Something Ugly

It all started when I got into the wrong car with the wrong guy.

I was at a big get-together full of people who, for the most part, I didn't know. At a certain point, when the party started getting stale, everyone decided to go hit up a bar.

I climbed into a car with five other people. I hadn't met the driver, a jockish fraternity type with a button-down shirt and a carefully groomed five-o-clock shadow. He and several others vouched for his sobriety. Vehemently.

That should have been a warning sign.

The second we started moving, our driver was honking his horn to the rhythm of the music on the radio. This, in a quiet residential neighborhood in south Charlotte. At 1:30 in the morning. He laughed.

We rounded a corner and hit the busy road. Several songs later, another beat overcame our driver. He started punching the gas in time, jerking all of us around. I wanted out.

We pulled into a parking lot, and our driver saw upon a man relieving himself on a car tire. He veered his car and put his front bumper within inches of the back of his knees. And then he leaned on the horn. The guy who was peeing turned around in surprise. I could see him saying something to us.

That was all it took.

Within seconds, our driver flew out of his door, leaped across the hood, and with all of his momentum moving forward, connected with a vicious jab. It sent them both to the ground. Both of them started rolling around on the pavement between cars. I was trapped inside the back seat of the car, and could only watch. "What are you doing?" the women screamed.

"He peed on my car," the driver said, between blows.

Two other men came to help. The driver was now wildly throwing punches, connecting on some, and clutching at shirts when he lost his balance. He taunted the three men who were coming after him. When he got a break in the action, he got back into the driver's seat and drove to the other side of the parking lot.

"We're going home," one of the women sobbed.

"No," the driver said. "We're not."

Despite the objections of everyone in the car, the driver parked conspicuously on the other side of the parking lot. The three men, staggering a bit but still looking strong, walked menacingly toward us.

Everybody got out. I was finally able to free myself from the back seat. I walked away from it all, and stood behind a row of cars, trying to make it clear that I was not going to help the driver out if he started throwing punches again.

He did.

One of the women who was in the car tried to get in the middle of the whole thing to stop it. In the heat of the moment, the man who was the first to be hit lunged and threw a punch at the driver, missed him, and hit the woman square in the temple. She crumpled to the ground. That sent the driver into a rage, throwing his fists at anything that would move. The screams started again. I tried to get to the woman who had fallen over, offering to get her out of there. She didn't want my help.

It took several minutes to end. Sirens that had been in the distance grew louder. The driver, taunted the men he'd just beaten up, cackling about them how bloody he'd left them. He got in his car with the woman who was still dazed from the punch. The others who had been in the car screamed at them, telling her to get out. She didn't. They drove off.

Everybody else walked over to a line of taxis in front of the bar. They all wanted to go home. One of the women in the car apologized profusely. They didn't know who that guy was, she said. They shouldn't have gotten in the car-- shouldn't have even let him drive, she told me.

Moments later, the driver and the girl who'd been came ambling up to the front door of the bar, as if nothing had happened. His hair was disheveled and the sleeve of his button-down oxford shirt was shredded. They let him in.

The cops arrived. So did the ambulance. The officers asked where the driver went. Right inside, the three men told them. Meanwhile, a screaming match started anew, between the women who'd gotten out of the car, and one who had gotten back in.

I quietly walked away, past the taxis, police cruisers, and medics, past the bars, neon signs and people carrying on and drinking beer, doing shots and having a good time. I just kept walking into the hot Charlotte night as far as my feet would take me.

I didn't want to get into another car. That much I could control.

It's Gotta Be The Shoes

Here's how to kill a pair of shoes.

First, wear them every day to work at the U.S. National Whitewater Center for three summers. Then, become a guide of rodeo rafts, those little eleven-foot four-man beauties that can only be flipped by, say, a stiff breeze. Watch as the soles starts to detach themselves every time you swim.

Then, after the bottoms are gone, walk around in them with no soles. Do this on different surfaces: concrete, grass, gravel, mud. Then, keep wearing them on rafting trips and scrape them on the bottom of the channels as you get dumped from your boat.

If you're lucky, truly lucky, you can get a pair of Asics to look like this (look to your right).

Here's how I finished the job.

I'd just taken three guys on a rodeo trip and we'd already flipped the boat twice. It was at the moment, however, that we got sucked back into the Class IV Big Drop that things really went downhill for my footwear. The boat violently turned, a tube disappeared into the frothy water, another boat t-boned us, and moments later, we were all holding on to our upside-down raft. All I had between me and the concrete side of the channel was a thin piece of cloth on the bottom of my feet. It was promptly torn to shreds.

