3,000 miles in 3 days - Day 1

I've been back in Connecticut since 9 p.m. Monday night, and a week later, I'm still having difficulty knowing where to start this blog. Information overload, I guess. When in doubt, I guess it's best to start at the beginning.

The story really starts Tuesday, February 19, when I picked up SN Suraci at JFK airport. For a few months now, Tim's been in the United States Coast Guard, and stationed in Oxnard, CA. In an attempt to acquire housing off the station, it became obvious he needed his car. So really, this is the story of shipping a car.

Flying home and driving back, even when you account for the cost of food, gas, and lodging along the way, turns out to be cheaper, and of course much faster, than having his car shipped. So, with leave granted by his commanding officer, thus begins this epic adventure.

3:00 p.m., EST, I pick him up at JFK -- he needed a ride, and I generally don't pass up an opportunity to see Timmy since he moved to the West Coast. That's supposed to be the end of the plan. I drove out to JFK, drove him home, he came over for good New Haven style Pizza for dinner, and that should of been the end of the visit. So I thought.

Over dinner we were discussing his trip back. Still no word from the friend of his who was supposed to drive to California with him. He finally did get him on the phone, only to find out -- as we'd expected by this point -- that he wouldn't be able to make the trip.

"Too bad I didn't know sooner; I could have gone with you."

That's what I thought, at least. But, after a bit of encouragement from my beautiful and loving fiancée, I walked into work on Wednesday, asked for the rest of the week off, came home, packed a small bag, found a flight home for Monday morning, and that was that.

So it was 8:15 a.m., Thursday. Quick stop for gas, smokes, water, and a road atlas, and we were on our way. By 9:00, we were in New York. 9:30... New Jersey. 10:50 a.m. and we were in Pennsylvania. That was the end of the short states, and the last time I crossed a state I'd been to before. The road ahead was new, the country was spread out before us, and the adventure was beginning.

By about 1:30 we were in Harrisburg, PA, our first stop -- gas and food. A couple steak sandwiches at the Flying J truckstop -- a landmark that would define civilization over the rest of our journey -- and we were off into uncharted territory. This would be the farthest west I'd ever driven, the last stop in a semi-familiar place, and the beginning of a foreign part of the country, a land dotted with crumbling barns and rebel flags. I wonder how they forgot about Gettysburg. Wasn't this still Union Army lands?

Pennsylvania bled off into Ohio, passing briefly through West Virginia in between. Strip mines contrasted oddly against signs advertising coal as "Clean, Green Energy". Pastoral farms still dotted the hilly landscape every mile or so, many of them still bearing the Harley Warrick painted ads for Mail Pouch Tobacco. By now it had been 10 hours on the road, and a gas and coffee stop in Ohio signaled driver swap, and brought up the question that would nag us for at least the next few hours... What is a Buckeye?

So it's 6 p.m., we're about an hour into Ohio (that's about a 1/4 on your maps, for those of you following along), fresh gas, fresh coffee, fresh driver, and a fresh blizzard heading right for us. Our network of progress-tracking well-wishers had made contact to inform us of an impending Midwest snow storm.

"OK, so where is it?"

"Wait, it can't be the whole Midwest."

"OK, we'll be in Columbus at about 7:00."

"So the snow starts in Columbus... at 7... and moves East."

"Nope, we have to go through it."

OK, so it turned out not to be a blizzard... at least not for us. That system did continue East and dump 10" on Connecticut, snowing in my fiancée, closing my office at noon. But, remarkably, as I drove through it -- and I did drive straight through it, from mid-Ohio through Indiana and Illinois, for no less than six straight hours -- there was never more than 1" of snow; slushy in parts of Indiana, dry powder for the rest, but never more than an inch.

Missouri brought me two new challenges I'd never faced driving: freezing fog, and an angry TomTom. The former was an interesting anomaly. Now pretty much past the storm system, residual moisture has made it a foggy night. Not the worst of conditions after 6 hours of snow, and not so dense as to slow driving conditions, but the unexpected part was the freezing aspect. The well-below-freezing temperatures caused this fog to freeze directly on the windshield, making it near impossible to keep the view clear as the wipers tried in vain to act as ice scrapers. Defroster on full and wipers double-time, we pushed forward, nearly at St. Louis. When we did finally stop, we removed a 1/2" thick cast ice mold of the front grill and licence plate, perfectly molded.

