8/9/13, Day Five (written on 8/12/13)

  Day five wasn't particularly pleasant. My first appt in Old Town Bellingham went well. The owner of the shop, E, was aware of my busy day, and didn't mess around. She got right into the glass buttons, and then jumped into the brass, two crates that I'm quickly learning to be the speedy money makers. Chit chat with E was relaxed and easy. I'm getting a collection of stories to tell, and questions to ask that always do the trick. It's all reminding me that I can be quite charming, and friendly when I want to.

  After I wrapped up at E's shop, I called K to see about our meeting down the street in a parking lot. K was walking there as she answered, and declined my offer to pick her up, as her pedometer had not reached the mile she wished to walk that morning. I took the 15 minutes she told me it would take to stop by the Vietnamese sandwich place I'd spotted down the street.

  Jimmy's sandwich/bar/beauty shop had dozens of paper butterflies hung from the high ceilings, all at various heights, and Jimmy himself was a sight as well: a classic queen, with shaped eyebrows, expertly manicured facial hair, and a bejeweled cross resting on his amply revealed peeks. He breezed in and out while TJ, a nice Vietnamese younger man warmed up my pre-made sandwich, and got really into telling me all about how he works with E-commerce. I was still in salesman mode, so just nodded and smiled at everything he said, pretending to be greatly interested, so to the point that he seemed to think I'd love to be involved in whatever it was he was talking about (I only understood half of what he said, due to his accent, my hunger, and just not really caring). But I ended up giving him my number, so we could discuss business ventures at a later date. And no, it wasn't a pick up line; TJ mentioned his wife a few times.

  I cruised down the street with my sandwich I wouldn't have time to eat, and soda that I was cursing myself for ordering, into a little parking lot/park right at the water's edge. Before long, K, an older woman with some kind of pale blue growth on her lip showed up, and asked me to move the van three times, to find a better spot for looking at the beads in proper sunlight. I found it funny that 20 minutes ago I'd been selling beads at the counter of a nice shop, and now I was sitting on the sidewalk bagging up more beads while K ooed and awed over shades of turquoise. It's silly, but at the same time it's nice to be around people who are so excited by something. K would find a hank of beads and exclaim, over and over, "This! This is the color I want! Oh my gosh, that's the one!"

  After K had spent a coupled hundred, I hopped in the van, gassed up, scarfed the sandwich (not great, but I love anything with daikon carrots) and opted to not try to make the appt I'd have to catch a ferry and maybe not get the appt anyway, in lieu of a different appt that I'd have to catch a ferry for and not get the appt. I had three hours to make it to the appt, which was really cutting it, but the traffic to the Puget Sound ferry was light, and a pretty drive. There was a naval air base along the way, where jet fighters were flying what looked dangerously low over the freeway while the tourists all took pictures.

  I got to the ferry, paid the fee, and sat for a while in the queue to get on. About 40 motorcycles poured off the ferry that had just come in. I was herded on the next boat, and had just enough time to piss, and stand on the deck for a few minutes before we pulled up to shore. I found a spot to park once off the boat, and discovered that I'd gotten on the entirely wrong ferry. I was on the wrong part of the mainland, and according to the iPhone map, my drive time was still an hour and half, with only 30 mins before the appt. I called the client, explained, and though I tried to set up for later, or the next day, but it was a wash. Fuck it, I thought, I'm driving home.

  I was just a bit north of Seattle, which is about three hours away from Portland…at least, when it's not Friday, on the I-5. Holy…fucking…shit. The traffic was endless. I won't go into it too much, but by the time I pulled off at a rest stop to piss, and scarf down some Chex mix, it had taken me FOUR HOURS to drive 100 miles. Fuck Seattle.

  The rest of the drive was fine, a wild fire that had been going for a few days making for some lovely clouds. As I pulled back into Portland, the last rays of the sun bouncing off Big Pink (one of the larger buildings downtown, with pink tinted glass) I started to get the concept of how long I would be gone for the next leg of the tour. I hadn't even been gone a week, and it felt good to be coming home. How is it going to feel after 16 fucking weeks?

  The past few days have been spent joyfully doing nothing. I spent one night making a fancy dinner with Janine, and the next watching Dirty Dancing and Face/Off, again with Janine, in her bed. Today, I'm trying to get back to tying up the loose ends before I set out on the 20th for eastern WA, MT, and ID. This mini tour was fine, but there's still that little voice in my head that keeps echoing the thought, "What have I gotten myself into?"

