life | Bertram's Blog

Car Noises You Don’t Want to Hear

May 4, 2018 — Pat Bertram

My mother’s sister claimed that if everything goes as planned on a trip, it’s an excursion. If things don’t go as planned, it’s an adventure. And oh, am I having an adventure!

First, I got the stuttering starter fixed yesterday, and when I started the engine again a little later, the starter made a harsh grinding sound. So I went back to the mechanic. Apparently, he put in a heavy duty starter, one that’s wound differently than the old one, so it makes that harsh noise.

So, I packed the car and headed out. Everything went smoothly for the first hundred miles, then there was an odd rattling noise on the front passenger side. I stopped on the side of the highway, looked under the car, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Got back in, same noise. Stopped again and rearranged things in the car in case something was rattling inside. Started up again. Same noise. I thought maybe a stone was rattling in the wheel well, so I sped up to as fast as the car could go, hoping to pulverize the rock. That worked. Whew! I certainly didn’t want to turn back after going all that way!

Everything was fine for about fifty miles, and then there was a horrible high pitched screech. I pulled off to the side of the highway, but couldn’t think of anything to do, so I started up again. No noise. Then about twenty miles later, the same screech. This time I was able to isolate the noise — my speedometer. It’s been acting up a long time — lubricant isn’t supposed to last 46 years, I guess — but generally on the highway in warm weather there was no problem, so I didn’t worry about getting it fixed. The thing kept screeching for about an hour, then it clunked and died. It feels odd driving without a speedometer, but since I generally drive in the slow lane, there shouldn’t be a problem. And after all this time, I certainly should be able to shift by the feel of the engine.

No more problems after that. I drove until sunset, then pulled into the first motel I found. I didn’t even know what town it was until a young woman at the gas station told me it was Chowchilla, famous for a horrible event — apparently on the 1970s some fellows kidnapped a school bus load of kids in Chowchilla and buried them in the quarry at Livermore.

I should be safe since it happened so long ago, but just in case you don’t hear from me again, suggest to someone that they should look for me in the Livermore quarry.

See you on down the road. I hope.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Unfinished, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: car noises, Chowchilla, excursion vs. adventure, noises. 8 Comments »

Stuttering Start

May 3, 2018 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I went to get gas and to run a last few errands before I started my trip. I was distracted at a light, and stalled my car. It’s not hard to do when one is weak from being sick — apparently, I did not have the clutch pushed in all the way. That’s not a problem. It happens. But what has never happened before is that the car did not start afterward. Nothing. No grinding, no sound at all. Just a dead click. I was in the middle of three lanes of rush hour traffic on a horribly busy highway. (60 miles per hour on the road, and stoplights every mile or so. Yeah. I know. Crazy.)

Cars all around me were trying to pull into the other lanes, and I just sat there with no way to pull off to the side. So I called my mechanic. We decided I’d have the car towed to him, but I tried one more time, and after a grumble or two, the thing started. So I headed to his garage, thinking all the while how silly I was to stall the car and then not be able to start it again. I mean, it’s not like it’s an unfamiliar car or anything — I’ve had it for more than forty-two years. (Wow. That sounds absurd. Who the heck owns a car that long?)

Everything was fine, and I felt sillier and sillier. Then, on another super busy highway, I heard something metallic fly off the car. So, I pulled over to the side and somehow stalled the car again. I couldn’t find what I’d lost (it was only later I realized the frame around the headlamp had flown away in the wind), and the car did start, but with that same grumbling noise.

About that time, I stopped feeling silly. Obviously something was wrong more than a weak clutch leg. As luck would have it, the mechanic finally heard the noise too. Apparently, the starter was stuttering, a sign of it going bad. So, instead of heading out early this morning, I head out to the mechanic for a new starter.

Someone told me that having the starter go out before a trip is good luck, and it certainly is. Better to have it happen here with a mechanic I know than out in the middle of nowhere with no mechanic at all.

This trip certainly has had a stuttering start, what with my getting sick and now car trouble. Let’s hope this new starter presages a new start for the trip, albeit several hours late, and that my luck continues to hold.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in Adventure, culture, life. Tags: car troubles before a trip, car won't start, feeling lucky, stalled in traffic, stuttering starter. 10 Comments »

Trip, Life, and Book Update

May 2, 2018 — Pat Bertram

Planning is what we do before the adventure begins. Once the wheel is on the road or the foot on the path, you have to take it as it comes. In my case, the “taking it as it comes” started long before the plans were even finalized. Originally, I was going to have a six week adventure, possibly even more, but that was cut short when I agreed to do a dance performance at the beginning of June. (I couldn’t pass up a chance to wear my belly dance costume again!) So the six week adventure became four weeks. A terrible cold knocked that four weeks down to three.