But if the freezing fog wasn't discomforting enough, it was the angry TomTom that really made that last leg of the trip difficult. We based the trip on directions from Mapquest. Two options were provided, but given that it was February, we opted for the route that didn't go through the Colorado Rockies. We have the driving directions, we have a road atlas of the 50 states, and we have a borrowed TomTom GPS. When all is going well, the three tend to be in agreement. When Mapquest takes us on an Alt route around a major city, TomTom spends 30 seconds recalculating the route, and is soon synced up with the printed directions. But, when Mapquest starts us down a route into Kansas, because it knows that I-64 is closed for the entirety of the state of Missouri... TomTom freaked out.

For 300 miles I drove through Missouri, across the old US-66 bridge over the Mississippi, just north of St. Louis, and every time I passed a highway exit, TomTom barked at me to get off and turn around; go back the way I came, because it will still be shorter to double back and take I-64... which was closed. 300 miles of this. I wasn't worried that I couldn't follow the Mapquest directions without the aid of TomTom, but I had to wonder, how far out of the way are we going if TomTom still thinks turning around and driving 300 miles in the opposite direction is still faster.

Against TomTom's better judgement, I got us to Kingdom City, Missouri, by the end of my 10 hours. Pulled off at a Phillips 66 truckstop just of the highway, right about where Route 66 would have crossed Highway 54. A newly-awoken Tim gets out of the car in a vain attempt to gas up, while I proceed to walk laps around the store in hopes of fending of leg cramps. It's almost 4 a.m., and I see through the massive display of Confederate flags that the cantankerous old clerk is growing increasingly agitated with Tim's inability to pump gas from what we would discover to be a broken pump, and I -- now awake for 21 hours straight -- was becoming increasingly agitated with his comments. I wonder what the penalty is in Missouri for hitting an 80 year-old man. Not wanting to find out, I left it at "Lay off; he just woke up." His tone changed, Tim gassed up at an adjacent pump, I got back in the car, and slept until Kansas.

So it's 6 a.m. when I wake up up from my brief nap; Garner, Kansas. 22 hours in and the first day is over. Good to his word, perhaps steeled by his determination, Tim has gotten us to Kansas -- about 30 miles passed Kansas City -- before the road was too much. And so we walked up to the night clerk at the Super 8 Motel, there in Gardner, Kansas, and asked for a room for the night.

"Just tonight? Check-out's at 11."

"What's time zone are we in? It's 6? What's that, 5 hours? That'll be fine."

And so we slept.

From York Street to Oblivion

I’m going back to Tennessee, back where I come from...

OK, I'm not from Tennessee, but then again, neither is Neil Fallon. Neil -- and his buddies Tim, Dan, Jean-Paul, and Mick -- actually hail from a place called Germantown, Maryland. I've never been there, but I'm sure I've driven trough it on the I-95 approach to Baltimore. But this isn't a blog about geography...

I've lost track of exactly how many times I've seen Clutch play live now -- few times in Connecticut; once in Jersey; Rhode Island for my first show -- never disappointed. Never the same show twice, even if it's twice on the same tour. Strangely, though, it is the same fans twice, or most of the time... of course, Jimbo's there every time, but I couldn't imagine going to see Clutch without him... and after a while, you begin to recognize a bulk of the fans, like they're your distant cousins or something.

Now Thursday night, the crowd was huge. I've been to a couple Valby Christmas shows, and I've still never seen Toad's Place that packed. Clutch is a great band, but I've never known them to pack a house like that, especially around here, and especially on a Thursday. But packed it was, and it was a very good crowd.

Covin was up first; a local original rock band from right here in New Haven. Solid band. Because they're local, I know I'll get to check them out again; give them a solid review of their own. Any band that can pull off a Life of Agony cover the way they did deserves a blog of their own.

No one knows what happened to Puny Human. I was told good things about them, but alas they no-showed the gig. In the end, what I think that really added up to was more time for Priestess.

When Priestess took the stage I immediately noticed two things. The first was that I now knew what it would have looked like to see Mountain in 1972. The second was that the lone dude manning their merch table was indeed to guitarist/lead singer Mikey Heppner. Very DIY... very cool in my book.

The bearded boys of Montréal put on a show of insane ferocity. Wailing guitars and screaming vocals, both kept in time by, and challenged by, Vince Nudo's insanely energetic drumming. That guy is an animal, plain and simple, and you have to respect a guy who can still play a drum solo in modern music. The Priestess set was amazing, but the capper was when, as their final song of the night, they ripped into Lay Down, their single most of us know from Guitar Hero III. Who could help but to green-yellow-red along with it?