  I thought this blog might be more interesting with some photos. So far, I think I'm wrong, but that's mostly because I'm still not used to having a phone with a halfway decent camera in it. Give me a few weeks, and I'll be posting pics of every meal I eat, every funny sign, every shitty hotel room...and it still probably won't be a very interesting blog. I try!

  

Welcome to my office, would you like to buy some beads?

It may have been then wrong ferry, but it was still a ferry ride.

Lousy picture of it, but here is ALL THE TRAFFIC.

Look! Something that doesn't look half as cool as it did to my naked eye. Thank goodness I took a picture of it while doing 70 mph!

See above comment.

And again...my city looked so much cooler than this. But it's home.

8/8/13, Day Four: Pretty good day. Though traffic in Seattle can suck a big bag of gooey dicks. I don't understand traffic. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just black magic.

  So I was a bit late to my first appt in Redmond WA. But the buyer, K, was very nice. A little frazzled, and in a hurry, but still bought around $1200 of stuff. I went off to the next in Monroe, WA, about an hour north. It seemed like a might suck when the buyer, L, instructed me to cart my dolly full of beads through the giant store (a Jo-Ann type place) to the back corner, then take the elevator up to the second floor. But in the end it wasn't so bad, and she and I hit it off, easily chatting the whole time. She told me that her husband was going on a rafting trip this weekend, and I asked what she was going to do, adding that maybe just getting a bottle of wine and relaxing would be nice.

  She informed me, mournfully, that due to some migraine pills she just started taking, she can't drink anymore, at all. And it makes her favorite soda, Dr. Pepper, taste like shit (she had to give up an eight can a day habit: too bad for you, diabetes!). But with migraines so bad she's ended up in the ER for meeds, it might be worth it. I find I'm getting pretty good at chit chat, and at times can lay on the subtle flirting. Not obvious "wanna fuck?" sleaze action. Just little ego strokes here, and light teasing. It gets their attention, and makes them want to look at beads longer. And, I'll admit that as I was carting all my shit back to my van, I found myself hoping that L rubbed one out thinking of me this weekend. What? I'm a dude.

  After that, I booked it up to Bellingham, which is almost right at the border of USA, and Canada. A friend who lived there said I could crash at her place, but she wasn't going to be there. Her boyfriend would, though. I stopped by and he wasn't there, so I drove around town until I found a BevMo to buy some "thank you" beer at, then ate dinner at a so-so Mexican restaurant. I went to the friend's (Cat) house, and found her man, Nick, hanging out. We cracked some beers, and ended up chatting for a few hours until he had to go to sleep. He has to be at work at six: he works for the largest solar panel company in WA. I think if we'd made it one more beer in, we'd have gotten downright buddy buddy. But he was tired, plus when he asked how I knew Cat, I awkwardly danced around the fact that we'd had a one night stand in Humboldt, years ago. Bit of an elephant in the room, but whatever. He's a nice dude.

  What else? I've been listening to way too much soft rock (Richard Marx themed Pandora station). All the songs are sung a half step above my range, but that doesn't stop me from trying. It's my goal to be able to nail "Hold on to the Night" by October.

  I could probably blab on some more, but I have to sleep. Tomorrow is gonna be an ass dragger.

  

8/7/13, Day Three: Ahh, there's nothing quite like a solid ten hours of driving/sales to check into a Motel 6 (in Olympia, WA) and find a pube already on the toilet seat. I wonder if it's Tom Bodet's.

  Today was a long one. My first appt, in Portland, told me in a mildly perturbed tone when I got to the store that she'd never agreed to an appt. Apparently her daughter had, twice, but never thought to check it out with mommy. So what easily could have been a $2000 sale was done in two minutes. I promptly went back home and took a shit.

  With my bowels sufficiently voided for what I thought would be a two hour drive in lovely Chinook, WA on the 101, I set off early. And good thing too, because I hit a lot of road work, making it closer to a four hour drive. At the shop in Chinook, it quickly became clear I wasn't going to do too well there either. It was a small shop that dabbled in all kinds of craft (crap). They didn't want any of my good beads, and I didn't have a good selection of the shitty ones for them to buy much. But, as is often the case, the BRASS box was my saving grace. It's the box of little pendants of seashells, turtles, dragonflies, and the like. It's very easy to spend a lot of cash dipping into that one, and they did. When all was said and done, they spent $904, but then wrote me  two checks that didn't add up. Luckily I caught that, called her on it, and we sorted it out.

