So a few weeks ago I visited a frequent flier forum to see if any of the members knew of a way for my organization to take donations in the form of air miles, as I know a lot of people travel for work and have a ton of miles but not a lot of money. For the Sanctuary, it would be helpful to use the miles for rescue trips, and I could also take miles in lieu of a paycheck, since I don't currently get paid anything. I didn't get any replies for a few days, and then this came:
"i believe that nothing is wrong by your thoughts concerning obtaining donated airmiles for charity purposes,but if i were the owner of any airline,i would insist that any or all donated airmiles do not involve charity website only,but involve having those interested to donate via your website,but your website would direct all donors out of your website linked to that airline.
That way,the airline could track each and every aspect of any donation.
the airline could ensure all miles being donated belong to those whom are donating them
i do not know anything about the process,but merely stating how i believe the process is probally maintained for the protection of all involved.
As to your mention of your own charity getting added to some list, i would tell you to telephone each and every airline to be directed to the correct department that handles those actions.
good luck, hope my thoughts enlightened you to atleast call the airlines on the phone,since that is the 1st thing i would have done,even though i know as much about the subject as you."
I know I'm being petty, but this really pissed me off. I stopped myself from blasting this guy two or three times and ended up not responding because I think he was really trying to be helpful, albeit in a really annoying, patronizing, self-indulgent way. Seriously -- what the hell? He says he knows nothing whatsoever about the process, and then states that, based on his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, he believes things to "probally" work a certain way. Then he says I should call every airline and ask them to add my tiny charity to their lists of huge nonprofits that they partner with; I may not be an expert on air miles, but I am an expert on nonprofit management, and that's about the stupidest business advice I've ever heard. I tell you what -- you call every one of the world's 120 plus airlines with frequent flier programs and see how far you get. In fact, call one of them and get back to me.
He then has the gall to suggest that his utter lack of knowledge on the subject would be enlightening to me and that he hopes I will take his advice, because, even though he knows only as much as I do on the subject, it's the course of action he would have taken, before bothering the busy, overworked frequent flier community to see if any of them might actually know something. God forbid I would try to gather information and do research before going to the airline directly -- wouldn't want to know what the hell I was talking about ahead of time, right? He says he knows as much as I do on the subject, but as it turns out, he knows quite a bit less, and that's impressive, because I know next to nothing. "If I were the owner of any airline?" Come on out of your ass some time -- it's much nicer out here. Of course, to be fair, that's an assumption, but I think it's a safer one than the ones this guy makes about how airlines handle their charity mileage programs.
Sometimes people try so hard to be helpful they end up just being a pain in the ass. 'I don't know the answer to your question, so I'll make some shit up.' Have you ever been driving on a city street and had to slam on your brakes because the person in front of you is stopping to let someone pull out of a parking lot? In being courteous to one person, he's pissing off the ten people that nearly wrecked behind him. Or what about that friend that insists that you sleep on her lumpy-ass couch instead of checking into a hotel with a nice, big bed and free HBO? She cooks you disgusting food for dinner so you don't have to spend your money at a restaurant. Thanks to her generosity you feel like a prisoner in some creepy David Lynch movie.
A few years ago I met a guy in Bangkok, and after we talked for a few minutes, I asked him if he knew where there was an Internet cafe. He said he did, and rather than give me directions, he walked there with me. The only problem was that he had no idea where there was an Internet cafe -- he was just a really helpful guy. After wandering around for nearly an hour, I told him I was hungry and wanted lunch; he showed me to a restaurant where I had the worst meal I ate my whole time in Thailand, and he told me he'd be back in half an hour to continue 'helping' me find Internet access. He was a really nice guy, and honestly, I was a bit amazed at how hard he tried to help me even when he had no actually ability to do so. And I still sneaked out the back of the restaurant and ditched his ass.
Last year in Costa Rica my friend and I had a flat tire -- a scenario I'd dealt with plenty of times, complicated by the fact that the vehicle was parked on sand, making it tough to jack up high enough to get the spare on. I had it under control, but then another guy showed up to 'help'. He was trying to impress my friend and show that he was handy and would make her a good husband or something, so instead of getting the tire on and going home, we dicked around in the rain for an hour, it got dark, and we had to have someone else come in the morning and take care of it. Nice guy -- I thought she should have gone ahead and dated him, but I wasn't as much of a fan the first night we met.
