I’ve been traveling from my home in lovely Ojai, California each year up north and east over the mountains into the Carson Valley of Northern Nevada. My friend Todd lives there with wife Stephanie and two lovely children. So, I came up with a silly t-shirt idea and made design for his town of Minden.

I bought a bicycle helmet today. A green Bern with a patented visor. First thing I did after getting it home was stick an Ojai Smiley Face right round on the backside of it. It’s a gift to myself and an acknowledgement of the importance of my head.

I mention that I got a helmet first because I’ve been obsessed with cycling recently. Possessed even. Dreaming of big rides over many hundreds of miles. And I want to put energy into this festering dream. I like the slow lane. I enjoy the details along the shoulder.

I bought myself a gift because in one week, I’ll be leaned back all leisurely like while Dr. Joe Westbury in Oak View fits me with a custom milled titanium abutment to which he super glues a custom fitted, dyed and stained porcelain crown. That gap in my smile is where old number 9 used to live. He was a little crooked and his replacement will be bulletproof and straight.

In my last update back in September, when I asked for donations, (see your yellow button opportunity below) my body was healing a hole-full of cadaver leavings into a lattice work of solid bone tissue. On the afternoon of November 4 Dr. Clark and oral surgeon with an office in Oxnard slashed open my gum line, fired up a boring device and made way in my jaw for a petite titanium screw with external and internal threads and a nifty antenna, i’m convinced, that helps the tooth fairy keep tabs on me. It also picks up Mexican radio so I’m glad I like polkas and accordions.

All told this project gumline is setting me back about $3,500. So if you’re inclined, put a portion of your wealth and good fortune toward a cause that has a mind, a passion and a hard-earned sense to strap on a helmet before an adventure. It’ll come back to you tri-fold. I’m the kind of odd that’s in your favor.

I don’t ask for your help because I need it, I ask because I want it and I want you to be a part of my mouth for years to come. Thank you.

I’ve been riding my bike a lot the past few days to strengthen and tone, enjoy nature and drop a few holiday indulgence pounds. I live in Southern California and the weather has been ideal for riding lately. I’m pretty fortunate, I know.

When I ride, I like to push myself. I love to climb, and so my motto is: the worst part is knowing that it’s possible.

In order to facilitate this extreme adventure, I need high energy fuel. Here’s a smoothy recipe video I made up from things I had in the cupboards and the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Make this recipe your own and let me know the flavors you’ve added or subtracted. I’d love to hear about it.

Recipe

• 1/2 Pear
• 1/2 Apple
• 1 raw egg (or not)
• 1 frozen banana peeled
• 2 TBS green super food powder
• 2 TBS hemp protein powder
• 1 TBS hemp seed oil
• 6 ozs. almond milk

Use organic think small and visit my sponsors:

Love Tanjane and Window Washing by Chris Wilson

I made a little video today with my sweety Sonia Erneux. She makes me some good omlettes and I’ve been wanting to learn how she does it. So today we fired up the camera and shot a little video that I then edited down to size in imovie.

Enjoy.

I just completed the dying and printing of a new batch of organic cotton tote bags. Here’s one of them with a classic Chris T. Wilson design with an Ojai Theme.

Lets have fun when we buy groceries and carry our valuables around town. I effin love dying these totes. What a fun way to spend a day. Colors staining my hands and the creative mind flowing.

Click this text to go to the “Totes” page or click the link at the top of the page or click the picture. I’m trying to make this easy for you.

Enjoy.

Very DIY’ing for you my corn childern. This is my first real foray into iMovie. I had a great time doing all this. I’ll put a buy link for the shirt after the video. Support!

 

I put this on facefuck but no one really seemed to notice, so I thought I’d post it here in my lazy ass bedroom where I should be posting more often. Oh well, here you go. A thought or two on traveling and people being kind or not….

I’m in Italy today on my first visit to this country. We are in the Ligurian region called Cinque Terre, five small villages on the northwestern coast that overlook the tranquillo azure Mediterranean. I have kept up with my online “friends” as my darling BooBoo* and I enjoy the resplendent luxuries of a wonderful well-earned vacation.  After a few days in the warm and well lit French city of Nice where I appointed myself the new village uncle, we caught a gritty regional train that swayed and lurched its way through Genoa and on to points south.

As we arrived at our destination we were stressed and exhausted, a bit snappy with each other but still laughing about our little inside joke. The Hotel Windsor that we lodged at in Nice was staffed all night long with a front desk, a bar, a pool and a foyer appointed with a collection of dark blurry photographs and Tin Tin posters up and down the walls of the ancient marble staircase. My equally jet lagged Boo awoke at 4 a.m. –  I had yet to sleep – and she suggested we Skype call a hotel in Vernazza called La Mala, to see if any rooms were available. She presumed the same, that it was a place staffed round the clock, which we realize now not to be the case. The first call was a pickup and hang up, so she dialed again and got a sleepy voice on the line.