So is a short cigarette break, a random discussion on GH:3 and whether or not Slash cheats, a couple bottles of water, and them on the the main event, and a giant Maryland state flag hanging from the rafters.

Barely had the band taken to the stage when, over the roar of the assembled masses, the open chords of Devil & Me started up. The would-be-title-track of the most recent album sent the audience into motion. The opening few songs were played much in the style of classic Clutch, Tim on guitars, Dan on bass, Mick on the organ, and Jean-Paul keeping it all in time while Neil barks, screams, sings, and gesticulates as he ministers to his audience-parish.

Jean-Paul Gaster, who I contend may be the hardest working drummer in rock today, and potentially the most talented, earned his paycheck Thursday night. Beyond his incredible talent, in addition to punching up some of the older tunes to the level of percussive acrobatics he displays in later works, three sprawling solos -- including the one that marked the division of Big News I and II -- not only took the audience on a rhythmic ride of tempo and technique, but gave his band mates some 10+ minutes of breather and beer-break he never saw nor slowed down for.

The second half of the set featured the newest track King of Arizona, another very bluesy track, but with a big, wall of sound dynamic to it, driven by the full and extended line-up instrumentation with 2 guitars, organ, and harmonica. Power Player, One-Eye Dollar, and Electric Worry rounded out the Beale Street component of the set, and the rest of the night was an eclectic sampling of many of their older works, covering just about everything but Elephant Riders -- odd since the merch table seemed to be focused on Elephant Riders and Pure Rock Fury shirts and other swag.

Neil likes to play guitar in the second half of the set, but I was happy to see him put it down to sling a mic over his shoulder to join Jean-Paul the only cowbell duet you'll see at a live rock show. Only Clutch could possibly fuse blues and hardcore, highlighted with a Hammond organ and harmonica. But it completely works. Personally I'm not a fan of the harmonica player. I first saw him last year in Sayerville, where Clutch was touring with his band -- don't ask me which band; I have no clue -- and Neil asked him up to play of the last three, very blues-heavy, songs of the night. His continued presence with the band irks me in some weird way; perhaps its his spastic movement, perhaps its the fact that he tries to scream backing vocals into his bullet mic. Whatever the reason, I am please to know that he's not considered part of the band, and although there were as many as 7 people on stage playing during one song, he's still not one of the five that actually make up Clutch.

All in all and excellent show -- not that I'd expect less. And although I was unable to snag the one broke shard of Jean-Paul's stick -- Gaster is one of the few drummers I've seen who does not toss his extra sticks into the crowd after a show -- I was delighted to be handed 2 free lighters and 2 free shot glasses by the guy at the merch table when I bought my tour shirt. It seems that the folks at Jägermeister Music like to give the fans a little something for showing up. That and the CD I got earlier in the year were really nice of them.

So, the next tour kicks off very soon, with back-to-back shows at Cambridge, Massachusetts' Middle East, starting Thursday, February 21, 2008. I know I'll be there one of the two dates, and I know it'll be another great show.

Twas the day before Christmas...

... and all through the town, not a creature was stirring... can't find rhyming noun.

I rode the 7:48 into the fair Elm City with 6 other people this morning... 3 of whom got on at my stop. I've never seen the train that empty. It was eerie. I guess no one works Christmas Eve anymore. Possibly too busy beating each other over the last Transformer in Toys-R-Us.

Against what I might call rational judgement, I was actually engaging in commerce yesterday. It wasn't as bad as I expected. I even... dare I say it... went to the mall. Granted, the lines were a bit longer, and the toy stores looked as if violent tornadoes had relieved them of most of their merchandise, but over all, not the terror I would have expected.

I finished the grand bulk of my Christmas shopping just after Thanksgiving this year, so I had nothing Earth-shaking I had to buy -- that might explain why I was able to navigate the pre-holiday chaos in a relatively stress-free way. It also allowed me a better opportunity to observe the masses -- to view the last-minute shopper in its natural habitat.

This morning, some of my co-workers shared this discussion, so I must in fairness state that not all of these observations are my own. But, that being said, allow me to present to you some thoughts on the last-minute shopper.

20 or so years ago it was the Cabbage Patch Kids; this year, the toy you'd most likely see two adults getting into a fist fight over: Transformers. I saw plenty of displays for them, but not one actual Transformer on a shelf; a couple in carts. I saw a cashier bringing back some cash register restock with at least on Transformer in the basket -- alas some unfortunate person got to the register only to find they couldn't afford little Joey's Transformer -- no less than 3 grown men, sacrificing their spots in a 2-hour long check-out line, dove on the basket to acquire the single, unidentified Transformer action figure.

