TTSOML #124: Photos Taken & Greg From Computer Park

I will go back to the shooting of Nacho, but as the timeline progresses.

There are two things which happened that I struggle to fit into the exact timeline, but it was pretty soon after I started commuting to Washington or right after I decided to stay there permanently. It may have been after I was a legal resident, come to think of it.

I don't know who it was, but I would go sunbathing up in the orchard mountains, high on the hill, at the end of the ditch for water. There was a bridge at the end, which I'd lie on, that summer of 2005, and I would lie out in the sun and read or take a nap. I brought a picnic with me and sometimes, music. I could lay out all day and hear the wind in the aspens and the burbling by. I usually wore a bikini but sometimes I took the top off, as it was high country, and sun my back.

One day, a motorcyclist drove up from over the mountain, and I didn't hear him until the last minute because the water was so loud, and he stopped and took photos of me and then sped off. This guy was poised with his camera, so I don't think it was just a random, "Huh! Who-da thunk a wimin be here, HOT damn." It was like he drove over to get a close up of me, because he knew I was there. I couldn't tell what he looked like, because he had a helmet on. It wasn't Rick Baken. I think the guy was Hispanic.

On another occasion, I was walking around in my bra (it gets VERY hot there) and this is in the frank wildnerness, and not even in sight of roads, and former FBI guy Rick Baken comes riding up on his motorbike. I had to put my shirt on and he acted like no big deal at all. I got the impression someone could walk stark naked around Baken and he wouldn't blink. Maybe it just looked like a bikini top though.

So the other thing is that when I moved to Wenatchee, I visited a couple of the bars and taverns to see what the offerings were. I went to the arts and culture center too and all they had was cage fighting. I didn't know where I'd landed. I'd never seen a "bar fight" before, but in Wenatchee, there was one every single night. A phyiscal fistfight or, "altercation". Every single frickin' night. I couldn't believe it. And everyone, no matter how long they'd been living in Wenatchee, would run outside to watch, yelling to everyone still seated inside the bar or tavern, "Fight! Fight!"

The entire time I was in Wenatchee, I went to a tavern or bar, maybe a total of 15 times. Maybe closer to 10 times. Probably 10.

Which is ironic, considering Wenatchee CPS's claim I'm a big alcoholic. I didn't buy my own liquor except drink an occasional glass of wine at night. I went through maybe one bottle of wine (small ones) every month and went out socially for a drink probably 10 times. There were only one or two times I actually even got "drunk" technically.

What I noticed though, when I first started going on, what that this guy, Greg, always happened to be there or show up after I was there. He almost always drank only coffee but a couple of times he drank something else. He later told me he was a computer tech and asked to see my computer. He said he wanted to "fix" it. I had a feeling, which I couldn't prove, that he was possibly an undercover something or other. I thought so because once I went out with him and this other guy who came back from Iraq and dated me (I never slept with him)were sitting together and I said, pointing to him, that he couldn't be an undercover guy because he was out of shape. They seemed to think this was funny and the looks they exchanged seemed to imply something was more of an inside joke than I knew. I told them I knew how to eliminate or include undercover people as being in or out. I said usually undercover is in shape, to make a getaway if needed, and sometimes they have a certain hand callus, possibly indicating frequent use of a gun (which Greg had), and no matter how grimy someone looked, if they had really good teeth or manicured fingernails, that was inconsistent, etc. I had a list of things.

So Greg kept siddling up to me and trying to befriend me. I dated one of the bartenders in town too, but wouldn't even really make out with him so he ditched me. I'd had drinks with these guys I dated, but like I've said before, I know the line between being tipsy and having fun to relax, and being taken advantage of while totally drop dead drunk. And it's not like I ended up sleeping with every guy when I was drunk, because most know boundaries. Or, a lot of them do, and respect this, or don't try to pull things. Anyway, I think the bartender and Greg knew eachother but maybe not. Basically, if you're not a tourist, everyone knows everyone in Wenatchee.

There are some language barriers between English and Spanish speakers, and there's a large hispanic population, but the hispanic community has it's own grapevine like nobody's business. Word travels FAST, orally, through the hispanic community. I was surprised at how effective word gets passed along there.

Greg expressed great interest in my life until he had finally obtained access to my computer. This is my desktop I'd been using since late 1997 ($2,000 then, for a 1998 Compaq Presario), but which had never had any problems because I only used 2 things on it: word processing and internet by dial-up. Basically, there was little stress to the machine.

I remember the CD player went out right after I told Christa I was going to get CDs of the hearings in Oregon that had been dismissed, but that was it. Oh, actually, something else happened, when I first met the monks, and it was right after I got to know them a little bit. I had about 5 techs look at it and say they'd never seen anything like it and it was more than a little strange. My graphics went from full range and color to "16 bit color". All the computer techs were sure it was for this reason or the other, and thought they could fix it, but they were confused by the messages they got. They said it was bizarre. And I woke up one day, and it was like that. I never saw what happened. Aside from that, and my CD player going out when it was rarely used, and then the next one going out or not working when it should, and other than the blank monitor screen, I didn't notice things. Most of the things that happened seemed strange, but not extraordinary.

I should also probably mention what happened, though, when I tried to write about Br. Ansgar and the monks, on an AOL blog site. I'll come back to that after I write about Greg.

So Greg said he could take a look and then would burn a CD for me to replace everything with. He said I probably just needed a particular disc or CD. It was a restoration thing, it was something else. I said okay, and I took my computer to a house he later said was his parents house. He took me downstairs and hooked my computer up to another computer. Then I started seeing everything from my computer being played on this other computer. It was reading my computer, because he said he was checking to see why my monitor didn't work properly. But then he put in a videotape and kept trying to distract me to watch him skydiving. He was downloading a massive amount of info from my computer onto his, or doing something, but I thought it was to figure out what kind of disc to give me. Then I looked behind my back, and he had his hand inside of the box of my computer near the harddrive. I said, "What are you doing?!" because he jerked his hand back and acted very nervous. He said he was just checking things. It seemed to me like he was putting something in, or taking something out, of my computer box. Or doing something to the internal parts. Which wasn't what he said he was going to do, by just running diagnostics.

The part I always go back to is how he was bent on trying to get me to watch this video instead of watching him. I never should have trusted him. I don't know who he is exactly, and who he works for, but I think he was just trying to get information. After an hour or more, he said he'd call me when the disc was ready for me.

He worked at Computer Park, in Wenatchee, which is owned by a Catholic couple.

He never got back to me after that, and never gave me a disc. He never called me or asked me out or if I was going to be at the bar either.

It was like he got his hands on my computer, did something to it, and he was done. This happened when I first moved to Wenatchee permanently, after my commute had ended.