Triple A Times Seven

I've been thinking about this one for a while, so it had better be a good one! I like it because it includes several travel stories of widely varying length and interest. More compelling than that, however, it delves into the always insane world I've inhabited for so many years, Show Business.

I started working for F/X Scenery And Display in January of 1996. There was a Project Manager there at the time that everyone on the crew hated to work with. That meant that, as the new guy, I was next to be awarded the honor of being Mike's bitch. To tell the truth, I worked with him on ten or twelve gigs and never learned to hate it - but then, I'm rather more flexible than the average stagehand.

And so it came to pass that in December, 1996 Mike somehow cajoled Triple A into having F/X do the honors of shepherding their incredibly expensive new corporate meeting set to its many scheduled destinations. He wanted to be the one to travel with it, but he knew that some destinations were better left to his bitch, me, when he had bigger gigs to fry. So when the fancy new set debuted at Disney's Contemporary Resort, he went there to begin this new position. He took me to learn the set along with him. Two guys from the Chicago company that designed and built it were to be there to show us how it's done.

Call time at the Contemporary: Sunday at noon. I, of course, showed up at 11:15. I found the big-ass function room scheduled for Triple A. As usual, there was a function already going on in there. With a lot of luck, they would finish up by noon or a little after. HA! So Mike came along, the designer-guys came along, the trucks from Chicago backed into the loading dock. Noon came and went, one, two...pretty normal show biz crapola. The Disney people were not willing to rush their guests out of there.

Mike and the designers decided to start bringing the stuff up the freight elevator from the dock. The biggest problem with that - several of the crates were too big to fit on the elevator! By 4:00 most of the set was upstairs, and Mike was huddled with the design guys sorting pieces and laying it out on the floor in an air-walled-off section of the ballroom. We even stood up the two screen surrounds just to be busy. Mike wanted to scoot them fully assembled fifty feet to the stage and lift them three feet in the air onto the stage. All of the rest of us kind of looked at him strangely, especially since the face of the set was sculpted foam with images of space travel and astronauts and planets and satellites and such. To grip this set firmly was to crush the thin shell of paint and pop holes in the sculpture with our fingers. We convinced Mike to reconsider.

Finally, a little after 5:00 the party broke up. The Disney Events Crew charged in to clear the room. Mike zeroed in on the leader of the pack. "You guys the ones bringing in the staging?" Mike asked. "Staging?" the guy mused. He got on his radio to headquarters. Of course no-one had ordered staging. But they could do it - for a slight extra fee - on a Sunday night! So we stretched our rear-projection screens, set up projection towers, assembled logos lights and microphones to the lectern, and unloaded the turntable parts to get them organized. It was after 9:00 when the stage was ready for us. We assembled the turntable centered at the rear (upstage) and installed the set pieces on it. This told us where the two screen surrounds should be placed. We did that.

The stuff on the turntable wobbled with the turning. We cabled the upper corners to the turntable floor to stabilize that. We washed our hands and added the pristine white flats and the very fragile Gatorfoam globe to the back side of the center section. We set in and shimmed up the triangular stage plugs on the corners of the rectangular staging pieces and velcroed up the facing pieces. We unpacked the big stage-wall AAA logos to install on the walls, and that's when Mike and the designers realized that these were the OLD logos - without the new blue orbits!

So, at about 2:30 in the morning, Mike and I headed to the shop with crude drawings of orbits to be cut out of blue PVC sheet stock. We drew them, I cut them on the band saw and we hauled ass back to Disney World. We installed orbits on all the logos and the day was saved. I went home at 5:30am. Mike stayed to meet the AAA cheeses. They walked in at 8:00, looked at the set and said, "How did those orbits get there? We don't start using the new logo until after the first of the year!"

Several days later, we were back at the Contemporary, disassembling the set, loading some parts back into the smaller crates, and busting up the way-too-big crates for disposal. Mike had talked them into letting me build wagons, one for the stage left screen surround, one for the stage right screen surround, one for the front center section, one for the white backside and fragile globe section, and one for the oddly shaped stage plugs and stage facing pieces. The intent was to have maximum flexibility from venue to venue - to be able to use whatever sections were needed to fill whatever space they were using, and to be able to load whatever wagons were needed each time. It was while I was working on this that I learned that in September this baby was going to London, England. I was pretty sure Mike would take that gig himself.

F/X ordered up a storage semi trailer dedicated to Triple A. As each wagon was finished and loaded, we rolled it into the trailer. The turntable already had a steel wagon, so it went on. I built a rolling box for the lectern. It went. When all was finished, it was apparent that a 40 foot trailer was just exactly big enough to handle the whole set. One of the guys working with me figuring out how to fit it all in there said that it was quite a puzzle - but in his Honduras accent it sounded like "quite a pus-hole." This became a buzz phrase at F/X that is still used today.

***

In January parts of the set went to Sawgrass Resort near Jacksonville. This was one that Mike was happy to pass off to me. I rented a Ryder Truck, backed it up to the semi, and loaded up the chunks I needed for this abbreviated version. The system worked. I drove it over on I-4, took I-95 up to Saint Augustine, then trundled up A1A all the way to Sawgrass. I backed 'er up to the loading dock, and quickly figured out that the three twelve-foot wagons were not going to make it out onto the six-foot-deep dock. Hmmm. There was a ramp from the back parking lot up to the side of the dock. Hmmm. Would my wagons roll down the metal ramp included in the truck? I kept my baloney lips zipped, took my two local helpers and drove the truck out to the middle of the space. We set the truck ramp and slowly rolled a wagon to the edge. It turned out that I couldn't possibly have put the wheels in a better place. They had an inch of clearance all the way, which made them very stable going down the ramp. Whew! We rolled them across the lot, up the ramp to the dock, and right into the ballroom, no problem. We set up one screen and the front center with no turntable - easy stuff - and the designer-guys helped me get my rental car to drive back to Orlando and then in a couple of days to drive back to Sawgrass. I guess Triple A figured out that this was their cheapest alternative over lodgings, truck driving mileage or whatever. So in a couple days I drove back, turned in my car, disassembled the set, loaded the wagons, rolled them out to the truck and headed home again. Easy gig.