Running a nonprofit, my whole life is about helping, so I guess that makes me somewhat of an authority on the subject. There are a lot of ways a person can help, but sometimes helping isn't helpful. Sometimes you have to let people help themselves, or get out of the way so someone who actually has something to offer can step in. A little discernment is in order. Help where you're needed, leave it alone where you're not, and learn to tell the difference.
I realize this probably makes me sound like an ungrateful jerk. I guess I'm OK with that.
In a few days I'll be heading to St. Charles, Missouri on what will probably be the last rescue trip for awhile. I thought this would be a good time to start using Twitter, so if you're interested in the play-by-play, I'm @stevemarkwell. I have no followers yet and it's embarrassing, but on the other side, I'm not following anyone. Is it bad that I don't really want to? Regardless, Twitter can be a valuable promotional tool and I felt I needed to use it, along with Facebook and blogging, to give people multiple ways to connect with my work. With the article about the Sanctuary coming out in the LA Times soon, I figured I'd better get on it quick, too. Funny about MySpace... anyone still using it?
So check me out on Twitter if you're a ... Twitterer? Tweeter? What a stupid site. But I'm still going to give it a fair chance.
I call it the big hurt because my shoulders are about six inches wider than an airplane seat, and I can never straighten my legs, even for a moment, so after about an hour on a plane, I begin to get sore unless there's an empty seat next to me -- an increasingly rare phenomenon, although it did happen on two of my four flights this time. If I sit on the aisle, I get tagged by every drink cart and flight attendant's hip that goes by, plus I'm not thrilled with having some guy's crotch in my face while he rummages through the overhead compartment, or having old ladies use my headrest as a hand-hold as they make their way to the lavatory. I like the window seat, because besides liking to look out the window, I only have another person on one side of me and I can lean my head against the side of the plane to sleep, which I have to do because the headrest isn't high enough for me to just lean back, and my legs are too long for me to sit lower in the seat. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a big guy, but I'm not abnormally large; that I can't sit comfortably on a plane shows the airlines' decided lack of respect for their customers, and what's more, the airport is the only place I ever go where I'm the tallest person there, which means that people bigger than me who can't afford first class simply don't fly, and they never get to travel overseas. I think it's discriminatory and that tall people should file a class action suit against the entire airline industry, run the airlines out of business, and usher in high speed trains as our preferred mode of transport. What it really comes down to is that flying is stupid, and America not having the world's fastest trains is ridiculous. Moving on...
My flight to Seattle was shorter than originally planned, by about an hour, for which I was very grateful, even if the tiny Asian girl sitting next to me made for a more comfortable flight. I had time to go to the airport food court for a burrito before picking up Phoenix from baggage services; he seemed content with the experience, but glad to get out of the crate. Once in the truck, he alternated between sleeping and quietly looking out the window, and was totally unphased by Bradley barking and snarling at him fromt the front seat.
Phoenix is kind of an old man, although I don't think he's actually that old. He's from Long Island, where he was abandoned presumably as a young dog and found by the guy that originally turned him over to me in March, after living with him for about five years. Unfortunately, the guy was kind of a dumbass -- nice guy, but just... yeah. He didn't tell me the dog's knees were blown out until I got there and saw his limp -- when you're about to drive for two weeks with an animal, his health problems are a good thing to know about ahead of time. But that was mildly annoying; what was really frustrating was that even though the guy knew his dog had joint problems, he continued to both overfeed him and to play roughly with him, so there I was watching this fat, gimpy dog getting slammed onto the concrete by this dipshit who thought that was how you showed a dog affection. I'm not sure which one of them I felt worse for, truthfully. This poor guy was crying and it was clear that it was really painful for him to give his dog up, but he had also been abusing the dog and just didn't know it.
