My Home On The River That Caught Fire

I started foaming at the mouth and chasing my own tail today.  I recognized this as an early warning sign of resuming wanderlust.  Shit, I really thought I’d make it longer.  You see I have a history of poor impulse control and a tendency towards erratic behavior.  But the doctors assure me that I’m not bipolar.  I just possess sundried and assorted forms of craziness and restlessness.

I am from Cleveland.  A place where the checkout lady at CVS calls me ‘honey’ and was there when I had to purchase tampons for the first time, underage beer for the first time and Plan B for the first time.  A place the humidity makes my cleavage sweat even at midnight and is about as welcome as a the middle seat on an airplane between two bulbous, perspiring 300-pounders whose beads of sweat are inching closer and closer to my elbows on the quarter-inch of armrest that is allowed me by their bratwursts of arms.  A place where people invite you in to sit down at their dinner table because, “Don’t you just know, this young lady was so nice to me today at the grocery store.  She helped me with my buggy.” (and yes we say ‘buggy.’ And sweeper, and clicker.  And if you don’t know what those words mean then you’re just not cool enough).

Cleveland.  Land of surprising ethnic diversity left over from Rockefeller’s days.  Not like Aspen, where you see a person who isn’t white walking down the street and find yourself wondering how they got so tan in the middle of winter.  Cleveland’s got the Czechs, the Croatians, the Poles, the Russians, the other assorted eastern Europeans, the Slovenians, the Irish, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexicans, the West Africans and of course the Italians.  Oh, the Italians.  I dated one once.  They make excellent lovers but terrible husbands or boyfriends.  Remember that.  It might serve you well someday.  They are the race of hair gel and tempers, rigatoni and knee-bending sex.  I will never stop missing inappropriate ass grabs from old men with gold crosses or the sort of overstuffed feeling that only copious canollis, everlasting slices of pepperoni and Grandma Marie’s urgings of, “Come on Katie, you’re too skinny, just one more slice of lasagna,” can wage upon one’s stomach.

Cleveland. A place where this hot mess of a world that we live in right now stares you right in the eye.  It’s my family friend’s face when they find out that they have a bun in the oven and no way to support the ones they already have.  It’s my sister’s eyes when she knows that she might lose the restaurant that is their income, their home and their lifeblood.  It’s the brittle little tear that drops down her cheek that’s already seen too many sorrows when she owns up to the fact that cancer is eating her husband alive and leaving her with two babies.  Alone.  It’s my brother-in-laws head in his hands to hide the tears on his lean, 200-pound high school football star frame when he hears that his house might enter foreclosure.  It’s a place where unemployment is 13%.  It’s a place where the pain of the Great Recession and the Economic Crisis are more than a trite buzzwords garnered from CNN.  It’s a place where these phrases spell a nasty reality.  That life’s hard.  Life’s a bitch.

And unfortunately for me fluttering free spirits with tendencies towards eccentricity and penchants for musing philosophically about the meaning of life, don’t get along so well in the school of hard knocks.  No time for that nonsense when the bank man’s coming to take your house. I got tired of this weight.  The weight of the Cleveland humidity sticking to my skin, even at midnight.  The weight of the problems in my loved ones faces wearing me down.   The weight of my memories dragging at the edges of my psyche. 

And so I’m headed West again.  It will be the tenth time my 2005 Subaru has crossed the country.  And I’ll rejoin comrades in our bubble.  Where this sadness is far, far away in a land called Cleveland.  The place where I’m from.  So don’t fuck with me because I’ve got a whole city behind me ready to kick your ass because us Clevelanders stick together.

The Quitter Who Laughs Last

This is not a fairy tale.  But it does end happily ever after.  I think.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I lived in cubical hell.  And then I quit my perfectly logical, very reasonable, well-enough paying job, packed a duffel bag and hopped on a plane to Aspen.  And I’m not going back.

I have a history of quitting.  And of making quick decisions once I make up my mind.  I just pack my bags and go.  My father likes to be melodramatic about these things and worry that I will never amount to anything and end up barefoot and pregnant every time I quit something.  Herein lies a brief history of my quitting.

First I quit college.  Four times.

I spent approximately one month of my freshman year at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.  It just didn’t feel right.  And for the first time I trusted my gut.  And it felt good.  And then I quit two more schools just for good measure.  And then I graduated.