This year's big shelf-stocking error: Wrestlers. The store shelves are overflowing with them; there are no less than 80 different wresting figures available from 4 different leagues; there are modern wrestlers as well as figures of the greats going back to the late 70's; sold individually, in 2-packs, 4-packs, and whole 10-packs; no one is buying them.

When it comes to last last minute, people aren't shopping for specific items. If I may dare quote Shannon Hamilton in Mallrats, "...I have no respect for people with no shopping agenda." These people are just buying anything to have a gift to give. If it's on a shelf, the seem to believe someone will want it. Sometimes I'd guess they didn't even know who they were buying for, just buying. 'I'm sure someone will need this pair of size 28 men's briefs.'

I will never understand. I'm not big on holiday shopping to begin with; I prefer to shop online when at all possible. But I will never understand what actions lead people to begin their shopping on December 23rd, or what makes them then acquire the things they do. I guess there's only one thing to say...

Merry Christmas! Enjoy your Wrestling action figure and size 28 briefs.

Can we keep the Holidays out of the office?

I'm not trying to be the big Scrooge here, but I feel like filing for conscientious objector status for the holidays here at work. Yes, I'm agnostic, but that has nothing to do with it.

I celebrate Christmas, not out of religious reasons, but simple tradition. I believe most do. While you're standing in line to let your kids sit on the mall Santa's lap, juggling your 30 bags of commerce, most of us aren't thinking 'happy birthday Jesus'. But I digress.

I'm not against the holidays. I love the holidays. Family, friends, cookies, food, music, log in the fireplace... and heck, gifts ain't bad either. I just don't want the holidays in my office. And I'm not even going to go into the omission of Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus. Let's start at the beginning...

Monday, November 26th, still bloated with turkey leftovers, still groggy from 4 a.m. Black Friday shopping, I walk into the office at 7 a.m. to be blinded by the "North Polock's" 700 kilowatt winter wonderland. It's the cubicle next to mine, but it pours over into my space -- a light up animatronic reindeer pokes his head over the wall at me every 45 seconds.

Not to be undone, the big dumb Irishman brings us an electronic tree that looks like something Charlie Brown would have had, should he have been skilled with fiber-optics. Now, not only is this tree hideous, but it blocks my view of the front door, so I can no longer see anyone come in the office. And if that wasn't the worst of it, Jolly Ol' St. Patrick doesn't even work in my section of the office... he just thought it would be nice if he spread his Christmas Joy to our workspace.

Then there's the parties. 5 or 6 Government branches work in my building. Each one with a Christmas party. Day parties, luncheons, evening parties, private parties, public parties... just too many parties. One can do maybe one or two, then just try to duck out of the rest. A bunch of us made our decision on one public, nighttime party, $50, open bar, thrown by a different agency. The one our agency throws is a complete drag, plus it's much better to get ripped when your supervisor, boss, and his boss aren't there.

Office luncheon... no way out of that pot-luck nightmare -- luckily, the boss makes good lasagna. Friday, another office party -- really the in-house drinking party; not possibly legal, but often fun. Now the "real" office Christmas party is Thursday night -- skipping that (as I said, drinking with the boss...). I'm overwhelmed already. I want it over.

Nope, not even close. Secret Santa? I opted out of that. Then it was cancelled anyway. OK, good. No office gift exchanging either? Maybe? Probably not. Christmas eve, my desk will invariably be covered with gifts I don't need from people I never intended to exchange gifts with. Heck, half these people wouldn't even be on my Christmas card list if I wasn't getting these mediocrely wrapped packages containing coffee mugs filled with chocolates, or Starbucks 3-packs.

And a candle swap? I'm not even sure what that is. Everyone brings in a Yankee candle, puts them in a bag... and you pull a candle. If I wanted a candle, wouldn't I buy myself a candle? No, I buy a candle, to exchange it, randomly, for a different candle? Is there a point? This is somehow better than Secret Santa? Again, I opt out.

It's holiday time here...

Can I just opt out of the whole thing?

The wandering blog finds a home... maybe.

This blog has been roaming for a bit. Or, maybe more accurately, in limbo for a while. Haven't posted anything in far too long anyway.