***

In February a short round went to Miami. Mike was going to take this one, but in the interim Triple A called Mack, the owner of F/X, and told him that Mike had told them that he was going out on his own and wanted to take AAA with him. Suddenly, I was the only one at FX who knew the set. When I got to Miami I learned that the design guys from Chicago had been removed from the gravy train as well. Suddenly, I was the only one in the whole world who knew the set. Now if I could only hold out until September!

Two things stick in my mind about the Miami gig. First, I had to unload and load the truck in the front driveway of the hotel, and roll the wagons through the parking garage to the ballroom entrance. Many people were very unhappy about that. Then, after spending one night in the hotel and hanging out until early afternoon, I was able to strike the show, load up, and drive to Vero Beach by early evening and hang out with Craig and Linda Bowers for a couple of hours before continuing home. Nice.

***

The first Atlanta gig was a strange one. It was for another company that had seen the new, incredibly expensive Triple A set and asked to rent it for a show in Atlanta. They wanted the whole magilla minus the turntable, lectern and stage plugs, which I could just squeeze into a 24 foot Ryder - it was quite a pus-hole! It was a rainy March day when I drove my truck north. It was a rainy March evening when I arrived around 5:30, looking for the hotel during rush hour. I found it, but there was no parking anywhere near it. I circled it a few times, and was finally able to squeeze in on a side street and leave it there long enough to talk to the guys at the loading dock. "Where can I park it?" I asked. They shrugged. I went to the front desk and asked. They shrugged. I headed out the front door, passing the Doorman. "Where can I park my truck?" I asked. "The Days Inn next door will let you park it in their lot for a fee." Cool.

While I'd been gone, a Fed Ex truck had backed in behind me and tight to the curb. His rear end was actually between my truck's rear end and the curb. When I pulled away. the left rear corner of the Ryder scraped a lens off of the right rear corner light of the Fed Ex truck. I stopped, police were called, an accident report was written. Luckily, when I rented the truck I accepted the full insurance coverage. This came in very handy when the lawyer for the Fed Ex driver began weeks later to try to make a big liability thing out of it. Dumbass.

The next morning I retrieved the truck from the Days Inn, parked in almost the same spot as the night before, and with my local labor, easily rolled all of the wagons down to the street and onto the freight elevator. We were done before noon, I parked at the Days Inn again, and grabbed MARTA to the airport. This company flew me home to Orlando for the three days of the show, then back to Atlanta for the strike. Strike started at about five in the afternoon. I was not given a room for the night. I set out driving at eleven, and didn't crap out until 3:30 in the morning in north Florida. Not too bad for a forty four year old man.

To add insult to these injuries, when I went to the airport to retrieve my vehicle, it had a parking ticket on it because it was too long for the space and poked out into the drive a little too far. I was beginning to regret being the world's leading authority on the Triple A set.

***

Atlanta Two was no driving required. Those Triple A guys had figured out that if their own guy drove the truck and I flew, it saved them money. I really don't like driving, so that worked for me. There was a huge underground loading dock and truck parking lot at this venue. I believe I set up the whole thing for this show, and they didn't bring me back for the strike. The weirdest thing, though, was that Mike the Snake was there doing the lighting for them. Hmmmm.

***

In May the abreviated set went to New Orleans. They didn't want me at all other than to pull and help them load the chunks they needed. I was sad, but also a bit relieved. A week later, the truck came back with the set in a shambles. The strike crew had just flung the pieces onto the truck. The pieces were damaged and the wagons were damaged. The Triple A guys were not happy about their incredibly expensive set. They authorized F/X to make all necessary repairs, and give it a new paint job for London. They even sent us a half-set they had been using in europe, for us to refurbish and repaint to match the big guy. Then they were taking it away from us forever. Weeks later, all spiffy and sparkly again, the full big set was loaded onto a shipping container and sent to London.

Weeks after that, AAA called to say that they had a very limited time to install in London, and could I please come and take care of the set for them? I told Mack to tell them that if I could have a private room so my wife could come, I'd do it. Otherwise, never mind. They said, "Fine, but you're only there for install, not strike." I said "Fine, but fly me back on Thursday with the rest of the crew. My wife and I want to explore for a few days." "Fine." "Fine."

And so it came to pass that we got our passports in order and Carmen booked a round trip to London on Virgin Air. This cost hundreds less than flying Delta with the AAA bunch. I was on the Delta flight with the psyched-up church choir going to England to sing at some big shindig. They were practicing all the way. I left Friday morning, nearly a week after Princess Diana was killed, and arrived, totally sleepless, on Saturday morning.

There was some hullaballoo about road boxes of gear clearing customs or whatever. My tool box came through fine, and one lighting guy and I split a cab to the Hyatt Hyde Park. We arrived at the ballroom just in time to see the first pieces of the set come off the elevator. They were unloading the wagons down at the dock. Before the job was finished, they had dropped one center sculpted foam piece and popped several finger-sized holes in it. Right in the center.

Carmen arrived and we got her squared away in my room. She got right on the phone and began making reservations for tours. She booked us a Jack The Ripper Tour for that night. By supper time, the set was pretty much done except for the tweaking. One thing was preying on my mind: those holes in the center. What could I use to fill them? The surface was a mottled and pitted texture, so anything smooth would show up like a beacon. A sponge would work, but it would need to be whitish-greyish. Hmmm.

I had a hard time staying awake on the bus with the driver telling stories and offering theories about Jack The Ripper. We visited the pubs, we visited the crime scenes, and back on the bus I fought to stay awake. When we finally got back to the hotel, I slept like a baby.

The next morning I knew that the only really big challenge remaining was to fill those holes. I was sitting in the bathroom picturing something that could be compressed into the holes and painted or Sharpied to blend in. I was wadding up toilet paper in my hand...HEY! A few minutes later I was downstairs with my roll of toilet paper. I climbed the ladder, wadded up some balls of tp and stuffed them in the holes. I climbed down, looked up - and couldn't see the holes, at all. A stroke of brilliance.

Carmen went on a bus tour to Leeds Castle, Dover and Canterbury that day. I finished up everything I knew to do and sat in the corner of the ballroom. Soon the Technical Director woke me up and told me not to sleep in a chair in front of the client who was paying me to be there. I told him to let me know if there was anything else they needed from me, and went out for a long walk. I was pleased to find that I remembered my way around quite a bit of the city from my trip here 22 years ago when I was 22. (Four Plays)

Carmen returned in the late afternoon, bubbling over with enthusiasm about Leeds, Canterbury and the White Cliffs. We were hungry, so we asked the Concierge to recommend a moderately priced Italian Restaurant. He recommended Toto's. We grabbed a cab.

