Thursday, June 28, 2007

Wright-Patt

Upon leaving Donatos we resumed our march toward Dayton by walking along the edge of Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Long story short, the Air Force police came to see us (that is, me) because apparently it IS illegal to take photographs in the United States of America. They said because I was just off the road (in the grass), I was on US government property and subject to different laws than usual. In other words, they fucked with me for an hour and 15 minutes. The main guy told me I had to give them my tape, even though I showed him there was nothing on it that showed even a square foot of the base; even though I told him I'd gladly let him watch me erase all the footage I'd taken from land adjacent to the base. (Of course, that's exactly what we ended up doing after their investigator showed up and watched it.) The whole ordeal was a bunch of unnecessary bullshit. These people are
supposed to be protecting me and my freedom. Instead they're stripping me of it... Fear your future.

From Dayton

We got a little sleep last night under an overhang in front of a church in Enon. (It was raining.) This morning we started walking toward Dayton, arriving in Fairborn just before 11:00 AM. Ronnie and John (his name is not actually Bill) were hungry but didn't have any money, so we went into a few fast food joints to see if we could get any "kick downs" (free food). No luck, so we tried again at Donatos Pizza. Having worked a couple years at Donatos, I thought we might have a good chance there because I knew each Donatos is supposed to make two large test pies every day just before opening, to make sure the ovens are working right. Sure enough the Donatos manager (Nick Reiter) took a peek at one of the pizzas sitting in the pass-thru and handed it to us. It was a large Works on a thick crust. While we were outside eating, someone else brought us a sub that had been made wrong. That was
cool. I think the Donatos people really felt good about doing something nice for us. I hope so.

Enon, Ohio

We didn't get arrested last night; we just got caught and kicked off the train in Enon, Ohio... You wouldn't believe the shit that's happened to us over the last couple days even if you'd been there watching it all. Fortunately my camera has been there to catch it for you. Yes, I did get footage of the Clark County Sheriff's deputies finding us in the box car and some of what happened thereafter. I thought I had 20 or 30 minutes of that stuff (holding the camera as if it was off so they wouldn't suspect anything), but apparently I accidentally hit the pause button a couple minutes into it. I was so disappointed when I realized I didn't get it all, but when I watched the footage I did get, I was thrilled because it's incredible. The guys agreed. The people in Enon treated us almost like celebs. We're gonna be legends in that town. We've walked about 8.5 miles so far today, from Enon to
Riverside. If you think yesterday wasn't crazy enough, wait till you hear about today. More later.