  Fun facts from appt one: V, the owner had just had surgery on her aorta, but it was done lapriscopicly through her arm. Fancy science! I overhead V talking about how some clients were building a steampunk clock for the father of a young man who was dying of cancer, the clock representing the three books his son had published on the topic of time.

  Once back in the van, I looked at the map and noticed that the appt that was scheduled for Saturday was right up the coast. Donald (the guy in North Carolina who schedules all the appts) for some reason had booked Chinook today, then sent me to Seattle and Bellingham the next two days, then on Saturday figured it would be a great idea to send me on a six hour drive across WA for a first time buyer. When I talk to Donald on the phone he sounds nice, but I have a feeling it's going to be pretty hard not to want to punch his neck. Amal told me he pulls shit like that somewhat often.

  But not on my watch! I dialed up the shop in Long Beach, asked if they'd see me today since I was so close, and they agreed. And I'm damn glad I did: The shop had tons of beads, and as soon as I got there, the owner B, an older hard ass lady shot down pretty much all my big sellers on account she could get better prices elsewhere. But I fished around until I found something that she and her employee, J, warmed up to. J, by the way, was a very nice guy. He had a very faded cartoon gator head tattoo that showed he'd been in the marines on one arm, and a d list native american design on the other. He was older, and his body was wrecked, rashes and skin tags everywhere. And the smell. Oh the smell. He had the kind of acrid, pungent BO that stays with you. So to the point that I could still smell him 15 minutes after I had left the store, and was alone in my van. I ended up wiping Purell on the inside of my nostrils to burn out the stench. The amazing part is that he was so nice, I almost didn't mind it.

  After the shop spent a whopping $180, I thanked them wholeheartedly for seeing me early (and in my head being VERY relieved that I'd saved myself from the future hell of driving six hours for a crap sale) and checked my schedule for where I need to be tomorrow. Tomorrow's first appt is near Seattle, which was over three hours from where I was, so I decided to at least try to make it to Olympia. So I started to head west, on winding highways with barely any traffic that passed through foggy forests. The kind of forest where for a while it looks normal, then you come upon a patch that's been logged down to the ground. Also got to see quaint lovely towns like Raymond, where I stopped at a gas station that had three port-a-pottys instead of an indoor restroom, there was a one legged man arguing with the ATM, and I got mad dogged by three rednecks in a Jetta.

  I stopped in Aberdeen for something to eat, as I'd only had a sandwich and nuts all day, and didn't want to end up malnourished with a butt water problem like I had on my training run. So, I made the healthy choice to eat a spicy chicken sandwich from Jack in the Box. The curly fries are still out in my van, if anyone wants some. I called Janine to chat for a bit about how it's so stupid that iPhones have so many buttons on the touch screen that can fuck up a phone call (she bumped the mute button twice; WHY DOES A PHONE NEED A MUTE BUTTON?), and then booked a room at the Motel 6 I am typing this thrilling blog at now.

  It's a pretty shitty room. Non smoking that smells like it's only been that way for a few weeks. Hardwood floor, which is the first I've seen of that, actually, No cheesy art on the walls. A microwave and mini fridge. They try to charge for WIFI but make it impossible to figure out how to pay. And the pube on the toilet. But, with my CLC card, it was only $35. You get what you pay for, I guess.

  So let's see: $1085.46 in total sales means that I've made $146.54 today. Minus the hotel room. And the spicy chicken sandwich. Ugh. Ok, I'm gonna go watch Shark Week until I pass out.

  BONUS FACT: Outside of Astoria, OR, there is a place called Cape Disappointment. No joke.

8/6/13-- Day Two: Today was easy peasy. I had a 10:00 appt in Portland, about 15 minutes from my house. The owner of Belladona Beads, K, is a late 30's woman with purple and red hair, a few old school tattoos, and a slightly geek/goth manner of dress. She was very friendly, and we hit it off right away, talking about how wherever you're from (she's a Detroit transplant) it's kind of hard not to become a hipster in some way here in Portland. "I own a hoodie," she said, "I only drink fancy beer, and ride a bike everywhere! Back in Detroit you only rode a bike if you had too many DUI's."