“Excuse me, hello, do you have any rooms for tonight?” she asked.

“Do you know what time is it?” was the musically Italian but exasperated retort.

“Oops, sorry,” Boo said, as the line clicked dead.

Feeling a bit bad that we had awakened a sleepy hotelier, we waited until later in the morning to place another call and were pleased to be greeted warmly and discover that a room was available for one night. We were in, and on arrival, though after dark, Jean Baptiste, a young and charming gentleman met us at the station and hoisted our bags up dozens of narrow stairway passages to a room high above the town overlooking the small harbor. The view is stunning and we have yet to reveal that it was us who awakened him much earlier that day.  Jean has been a very kind and helpful host in a town that we now realize thrives on a steady stream of tourists. Sound familiar Ojai? I wonder, as a community, are we grateful or irritated by the fact that Ojai is a tourist trap?

I’d like to suggest that we are all tourists, no matter where we find ourselves. It’s something I can say about my life for the past 3,902 days as a resident of the Ojai Valley. Despite a few off days, my life feels like a vacation.

Now I see we have emails circulating to vote for Ojai as the best place to visit on a budget travel website. We too in Ojai acknowledge often that we’re indebted to the tourist coin, am I right? Two edged, this realization appears. For us that consider ourselves locals may at times give thanks for the revenue and also feel trampled by the visitors that pour coarsely through downtown clicking pics of the arches and tower, grabbing a meal, falling onto a hotel bed, flushing a morning toilet and then pressing onward to the next memory.

This past evening we restaurant hopped. We spent much of the day hiking through the terraced vineyards and along the cliff-side path La Via dell‘Amore, from Riomagiorre to Manarola. Here couples inscribe their names on pad locks and fasten then to the fence to secure their love.  After making New Zealand friends in Corniglia and catching the 5 minute train back to Vernazza we were tired and hungry and stepped out for a bite to eat. At the first restaurant we left before being served because a nearby group of sporty Americans were loudly proclaiming the similarities of Rome and New York. Of course Rome is a little older, one noted with cunning intellect. At the next place, where we had dined the night before, the meal the of Trofie al Pesto (this is the land of pesto’s origin) had been excellent but we didn’t get a table we liked, so we left. We’re picky like that. Then we waffled between two restaurants in the town square, sat down in one and then moved to an adjacent one only to be served by a grumpy and visibly exhausted waiter. We were his last table after a 14-hour day, so we gave him a pass.

This morning we were insulted by a young man as he stepped out of the kitchen of one of the places we hadn’t eaten at the night before. I was being a genuine tourist, snapping a picture of a busy morning kitchen and he shooed me away like a pesky bug and glared menacingly at my BooBoo. At first I got paranoid. Am I a bad visitor? Then I felt kind of angry and sort of indignant. I mean, don’t they live off the hundreds of Euros we’re dumping into their local economy? Then I brushed it off and thought of all the ice cream-slurping bozos I’ve witnessed ambling through the Arcade. We are all in the same boat, rocking between waves of ambivalence and gratitude. All I want to do is strip away my isms. I thought “what am I?” Am I my race, my place, my age? None of that really truly matters unless I create, place and attach meaning to it.

And therein my mind went back to a recent podcast I heard from comedian Marc Maron on his show “WTF” that I was listening to while washing windows a few weeks back. It was an interview with old school impressionist and improv superstar Jonathan Winters who is now 85 and living alone in Montecito. Winters was talking about maintaining a positive outlook on this thing we call life on Earth. In spite of the difficulties we perceive as we go through our days, he dropped a nugget of wisdom that’s been knocking around in my head a bit lately and makes me want to remember to treat visitors kindly.

“We’re all just passing through,” Winters said. “Let’s make sure we don’t mess up the visit.”

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Here it is version two of the Ojai Smiley Face Decal. This is a 3.5 inch high quality vinyl decal with a 5-7 year life expectancy. That’s a lot of Ojai sticker enjoyment for only $5.

Note the irony please. We’re not really here, if we’re actually bored. But no one will deny that it’s pretty easy to slip into decadence negligence on occasion in the indulgent Earthen cleft. That’s why this game exists. Check yourself and your friends. Find the truth that you’ve created and have known to be speaking loud and clear all along.

Gather with a friend or two, focus and breath upon a question and then let the unknown take care of things.

I’m custom making these. They are hand printed on vintage wood. Approximately 11×13 inches. The planchette is hand shaped. $33 free shipping in US.

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