My only regret about this whole trip is that I didn't go back to the Hyatt, grab the Concierge by the lapels and ask him how expensive a meal would have to be to earn the rank of HIGH priced. Our dinner came to just over 100 pounds- way over 200 dollars! They put us upstairs in the Beverley Hillbillies section, where everyone wearing jeans was put. The up side: we were by the railing and could watch the fancy people down below, including Uma Thurman.

Early Monday morning we checked out of the Hyatt, leaving our luggage at the front desk. We had a good breakfast before our tour bus picked us up and took us to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral and Bath.

Stonehenge is a little like the Grand Canyon. You can see photographs and movies, and you can hear and read descriptions, but until you actually see what those wacky Druids did all those thousands of years ago, the impact pales.

Salisbury Cathedral was very cool, lots of famous dead people entombed in there, beautiful architecture. The tour group was walking, walking from the cathedral to a pub for lunch, but Carmen wanted to linger in the gift shop and such. My job was to watch which way the group went so we could catch up. I watched them through five or six turnings out of the cathedral grounds, down this street, turn onto that street. I went beyond where Carmen could see me from the grounds, watched one more turn and headed back. By the time we set out to follow the group and we attained the last turn I'd seen, there was no sign of them or any pub. We guessed the next turn to no avail. Several college-age boys came down the street, so we asked them. Believe it or not, they knew exactly where the pub was. Lunch was crappy, by the way.

Bath was very cool as well. You know, seeing signs directing you to "Historic Downtown Orlando" loses all of its charm after you spend a day looking at a five thousand year old henge, a seven hundred year old cathedral and baths where the Romans bathed.

We returned to London during rush hour. Carmen got off at the Knightsbridge Hotel on Knightsbridge Street to check us in. I continued on to the Hyatt Hyde Park, collected our luggage and took a cab back. Once we had settled in we went out for a walk to explore our new neighborhood and find some dinner. We turned down Brompton Road and passed Harrod's with its chest-high heaps of flowers and gifts from mourners of Princess Di. Dinner was pizza at a much more moderately priced Italian restaurant than Toto's.

Tuesday's tour was called "The Historic And Modern London Tour," with yet another twinge for Orlandoans. "Modern" London was anything built since the fire of 1666. We saw all the usual stuff: the Changing of the Guard between chest-high heaps of flowers and other gifts all along the fences around Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, lunch in Covent Garden, Saint Paul's Cathedral, Parliament, all that stuff. It ended with a boat ride from the Tower of London up the Thames to meet the bus and go home.

Wednesday, our last day, was a wandering day, a shopping day (yes, she bought pottery) and we had tickets to see "The Woman In Black" at a theatre near Covent Garden. She went to the Victoria And Albert Museum and gift shop. I walked to the Harley Davidson store (they don't sell motorcycles) and bought Harley Davidson London T-shirts for the three guys back at F/X who requested them. They had a special going: buy two, get one free! Then we went to St. Martin in the Fields, Picadilly Circus and back to the hotel to dress for the theatre.

The play was pretty good, with a couple of really chilling moments. After the show we went back to the hotel to pack for our sad departure. I disappointed Carmen by just going back to the hotel instead of coming out wild and crazy and telling the driver to take us to a fun night spot to close out our best vacation ever. So far.

I missed the best part of our return trips. I checked in at Delta first, then Carmen went by herself to check in at Virgin with her way-too-heavy carry-on bag of pottery that, hell no, she wasn't going to check it! She wouldn't even let ME carry it!

***

Soon we come to the end of the Triple A saga. It all came down to Time Change Weekend, Fall, 1997. A few weeks prior, the AAA guys asked Mack if I could come to Phoenix. They'd seen the loaded shipping container in London and weren't at all confident that the set would be in very good shape when the container got to Phoenix. They sent their truck to pick up the European half-set, and F/X was almost completely done with it.

I flew to Phoenix on Friday afternoon, and in the evening we opened the container. Their fears were not in vain. One screen surround flat was completely snapped in half! "What do we do now?" they lamented. My face lit up. It just so happened that that exact piece was duplicated in the European half-set! All day Saturday I installed the whole set, turntable and all, all by myself. I used half a roll of toilet paper, gaff tape, Sharpies- everything in the arsenal, and it looked good one last time.

On Sunday morning I knew the time had changed everywhere but Arizona. I got on the standby list at Delta, left four hours earlier than scheduled, flew from Mountain Time to Eastern Time, and had absolutely no idea what time it was when I got home. There were no parking tickets on my vehicle at the airport - life was good and Triple A was over!

Holes In The West

Now we jump ahead to 1993. I may think of a fascinating trip in between someday, or not. This was probably about a year after we saw the VHS tape of the movie "Grand Canyon," which kind of motivated us, plus my mother wanted to see the grand canyon before she died. Better than that, she wanted to see it by the light of a full moon.

Their Winnebago LeSharo, with the too-small Renault engine, had proven itself to be a failure. It was really too small for two people to be comfortable for a long trip. PLUS, there were, according to my dad, two kinds of trip in that thing: "the ones where we limp home, and the ones where we are towed home." They weren't going to Arizona in the Winnebago. That's a long tow to Florida.

In fact, there was nothing about their RV ownership experience that made us want to follow in their tread tracks. They were members of an RV network, Good Sam I believe was the name. The news letters were full of people trying to unload their expensive and maintenance-intensive monstrosities at a horrendous loss, and people wanting to rent their monstrosities to strangers, just to help with the payments and maintenance costs during the 95 percent of the time that they were not using it, watching it rot in the yard. Do I paint a clear picture of the joys of RV ownership?


So they called around and found a woman who was looking to rent out her Coachman Leprechaun, a twenty-six foot long box on a truck chassis with sleeping accomodations cantilevered out over the cab, a Class C motorhome. According to the owner it was "the last of the classic Cs." We met my parents over in Titusville one Sunday morning to inspect it and get the lowdown on all of the jazzy innovations her husband had invented for it. I wish I could remember what they were.