Finally, I am well enough (I hope!) to leave tomorrow.

I’ll still be able to see the people I planned to visit, but the extended camping and hiking trips on the way to Seattle have been cancelled. In a way, I don’t mind — I’m still not completely well and I don’t want to take a chance on getting pneumonia, but more than that, when left to my own devices, I tend to just drive, only stopping for the night when I am too exhausted to continue. I really get into the Zen of driving — letting thoughts drift into my mind and then leaving them in the past as I continue to drive into the future.

Although I desperately need a wilderness trek, there is much wilderness within a day’s drive of where I am staying in the desert, including access to the Pacific Crest Trail and various national parks so it’s not as if this was my only chance to tree bathe. And who knows — if I feel well enough after I’ve made turtles (the chocolate/pecan/caramel kind) with my sisters in honor of our mother on Mother’s Day weekend, I could still do a camping trip in the Olympic National Park. (That was one of the camping trips I had to cancel because of my illness.) And perhaps even a short backpacking trip, but that’s up in the air since I’ve spent much of the past three weeks in bed and have little strength.

The one bright spot in all of this is that I finished my decade-old novel!! I hope I didn’t rush the ending to get through, but I had already made all the points I needed to make, and I couldn’t figure out a second-to-last twist, so I mostly summarized their idyllic existence in their near-Eden before I hit them with the big whammy.

I still don’t know what I am going to do with the book. I do not like Amazon, so I don’t want to “publish” it there, I don’t have a publisher for it, and I don’t want to do the horrific work of finding one, so as of right now, I am just sending a PDF to anyone who wants to read it. If you want to read the book, leave a message in a comment, and I will send the PDF to you. It’s not my typical story with a mystery — it’s more of a sometimes humorous, sometimes horrifying apocalyptic novel where God decides to recreate the world. If you do read it, I would appreciate a notation of any typos you might find as well as any sections that drag or speed by too fast.

See you on down the road!

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Posted in Adventure, books, life. Tags: decade-old manuscript, foot on the path, planning a trip, planning is what we do, recreating the world, the zen of driving, wheel on the road. 12 Comments »

Badassery

April 27, 2018 — Pat Bertram

Why does everything pertaining to strong women now have to fall under the category of badassery? There are so many groups of bold women online, so many websites geared toward women who want to lead a more adventurous life that seem as if they would be interesting or inspirational, but always, there comes that word — badass — which grates on my soul and makes me turn off my computer.

For one thing, the word makes me wonder why their behinds would be called bad. If the women are as athletic as they are portrayed, for sure they’d have good buttock musculature.

For another, the word is vulgar, vulgarity seems such a cheat, especially to one who loves words.

And, of course, the word is now incredibly trite. If every woman is a badass, then none are as special as they think they are.

Look at the words I’ve used so far to describe such women: bold, adventurous, strong, inspirational. And there are many others that would be as colorful: fierce, independent, rebellious, powerful, tough, intrepid, daring, audacious, free-spirited, awe-inspiring, formidable, admirable. Any one of those words makes badass seem namby-pamby. And any of those words I would gladly claim if I could. But badass? Never.

That’s all. As you were.

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: audacious, badass, daring, describing strong women, free-spirited, good buttocks, intrepid, vulgar word. 9 Comments »

The Best Laid Plans

April 20, 2018 — Pat Bertram

Plans gang aft agley, but it’s hard not to feel silly after one has posted one’s plans online, and then have those plans come to naught. All these months, I’ve been talking about the big road-camping-hiking-backpacking trip I’ve planned for May, and then zap! I caught a cold. A bad one.

I haven’t accomplished much of anything the past week— the book remains unfinished, the trip preparations have come to a halt, and trail foods never got fixed. (I haven’t even been blogging — didn’t want you to catch my cold.)

I still hope to be well enough to leave Wednesday as planned, but I even if I have stopped coughing by then, I might be too weak. If I left a few days later, driving mostly straight through and staying at motels instead of campgrounds, I’d still be able to visit the people I’d planned to visit (keeping my fingers crossed!) but I would have to forego some of the sights I wanted to see and the activities I’d hoped to experience.

But you never know. Everything could go as planned. And if not, well, I still have my trip book — the binder I’ve filled with maps and directions and descriptions of parks and places along the way — so I can take the trip another time.

