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Named for the rapids nearby on the Yukon river, which resemble the flowing mane of a white horse, this town, Whitehorse, was once the epicenter of a great bonanza. Gold was discovered in 1896 and when word reached Seattle and San Francisco an estimated 100,000 prospectors saddled up and headed north. Mass resignations to join the gold rush became famous. In Seattle, this included the mayor, many policemen, and a significant percent of the city's streetcar drivers. Only about 30% of them made it.

I was about two hours outside Yellowknife when I realized I wasn’t going to make it. I had fueled up at High Level, about 5 hours back, which was the last town I saw a roadside station. For about 300 miles, all I passed was charred trees; the enchanted forest of blackened toothpicks surrounded by a tarp of purple flowers. The enormity of the 2023 fires is insurmountable. Everywhere, everything north of Edmonton is burnt. For hours and hours, and miles and miles, and days and days.

I wasn’t going to double tap on the 51st state, but it’s too charming not to. So, if Houston and Bend had a bouncing baby boy, they’d name it Edmonton. I told a friend: Canada is like a vintage store version of America - only the good things of the nostalgic past. Everything is less clogged, from towns to national parks. With an identical landmass to ours but about 300 million fewer people, Canada’s population density is about one-tenth that of USA. Off grid is actually a thing here, too.

If Fresno and Montana had a baby, they’d name it Alberta. Imagine a prairie farmland larger than California being minced up by whistling, gurgling ranch trucks; and taking those naked plains faster than you can drive the highway… Oh Canada! Some might say it’s the Canuck’s Texas, and I think they’d like that. But Texas is actually 2% bigger. I mean, of course it is, otherwise everything wouldn’t be bigger in Texas.

When I started Reta, I used it as an opportunity also to revamp my diet. I figured, if everything was going to taste mediocre anyway, might as well eat healthy things, and since I’ll be eating less, I should make it count. Prior to going on, I was eating one meal per day (dinner) but it was an unbridled disaster. For example, perhaps 4,000-5,000 calories of lasagna at a sitting plus a peanut butter and jelly burrito (or two).

When American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower, the kid next to me — well, he was a kid then — said on the phone to his dad: “Dad, a bomb just went off in the Towers.” Before I could even register what happened, I recalled seeing a snapshot of a giant silver projectile impacting the building imprinted in my memory; my mind took a picture of the fuselage hitting the tower just before it exploded.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) Last year I booked NASCAR and Burning Man, mostly to write about. Unpredictability is the best thing about the road, and for the Gonzo journalism, minus the ether and LSD, both were great, however, I feel no particular compulsion to return to either.

This is going to be a blockbuster. Bigger than Viagra. Bigger than fentanyl (I’m reading Empire of Pain right now). And bigger than Advil. So big, that, I wasn’t going to write about it today. Instead I was going to do a big “reveal” when I had lost a shit ton of weight… but I couldn’t wait. Spring is sprung, retatrutide has arrived from China, and I’m feeling 20 again. To preface this evangelism, I’ve tried everything from prayer to microdosing LSD.

There’s a bit of math involved in sleeping in a van. The calculus comes down to this: can you handle the shame and disruption of somebody knocking on your window to tell you to move. It has only happened once, but, I must say, it felt pretty grimy. I heard rapping on the window in my sleep.

Rolling Stones, Satisfaction Probably the most fake job, and with the most annoying description, is content creator. Even the best inevitably seem to claw, just give them a little time, until they’re pressing contrived interactions so hard the vicarious embarrassment becomes unbearable. The Germans, who also brought you schadenfreude, have a word for this feeling too (of course they do). It’s fremdscham. What it looks like: creating uneasy situation, designed for controversy, just to gain clicks.