  K and her longtime boyfriend, E, lived upstairs from the shop, which was pretty cool looking: vintage red and black checkered tile, and another vintage counter that E had built. Once she got to looking at the beads, I knew it was going to be a good one. She pulled out a lot of each box, and after a bit, her store started to fill up with customers. She alternated between picking out more beads, and shooting the shit with me, while I tallied up what she picked out. After about 2 1/2 hours, she'd spent $2434, making those two hours of pleasant conversation worth $329 to yours truly.

  With my next appt up in Vancouver not until three, I opted to go get a burrito at the best, and probably only really good place to get a burrito in this town: Nutri Taco. If you're ever there, get the Super Gabby. So goddamn good, I'm incapable of ordering anything else. As I sat in my van and chowed down, I called the second appt to try to bump it up to two. The employee of the shop informed me they'd tried to cancel earlier, but had a bad number. Turns out the owner was out of town. Whatever, I thought, I've already made enough to call it.

  If you're still reading at this point, my friend, I admire your tenacity. I have a feeling this is what it's going to be like everyday. However, I'm still in my hometown, so everything is familiar and whatever to me. Tomorrow I leave for a for a three day trip up into WA, and then get back on Saturday, or Sunday. I can't promise it'll be any more interesting, but I know that on Friday I have to RACE TO CATCH A FERRY TO AN ISLAND!! OOOOOOOO!!! THRILLS!!!!

  And there's also the promise of all the EMOTIONS I'm bound to have when I leave for the long haul on the 20th. Like, the fact that right before I flew to NY to meet with Nir for the interview, I met a fantastically wonderful woman named Janine. She'd know from that day that I was set to be traveling around the country for long periods of time, but that didn't stop either of from falling deeply in like with each other, and we've been spending a whole lotta time together in the past few months. So, that'll be interesting to read about, in terms of romantic melodrama.

  Plus all my friends, and sister in the city I'm still quite fond of, Portland fucking Oregon. I'm going to miss alla that too! The beer theaters, the bars, the food, the parks, the weirdos on unicycles and tall bikes. What will I do for weirdness in fucking Wyoming??

  And there's the added attraction of me having never done anything like this before. This could have a strange effect on me. You all will be there to witness it in print. Oh so speshul!

8/5/13, day one: I set my alarm for six in the morning. For some reason, the night prior, I'd thought I'd need that much time to shower and eat before driving to Camas, WA before 9:00, when my first appointment was. I was very wrong about that, and ended up sitting on my couch playing solitaire for 45 minutes.

  Camas is a small town next to Vancouver; there's really not much to it. And the directions to the appt led me far beyond Camas, into the woods. Deeper and deeper into the woods I went, until I found the address: a decent looking house (right next to one a few shades away from a shack). T was standing out in the driveway waiting for me, with a card table set up in her garage.

  T* was pleasant, mid 60's, grey hair, standard grandma look. She makes jewelry that she sells online, and at gift shows. As I put the bead crates in front of her, she was very hesitant to go through them throughly, like most customers do. Despite my repeated invitations to make a mess, and pile up the unwanted beads on the table, she just skimmed through the top two inches of the crate, and sometimes set aside a few strands to buy. She did this with nearly every box in the van (about 25), but when I tallied up her total, she ended up spending only $380. I packed up, thanked her, and got the hell out of the woods.

  After a brief chat with my boss on the phone (where he assumed that I'd never driven a car before, apparently, and informed me not to use the cruise control when driving the van up a steep hill. Yeah, duh), I drove to Vancouver. The names of the appts in the schedule always have names that sound like they're going to be actual shops, and I had hopes that this one would be a business. It was not. Another house call, this time in a nice, large home with a two car detached garage. J's daughter, B, answered the door and found her mom, who showed me how to get into the kitchen where we would be looking over the beads. J was in good shape, mid 40's, with some old, half blown out tattoos here and there. 

  My fears that this sale would be another wash would quickly dispelled as J went through the fire polish and pulled out what added up to more than T had spent altogether. And she kept at it. Again I pulled out almost every box in the van, but J was making piles of them so quickly, I barely had time to bag, and tag them. All the while, we chatted about how she ended up being a bead vendor (a lot of home buyers are that: they buy the beads wholesale, then mark them up to sell online), how she and her husband were triathletes, how B was about to head to college to become a physician's assistant (different from a registered nurse because you can only work for a private practice, not a hospital), and how her wiener dogs were all going to miss her.