I finally righted the raft, but it was at that moment that the sky exploded. Rain and lightning started shooting down everywhere. We all got out at a ramp that leads into the bottom pond. I pulled the boat out a few feet above the water line, and we all trudged back out along a paved path-- the tongue of my disintegrated right shoe wagging out below my toes.

I'd like to think I have a high threshold for pain, but pain can add up. I dinged up my elbow surfing a rapid in a duckie earlier in the afternoon. I had a raging case of poison ivy on my right knee, which was now swelled up to the size of a small grapefruit. It started itching again. And those two earlier flips left my feet screaming in pain. I had tried to fix my shoes with duct tape before the trip, but it had been sucked away as soon as I hit the water.

My guests left, I was more than sore, and I wanted to leave. But, I had to take my boat back to the raft barn, and it was sitting on a ramp a quarter mile away in the middle of a lightning storm. In the midst of all this, the center decided to shut down early for the day, which meant they cut the pumps and conveyor belt off. That then sent the water level in the bottom pond up, sweeping away my raft and depositing it next to the grates of the pumps.

One of the funny rules at the center says you can't be on the water in a lightning storm, which seems strange, but probably wouldn't be funny at all if you're struck. So, two guides and I set off to retrieve my raft with a long rope and a carabiner, which is kind of like fishing without a hook. Somehow, we got it.

Problem is, getting to the raft required my walking across mud, gravel driveways, metal grates, stinging grass and more, all with my bare feet poking from the bottoms of my tattered shoes.

After thirty minutes, of pulling, tugging and carrying, we finally got the raft to the top pond, and threw a rope to another guide across the channel to have him pull it in. And that's when I realized how far I had to walk to get back to the barn: a quarter-mile across the most jagged foot-piercing rocks we have. I cursed our paving budget.

It was at that moment, in the pouring rain, that two girls who work on the zip line came speeding by in an ATV. If it wasn't for them, I may have crawled the entire way.

Getting back into the barn, I realized if I had just bought a sturdy pair of sandals, or bothered to wear bring another pair of shoes, I would have been able to leave nearly two hours before.

Strange as it sounds, I had a connection to those shoes. My grandmother bought them for me years ago. I'd run races in them. I'd worn them to work each and every day for three seasons at the U.S. National Whitewater Center. I'm actually a little sad to see them go. But as we speak, I'm thinking about which pair of old running shoes I'll wear the next time I hit the water.

I know. I'm a serial killer.

Who Needs a Microphone When You Have Facebook?

I always forget something crucial when I go on vacation.

A few years ago, I packed up an entire week's worth of shirts, pants and socks before getting to my destination and realizing I hadn't packed a single pair of underwear. Sometimes I won't remember to throw contact solution into my bag. Once I neglected to throw my phone charger into my suitcase. I turned my cell phone on only once an hour to check messages and make sure the battery would last for seven days without a recharge.

This time, I forgot a microphone.

That's usually not a big deal, because I've never had to bring a mic with me on vacation. But this time, I'd promised to put together an audio version of my story for September's issue of Charlotte Magazine. I figured I would find the time during this week at my parents house in Ohio to do it.

Once I got here, I realized I had no way to get my spoken words into the computer. I broke into a bit of a cold sweat.

I decided to tap into the power of crowdsourcing by turning my status update into a want ad to my 627 Facebook friends. One of them had to a.) have a microphone, and b.) live within 20 miles of my parents' house.

It worked. Moe, who went to my high school and is now in a band (The Kellys), sent me a message back within 10 minutes, telling me that not only did he have a mic, but that he lived close enough to my parents' place that I could make it there whilst multi-tasking (walking the dog).

I stopped by, picked up the microphone (a Blue Snowball, technophiles), emptied the dog of all waste products, and made it back home in 15 minutes. Last night, I successfully recorded the audio track for the story. It was tough to find a suitable place to make it sound professional at my parents house. If you listen to it, just remember, I recorded this while sitting in the front seat of my mom's garage-parked Saturn, huddled under a blanket around 10 p.m. The acoustics were perfect.

Back in the day, I probably would have been screwed. Not only would I not have known how to get ahold of Moe, but I would never have known he was in a band in the first place. We were acquaintances from high school, but probably hadn't talked in person for eleven years. As it was, I found what I needed and caught up with Moe, and the whole thing took maybe an hour, beginning to end.

For as much as I think Facebook sucks away my free time and chips away at my social skills, I am finding out how powerful it can be when you truly do need help.

Don't worry, if I ever forget my underwear again, I won't ask to borrow yours.

The Drive Home

Books On Tape - I checked out three from the public library. One was The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama. I was a little bitter about the state of my dental affairs one night and pervaded the name of that book in order to make a joke. Something like: if I were the commander-in-teeth, my first book would be The Audacity of Scope.