I started blogging on MySpace, but, well, my departure from MySpace might require a blog of it's own. Facebook is all well and good, but not an interesting place for hosting a blog. So yesterday I was talking to Jason Page of ESPN radio, and he was mid-blog, so I asked him about this site. He was happy, so I went with it.

I hope now to return to blogging regularly, and keep up with it in the coming year. I have the distinct feeling that 2008 will present me with enough to say. I feel a good year coming up -- not that 2007 was at all bad -- and here will be the place to present it.

So, with luck, this is more permanent home for the blog. And to those of you who haven't followed me over from the old blog, welcome to my astigmatic view of the world.

First Facebook Blog

Archive of the first Facebook blog

So, here it is... not much to say yet, but, the fact that I can now blog on Facebook means I finally have no reason to stay with MySpace. So, I've all but nuked MySpace. My profile is still up, just so the few friends who I might actually want to talk to there know that I'm deleting my account. Hopefully some will come over here.

Actually, to be honest, I hope only some come over here. It's not that I don't want to talk to people... quite the contrary, I do want to talk to people. I have 60-odd friends here, I can actually talk to them... really keep in touch with them. On MySpace, I had 496 friends. Who has 496 friends?!? Actually, even when I went on and deleted every profile that wasn't an actual person I actually knew... I still have 190 friends.

That's great. I guess it's cool that I'm friends with 190 people... but to make reasonable contact with 190 people... not possible. So I'm happy here. 60 friends... even better, some family... I can say hi, send them a "drink"... basically put, and to borrow from the jargon of such sites, I can "Socially Network". I like it.

In the coming month, I'll probably drag over some of my blogs from the MySpace days, and hopefully have some new things to say here. When it comes right down to it, it was blogging that first brought me to MySpace in the first place. Now MySpace is out of control, but I still love to write.

So, here it is. Welcome to my blog.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Dreamland

Archive from old MySpace Blog
Current mood: amused
Category: Romance and Relationships

This blog contains graphic scenes of adults of opposite gender sharing a bed together, Reader discretion is advised.

So yeah, bedtime. Last night to be exact. Watching a little classic Trek on DVD, chilling out, zoning out, Molly's out.

Not too long ago, we got a nice new King sized bed. It's great. I love it. Molly Loves it. Not only is a King long enough that my feet don't hang off the bottom, but it gives us room to roll over without smacking each other in the head.

So I'm finishing up Wink of an Eye, Molly's sawing logs next to me...

Molly doesn't normally snore, but I guess she's suffering from a bit of allergy issue, and just, at this point, having a bit of a fitful sleep. She's tossing a bit, rolling over, snoring on and off, and even mumbling.

So, it's about 11:45, I'm relaxing, Kirk's kissing the girl, and the pillow shifts next to me. An abrupt stop in the snoring, that slight stir before someone rolls over again, an arm pops out from under the pillow, and a body rolls over.

Well...

Almost over.

I glance to my right, and discover that Molly has actually stopped mid roll-over. At least I guess that's what she did. Maybe. I don't rightly know what she was doing. But there she was, still tucked in the fetal position, face down in the pillow, knees tucked under her, ass in the air.

I've never seen a person attempt to sleep in this position. I tried to imitate the position later, and without my full weight on my elbows, I couldn't even stay up. Not to mention trying to breathe with my face buried in the pillow. I just don't get it.

But there she was, laying there -- if you can call it laying -- for a full 45 seconds, before she tossed again, into a more typical sleeping position. And I went back to watching Spock repair the entire Enterprise in 12 seconds due to the enhancing properties of the Scallosian water.

12:10, and I've decided not to watch The Empath, in favour of seeing what's on HBO. "Why'd you wake me up?" What?!?

"What?"

"Why'd you wake me up?"

"I didn't."

"No, you woke me up."

"No really, I didn't. You've been tossing and turning, snoring, and just before you were sleeping with your face in the pillow and your ass in the air."

"What?"

"Yeah, you were asleep, face down in your pillow, with you ass sticking up in the air. But I didn't wake you up."

"Uhh... you didn't wake me up?"

It's 10:00 a.m. this morning, Jenni's on vacation, and I'm doing her work, as well as my own, as well as my usual volume of email conversations. "Did you wake me up in the middle of the night last night?"

"No, but you woke up, and asked me if I woke you up, and I told you I didn't but you were sleeping with your face in the pillow and your ass in the air."

"That did happen?"

"Yup. Face down, ass up."

"Maybe I was having a dream and getting laid."

"Maybe so."

Maybe so.