The reason I was asked to take Phoenix was that the guy he lived with was moving to a third floor apartment in Kentucky and with his bad knees, Phoenix wouldn't have been able to go up and down the stairs. That alone wouldn't have been a problem in terms of placing him with someone, but Phoenix had also bitten several people, usually strangers reaching out to pet him, which is a totally inappropriate thing for a person to do, but under the law, dogs are expected to just take it. Instead of bringing Phoenix back to Washington, I took him to a shelter in Orange County, New York, because I didn't feel that his behavior warranted him coming to live with me. I also gave them a German shepherd with hip dysplasia, and took a golden retriever that had been beaten with a cane and burned with cigarettes for a few weeks by a degenerate alcoholic after her husband overdosed, leaving the dog with some 'people issues' that made her unsafe in a traditional home environment.
The people at the shelter loved Phoenix, but unfortunately he didn't love some of them and racked up more bite incidents while he was there, so four months later, I had to make good on my promise that I would take him back if he turned out to be non-adoptable due to behavior. And that's why yesterday afternoon, I found myself in the position of having to remove a big pit bull mix from his crate for an airport security check, with about a thousand people around me and nothing between them and the dog, having just realized that I hadn't seen the dog in months, that even when I did have him, it was only for a few hours, which he spent in the back of my truck, that I had no idea what kind of kennel stress he'd developed at the shelter, that I had spent no time walking him or familiarizing him with me at the airport before he was put into his crate and wheeled to the ticket counter by a skycap, that his issues at the shelter involved being in confined spaces, and that he had already snarled, lunged, and tried to bite me through the wire frame door of his crate. I wondered how badly I was about to be bitten and how much blood the airport bystanders were about to see, how many camera phones would soon be documenting my 'skill' with dangerous dogs. Fortunately, Phoenix did everything he needed to do, and I'm not a punchline on YouTube just yet.
Picking up from where I left off, Bradley came from a rescue in New Hampshire that works mainly with dogs that aren't quite ready for adoption; they're a new organization with no facilities (foster care only), but from what I saw, they're doing a good job. They're also young, which isn't common. The one thing they screwed up was the dog carrier -- they forgot to get one until yesterday, and it was too small for the dog. We had to make a stop at Petco this morning to get a bigger one.
The first leg of my flight today was smooth; the dog fit under the seat and was pretty quiet. Now I'm at JFK, where I picked up the second dog; he made it through security without much trouble, but he was doing a little snarling and lunging, so I hope he'll be OK with the rest of this process, when i can't be there to look out for him. This next leg, New York to Seattle, is likely to be pretty awful, especially if I have someone sitting next to me who's normal size or bigger.
I'm about to board again. Highlight of todays airport experience: slobby women who, despite having been dressing themselves for 30 or 40 years, can't figure out how to keep their lady garbage in their shirts. Disgusting and hilarious.
I read the sign in Seattle that said my flight boarded at 9 AM (even though it was supposed to leave at 8:20) so I didn't rush to get on the plane; at about 9:05 I walked over to the gate, only to find that everyone else had boarded and they were calling my name over the PA. Off to a great start. I got onto the plane and was fortunate to get one of the few seats with no one next to me. The flight was pretty good; we flew right over a property that I really want to buy someday, although it's not for sale at the moment and even if it was, no chance at this point.
In San Francisco, I had enough time to make my connection, although it was close. Once on the plane, we sat for an hour before it took off. Also on board, about thirty high school kids from Boston who were returning from an overseas trip somewhere in Asia. Draw your own conclusions about how awesome that must have been. My favorite part -- the girl with the potato chips walking up and down the aisle, giving chips to everyone from the high school group, but not to anyone else who might have smelled them and wanted to eat some.
After about five hours in the air, we flew a few S patterns before landing, thanks to congestion. We landed in Boston and waited awhile longer while they fixed the broken walkway that connects the plane to the gate.
I found my ride and headed to their home for the night, met the dog I was taking, Bradley, and after dinner and hanging out a bit, I finally got some sleep -- while the Bradley wasn't barking or pooping on the floor.
My flight is loading; gotta go.