It’s interesting (to me, anyway), the difference in my thinking when I am feeling well and when I am not. When I am well, I feel as if I can work toward impossible dreams and maybe even accomplish them. When I am weakened by illness (or by coughing fits), I feel as if even the possible would be impossible.

But thinking doesn’t change reality, even though people say it does. If you don’t think you can do something, you can still try to prove yourself wrong and end up accomplishing what you think you could not do. If you think you can do something, you can rely too much on the belief and do nothing to make it happen, you can fail to accomplish what you thought you could.

Whatever happens next week — and next month — I’ll continue working toward the goal of an eventual epic backpacking trip. That doesn’t necessarily mean I will take the trip because as we all know, plans don’t mean a whole lot if things change and you can’t implement them, but still, it’s the work that counts.

For now, I need to work on getting better.

Hope you all are doing okay.

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Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: bad cold, best laid plans, camping trip, dealing with changes, plans change, plans gang aft agley, road trip, thinking doesn't make it happen. 15 Comments »

Uncreating and Recreating my Life

April 7, 2018 — Pat Bertram

It’s been exceptionally windy lately, and will continue to be windy through tomorrow. I still did my faux backpacking treks the past couple of days, though I must admit, I procrastinated this morning. It wasn’t just the wind I couldn’t face, but the struggle to get the backpack up onto my back. I can do it easily sitting on the bed, but I have it on good authority there are no such beds out in the wilderness. In the desert, there are often boulders the right size, but I’ve hiked many places where there wasn’t even a place to sit down except the ground, and sometimes not even that if the trail follows the side of a mountain or swings through a deep forest.

Yesterday, I had such a hard time getting the pack on, I was afraid I would wrench my back, but it’s something I have to learn — getting the darn pack on with nothing or no one to help. Then, it came to me: do the left side first. (The instructions for putting on a backpack were to haul it up on the bent right leg, put your right arm through the strap, then with the left hand gripping the haul strap, sling the thing onto your back, but my left hand isn’t strong enough and even if it were, the wonky arm no longer bends the way it’s supposed to.) I switched sides, and by golly, it worked. Despite the twenty-eight pound dead weight, the pack went on easily.

Then, of course, I had no excuse not to go out walking.

As I was sauntering along with all that weight on my back (plus two pounds of water in my belly pack), it occurred to me that I no longer feel the pull to do an epic backpacking trip. It’s not that I am giving up on the idea, it’s that I’ve already been pulled. It’s no longer an impossible dream, though the dream has to be tailored to my fitness level. It is and will probably always remain impossible for me to do the whole 2,700 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from beginning to end in one season. An average of twenty-miles a day for six months? Eek. Not even many young fit folk manage to do that. But I will be doing some of it, even if only a few miles — it’s just a matter of when and where.

I like the idea of doing the last hundred miles of the northern section and the first hundred miles of the southern section, and then filling in the center. Sort of like the way I colored when I was a kid — first the outline, then the middle. But we’ll see.

My May trip is getting closer, and I still have a lot to do to prepare, most notably searching through my storage unit and the closet in my room for all my camping and backpacking gear so I can decide what to take. (And make sure I don’t leave something important behind!)

Meantime, I am spending most of my mental time on my book, trying to figure out the last section. There needs to be more upheavals before they settle down, but I’ve already uncreated the world and recreated it, so I’m not sure what I can do that doesn’t set up echoes of what’s already been done. I’ll think of something though — in fact, I might take inspiration from one of my silly little water colors, and pull the stars down to earth and the flowers up into the sky. One can do that if one is a writer, especially if one is a writer who is playing god.

I’m still not sure whether to create a Garden of Eden or some sort of cave person environment. (I’ve been trying to find out what a Garden of Eden would look like, but to no avail.) Not that it really matters, but they have to settle somewhere. I don’t want to have to research a whole set of survival skills for them, so it has to be easy for them and for me, this primordial and primitive place where they will raise the baby they are going to have. (And yes, the poor kid will be named Adam. What else could his name be, this first boy child born into the recreated world?)

With any luck and a bit of determination, I might be able to finish the book before I head out, to free my mind for all the new adventures coming my way. So, while I uncreate and recreate the world in my book, I am also uncreating and recreating my own life as I finish the novel, prepare for my trip, and continue my backpacking conditioning.