Then I got into Oxford.  So I went.  Because it was Oxford.  And if you get into Oxford you go.  I guess.  But it just wasn’t for me.  I like freedom, and mountains and madness.  Not seven hundred year-old stiflingly damp tradition in a flat, damp land.  So I quit.

Then I went a got me one of those high-paying jobs.  At a reliable company.  With reliable pay increases.  Doing reliable work.  With reliable people.  It was a great company.  Just not for me.  The problem was that I hate reliability.  I like remarkable.  And really the opposite of remarkable is very good.  And McMaster was very good.  But not remarkable.  I was seeking something.

I was seeking myself.  I still am.  Hopefully I still will be on the day I hit the pearly gates with a six-pack and a slew of stories.  I was seeking that madness that feels like its going to explode out of you like an orgasm of lunacy.  I was seeking people who inspire me to be just a little more insane every day.  People who ask, “Why not?” instead of, “Why bother?”  I needed to find my fellow dreamers and sinners – my desperados and free birds, my rolling stones and high-flying birds.  I like crazy people with a gleam in their eye.  I like the kind of people who might walk out the door and never come back because the world was calling and they had to go.  These people have broken my heart and destroyed me.  They’ve left me lying naked on the floor asking, “What the hell just happened?” 

But they challenged me, and pissed me off and made me question my reality, my morals, my dreams and my soul.  And I have stories and laughs and tears.  But never a dull moment.  And I’d rather have that remarkable life than a life of safe reliability, a stable marriage and a good paycheck.  Because I guess I am just fucking nuts.  And each day I get a little bit closer to the authentic me.  My own crazy devil without a cause.

So I quit that life and I hit the road.  And I’m still going.  Everyone likes to call it a phase.  And rattle of trite clichés about “growing up” and “settling down” and “changing my mind” and “getting it out of my system.”  I think they truly believe that one day you reach a magic age when you must get serious and settle down into the mendacity of a 9-5 job.  This life supposedly offers the steady security that your life will never falter and will never be scary, but will never be crazy nuts either.  I promised myself never to go back there lest I go back to the dark corner of hell where I was wallowing.  Go ahead.  Roll your eyes at my youthful naïveté all you want.  I’ll add you to my list of people to call in ten years and say, “I told you so.”  And yes, there really is such a list.

And I know it’s going to end happily ever after.  And I will find people to share my ride with.  And every night before I fall asleep I pray (even heathens can believe in God).  I thank God for having the strength to change the way I was.  And I ask for peace of mind, and a gentle hand, and a miracle to heal my broken soul.  And I pray – don’t let us get sick, or old, just let us be together tonight.  

A Rainy Day In Idaho

It’s a rainy day in Idaho and I’m on the road again.  Still looking for that real world out there in that big, vast somewhere.  Disappearing down this lost highway, underneath that purple-gray bruise of a sky, I can breath.  Smells like wet, and dirt, like one of the juicy sausages of a caterpillar unearthed from beneath Mom’s terra cotta pots.  Country is on the radio again and it keeps interrupting my otherwise profound musing on the metaphysical being of life. It’s all pure America.  It’s all heartbreak and hope, healing and moving.  It’s never easy to say goodbye.  I’m gonna drive to Atlanta, and live out this fantasy.

It’s nice to sleep again. Woke up early this morning around 4 AM.  Thoughts of us kept keeping me awake.  Not passed out drunk from too many bottles of Fat Bastard sleep.  Not return to the crypt from taking four Tylenol PM’s sleep.  Not I’ve cried so hard that snot dripped from places I didn’t know it could drip and now my body is cooked sleep (footnote: thanks for dealing with that one D).  But good old-fashioned sleep.  The kind you get when the rain is sliding down the windowpanes on a summer night as seductive as Miles Davis’ Blue Is Green.  It’s what seeps into your body when you’ve finally put everything else to bed. But that’s ok, there’s nothing left to say. But you’ll think of me.

Clayton, Idaho.  Population 26.  I note the irony of the name.  My family’s name is Clayton.  Sweet somewhere far away someone’s name is Clayton. But we can be assured we’ll meet again by and by.  If not here then somewhere up above.  The place is lump-in-your-throat beautiful.  It must be how parents feel looking at their babies, or how art connoisseurs feel looking at a Caravaggio.  I am neither so I can only imagine.  The Salmon curls up and wraps around my mind like the ribbons of smoke that used to twist and wind up from my old lover’s midnight cigarettes.  It’s seductive and sort of frightening.  Like any good lover should be.  Most are neither. 