A couple of weeks later, on a Friday late morning in early May, my dad arrived in our driveway on Wisconsin Avenue in St. Cloud (our third and final residence in St. Cloud) driving "the last of the classic Cs." We loaded up our two weeks worth of gear and had a nice liesurely lunch before setting out on our last epic journey together.

My dad drove us north on the Turnpike to I-75 to I-10. It was time to pull into a rest area and have some supper. This is a given when traveling with my parents: you don't eat in restaurants, especially if there's a refrigerator and stove in your vehicle. As darkness was descending, Carmen took over the driving. After a while, my dad decided to go to their bedroom in the back of the box to try to sleep some. My mother went back there too, as there wasn't much to do or to look at on that long long haul across the panhandle of Florida in the dark. Soon we heard my mother giggling uncontrollably. We were greatly amused by the possible goings-on back there, but were disappointed to learn that the giggles were a result of the fact that the back bedroom, which hung way out beyond the back wheels, was pitching, rolling and bouncing like an E-Ticket ride (old time Disney World patrons will remember E-Ticket rides.)


Daylight the next morning found us in Louisiana and breakfast in a rest area. Lunch was in eastern Texas, and we pulled up in front of Carmen's mom and dad's house in Crosby, Texas in early afternoon. Olen came running out to help us get electricity and water to the RV and get 'er leveled up. Then we all went inside for conversation, a nice dinner and a real bed for Carmen and me - no giggling.

Sunday was Mother's Day. We both got to spend time with our (and each other's) mother. After a grand lunch and some more conversation, we loaded up and headed out. It was getting dark when we motored through San Antonio. The group agreed to pull off the interstate and drive by The Alamo. Nothing could have prepared me for it. It was like an old, oddly shaped storefront packed into a street lined with storefronts.

Since I brought up "the group," I should explain a few things about decision-making on this trip. We evolved a system during this adventure that has worked well for the four of us for all the years since. Each member of the group, when asked what they want to do, would answer, "Whatever the group wants." We figured out as time and mileage progressed, that my mother had three votes, Carmen had two votes, I had one vote, and my dad had no vote. In the event of a tie, Carmen and my mother would try to acquiesce to the other for a spell, until they (or my dad and I) got tired of it and swung the vote one way or the other.

Part of the plan all along was for the second stop to be Carlsbad Caverns. So we exited Interstate 10 at Fort Stockton early Monday morning and followed US 285 northwest into southeastern New Mexico, arriving in time for lunch. We secured our parking space in the campground, then followed the signs up a 600 foot tall hill and parked near the entrance to the 600 foot deep caverns. "We could have stayed down at the bottom of the hill and walked straight in!" I observed. We took the elevator down to ground level, and bought lunch at the concession stand deep inside the hill. So we did the caverns, which were very interesting. They had narration headphone thingies to tell the story of the caverns over many thousands of years, including the time a mere century or so ago when some entreprenurial humans busted into the side of the hill and extracted bat guano for sale as fertilizer. "See?" I said.

It was miserably hot when we came back up and drove back down. We hooked up to the electricity and ran the air conditioner full blast, barely making a dent in the stiffling interior heat. We blew the breaker on the panel three times. But as a wise and wonderful person once said to me, "When the sun goes down, it cools off." In the early evening Carmen and I walked down to the gift shops over by the road. When we returned to the campsite, there was a mule deer wandering the grounds. We roused my dad to come see it, but it wasn't near enough to see in the dark. Later, when we walked down to the bathrooms, there were several mule deer licking the floors in the showers. I guess you get your water where you can in an arid environment.

Tuesday morning after breakfast we packed the Leprechaun for the final push to the canyon. We mosied on up 285 to Roswell, where we saw no aliens that we knew were aliens, and turned left onto US 380. It was getting close to lunch time when we saw signs for the Valley Of Fires National Recreation Area. We turned off the highway and drove into a strange and beautiful place. The Valley is as green and lush as any place I've seen in New Mexico, but with ridges of black volcanic rock poking out of the green, looking like plowed furrows in the landscape. So we ate lunch without taking any pictures of this magical place, and moved on. Hey, I live in New Mexico now. I could nip down there any time I want. It's only about a hundred fifty miles from Albuquerque.

We crossed the Continental Divide at about 8:00 Tuesday night. Not long after, we pulled off for gas. We entered the Parking Lot of Potholes leading to a truck stop. I was driving, trying my best to avoid the big, deep holes, but there were just too many. The front right wheel went down, and the Leprechaun pitched hard to the right, popping open the cabinets on the left side. It straightened up in time for the left side to go down, popping open the cabinets on the right. While I pumped the gas, the others were busy picking up all the crap that had come flying out of the cabinets.

We were all getting pretty sleepy in the wee hours of the morning. We pulled into the rest area near the Meteor Crater and grabbed some shuteye. The next morning, on the way to the restrooms, Carmen spotted a tiny bunny in the huge rock arrangement by the building. It was very cute, and it just sat there. I guess it was accustomed to gawking tourists. The other thing that happened there was that we decided to go to the meteor crater on the way back east. Tonight was the full moon, so we didn't want to dally.

We reached the campground at the village of Grand Canyon around mid-morning. We secured our space, then drove to the nearest parking lot at the rim of the canyon. I could spend all day describing the grandeur of this massive hole in the ground, but until you are there you can't begin to get a sense of its awe-inspiring size and beauty. So go.

The only shoes I brought for this adventure were my flip flops. Walking the trail along the rim of the canyon is not a task best done in flip flops. By the time we returned to the campground, my feet had canyons of their own cracking open in my heels.


My dad and I were ready for a shower, so we walked down to the bathrooms only to find that the showers were coin-operated, four quarters for five minutes. He went back to the RV, and I went to the trading post, both of us seeking quarters. By the time I returned, he was done with his shower and back in the RV.

After resting awhile and eating our supper we cast off lines (electric and water) and went back to the rim. We found ourselves places to sit on the rocks, and watched the sun set and the full moon rise over the canyon. Very beautiful.

Carmen and I wanted to go to the Ranger Talk that evening, so we were dropped off at the Visitors' Center on the way back to the campsite. We were early, so we did some shopping at the trading post before following the trail to the outdoor theater. The ranger had a slide presentation about the history, geology and wonderfulness of the canyon. Two aspects of this presentation struck us as odd: his visual aid for the layered geology of the region was a Milky Way candy bar; and his segues into arial views of the canyon were pictures of him dressed as Superman! Silly boy.