It's about 8:20 AM and I find myself embarking on another rescue trip, this time by air to pick up a Pomeranian in Boston and a pit bull/Lab in New York -- a dog that I've rescued once already, having taken him to a shelter in March along with a German shepherd, trading the two of them for Shirley, the golden retriever who had absolutely no chance of ever being adopted thanks to her biting episodes. It turns out that the shelter doesn't feel comfortable letting anyone adopt Phoenix, either, so I'm on my way back to get him.
As usual, I didn't manage to get much done before I left, but I did get on the road on time; getting to bed was another story -- that didn't happen. Between the Hood Canal and Gig Harbor I have no idea how many times I fell asleep while driving, but I know at least twice I woke up just before my truck straddled the concrete wall along the median. You'd think that would have helped to wake me up, but being calm under pressure has its disadvantages.
I made it to the airport alive and went to the American ticket counter, getting there just in time to see a ticket agent scold a kid for not helping his mom with her bags, at which point the kids mom pointed out that her son had no arms. You'd think that after a blunder like that, the agent would try to be a little less impulsive and maybe assess things more fully before she reacted, but apparently this woman doesn't learn from her mistakes. I had tried to do self check-in, but was denied because I had a reservation for a pet; I went to the counter with the printout the ticketing computer had given me, to make sure that my reservation was booked correctly, because I am not taking a pet on this leg of the trip. Instead of listening to me, she took the print-out and threw it in the trash after barely glancing at it and said, "You're on Alaska -- you need to go down to their ticket counter at the other end of the terminal." I had booked the ticket with American, but Alaska was the carrier -- no problem. But I still needed to check on the dog situation. I said, "OK, but I have a question..." She cut me off and told me to go to the Alaska counter again. I said again, " I need to ask you a question first..." Again she cut me off and said, "You're ticket isn't with American -- I can't help you." So I said again, "I have a question for you before I go." Finally she listened, and I asked her first if the pet reservation was booked for the right leg of the trip, and then if I was going to hav tocheck in again in San Francisco, because my San Francisco to Boston flight is on American. So she ended up digging the print-out out of the trash, checking my reservation, and printing up my boarding pass for San Francisco, which she could have done sooner if she'd just shut up and let the customer ask his damned question. But as rude as she was, she was still friendly, if that makes any sense.
Time-out: I just saw a woman slip and fall on a spilled drink in the food court that no one had bothered to mop up. She almost took out a mother holding a baby in the process.
Time-in: When I checked in with Alaska, I found out that my flight is delayed about an hour, which is why I'm sitting in the food court typing this instead of sitting in a tiny airplane seat wishing the person next to me would go to the lavatory and get lost on the way back.
I'm back home after 26 days on the road. I covered almost 10,000 miles, and passed through six Canadian provinces and 27 US states. I ate hoagies, grinders, and subs. Actually, I ate none of those. The closest thing I had was a sandwich at a Tim Horton's; I'm not sure what they call long sandwiches in Canada.
This is the first time I've come back to Washington at the end of a trip and not been happy to be home, which is remarkable considering how long the trip was and how eager I was for it to be over. I'm elated to be back with all my dogs (less elated about the workload over the next two or three days), but I want nothing more at the moment than to pack them all up and move them to California, where it's springtime now, not the dead of winter. Washington's been great, and I'd probably not be where I am in terms of my career if I hadn't been living here for the last five years, but that I can return to such a beautiful place and not be happy to be back tells me one thing - it's time to leave. A little history on this nagging itch:
I have a hard time staying in one place. Call it wanderlust, fear of commitment, an inability to ever be satisfied, or whatever you like, but the fact is, even though every time I move I complain that I never want to do it again, it's never long before I'm ready to get going. I moved into this building about two years ago, and I still haven't unpacked most of my stuff, so I guess I never fully intended on making this a long term arrangement, whether or not it was a conscious decision. What tempers my need to keep moving are the facts that my career necessitates a less nomadic lifestyle and that one of my main hobbies, landscaping and horticulture, works better when I stay in one place. If not for those two things, I'd probably be in a new place every few days.
When I first came to Washington, I felt I'd stay here at least until retirement, but it wasn't long before I was looking for a way out, first for financial reasons. When my money situation became more stable and I didn't have to leave, I was content to stay indefinitely, but a drive through California had me, for lack of a better way to put it, seeing elephants. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to anyone reading this, but I'll explain anyway.