I really like to know things.  That’s deep I know.  But bear with me. Not knowing what we could have been, what we should have been.  However, it’s this desire to “know things” that provided the jet fuel for American expansion.  It’s also our collective, national ADHD.  Once we know one thing we want to know another because our attention has already deviated from the original thing that we discovered.

The lure of the open road lies in its promise of freedom and hope and new beginning and forgotten sorrows.  The logic is as follows.  If Point A is bad, and Point B is unlike Point A, then Point B must be better.  This has drawn road warriors from the pioneers to Kerouac, Lewis and Clark to Thelma and Louise.  The problem lies once again in the fact that human behavior is inherently illogical.  Generally humans arrive at Point B only to realize it has it’s own set of problems and that they should either go on ahead to Point C, or cut their losses and head home to Point A.  And so we as Americans move.  As Stevenson said, the great affair is to move.  That’s what we do as Americans.  We pack our worldly belongings into the big, American-made land barge (or small Japanese vehicle in my case) and head out in search of meaning and answers, new beginnings and buried problems.  The problem is we don’t find them.  But then again, I guess that’s life.  Take your records.  Take your freedom.  Take your space and take you freedom.  But you’ll think of me.

And it’s a good thing we’ve got problems, and highways, and cars, and hope.  Because if we didn’t we would never move.  And if we didn’t move we wouldn’t have the America we know today.  And maybe that would be good.  But maybe, like the weird uncle everyone has, you have to love America warts and all.  Because maybe that’s how life is.

It’s never easy lettin’ go of the ones we love.

Author’s Note:  Cut me some slack.  Thanks for listening to me wax poetic about life and the open road and it’s effects of the interpersonal relationships to individual problems that define the dichotomy of American life today.  I’m a bottle of cheap red wine in and it seemed appropriate.  Tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.  

Things To Do While Driving Through The Empty Plains

Anyone who has driven the vast stretches of empty space, prairie and farmland that comprises the Great Plains of America will understand.  And most of you will know what I mean when I say that there are times when an entire song will play on the ipod and you will realize that, albeit the fact that you have been starring at the road the entire time, you have not really looked at the road for the duration of the song.  This empty, straight road, devoid of other drivers, provides you with ample time and ability to perform myriad meaningless task behind the wheel.

1. Read the map.  I mean really read the map.  When you really read the map you discover town with names like Fairplay, Last Chance, No Name, Slickpoo, Zaza, Hungry Horse, Lolo, Cut Bank and even Hell (Michigan).  You learn about mountain ranges and lakes, national monuments and national parks.  One time I read the map for ten minutes in eastern Wyoming and realized that I should check in with the road before continuing to study the map.

2. File your nails.  Yes, this sounds unnecessarily girly and very anti-feminist of me.  But trust me, when you've been driving for throaty-seven odd hours and have nothing to look at but trucks, prairies, the hood of your car and your hands on the steering wheel, eliminating ragged nails become an obsession.  And since driving requires little or no attention, filing is easy.

3. Eat.  You could actually set up a TV table with a full steak dinner and enjoy it without disrupting your drive.  Nonetheless, on the road, all you're likely to come by is Arby's or Subway, McDonald's or Burger King.

4. Change drivers.  I've done it.  Cruise control makes many things possible.

5. Read a book.  Or, for those who prefer pictures to words, watch a movie.  While I've never tried either, I know people who rent a stack of DVDs before any long road trip.  This makes you question the safety of the roads more than you already do doesn't it?

6. Take a nap.  Ok, just kidding.

7. Watch other drivers.  You will never believe the things you see people doing in cars.  I've seen people applying make-up.  Not just lip gloss but full blown foundation, concealer, eyeliner, mascara and eye shadow.  Like my mother always said, "Careful you could poke an eye out."  I've seen people reading books.  Probably just tourist book and not entire novels but nonetheless, truly engrossed in books.  I've seen more nose-pickers, family-jewel-adjusters, clothes-changes and eyelash-getter-outters than I can count.  But what really takes the cake is when you look at a passing car or glance in your rear view mirror and see a lone driver behind you.  And then, just like that, there are two people in the car behind you.  A guy and a girl.  Priceless.

National Parks, Inc.