In any event, I hadn't read it, so I checked out the audio book. Obama narrates it himself. It's like listening to the president speak, if his TelePrompTer went down and he had to read directly from a piece of paper in front of him, and he wasn't quite sure of himself. I feel pretty confident that I could do a mean Barack impression now. I've since moved on to Where Have All The Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca, a fanciful book about how everybody everywhere sucks. It is also helping helping me re-live the last year of the Bush administration, and remember what John Edwards was like before, you know, the drama.

Charleston, W.Va. - I really miss Charleston, which is a shame, because apparently there is nothing going on there. A few restaurants have opened up. My friend Jessica and I had lunch at a new one and discussed the general decay of the television business. My old TV station has laid a few people off, which means when people come into the front lobby, they have to push a button which buzzes somebody in the newsroom to come check things out. Sometimes it's an intern. Sometimes it's Jessica. One bright spot, they did fix a particularly nasty sewer odor which crept into the building during rainstorms.

The new lunch joint is directly behind the Red Carpet Lounge, which has an outdoor patio which is probably crawling with opossums. It's called Fort Swagger. There apparently was this guy named Charles Swagger who was a Red Carpet regular, and when he died, he had his ashes scattered in the flower bed. His wife's ashes were thrown less auspiciously under the stairs. I say all this because I used to be somewhat of a regular there myself a few years ago. Jessica didn't know that this bar also doubled as a graveyard, and launched into a story about how a particularly nasty-looking drunk woman once pulled down her pants on the patio and relieved herself. Jessica had no idea that this woman was probably peeing on Mr. Swagger's final resting place.

I stopped in quickly at Taylor Books, hoping to see Jennifer Garner (she hangs out there when she's in town). I did not. However, I did leave with two paperbacks and a cup of coffee. Then, to prove to the world that I indeed did get all of these things, I set my camera on a timer, set it on top of a newspaper rack on Capitol Street, and took a self portrait. The flash went off, which scared the hell out of the woman who was coming up to buy a paper a half second before the picture.

Ohio - Nothing particularly interesting actually happened ON the road, until I got within about 20 miles on Canton. There, I saw a big plume of thick black smoke on the horizon, then I got to see what was causing it: A Jeep fully engulfed in flames. This thing was burning. Hard.

Then, on I-76 on the other side of Akron, some woman was swerving along wildly in a big ole' tan Buick. I pulled as far over to the side and let her pass. She disappeared quickly. Five miles later, I saw a bunch of people slowing down to a near-stop, because Buick lady had gone and swerved herself right off the road into a ditch. She was furiously trying to free herself, but appeared alright. Must be hard to be drunk at 7pm on a Monday.

Cortland - I don't know much, but I know my friend Todd's wedding is going to be awesome. He's holding it on Halloween night, and the guests all have to wear costumes. I ran into to Todd today, literally. Just like old times. I was jogging by his house, and he and his fiance Nikki were walking outside to the car. They asked me if my dad was going to the reception dressed as a New York Yankee. They know him all too well.

Warren - The guy sitting across from me at the Mocha House just belched. Loudly. It's good to be home.

I'm Not Going To Do It

At least not right now.

I'm going to postpone my 450 mile bike ride from Charlotte to Cincinnati.

Basically, I'm woefully unprepared for a bike trip. I mean, I could make it, but friends in the know told me that a passing car could whomp me on a stretch of road without cell service, and then where would I be? Probably in a ditch, holding my head, wondering how many days it would take for somebody to find me.

Not fun.

When I do decide to do this, I'll find someone to go with, and actually have the gear required to complete the ride.

As a substitute, I'll drive to Ohio instead. I know air conditioning isn't as romantic, but I ain't complaining.

Damn You, John Steinbeck

It was at the point where a lazy Saturday morning stretched into the afternoon. I had ridden my clumsy mountain bike over to the Original Pancake House, up to a friend's store, and then over to the library. I like to do this on weekends. My weekdays are becoming increasingly cluttered with daily tedium and unrelenting gruntwork. I don't do a lot of thinking.

Thinking is easy to do on a bike. You're unable to do anything else but look and think and feel. And, of course, pedal.

So it was at that moment, with my mind completely open, that I fell vulnerable to The Idea.

The Idea is actually John Steinbeck's fault. I was walking through the stacks at the Morrison Library when I came upon "Travels With Charley," propped up nicely among the Fodor's guides and Rick Steve's selections. It stuck out. I grabbed it.

"Travels With Charley" is what happened when John Steinbeck wanted to take a vacation, left his wife at home and took the dog instead. He putzed around America in a truck he converted into a camper. He wrote about it. All of it.

