ann), but shit, I’m gonna bask in the warm glow that I haven’t felt in some time and lean into the hope of another Trump economy. Love him or hate him but $1.75 a gallon and no schoolhouse indoctrination should sound good to anybody. Sounds good to me.

The thing that gets me is how information was distributed during this whole election period. The gaslighting was separate and focused. I mean with the information I received the opposing side would have out of their fuckin’ minds to believe and I’m sure they think the same about me. All that gaslighting has to come from somewhere and it ain’t from anybody I know. I guarantee the other side has no idea either, none of us will ever know for sure.

So, I’m still stuck with this unexpected glimmer of optimism and killin’ myself to not be dancing around on the front lawn because of it. However, I’ve been fooled before, I’m not that intuitively gifted.

I’m more inclined to hedge my bets before I get all giddy about it. I started Chopper Hostel to fill the gap created by the end of my painting career as it was. I’m still stickin’ with it, painting that is, but I’m not going to rely on it exclusively. It’s actually nice to step back and assess where my life is at.

In a few days all the commotion will be behind us and actual information will start to flow from the new administration before I get too excited about the future. It’s more a matter of self-preservation rather than anything financial, finances are irrelevant when you’re fuckin’ broke.

I made some adjustments to my life, first when I landed in West by God, again when I bought my shitty house and finally when Chopper Hostel became a thing. They were all good ideas for me at the time and those ideas held up through the last four years of this bullshit.

Now, under a proven presidency, things here at the hostel are lookin’ brighter but I am only cautiously optimistic. Things have a tendency to fall apart when I invest in the future based only on a feeling even if that feeling is justified.

So, I’m stuck with this little wad of hope for my immediate future and the future of this great country. I’m afraid to nurture it as doin’ so seems like it will jinx it. A beaten dog only recovers for a while before you turn them sour. This dog is beaten but not quite sour, but there’s still time.

Immediately, I still need to heat my house, fuel my truck and afford groceries before we drill, baby, drill. I’m at the bottom of the financial barrel hovering somewhere below livin’ paycheck to paycheck and sellin’ my ass for a bag of weed. The lowest of the low on a scale of monetary bliss but still too proud to pull a government check.

“That’s a whole lot of words painter you dashing example of socio-economic prosperity and fine demeaner, but what the fuck would you do different if the future didn’t have the possibility of venturing into national greatness again?”, I hear you say. Well here it is.

If things hadn’t gone in the direction they have, Chopper Hostel would become only a website and not a campground. With no possibility of a financial surge, I would have been forced to sell off some of my land, buy a van and just spend my time chacin’ one chopper venue to another just tryin’ to make enough scratch to keep the dog and I fed.

That was seriously the plan if the election hadn’t gone in the direction it apparently has. I have always been better on the road just livin’ rather than stayin’ in one place building things over the years. I could always make a few bucks to get me too the next destination rather than stay put and build an empire. I want that empire, I’m too old to keep movin’ around like that, I’m fuckin’ tired.

So, with the announcement of Trumps win thoughts of packin’ up and disappearing have faded, and the hope of Chopper Hostels next season is comin’ further and further into focus. Instead of packin’ my bug out bags and hittin’ the high country it looks like I can turn my intentions to another summer with the grounds filled with dirty chopper jockeys gruntin’ around the mountain twisties of my hometown.

Basing your life on your ‘feelings’ has never been the way to any kind of stability and it certainly is no way to run a country. Stability is an actual thing that everyone wants and needs and with the previous administration feedin’ on feelings was little more than confusing and reached to the farthest opposite of stability. I can’t imagine being an impressionable kid tryin’ to grow up sane with all this hippy ass stupid inconsequential nonsense just to get reelected. A man is a man, a woman is a woman and neither can live on an empty belly. These are facts, not feelings!

Now that we’re gettin’ back to brass tacks maybe there’s a chance to flourish. Without gettin’ bombarded with confusing rhetoric and hate speech we can move forward building OUR dreams instead of the dreams of the new world order.

If you go to my Big Cartel store,(link below) you’ll find all my Trump prints are on sale for a limited time.

https://georgethepainter.bigcartel.com

Grab a few. Help me get a few bucks together while we wait for the transfer of power. If not and you like what I am doing here and would like to help keep it afloat consider a donation.

I appreciate all that you do and for following along. You’re what keeps Chopper Hostel going. Please like comment and subscribe. Until next time “GTP” out