Visiting a national park in off-season is a lot like visiting Aspen in April, Seaside Heights, New Jersey after Labor Day or a Des Moines street carnival on Monday morning.  It’s as quiet as a college library on spring’s first sunny day; yet you can hear the faint creaking of chairlifts, or smell caramel apples, or see toothless carnies grinning.  It’s perhaps the most authentic time in these worlds built mostly on whimsy and fantasy.  It’s when you see them for what they are, cracks in the varnish and all.

There is no other time to visit one of America’s great National Parks but during these times.  I do this not only to fulfill my romantic yearnings for authenticity and realness, but also because of the decided lack of the species Homo touristicas.  Find this species in their natural habitat, usually the behind the wheel of the gas-guzzling, road-hogging RV, within the confines of the Shitty-Items-Made-In-China Gift Shop or at the I’m-A-Fat-American Fast Food Restaurant.  This species is identifiable by their really white sneakers with requisite white tube socks, neon green or magenta fanny packs and khaki shorts.  They can usually be seen carrying their young on a nylon leash, or dragging them by an arm as the young screams because they were not allowed to purchase a Shitty Gift at the Shitty-Items-Made-In-China Gift Shop.

Everything leading up to Glacier National Park is themed. It’s as if Walt Disney himself got a hold of the Great American Wilderness and created Wilderness Disneyland.  There is the Glacier View Inn, the Glacier Bar and Grill, the Glacier Bear Supermarket, Wild Indian Curios, Glacier Laundromat and the list goes on.  The so-called Glacier Park International (yes, international) airport is bigger than both the Aspen airport as well as the Akron-Canton airport.  Where is the wilderness I was looking for?

Inside it’s all park fees, park rules, paved park roads, fenced off park picnic areas and tourist shops in this supposed wilderness area.  At this time of year the park, like the Des Moines street fair, is blissfully devoid of Homo touristicas.  It’s just me and a Tacoma with a couple from Alaska, who probably came down south to this here beach for spring break.

I wake up and unfold myself from the backseat of my car, feeling good about life because I was not attacked by a hungry, pissed-off early spring grizzly, and am greeted by the most pristine excuse for a High Rockies lake that I have ever seen.  Alone, absolutely alone, I can’t think of anything better.  Except maybe a cup of coffee, but let’s not split hairs.  I don’t think it would feel the same if the morning silence was interrupted by a screaming rug rat, the growl of an RV engine or the smell of bacon frying on the portable Coleman.

The National Park system is quite the accomplishment.  It protects vast swaths of land and allows the city-bound American to get a taste, however small and brief, of true wilderness.  This is good.  Otherwise the Average American wouldn’t stand a chance against the call of potato chips, Pepsi and the six-hundred channels on their Direct TV. But are they really experiencing the wilderness or are they just touring around Wilderness Disneyland?  It’s just another one of the contradictions that makes America great.  Welcome to National Park, Inc.

Rules For Sleeping in Your Car

Since we are on the topic of sleeping in cars…

1. Never sleep naked.  I don’t care if you are hot.  I don’t care if you want to have wild sex.  You never know when a cop, ranger, grizzly or a shotgun-toting Montanan will come a-knocking.  It’s always better to be clothed in these situations.    Nudity makes it really awkward.

2. Always lock you car.  It deters psychopaths and bears from breaking and entering.  And it gives you a chance to start the engine and make a quick getaway if such an intruder should surface.

3. Don’t fuck with the US Government.  Park Rangers love nothing more than ousting car-sleepers parked in inappropriate camping spots.  Obey all signs in National and State Parks.  Or at least be able to explain why you didn’t.  Note: National/State Parks are different than National/State Forests and require a fee.  Should you choose to ignore this, beware that a Ranger will sniff you out like a bloodhound on a coon’s trail.  Public lands and BLM lands are ideal.  Especially in the wiles of Northeastern Idaho. 

4. If you don’t obey said signage, play nice with the ranger, cop or shotgun-toting Montanan who is mad at you.  Playing dumb usually works best for the female variety of car-sleeper.  Bonus points for nice tits and pretty smile.

5. Crack a window so you don’t suffocate.

6. Keep all of your shit in the car.  Rangers, vagabonds and animals tend to collect it if it’s left outside the vehicle.