I walked back downstairs with Steinbeck, threw him into my bag and pedaled toward home. And that's when I got The Idea.

I would bike all the way from Charlotte to Cincinnati. From one Queen City to the other.

Sounds implausible. I know.

But something inside me said that I wanted to do this. And parts of it made sense. I ride to work nearly every day now. My brother and his wife live in Cincinnati. They could use a bicycle. I would give it to them when I got there.

Usually, a dose of reality has it in for ideas like this. But not The Idea. I crunched the numbers. 450 miles. Seven days. 65 miles a day. Five states. Up one side of the Appalachians and down the other. It could be done, I thought.

I didn't want to tell anyone about The Idea. I was too afraid that someone would try and talk me out of it. That's ridiculous, they'd say. You're going to leave in a few days? You ride 60 miles a week. How could you do 65? Seven days in a row? You thought of this WHEN?

I started to come up with answers, just in case anyone asked me what I was going to do with my week off. Why? I thought it would be a nice gesture, to hand-deliver a bike. Why? It would be something I'd never done before, and would probably never do again. Why? Because I want to, dammit.

I started to think about what I'd need to make The Idea into The Reality. A bike, for starters. One I could take cross-country. I'd also need a backpack capable of carrying food, spare parts and a few changes of clothes. I'd probably need a tent. A camera. Something to write things down.

The Reality started to take shape. I'd leave right after work Friday. I could probably make it to Lincolnton by sundown. Johnson City in a day or two. Hazard, Kentucky a few days after that. And Cincinnati in a week. Definitely in a week.

And then I thought of how incredibly selfish The Reality would be. Steinbeck would have his wife waiting for him at the end of that three month long drive-around. He brought the dog. I'd be by myself. For a week. My parents had been hinting that they'd want me to come home for a few days. Same thing with my brother. I don't get to see them all that often. If everything went according to plan, I'd breeze into Cincinnati on a Thursday or Friday, then would have to find a way home by Sunday.

The Idea had been stewing in my mind for two days when on Monday night, I just had to tell someone. I started sending text messages to a neighbor who knows a thing or two about biking.

ME: Could a person conceivably bike 450 miles in seven days?
HIM: Sure, pro riders regularly do 150+ for a few days in a row.
ME: So, 90 miles a day would be rough, but doable?
HIM: For someone who's used to it.
ME: Hmmm...
HIM: Someone who's not would likely get a nasty saddle sore.
ME: Contemplating something. Semi-spontaneous.
HIM: For you, I think 250 max if you're on a road bike. That would be rough, though.

And there it was. The Excuse. It's probably out of my range, says somebody with experience. My negative thoughts take over. It's too much for someone to come up with in a week. You haven't been training for this. You don't know how to fix a bike. Where to stay for the night. There's too much unexpected. Too much you won't be able to handle.

Somehow, I find myself faced with a situation I'm in a lot. I have The Idea all too often, but I'm becoming less able to make it into The Reality. Maybe it's just a function of going older and finding it much easier to accept The Excuse.

"When I was very young, and the urge to be someplace else was on me," Steinbeck wrote, "I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch." And maybe he's right. Mature people don't ride a bicycle 450 miles on a whim.

But he went. It turned out to be the journey of a lifetime.

Maybe I should go too.

Write-Off

Here's my "I haven't written anything here in a while" post.

So, I'm talking with this girl who's a more prolific writer than I am, and we both agreed: we only seem to write when we're frustrated. Seriously. I look back at when I used to churn stuff out on a nightly basis. I'd be so wound up that I'd have three blogs ready to go, and I'd space them out to post at random times because, you know, I don't want to seem weird.

I write so much on a daily basis (it's for TV, so most of it's in caps) that more and more there's just nothing left at the end of the day. Plus, I've got this magazine gig that leads to more writing, and so on, and so forth. I'm working at the whitewater center twice a week. Starting now, I'm training for a 15 mile race over Labor Day weekend. I think maybe I'm doing so much that I don't see things around me like I used to. Maybe my earlier feelings of frustration have been replaced with a constant need to be doing... something.

In any event, I feel like I've got a lot to say, and maybe it's time I said it. I mean, I'm not going to go all political. Not really my style to give me opinion unless I'm asked (although, yeah, I do. Sometimes).

No, what I really mean is, inexplicably stupid things still happen to me. I still can make things painfully awkward. Weirdos gravitate toward me. Those are the things I like to write about. I like getting myself into unfamiliar situations just because they'll make for a good story. Putting yourself in strange places is a great way to see what life has to offer. I think it started when I snuck into House Party at age ten. It's been all downhill from there.

Ok, I feel my frustration rising up again. Let's see if I can't turn it into some more words this time.