Day 15
4:30 a.m. I woke up real early at my friend’s house in Danvers. It’s the first night I’ve slept in a bed in 14 days. It really wasn’t all that great. I did get about 7 hours of sleep which was nice.
6:30 a.m. I get all my stuff together and I head over to Walmart so that I can get LA a tent. I walk around Walmart a little bit just to kill time. I found a one person tent for LA. It’s 30 bucks.
Walmart Parking lot
7:30 a.m. I sit in my truck in the Walmart
parking lot working on my finishing up the blog and doing media stuff. Every Sunday I visit my mother and she wants me to be there around noon. I have time to kill.
8:30 a.m. I decided to head over to Market Basket in Danvers to get something to eat. I buy a hamburger and french fries for breakfast. Sometimes I don’t realize how hungry I am until I start eating. Knowing that winter’s coming, I’m not afraid to eat too much. After I eat I’m sitting in the dining area at market basket and I’m getting antsy. I decided to head over to Savers which is in the same parking lot and see if I could find a bigger backpack for LA for his trip and also anything else that might be useful. When I get to savers and look around the backpack area has been ransacked and there’s really nothing of worth. I do find a pump that I can use to pump up my air mattress for the winter time if I end up sleeping in my truck. I also bought a skull cap. When I leave savers I call my website guy and good friend fast Eddie. He’s awake and says I could come over if I want to hang out. It’s good because we can work on the website together. I go back to Market Basket and get some breakfast foods for brunch at Fast Eddie’s.
10:00 a.m. I get too fast Eddie’s house and he begins cooking breakfast. We have scrambled eggs, kielbasa, bagels, corned beef hash, and eggnog. After breakfast I record my weekly policy points. I feel that I’m morally torn when I walk through Atkinson Street. I do not believe people should be able to use drugs to the point of death in the street. Here are some of the policy points I’ll recap week one and week two so you can see my thoughts.
POLICY POINTS
Week 1
1. Access Small Inflatable mats to sleep on
2. Designated sheltered places in the city near resources where people can sleep outside
3. Have social workers and healthcare workers visit meals for homeless and address everyone and share their info
4. Phone trainings on how to use smart phones
Week 2
1. Make illicit drug use in the street illegal with a choice of 30 days county time or mandatory detox with the option of further treatment.
2. If people want to go back to their home state make that available immediately.
3. All social workers and behavioral health works to spend 2 months homeless around the populations they serve before working in the field.
12:45 p.m. I head over to my mother’s house. I spend time with my mom and her dog Charlie. The last time I took Charlie out on a walk Wednesday, Charlie got a really bad cut on his foot from running around in the woods. Charlie is now on a walk restriction. I help my mom bandage Charlie’s foot so that it can heal. My mom makes some rice and chicken marsala for me. It’s only 1:30 and I’ve already eaten three meals today. The train comes at 3:11 p.m.
1:40 p.m. I leave my mother’s house to go park my truck at a friend’s house and take my bike to Beverly train station so I can get back to Boston. I message LA to let him know I’m on my way.
3:50 p.m. I got to north station, LA messages me to meet him at the dunkin’ donuts on Tremont Street across from the Boston Commons. The plan is that we get dinner at one of the churches. When I meet up with LA we bike over to a church called Old West Church. When we arrive there’s two other homeless people there and they tell us the church is not serving dinner tonight. This is kinda frustrating, we bike back to the Commons which is about a 3 minute bike ride. There is a van that pulls up to the Commons on Sunday run by a church. They give out sandwiches. I get water since I’ve eaten so much already today, and LA gets a sandwich and a coffee.
5:30 p.m. The pedal on my bike begins to loosen as I’m riding and I see that the JB weld epoxy I put in to keep the bolt in place is coming out. I reached out to my good friends at the victory outreach program and asked if I could come get some of my gear. I’d stash my gear at their house on the second day of my journey. My friend pastor Danny agrees and I take a half an hour bike ride to their house in south Boston. I grabbed my tent and the JB weld and talked to my friends at the victory outreach program about what I’ve learned and what I’ve seen. My plan is to plug that program into some of the churches for people that want to work on their recovery and get closer to God. The Victory outreach program is a free Christian based residential recovery program, but they require abstinence from all substances, even cigarettes.
7:15 p.m. I leave victory outreach house and I head over to the beach near L Street. I hang out down by the beach and eventually LA shows up. There’s going to be rain tonight so we set up our tents.
10:41 We’re sleeping on the beach near the L-Street Bathhouse. A man approachs our tents flashing a flashlight and asking our names. LA answers him, I don’t. I began to unzip my tent, so that I can confront the intruder. By the time I get out of my tent I see the man has walked all the way up the beach to his vehicle flashlight in hand. He then drives away. I get paranoid and start to think that I’m going to pack up and leave. LA says from his tent, I’m not leaving. I sit and think about the situation. We’ve committed no crime. We are just sleeping on the beach. I’m tired. it’s cold. I decided to go back in the tent and go to sleep
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Thank you for sharing 💜
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