I woke up around 6:30 a.m. at my girlfriend’s apartment. I head out around 8:00 a.m. and drive over to Danvers where my truck is parked. I spent about a half an hour cleaning all the snow off the truck and I left my little car in the parking lot. I drive the truck over to where Cryin Mike is camped. There was a post from another homeless friend in Salem asking if anybody had a tent for Mike and that he needed help. When I get up to Mike’s camp his tent is still intact. I yell into his tent, and by the grace of God I hear his voice. He’s groggy, I’ve obviously woke him, I check to make sure that he’s all right and I let Mike know that I’m going to set up camp next to him so that he has company and that we can both help each other. I definitely need help, because both of my camps got collapsed by snow.
9:30 a.m. I stop at Wendy’s in Salem, and it’s good to see that it’s been cleaned up, and all the tents are still standing. I do a video and I stop by my friend Nick’s tent. I yell into the tent, and I hear Nick say “who’s that?” I tell Nick that it’s me, and he says that he’s still sleeping. I walk out of tent city.
10:00 a.m. I drove over to Walmart to buy some parachute cord and a tarp for my new camp with Mike.
10:45 a.m. I drive over and park my truck near the woods where my two collapse camps are. I hiked out to the small camp first. I’m able to get the snow off and climb inside the tent. I push it back into place and I’m able to resurrect it and bring it back to life. Next I walk over to the mega camp which is completely destroyed. I salvage some of the useful items that are left over like the ratchet straps, and the blow up mattress. Then I hike back over to the smaller camp to build an A-frame to protect the camp from future snows.
2:00 p.m. I hike out of the woods after I’ve secured the small tent. My homeless friend Nick has been texting me and wants to meet up. I sit in my truck for a little while and get caught up with writing some blogs.
3:30 p.m. I drive over and park my truck at the abandoned council of aging building near downtown Salem. As I park my truck I see Cryin Mike walking by. I stop and talk to Mike for a minute. Mike says he is heading back to his camp before the rain and the wind starts. I let Mike know that I will be setting camp up next to him tomorrow. I walked over to Steve’s Market and I got a couple of spinach pastries since I hadn’t eaten all day. And then walk over to CVS in the mall strip area in Salem, where I meet up with Nick in his husky dog Rigatoni, or riggy for short. Nick tells me about some of the bad treatment Homeless people have experienced at Lifebridge. I’m always concerned that large wealthy nonprofits, where executives make millions of dollars are not doing the job that they’ve been set out to do. Nick and I have a long conversation about corruption, and we talk about possible ways that we could help each other survive the winter.
4:45 p.m. Nick and I walk over to Lifebridge for dinner. Nick cannot bring the dog inside, so I go and ask the Lifebridge worker if Nick can have a take-out tray. Nick and I wait for the food to be ready. We should have a picnic table and we talked some more. I watched a news broadcast about the Karen Read case, and told Nick about the murder trial and police cover up.
5:30 p.m. We walked back over to the entrance of the shelter. Nick gets a take away tray, I go in to eat inside. I say goodbye to Nick and I go eat my dinner.6:00 p.m. I had been texting with my friend Kyle about a tent. Kyle says he has a tent for me. I drive up to Rockport and I grab a really nice Ozark trail tent which I’m super grateful to have. I ended up hanging out for a while.
7:30 p.m. I drive back to my camp. I parked the truck. It’s raining. I had set an appointment for a virtual meeting for the old Prison to Prosperity group that I helped create a few years back. I had remembered that I had to jump on the virtual while driving to Kyle’s. But while I was driving I ended up on a phone call with an old friend who’d found out that they have an illegitimate child, and I completely forgot about my appointment with the guys from prison to prosperity. When I park my truck I see the text that somebody was sitting on the zoom waiting. I feel terrible and I apologize in the group text. I’m usually good about appointments, it really rattles me when I make a mistake like this.8:00 p.m. It’s raining pretty heavily now. I grabbed my gear and I hike into the forest to my resurrected camp. I settle in for the night, it’s a really rough night. The wind is blowing Gale Force. The rain is torrential. I’m worried at some point that my A-frame will break and crash onto the tent. Or the tarp will get ripped up. Blow up mattress I put in the tent leaks air, so that is uncomfortable. I had a restless night. I made a video at 1:00 a.m. in the storm.