  By the time she finished, J had spent $3494, and didn't even ask to split the total between two checks. After she showed me her bead warehouse (her basement, floor to ceiling with tiny bead drawers, I packed the van and headed home. In my limited experience, this was my biggest sale ever, meaning that for around six hours of work, I made $520. Not too shabby. As long as J's check doesn't bounce.

*names have been hidden because I don't know why. deal with it.

Druks. Rondelles. Fire Polish. Faceted Rounds. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Neither did I, until about three months ago. Had you said any of those words I would have probably guessed that they were band names (and then thought you were a hipster, because I'd never heard of them). But now I know. I know what they are, and I'm about to eat, sleep, and shit them (not literally in any way): BEADS.

  Let me back it up a little. My name is Chris. I live in Portland, OR, and until about eight months ago I was living what was by now, the stereotypical Portland life. I was 35 and delivering pizza for a living (a job I'd had, on and off, for six years) while trying to get my art career off the ground. And by that I mean, half heartedly trying to sell an extremely novelty art form (black velvet paintings). I'd recently hit a wall of borderline suicidal depression, complete with rampant alcoholism, and heavy drug use. I was bitter, angry, miserable, and jaded. I hated where I lived, I hated where I worked, I even kind of hated my friends. The only thing not fitting the Portland Never-Neverland complex was that I wasn't in a single band (though I did write, and record an entire country album about my woes), and I only have a few stupid tattoos, not a whole body full.

  But then, little by little, things I started to change things. I started going to therapy. I moved out of the apartment I hated. I stopped getting black out drunk three nights a week, and stopped partying until seven in the morning. Because of a crash and burn romance that is another tale unto itself, I quit my shitty job, and started doing my art full time. I slowly started to crawl out of my hole, and bit by bit, started to feel better. My family noticed I was happier. My friends were more comfortable around me. I liked me more.

  Things were getting better, but they still weren't exactly great. I was scraping by with the money I made from my paintings (sold online, and through word of mouth), but barely. If I hadn't have been getting financial help from my parents (another oh so Portland trait), I'd truly be living the starving artist life. I felt a lot better than I had before, but I still was just floating around, my head barely above the water.

  Then one night in March, half drunk of red wine and chatting with one of my best, and oldest friends, Chrissy, I found out about this job. You see, Chrissy is a jewelry designer (and a dozen other amazing things, but she makes awesome jewelry for a living), and had just recently ended her 14 year long career at a bead shop in our hometown of Eureka, CA. Through of the bead vendors they'd been buying from for years, Nirvana Beads, she learned that they were looking for a new west coast rep. Chrissy  about to start of her full time jewelry career, considered the idea of driving around the western half of the country selling beads out of a van for about…five seconds, before she said, "Fuck no, but….I might know someone who WOULD be interested".

  And to a half drunk, directionless dude sitting on his couch at 10:30 at night, it didn't sound half bad. Sure, why not? I thought. Let the company know I'm interested! And after about a month of emails with the co-owner of Nirvana, Nir, he flew me to New York for an interview. After he was sure I wasn't a total freak, I spent the next two days riding around with him in his bead van, watching the process of bead slinging. 

  A month later, I was flying down to Long Beach, CA, to be picked up, and trained by the salesman I'd be replacing, Amal. Over the next week, I went with him to all his appointments, where he taught me all the tricks of the trade. After eight days, he handed over the keys to the van in San Jose, and I was on my own. After another week of appointments, sleeping on floors, couches, in campgrounds, eating everything from Taco Bell to Whole Food salads, a bout with exhaustion, three days of diarrhea, and a whole lot of driving, I was back home in Portland.

  And now, I'm about to start my official first tour. Everywhere from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean is where I'm headed for the next four months. A lot of people I've told the job about told me it would be a good idea to start writing a blog about it. There've been theories that I'm going to become a beard growing, vest donning gypsy, that I'm going to start filming pornos in the back of my van in every town I go to, and that I've finally realized my dream to become a serial killer. The likelihood of any of these things happening is slim to none, but if you have any interest in reading what it's like to be a traveling bead salesman, well count your lucky stars, because that's exactly what I'm going to write about.

  So, hop in the van, buddy. Let's go for a ride.