Thursday morning we packed 'er up for the return trip, which now included the Meteor Crater as well as a short visit to West Helena to introduce the parents to Carmen's grandmother. So we took our sweet time leaving, driving up to Desert View, across the Painted Desert, through the Petrified Forest with several stops to check out petroglyphs and such, and then backtracked on the Interstate to the Meteor Crater. It was definitely the smallest hole we saw on this trip, but pretty cool nonetheless. If you saw the movie "Starman," you got a pretty good look at it.

It was getting late by the time we finished our tour of the crater, so my mother was searching her campground guide for a place to spend the night. She found a place north of Holbrook, AZ called Buzzard's Gulch. The guide gave it a 4 out of 5 points for scenic beauty. When we arrived, we could easily see why. There was brown dirt stretching to the horizon in all directions save one: the dumpsters and air conditioning units on the back side of a shopping center. Carmen and I walked over to the shopping center and bought me a pair of cheap sneakers, some socks and some moisturizer to try to repair my cracked and bleeding heels. We plugged in the cable to the TV and watched the news. The weather report told us that the humidity was a crackling fifteen percent.

Friday morning we had a liesurely breakfast, unhooked ourselves and set out. By the time we made our way to New Mexico, we were thinking about lunch. We began seeing signs for Red Rock Park. We exited the Interstate near Gallup and followed the signs north to the park and The Red Rock Museum. Large in the landscape was an enormous red rock, hundreds of feet tall and hundreds of feet wide. When we arrived at the museum parking lot, there were no other vehicles anywhere in sight. I got out and walked up to the glass museum doors. They were locked, but I could see in. The doors on the far side were also glass, and just a few feet beyond them was the enormous red rock. Good thing there was a museum there to showcase that rock. But it was closed. We ate our lunch and moved on.


We crossed the rest of New Mexico stopping only for gas and one misbegotten dinner at a diner on Historic Route 66. We drove all night through the Texas panhandle. I was driving through Amarillo. The gas tank was getting low and I was thinking about stopping, but didn't. A long long stretch of nothing but nothing went by, and we made a critical decision to turn around when we had just enough gas to get us back to Amarillo. Good thing, too, because the next gas station east was at Shamrock, about a hundred miles away.

It was mid-morning Saturday when we pulled off the Interstate about fifty miles into Oklahoma. We spent two nights at Foss State Park on Foss Lake, watching the Mississippi kites soar the skies and the scissor-tail flycatchers dart after flies. All this time we had been on the lookout for roadrunners, but had seen none. Oklahoma was no exception.

Monday afternoon, after the long drive across Oklahoma, we camped for the night at Horsehead Lake in the White Rock Wildlife Management Area at the southern end of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. It was a gorgeous, lush place, especially after the dry brownness of Arizona and New Mexico. I went for a long walk - my heels felt much better. We saw goldfinches, a scarlet tanager and a bluebird. That evening, Carmen found a luna moth on the floor in the restroom. She enticed it onto her finger and carried it around for a while. Eventually it gathered the strength to fly. It fluttered about ten feet away before a blue jay streaked out of a tree and nailed it.


Tuesday morning we cast off again, making a side trip to Devil's Den State Park. As we were driving down the access road to the park, a roadrunner came running up onto a log and on up to the top of a branch sticking up. It posed there for a moment as we roared by. At last, a roadrunner - in Arkansas?

Tuesday evening, after the three hundred mile trip across Arkansas, we pulled up in front of Mum Mum's house. Olen came running out to help us get electricity and water to the RV and get 'er leveled up. "Didn't we just see you in Texas?" my dad asked. Yes, we did. Hmmmm.

We visited with Mum Mum, had dinner at the Golden Corral (Where Carmen had worked as a "Steerette" in her youth) and went to visit Evil Sister Tammie and her daughter Nikki at their house nestled in the woods a few miles away. Nikki did a fancy dance routine for us in her cowboy boots. Back at Mum Mum's Carmen and I had a shower and a real bed to sleep in before the push for home.

Of course, the push for home included one more stop. There was a CCC park in southern Alabama, Frank Jackson State Park, that the parents wanted to check out. My dad's brother Bob had worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, and my dad has a soft spot for CCC parks. And it was a very nice park and very nice campground. The big thing I remember was on the way there, on Interstate 65 south of Montgomery, the truck in front of us had one of his tires disintegrate, shooting rubber projectiles all over the front of The Last Of The Classic Cs.

I don't remember anything about the trip from Jackson State Park to St. Cloud, other than our last dinner in a rest area east of Tallahassee, for which I drained the macaroni and the lid came off the pasta pot and dumped macaroni into the RV sink. I believe we pulled in late on Friday night, reacquainted ourselves with our kitties Harvie and Ms. Mouse, and went to bed in our own bed.

On Saturday morning we washed down the Leprechaun, had a last lunch together, and my parents drove away to Titusville to trade the RV for their car, and went home.

Too Much Vacation

This is a long one, which is why I've been putting it off. It was the summer of 1989, when we lived in "Green Acres," a tumble-down old wood and palmetto bug house on 9th Street in St. Cloud, our second residence in Central Florida and the first place we bought. We actually bought it while I was still at the plant nursery. It was the subject of a closing Carmen was working up at Land Title And Survey, and the deal fell through. The price was 27,000. She couldn't pass it up. John Geip was aghast that one of his lowly grunts would be so uppity as to own "proppity."

Anyway, despite many stories I could tell about this house, I'll get on with the story at hand. My parents had bought a used RV, a Winnebago LeSharo (kind of a long van with a wide body and a too-small Renault engine) and were itching to take it out for a long trip. Their little red dog Maggie was itching to go as well.

I was still suffering under the delusion that I was going to write a Civil War Blockade Runner story, so I wanted to see Wilmington, NC and Fort Fisher, near there. I also wanted to see Charleston, SC. We also wanted to visit the same friends as always, the Shetrones and the Buinickases in Maryland. Carmen wanted to visit her grandmother in Arkansas again. So this trip would cover ten states in sixteen days. My parents wouldn't go all the way to Arkansas, so they would go straight home to Vero Beach from Maryland.

We packed our little Corrolla full of camping gear and clothes, put a rack on the back for two bicycles (Carmen's and Brandon's) and lit out in the early afternoon, leading the way. Our first night was in Savannah, and we three decided not to pitch a tent that night. We stayed in a motel while the parents and Maggie hooked up in an RV campground.