7. Leave the driver’s seat clear in case you need to make a quick getaway.

8. Don’t let your fear get the best of you. 

9. Face east.  There is nothing better than watching the sun come up.

Driving I-70 (Also: Running The Colorado Winter Road Gauntlet)

For the second (or is it third) time this week I hucked my pack into my Red Rocket, an ’05 Subaru, and joined the jihad of Weekend Warriors to the ski resorts of central Colorado in their descent to Denver on the dreaded I-70 corridor.  I-70 is a daily battle between overly confident Coloradans, overly paranoid tourists and long haul truckers who could give a shit about anyone because they’re the biggest thing on 18 wheels.  The Coloradans, thinking nothing of doing 85 in a snowstorm, over 10,000-foot Vail Pass around the bends and twists of I-70, terrify the white-knuckle tourists whose license plates are routinely from Arizona, South Carolina or Texas (sorry T$, not you).  Woe is he who is caught in a swarm of Texans in a snowstorm.  A black Escalade in front, an 18-wheeler to the right and a Tahoe behind.   All bearing the blue star and cowboy on a horse that brand the loud-voiced, boot-wearing, big-haired virgins to snow driving.  Rather than maintain a logical distance between cars and pursue a consistent speed, the Texan muscles through in their outsize SUV and then slams on the brakes when they near the unsuspecting car in front of them.  For this reason, 30-car pileups are not uncommon along the I-70 gauntlet.

Despite being a Midwestern transplant to Colorado I crank up my Credence on my iPod and ignore the pending disaster around me.  After all, I learned to drive in Cleveland.  And the Cleveland driver thinks nothing of scraping a 4 by 4 holes in the ice on their windshield and hoping behind the wheel with the defrost cracked all the way up.  Who needs to actually see the road?  It’s all drive by feel in Cleveland.  The idiot factor on I-70 is the highest I’ve seen it all season.  There is no snow.  Literally, no snow.  Not a dusting.  Not the remnants of a snowstorm.  No snow.  Dry roads.  Yet, in preparation for the promised upslope storm (comes from the east), CDOT already has chain laws in effect for Vail Pass and truckers are diligently slinging 20 pound chains around their drive wheels.  Of course the Texans have to slow to a crawl to observe (or oversee perhaps) this activity.  Somehow one such driver finds a way to smash his SUV into a parked semi chaining up.  Like I said, the idiot factor is at an all-season high today thanks to increased Easter traffic.

Since it’s Colorado in the springtime, we think nothing of the fact that it was 72-degrees and sunny at 9 AM and that now, at 6 PM, husky snowflakes have begun to drip down on the city of Denver like Cinnabon frosting.  I have a smattering of friends, both old and new, to grab drinks with.  Crashing on one of these couches won’t be a problem.  I call Lauren.  We’ve been great friends since we were five years old and are supposed to grab dinner and drinks. 

“I’m stuck on the highway.” She’s pissed.

“36 hasn’t moved in the last 40 minutes.  I actually put my car in park and started reading my book.” 

“No worries.  Just call me when you make it back.”

I call Amber, my friend from the mountains.  She’s in the wine business and regularly runs the I-70 gauntlet.

“They closed I-70 at Eisenhower Tunnel.  I can’t stand this road.  And the moron factor is out of control today.  I think I might just die.  Right here.”  Amber tends to be theatrical.  That’s why I love her.  It keeps life interesting.

“No worries.  Just call me when you make it back.”  Déjà vu?

Lauren texts me.  I’m running out of gas.  My light came on 30 minutes ago.  Help?!  I tell here to drive in the emergency lane.  Sounds like an emergency to me right?  CDOT would be ticked if her dead car blocked a lane of the Boulder Highway.

I try Whitney.  She and Lauren and I are all native Clevelanders.  Transplants to Colorado.   We drove west on I-80 until we hit the mountains and decided to stop there.  Her phone’s off.  “Shit.”  She is still on the plane and the prospects for DIA actually staying open are not looking good.  The Frosty Flakes have laid down about 8 inches in two hours.

My phone beeps again.  Lauren.  I am in some random girl’s car.  Will probably sleep at B’s tonight.  So sorry.  Highway closed.

I’m not surprised.  Rather than deal with the idiot factor, CDOT usually elects to shut down entire highways to deal with snow removal.  Eisenhower Tunnel usually shuts down because of avalanche risk.  The roads around Denver and Boulder usually shut down because of idiot risk.