I’m currently sitting in the Clown Motel strike that. Let’s come back to the clowns.

Last day at the cabin was pretty good. I’ve been following the antics of a particularly enormous squirrel, which I’ve named Squishy.

I also learned that one of the neighbors at the cabin has a wifi-named “poobox666” –

As well as a regular ‘Poobox’. I have a lot of questions. Is this for the router inside his outhouse? Does he have a separate outhouse for when he is directly communicating with Lucifer, the Morning Star, Satan himself? And what sort of asshole starts his wifi name with ‘hug’?

I drove out to visit the Yuba River, seeing some wild turkeys on the way, and a lynx immediately after crossing the bridge. And since I bought a dashcam for the trip, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get some use out it:

The lynx is far enough away that it’s only barely visible on the screen so I didn’t bother including that, and since my dumpster fire editing software on this laptop won’t let me zoom and enhance, it’ll remain that way, presumably until I get home.

I also spent some time tooling around the historic downtown area of Nevada City.

It’s basically a tourist trap with lots of shops and whatnot, and unfortunately all of the interesting buildings I’d actually want to visit are closed due to COVID, so there wasn’t much to do. I’d gloss over this entirely except I had a couple interesting experiences. Now, this being a tourist destination town, everyone walking around is either obviously a couple or a family. I’m by myself, and I probably only saw one or two other single people during my time there.

Then a young, leggy blonde walking by makes eye contact, smiles (she wasn’t wearing a mask, annoyingly) and says “Hello”.

I figure she’s just being polite / I’m standing in front of her store, so I say “Hello” back and step past her. As I do, she says “You seem like a nice pers – ” and then trails off when she realizes I’m past. I walk away, mulling it over.

Then, maybe forty minutes later, I’m heading back to my car, and as I round a corner, there’s a tall goth chick, early twenties, who looks me up and down from head to toe, bites her lower lip, and says “Hey there.” I stare back at her blankly, say, “Hey” and head back to my car. After I hop in TARS I drive down the street and stop at the stop sign, directly across from where she’s standing. She does a fluttery-finger hand wave.

Now, as a reasonably unattractive dude, I can count on one hand the number of times strange women have initiated conversation with me over say, the past three years. It just doesn’t happen. Not complaining, this is the way the world works, and for good reason: women should stay the fuck away from strange men they don’t know. I immediately texted Amy Jane to see if Nevada City was known for its prostitution. We’re in CA, so it’s not legal here, but maybe they have a legal loophole since “Nevada” is in the city name. She never really responded, so I guess it’s a mystery.

Today’s journey was fairly uneventful, despite some traffic delays, with a quick stop in Reno to get some In-N-Out. I was overjoyed to see that the mountain pass from California into Nevada is the Donner Pass, to celebrate that intrepid group of explorers who cannibalized each other to stay alive. Sundays is when my D&D group meets, so I dialed in from the car and had other people roll for me when needed. Service was not great through the mountains and kept cutting out, but overall, I think my audio quality was a lot better than Graham’s, who DM’s for the group, so there was no cause for complaint.

Which brings us to the Clown Motel.

As soon as I knew my journey would take me this way, I knew I wanted to stay at the Clown. For background, back in 2007 I briefly worked for the Silver Reserve Corp, a mining company with extensive mineral rights to BLM land around Tonopah. We (mostly) fenced in abandoned mine shafts, which are everywhere, less so to keep people from falling into them (which did happen, with fatal consequences) but more so that the company could show that they’d done their due diligence to warn people off as defense when they were inevitably sued. We also (occasionally) took soil samples. We lived at the Clown Motel, mostly because it was the cheapest motel in town. My time working for Silver Reserve Corp ended when I fell asleep at the wheel and rolled the truck at 70 MPH, nearly killing myself, fracturing six vertebrae in my spine, and causing me crippling pain for the rest of my life. But that’s another (admittedly, very good, story).

In addition to the exterior decorations, all the pictures in every room are of clowns, and the office/gift shop is crammed with thousands upon thousands of clown figurines, clown postcards, clown pictures, clown masks, famous clowns, clown DVDs, clown condoms, clown ashtrays …you name it, they have it. If you love clowns, you would love it.

Personally, I fucking hate clowns, but whatever, I can deal with it. I go to check in. The owner asks me if I’ve been there before, and I explain my history. He offers to upgrade me to a suite at no charge since I’ve been there before. Sweet! The standard room rate is $69 (nice) and after signing the paperwork (which still states, as I recall from 14 years ago, no refunds under any circumstances for any reason). Once I get into my room and look around, I’m initially impressed: there’s an old-timey refrigerator in there, and newish hardwoods. Even the clown pictures on the walls of my room aren’t too terrifying:

I move my shit in, call to order a pizza, and start to get organized, but as I switch on the rest of the lights, problems start appearing:

• There’s several holes in the wall, and one in the ceiling
• I turned down the corner of the bed and there are cigarette holes burned into the sheets
• There’s a clear line across the popcorn ceiling of the ancient yellowed white parts and the newer white installation
• the stopper in the sink has been pulled out revealing on the gross crap inside it, but it hasn’t been cleaned

Now, I remember the Clown Motel of 14 years ago being shitty, but I don’t remember it being this bad. Still, I tell myself, keep a stiff upper lip: it’s part of the experience and it’ll be fun to bitch about for your blog. The pizza will take 45 minutes to arrive, and it’s been a long and hot day, so I decide to take a shower and head into the bathroom where the problems continue:

• There is a pube on the toilet seat. I have a strict personal “no strangers’ pubes on my hotel toilet” policy
• There’s a dirty towel on the floor behind the door
• When I switch on the fan, which is half-dangling from the bathroom ceiling, it makes a sound like a flatulent cat being fed into a garbage disposal. Seriously:

I take several deep breaths, and decide to just take my shower. The bathtub isn’t super clean, but whatever.

After two and a half minutes, the hot water goes out.

I emerge, dripping, shivering, and furious, dry myself off and sit on the edge of the bed to get dressed. It feels gritty. I run my hand over the surface. It’s filthy. I can feel all the molecules of sand covering the top of the bedspread.

“Nope,” I decide. I pack up all my shit back into the car, wait for the pizza, and drive across town and check into the Best Western.

Fuck the Clown Motel.

Have you ever wanted to learn about what is actually in the Bible, but be be entertained while you do so? Do I have the books for you.