Whenever I drive through a place for the second, third, or tenth time, I do so with a new pair of eyes, seeing things differently than I did on the previous occasions. Each trip through a familiar place is a bit like a visit to someplace brand new. So a few years ago, as I drove through California's central valley, I looked out at the golden, rolling hills and their oak-laden ravines, and it reminded me of videos I'd seen of Africa, particularly the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. At that time, I had begun expanding my vision of an animal sanctuary for large carnivores into one for many species; I thought that a California location might be good for a second facility, after the sanctuary in Washington had been established for a number of years and reached its full potential. I set the idea aside, planning to revisit it much, much later.
Then came the winter of 2007/2008, with hurricane force winds that ripped my building apart, nearly killing me in the process. Maybe that's too dramatic - the winds ripped apart 1,200 square feet of the building that had been added onto the original structure, carrying it over my head, across the road, and into the neighbors' yard, where it took out a large tree and a fence. I wasn't hurt, but if the flying metal and wood had hit me, I'd probably have been cut in half. Regardless, I wondered if Washington was the right place for an animal sanctuary, and I decided that if this winter brought high winds like the last one did, I'd be gone before the next one. Then came our current winter - no horrific winds, but it's been one of the coldest on record. I began to worry about my animals getting hypothermia, and kept my dogs inside quite a bit. My pond froze, and I couldn't leave the dogs in that section of the yard, for fear that they would fall through the ice. The snow was fun for awhile, as first snows of the year always are, but it wasn't long before I, and the dogs, were sick of it. It surprises people, but I've spent most of the winter wishing for rain.
I've been thinking a lot about California. Without revealing my entire, long-term vision, (which I've already done in a rather lengthy document for internal sanctuary use) much of California has traits, in terms of weather and location, that make it ideal. Proximity to cities with affluent populations, no snow, relatively mild summers; after scanning the coast with Google Earth, I had some ideas of where to look for property, and I tried to drive through as many of those potential areas as I could on this trip. So back to the trip:
I picked up small dogs in Huntington Beach and Thousand Oaks; I'll do a separate post about all six dogs from this trip, with pictures. I left southern California a few hours later than planned on Wednesday, and drove through Santa Barbara and up 101 to Greenfield to visit a friend, Jason. Jason told me that real estate in the area was pretty cheap, so I've been looking into it, and found small farms for under $7,000/acre. I'd prefer to be closer to the ocean, but I'm not likely to get everything I want out of the first place I buy. I stayed in King City overnight and continued up 101 the next morning.
Just before Salinas, a guy was tailgating me, so I tapped the brakes to get him to back off; I didn't slow down. The guy then passed me on the right, got ahead of me, and gave me the finger, which he did in a way suggesting that he really meant it - not just a casual f-you. I pulled alongside him, not because I was trying to catch up, but because he had slowed down; I looked over and motioned to him to ask, 'what's the problem, ' at which point his wife was leaning halfway across his lap, waving her arms and screaming at me. I don't know if she thought I could hear her, but I couldn't, because my windows were up, their windows were up, and we were driving on the highway. Duh. I kept driving, passed them, and I still have no idea what they were so angry about. But I'll say this - what a couple of a-holes. Which brings me to the one thing I probably dislike most about California: the drivers. Back east, people drive aggressively; they do it because if they don't, they'll never get anywhere. In California, people drive aggressively, too, but not because they need to; rather, they drive that way because they're selfish, self absorbed two-year-olds who don't care about anyone or anything outside of their own vehicles. They crowd into the left lane, all wanting to be the fastest car on the road, but end up just making it impossible for anyone to pass anyone else, and slowing down traffic. They pass on the right, which makes it impossible for a slow vehicle to move out of everyone else's way. They pass you, then slow down in front of you. They drive into your blind spot and stay there for miles. Because I drive a vehicle that's over twenty feet long, I've adopted a driving style for western highways that works particularly well in California, which is that I do pretty much whatever I want as far as lane changes go, but I do it slowly enough that everyone around me has time to react. So in Thousand Oaks, I was moving into the right lane, when I saw a little, sporty car flying up behind me, intending to pass me on the right before I got over. I kept moving over. He decided to pass me on the shoulder. Then when we got to the light at the top of the offramp, he wouldn't look at me. That's California drivers.