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Posted in Adventure, life, writing. Tags: conditioning for a backpacking trip, creating a Garden of Eden, excitement and dread before a trip, playing god, putting on a backpack, trip preparations, wonky arm. 2 Comments »

A Gathering of Gatherers

April 4, 2018 — Pat Bertram

Once upon an e-time, long ago and far away, there was a social networking site for writers, photographers, and artists of all kinds called Gather. I haven’t thought about this site much lately because, well, because it’s no longer there. The owners sold it, and the buyers only wanted the health site part of the owners’ holdings, and so Gather was deleted. All our photos, articles, discussions . . . gone. Though some people were perspicacious enough to copy and save those discussions, I was not one of them. Luckily, I was able to recreate some of the photo essays I posted on the site, those I was most proud of, such as Echoes, Deep Thought. Or Not, and Short and Witty Photographic Ditty.

Today, when I was talking with my sister about my upcoming trip, she mentioned how wonderful it was that I actually turned online friends into offline friends, and so I told her about two of the women I will be visiting on my way to Seattle. Then it dawned on me — I’d met both of those women on Gather. Not only that, it was my sister who had introduced me to Gather. She’d found a contest on the site that she talked me into entering. And that contest led the way to many new friendships.

It’s interesting to think how one small thing can reverberate through the years. I don’t know if my sister actually changed my life by her urging me to enter the contest, but she sure had an effect, and my life is richer for it.

Gather might have been the beginning, but I have since met others online through my blog or Facebook. Generally these folks started out as fans or fellow grievers and became friends. People often caution me about visiting people I only met online, but I have never had a problem. (Apparently, they haven’t had a problem with me, either, because almost all of them have remained friends.) Over the years, reading and commenting on each other’s blogs, seeing the photos of their families and vacations, participating in various discussions, you do get to know people. (It’s the same as offline, actually.)

I must admit, having people to meet along the way makes any trip a wonderland of possibilities — not just because of meeting the people themselves, but because of all the things they love in their area they want to share, things I would never have found on my own.

People who are fed up with the politics and policies on Facebook and who are looking for another place to hang out would be gravitating to Gather if it still existed. For a while, Facebook was an adequate substitute for Gather, but it is becoming increasingly unfun. (Which is one of the reasons I keep blogging — it makes me feel as if I am in control of at least a part of my online destiny.)

I can’t go back, but I can go forward, and forward means I will soon be meeting friends from Gather and elsewhere. I can hardly wait!

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Posted in internet, life. Tags: changing someone's life, Facebook, fans and friends, Gather, looking for another social networking site, meeting online friends offline, talking to my sister. 7 Comments »

Wishing You the Joy of This Day

April 1, 2018 — Pat Bertram

A new month starts today, maybe even a resurrection of sorts. Despite the predominately religious meanings of this time of year, there is a more personal spiritual meaning — that no matter how down (or up!) we are, we can find a renewal, a liberation, a breaking open of the constraints that bind us so we can burst forth into a new day, a new way of being.

Or something like that.

After yesterday’s feeling that much of what I’ve been doing is just plain silly, today I am taking a break from all of those things. Well, most of them. Obviously, I am blogging, but I did not go sauntering with my pack (though I did chat with a fellow on FB about various sections of the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington), did not go to dance class (that counts even though there was no dance class today), have not added any words to my book (though I did delete some, which doesn’t seem anywhere near as silly as adding words).

So did doing not much of anything feel silly? Nope. It felt good just to be. To enjoy the moment. I do enjoy the moments when I am doing something, of course, but when I am not doing “nothing,” the enjoyment is sort of a tagalong feeling to whatever it is I am doing — enjoying the desert while sauntering, enjoying the energy of dancing — rather than enjoyment as a separate entity.

I so often feel a push for more — to carry more weight in the pack, to walk more miles, to write more and better, to get stronger, healthier, wiser — that it’s good once in a while to burst out of the winding cloths I’ve wrapped myself in, and step out into the joy of being

I’m overdoing the metaphor a bit, but so what?

It’s a new day. And today I can do whatever I want. Be whatever I want. Well, in my own mind at least. There is still the matter of a body that doesn’t always cooperate, but that is a matter for another time.

Wishing you the joy of this day.

***

Posted in being me, life, writing. Tags: doing more, enjoying the day, feeling silly, finding renewal, personal resurrection, resurrection, wanting more. Leave a Comment »

Being Silly

March 31, 2018 — Pat Bertram

As I was sauntering along today, carrying twenty-eight pounds on my back, the whole thing — the weight, the pretend backpacking treks, the dream of a hugely long hike — suddenly seemed utterly silly.