Day two we stopped off to take a boat tour of Charleston Harbor while the parents plowed ahead to the Wilmington area. This was years before any of us got cellular phones, so when we finally got to Wilmington, we were flabberghasted to find that the campground we were all going to stay in was closed. How were we ever going to find each other now? We turned around and headed back to a little shopping center we had passed to use the bathroom and buy some snacks. As we were getting ready to pull out of the parking lot, the Winnebago went by, headed back to the closed campground looking for us. We chased them down and we all pulled off the road. They had checked in at another campground nearby and reserved an adjacent space for our first night in the tent. Whew!

Day three: the parents and Brandon went on to the Cedar Island campground while Carmen and I explored Wilmington, visited the museum, and went to the overgrown site of Fort Fisher. This was all very exciting for me to actually be there in the presence of so much of the history of the Blockade. Carmen tolerated it pretty well. We mosied on to Cedar Island and set up the tent again. This was right on the ocean and Pamlico Sound- very nice, breezy, quiet. We liked it.

Day four my parents declared that our next stop needed to be at least two nights. We took the ferry over to Cape Hatteras, drove some, ferried a few more times and stopped up near Kitty Hawk for two nights. We went to the Wright Brothers Museum on day five, and the bicyclists and Maggie got a good workout that day.

Day six saw us go through Virginia up US 17 to US 301, across that one dollar Eisenhower Bridge (see "A New Adventure Every Day" at the beginning of this blog) and on up through Maryland where we all (except Carmen, Brandon and Maggie) had spent so much of our lives. As it turned out, this almost worked against us. We were confident going into familiar territory, but it had changed so much in twenty one years that we were totally disoriented.

I don't remember how long we stayed at the Shetrone house. On Saturday Sharyn and Don loaded their kids, Brandon and me into their van and we went on one of their standard day trips to Rocks State Park in the mountains. (It's funny now to sit here in Albuquerque and remember the "mountains" of Maryland) There are trails up to the "King and Queen Seat" at the top of a mountain, and it was on our way up there that Brandon uttered the famous line, "Follow me! I know where I'm going!" when he had never been there before in his life. A couple of days were spent by my dad and Don trying to fix the generator in the RV. Anyway, it was several days before we parted company with Mother, Dad and Maggie and set out for Arkansas.

We went around Washington to Interstate 66 over to I 81 and spent the night in Bristol, Virginia. We asked at the front desk if there was a Walmart nearby. "It's in Tennessee," she replied. We were crestfallen. "Across the street." Bristol, Tennessee is across the main street from Bristol, Virginia. I guess the locals love to catch up tourists with that stuff.

The next day was the long slog across the length of Tennessee, turn left at Memphis, sixty miles south to Lula, Mississippi and across the bridge to Helena, Arkansas. Except the long, high bridge was being repaired, so instead of two lanes, it was down to one. There was a signal light to tell us it was the westbound turn to go. It told us to go. We went. Luckily there was nobody behind us, because over the top came an eastbound semi straight at us at a high rate of fuel consumption. After we screamed and panicked, we backed back down the east side and let the semi keep going.

The big news in the twin cities of Helena and West Helena, was that there was now a Taco Bell, pronounced TOCKobell. Everybody we encountered announced proudly, "We got a TOCKobell." It rivaled the time, in Carmen's high school years, when they got a MACKdonalds.

So we visited Carmen's Mum Mum and evil sister Tammie and pre-evil niece, Nikki for a few days, then high-tailed it home through Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. We came close to making it in one shot, but in White Springs, Florida, Carmen pooped out. It was nearing midnight, and about three hours from home. We had her father's Union 76 credit card for gas, and there in White Springs was a Union 76 Motor Lodge. We spent the night.

The last day was Brandon, bored, tired and missing his mom, singing a little song all the way down I 75 and the Florida Turnpike. It went, "Going up a big hill, going up a big hill, going up a big hill, top of a big hill, going down a big hill, going down a big hill, going on a flat part, going on a flat part..." you get the picture. All the way home.

We finally drove up to the entrance to our driveway, to be faced with a pile of rubble. "What's that in our carport?" asked Carmen. "Oh, crap, it IS our carport!" We sold the house a couple of months later.

High Q

It came to pass in those days, the early days in St. Cloud, that the Buinickas family was coming to Orlando on vacation. They were staying at the High Q on International Drive. We knew how to get to I-Drive becauise we'd been to the convention center once. So we packed for a long expedition, and drove down US 192 to the turnpike. We exited the Pike at Orange Blossom Trail, and proceeded north to Sand Lake Road, which we knew connected with I-Drive. First we went south on I-Drive, followed it to the end, turned around and headed north. The other side of Sand Lake Road was unfamiliar territory, but we forged ahead. Before long we were parking at the High Q, a tall cylindrical building very near the north end of International Drive.

We had (mostly) a good time with our friends, visiting Epcot Center and Disney Village etc. Then it was time to make that long, arduous trip all the way back to St. Cloud. But we made it.

A few months later I quit the plant nursery. After a week or so of casting about, I landed my first job as a professional scenic carpenter. It was a company called Image International, about twenty minutes from home. It was a block away from International Drive, within view of the High Q. I drove my motorcycle there six or seven days a week for six and a half years, never forgetting the first epic journey seeking out the far away, elusive High Q.

The Dawgs of Narcoossee

Rummel Road connects Greater Narcoossee with St. Cloud, and this was the way we found our home for the next nine years- in three different dwellings in St. Cloud. When we first moved there, at the end of March, 1987, we rented half a house on Tennessee Avenue. Carmen was working at Land Title and Survey in downtown St. Cloud. I found a job at Raintree Forest Nursery at two locations in...Narcoossee. This was where I learned that Narcoosians, when they go into town, go to St. Cloud.