Moving on, I drove through San Jose and San Francisco, then crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, got onto PCH, and went to Point Reyes National Seashore. I'd been reading about Point Reyes, which has a large herd of Tule elk, the most endangered elk subspecies in North America. I went to all of the southern beaches, and did manage to see a herd of elk near Drake's Beach, which were smaller and lighter colored than our Roosevelt elk or the Rocky Mountain elk I see in Colorado and Wyoming. The rest of the park was mainly dairies, which seemed a little strange to me, but I guess the mission of that particular park is to preserve agricultural history as well as wildlife habitat. As an animal welfare advocate, I have to say I wasn't especially excited to see what looked like a veal operation at one of the dairies. It may not have been veal, but I can't imagine why else they were confined to such small quarters; they weren't in boxes with their legs broken, but their pens were only about six feet long.
Point Reyes is windy - too windy for me, after the trauma of last winter. It is, in fact, said to be the windiest point on the Pacific coast of North America, and I believe it. Trees struggle to grow there; sand drifts across roads; the ocean is as rough as it is up here, 700 miles north. A little farther up the coast, Bodega Bay is less windy, but despite being only 65 miles from San Francisco and 23 miles from Santa Rosa, it feels a world away - a tiny town of less than 1,000 people, that happens to have a large harbor and a world class golf course, recently renovated to the tune of $1.2 million. So not an especially cheap place to live, but probably the area in which I'd most like to live and build my sanctuary. Land is expensive if you buy a small piece, but the price per acre goes down considerably, the larger a parcel you buy; I guess that's true in most places. So maybe someday... It's hard to put my finger on what I like so much about the area, but I think it's that it has most of the things I like about southern California and western Washington, without most of the things I don't like, plus a few elements of the Dakota Badlands and the Nicaraguan jungle. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get back; I'd like to go again in the summer and see what it's like in terms of weather, tourist traffic, etc.
From Bodega Bay, I headed back to 101 and stayed the night in Santa Rosa; I like that city, although I haven't been there many times. I've never entered from the coast before, but I was surprised to find myself in a familiar area and I knew right where the hotel was. I continued up the coast the next day, driving through the redwood forests; I like the redwoods, and would consider living there as well as farther south, the drawback being the longer distance to San Francisco. Besides, even though Humboldt and Del Norte Counties are the best known places for redwood trees, they occur naturally as far south as Big Sur. I stopped in Eureka for some Carl's Jr.; the Kentucky Bourbon Burger is gross - stick to the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I went to Orick, where I always stop to buy redwood and sequoia seedlings, and where I will someday buy some amazing redwood and buckeye burl furniture. From there, it was on to Crescent City, where I took 199 to Grant's Pass, Oregon.
Grant's Pass can go to hell. Someone actually tried to spit on one of my dogs while driving past, and I had the sense that he was one of the more friendly, polite people in that town.
I spent the night and drove home the next day. I found all of the dogs looking good, most of them a bit fat, except for Ruby, who had lost weight and appeared not to be eating much while I was gone. Next time I go away I'll board her at the vet's office. A few of the dogs seemed not to recognize me right away, while others were overjoyed to see me. Spencer, who's been riding with me all this time, acted like he didn't know any of them; he's been pretty nasty with all of the dogs that we left behind, but I think he'll settle down after a few days.
It's weird being home after so long on the road; it almost feels like none of it ever happened. One thing I will never forget about this trip, though, is all of the displaced people I saw, leaving one place to find work in another. It really reminded me of the stories I used to read about the Great Depression, people fleeing the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck novels. If you haven't seen the impact of our economic situation, and you're wondering if it's really as bad as everyone's saying it is, hit the road for a few weeks. People are in trouble and desperate; it's a scary time.
Pictures:
 Coming into San Francisco |  North Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore |  North Beach |  North Beach, looking the other way |
 Tule elk |  Tule elk |  Redwoods |