I suppose if I could see any changes — more muscle tone, a sleeker body, greater energy, anything — it wouldn’t seem so ridiculous, but I don’t see any difference in me at all. I am carrying more weight in the pack than I did at the beginning, but I don’t think it’s because I’m stronger; it’s more that I carried less than I could when I started this project. Back then, I couldn’t carry much because I couldn’t sling the pack onto my back. Once I figured out that it was easy to put the pack on while sitting on the bed, I was able to increase the weight.

But that brings up another silly issue — in the backcountry, there are no beds, so I researched how to put on a pack out in the wild (hoist it up onto a bent leg using the haul strap, hold the haul strap with the left hand, put the right arm through the right shoulder strap, hump it onto your back and then put the left arm through the strap), but that’s difficult to do even without a weak and wonky left arm. I thought of using a rope to haul the thing up my back, but sheesh — talk about silly!

I guess none of this is any more foolish than the rest of my life, such as spending years writing books only a few folks read. Or taking ballet classes when one is leaden footed. Or learning to dance when one can’t distinguish one note or instrument from another. (In class the other day, I was told to do a certain move when the steel guitars started. Total blank. Hadn’t a clue.) Or driving a forty-six-year-old car. Or . . .

Come to think of it, is anything in my life not silly?

But then what do I know — perhaps silliness is the point of my life. Of any life. Maybe God created us and the world and even the universe in a fit of silliness and then went on to more important things.

Since I have nothing more important to do at the moment, I’m stuck with my silliness. At least I’m consistent, but then, consistency is foolish, too.

As if all this weren’t silly enough, I spent the past half hour trying to find the perfect positioning for the image of the bed in this blog post.

Yikes.

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Posted in life, writing. Tags: carrying a backpack, foolish consistency, foolishness of life, hoisting a backpack, practicing backpacking, putting on a backpack. 11 Comments »

Author Arc

March 30, 2018 — Pat Bertram

There are only two days left of my novel writing month. Unlike the National Novel Writing Month in November, which is about writing 50,000 words in a month, I had no goal except to work on my book every day. The first four days of March were dedicated to editing and reading what I already had written — it’s impossible to finish writing a book if you don’t know what it’s about, and I’d let the poor thing lie fallow for so many years, I’d forgotten many of the details.

Two days of the month were wasted from a novel writing point of view as I celebrated Jeff’s death with tears and sorrow (though not, of course, wasted from a purely personal point of view). I did open the manuscript and stare at it for a while both those days, which has to count for something.

It is interesting that I should be working on this particular book around the anniversary because it was the last book where Jeff offered any input — he always helped with making sure the men thought and acted like men. Some people were disappointed with my last two books — Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare and Unfinished — both of which were written long after his death so they lacked the male point of view that kept my first four books from slipping into girlishness. And I have to admit, both Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare and Unfinished are “girlier” than my first four novels, which I doubt Jeff would have liked. But the way I figure, if he didn’t want me to write fiction geared more for women, then he shouldn’t have died.

I have a hunch my male characters in the book I am writing now are losing their edge, but I don’t think it matters. The theme of the story is freedom. How much freedom we are willing to give up for safety, how much safety we are willing to give up for freedom, and in the end, since freedom is an illusion, it’s about embracing responsibility. So, if in this third part, the characters are different from the first two parts, it can be chalked up to character arc rather than author arc.

Usually about this time, as I am sliding down to the end, I have another book in mind, but not this time. One idea I had was to write a murder mystery when/if I ever hiked long sections of the Pacific Crest Trail. I’d probably scare myself half to death writing about death in the wilderness on such a hike, but it certainly would give a book immediacy if I were sort of living it as I wrote it. Another idea is to do a sequel to the book I am now finishing. Two babies were born in completely different circumstances in this newly created world of mine. One of the babies is named Eve. The other Adam. It does call out for a sequel doesn’t it? And yet, this book is more or less a one-note story. Once the gag is played out, I’m not sure what’s left.

Anyway, considering how long I’ve been working on this book, I shouldn’t count my ending before it’s hatched — if I get sidetracked again, it could be years before I get back to it.

I will extend my novel-writing month into April, however, even though I only have half the month to write since I will need at least a week to prepare for my trip. (It’s not just a road trip and a camping trip and a hiking trip, but also a backpacking trip, a city trip with a fancy night on the town, and various and sundry other excitements.) After that week of preparation, I will be leaving. Although I have been calling this my May trip, I will be leaving in April since I have to be back the last week in May to practice for a performance. Let’s hope I don’t lose the dances somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. They were both difficult to learn.)

Does talking about my book constitute working on it? No, I guess not. So, back to work I go, constructing a world and many dangers for my poor characters to suffer through.

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