I began life there as a bicyclist, riding an old beater one-speed Schwinn with a kickstand that wouldn't stay up, so it went "clink...clink...clink" all the way there and back. I passed a house on Rummel Road every day, with two big doberman pinschers in the fenced yard. They heard me coming for a mile, "clink...clink...clink" and waited at the west corner. As I approached, they began snarling and barking, following me as I continued along the fence, to the east corner, where they snarled and barked until I was out of range. Then one day I approached, and the dogs weren't out there. I called out, "Hey, Dobies! Dobie Dobie Dobies." They came running from the back of the house, snarling and barking, following me along the fence. Then I looked ahead. The front gate was open. My blood ran cold. Oh, shit, what am I gonna do now? There was nothing I could do but fight them off as best I could. The dogs were running down the fence. They came to the open gate and stopped, obviously puzzled by this new development. Then they started up again, snarling and barking, running along the inside of the fence to the end. Whew!

Going to Nursery Number One, on John Geip's property, was much more of a trip. I was glad to buy a motorcycle in June for that trip down Jones Road to the nursery. At one point, the dirt road was a deep pit of sand as wide as the road and about ten feet across. In the morning it was soft sand. In the afternoon, after the rain, it was mud. Either way it was treacherous. So there was this big German shepherd that lived there. He was the troll of the sand pit. He heard my motorcycle coming and waited for me to hit the sand and get bogged down and struggle through it. He'd snarl and bark and dance around me and nip at me. Until the day he was dancing around and mis-timed it so that the front tire hit him. He yelped and ran home and I never saw him again.

John had a German shepherd, too- a nice one. I'd say that she followed him wherever he went, but that would be grossly inacurate. She ran about twenty feet ahead of him as he walked around the property. This was handy for us. When we saw the dog, we had about ten seconds to stop whatever we were doing and get to work.

The greatest adventure I had at Raintree was the time I was building platforms for plants, with wood framing and wire fencing on top to hold the plants and allow drainage. John told me to get somebody to help me carry the big-ass roll of fencing in to where the frames were set up on concrete blocks inside a greenhouse skeleton (which would be covered with plastic sheeting November through April) but I was even stupider then than I am now. I carried it by myself. Well, I lost control of it and it crashed in the corner where all of the irrigation pipes were clustered. I broke two of the pipes and the shut-off valve. It was approaching time to go pick up Brandon at Day Camp. So I scrambled around for some parts, fixed what I could, and told the boss lady that I would finish it early early in the morning. The next day I showed up two hours early, found the parts I needed among the steaming heap of PVC irrigation parts, dug down to the deepest breaks, and began cutting and cementing. I filled the hole pretty, and tried to remember which way the valve had been set- on or off. I couldn't remember. I figured I'd ask Boss Lady when she came in. Meanwhile, I began rolling out wire onto the frames and cutting the lengths. John came along. He nodded approvingly at what I was doing, and went straight to the main water controls by the office. In a moment he was standing by the house I was working in. "I can't get the water to come on." he said, scratching his head. I went straight to my new valve and turned it on. The waterworks were working again! I got a nice big "Atta boy" for that one, and another big "Whew!"

Christmas 1986

Somewhere between the summer and Christmas, 1986 Brandon's mother and her boyfriend, Melvin The Toothless Twit, loaded a homemade trailer- which fell apart on the road before they got out of Florida- and moved to Edison, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati. In fact it was after they had gone that our divorce, written by Carmen and uncontested, went to court. It was a good divorce, as divorces go.

This was my year to have Brandon at Christmas. I thought it would be a treat for him to come to Florida by bus. He loved anything with wheels on it. My mother, of course, still thought bus travel was dangerous, so she offered to pay the difference between the price of bus tickets and air fare. Well, as luck would have it, our local radio station, WTTB (Where The Tropics Begin) in Vero Beach ran a Greyhound promotion called "Home For The Holidays," with a prize of two round trip tickets to anywhere in the US for the listener who wrote the winning sad tale about what schmaltzy thing could be accomplished if she/he had this grand prize. You know me and schmaltzy tales. Actually, I think I might have been the only one who entered. But I won in any case. So Mom and I negotiated a settlement. I took Greyhound to Cincinnati and had two plane tickets back, subsidized in the amount it would have been if the bus tickets had been full price. Melvin was going to haul Brandon back to Ohio.

I don't recall anything particularly interesting on the trip to Cincinnati. When I arrived I did what I usually do- I bought a map. I found the street where they lived in Edison, figured out the bus route that went that direction, and set out. So, the bus only went about half way. So I did what I always do. I set out walking with my suitcase.

I guess I walked about three miles before a kind soul stopped and offered me a lift. He took me right to their front door. I waited around for about an hour before Brandon was ready to go. Melvin called a cab company and asked how much the fare was to the airport. It was forty bucks. He drove us himself. Not only is the airport on the far side of the city, it's not even in Ohio! It's in Covington, Kentucky. I secreted a twenty dollar bill poking out of his ash tray while he was buying gas to get there.


Brandon was entranced at the airport. There were real airplanes everywhere! Then when we got on the plane, there were light switches and air jets to play with. The flight crew were charmed by his winning little six-year-old personality, too, so it was a fun flight. It was dark out, so we could see things that were lit up on the ground, cities and such. The coolest, though, was the approach into Orlando a few days before Christmas. The whole place was a blaze of colored lights.


Carmen picked us up at the airport and took us back to Vero Beach. We didn't explore Narcoossee this time. I guess it was 11:00 by the time we arrived at home and carried the sleeping boy inside.


Christmas was Christmas as usual, but it had a surprise lurking behind it. Carmen got a call from her mother that evening. Mum Mum, Carmen's grandmother who all but raised her, had had a heart attack and was in the hospital in Memphis, sixty miles from West Helena, Arkansas where Mum Mum lived. We made arrangements with Melvin to make the transfer in Memphis to get Brandon back in time for school in January. We quickly packed the car, and bundled ourselves in for the long drive.

Late the next morning we were in eastern Mississippi thinking about lunch. Carmen talked to her mom, who said that Mum Mum was in no immediate danger. We decided we wanted to cook out in a park somewhere. So we stopped at a little grocery store to buy ground beef and buns. Carmen thought we ought to make s'mores for dessert, so we bought graham crackers and Hershey bars. The store did not have any charcoal or marshmallows- in fact the proprietors gave us suspicious looks for even thinking about cooking out. It was below freezing. So we continued on, stopping at every convenience store looking for the missing items. Finally one had an old dusty bag of charcoal, and another had an old dusty bag of marshmallows and a can of lighter fluid.

We were seeing signs for Chewalla Lake Recreation Area in Holly Springs National Forest, so we turned off US 78 and followed a long and winding road to a totally human-free picnic area beside a beautiful lake surrounded by bare trees and evergreens. I got the charcoal going, then Brandon and I walked a portion of the ice-rimmed edge of the lake to see what we could see. Not much. We were there for about two and a half hours, another long siege while Brandon took forever to eat. The s'mores were yummy and worth all the effort it took to find the wherewithall.


Back on the road, we were on the home stretch. Before long Marc Cohn was running through my head as I was Walking in Memphis. We visited Mum Mum in Baptist Hospital, then drove back to West Helena, Carmen's home town, for some much-needed sleep.

We called The Toothless Twit and he declared that he would be in Memphis Sunday morning to pick up Brandon. We told him where the parking garage was where we had his luggage to haul back. We were dismayed when Melvin arrived after his 480 mile journey on his motorcycle, ready to haul Brandon and stuff 480 miles back to Cincinnati in below freezing weather. But...it wasn't our job to interfere, and they both survived it.

We returned to Vero Beach soon after, with a liesurely tour of the Greater Narcoossee area thrown in. We found a road that skirted the south side of East Lake Tohopekaliga and landed us on St. Cloud's lakefront, where sandhill cranes roamed like huge tall chickens and snail kites munched on big snails.

We moved there three months later.

Snappy

It was August, 1986. Carmen's friends from New Orleans were coming to visit us in Vero Beach. This, of course, meant a trip to Disney World, standing in long lines in stiffling heat. Fun. So we went to meet them at Orlando Airport, about a hundred miles away. The way I knew best was US192 from Melbourne to Ashton, and SR15 through Narcoossee to the Beeline (SR528) to the airport. So that's how we went. On our way we were suddenly entranced by Narcoossee, seeing it as a place we wanted to get to know.

Catherine and Felton had their camera out and at the ready coming off the plane. They took pictures of us waiting at the gate (remember when you could do that?) pictures of the airport, pictures of the Snappy Car Rental booth, pictures of the van that took us to the lot, pictures of the car, getting into the car...you get the picture- so did they.

They followed us back to Vero and got situated at the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge, we had dinner at HoJo's, and then we parted, to get some sleep in preparation for the big day tomorrow.

Tomorrow came. We drove over to HoJo's and knocked on the door to their room. Then we all went out to the Snappy Rent-A-Car and loaded ourselves in. Felton put the key in and turned it. Nothing. He went to the nearest phone and called Snappy. "The car won't start," he told them. The were very sympathetic. "Well, just drive it back over here and we'll give you another one." "But...the car won't start." "What's wrong with it?" "It won't start." "Probably the battery. Get a jumpstart, drive it over here and we'll give you another one." "Thanks for your help."

Luckily, Carmen had jumper cables. It started up, and our first stop on the way to Disney was the Snappy lot on Semoran Ave. near the airport- about twenty miles out of our way. True to their word, they gave Catherine and Felton another car. Nice of them.

The day at Disney was like most days at Disney- crowded and hottern blazes. It was during this fun outing that Carmen felt the first symptom of a disease that is exacerbated by heat: multiple schlerosis. It would be another year before it would be diagnosed as such.

Anyway, at the end of the day, after the Electric Light Parade and fireworks, we were on our way home, toodling down 192. We were hungry, having refused to pay twenty dollars for a hamburger at the park. "Is there a Wendy's anywhere around here?" Catherine asked. We were sure there must be. On we slogged through what we call World World, a long strip of motels, restaurants, tourist attractions and souvenir shops. And on and on, searching for...suddenly all four of us threw up our hands and shouted "WENDY'S"

And so we learned three things that day: where the Wendy's in Kissimmee is, never go to Disney World in August, and never rent a car from Snappy.

Incidentally, six months later, after exploring the area several times, we moved to St. Cloud, just down the road from Narcoossee. We lived there for nine years.

You Want Fries With That?

Spring 1986: Damn Yankees was finally over, after many extra performances beyond the originally scheduled closing date. I was in love again, though still not legally divorced from Brandon's mother. And I was ready for another trip. I was taking Brandon to Maryland by Amtrak (no luggage checked, thank you.) Five-year-old Brandon's whole world revolved around trains, so this was going to be an extra special treat for him.

Carmen, my new squeeze, volunteered to drive us to the train station in Orlando. She didn't really know how to get to the station, but she said she would figure it out. (How could I not love a person like that?) We allowed a lot of extra time for getting lost etcetera, but as it turned out, we drove right to the station no problem- except we now had an hour and a half to kill. So we meandered out onto Orange Blossom Trail and looked for a place to get some lunch. Brandon was lobbying for McDonald's, believe it or not, but we chanced upon a funky little sandwich place nearby. The promise of French Fries was enough for the boy.

Brandon was among the world's slowest eaters. No amount of prompting, cajoling or abject abandonment could make him eat a meal in under two hours, so when it was time to go catch the train, he took most of his french fries with him, leaving most of his burger behind. When we got back to the station, the train was already there getting baggage loaded etc. Brandon was beside himself with excitement to actually be that close to an Amtrak train just like his HO scale one at home. He set his fries on the platform and began running from one end of the train to the other, examining the wheels, the brakes, the couplers between cars. Finally the conductor called All Aboard, and we were forced to abandon the inspection. We boarded the train, found seats on the Carmen side, and waved bye byes as the train began to move. It was then that Brandon saw it: his package of french fries was still on the platform! He called to Carmen to get them, but she couldn't hear. He wanted to stop the train, but the conductor wouldn't do it. The fries got left behind.

For years he was incapable of recalling that trip without lamenting the loss of his fries.

Tyrone

On one of my many Amtrak trips to Baltimore we stopped somewhere in South Carolina late in the evening, and a mom came aboard with her two kids. The girl was about six and the boy around eight years old. They sat in the seats in front of me- well two of them did. I don't know if the boy ever sat down for more than a few seconds.

All night long I heard Mom. "Tyrone, sit down. Tyrone get back here. Tyrone, leave that gentleman alone. Tyrone, what in the hell are you doing? Tyrone, quit messing with your sister," etcetera etcetera all night long.

It was daylight as we were approaching Washington, DC. Tyrone came and sat down in the seat next to me. "How you doing, Tyrone?" I asked. His eyes got real big. "How'd you know my name?!!" he said.

I Love A Parade

Here's a little one I forgot about from the TR Transport truckin' days. I was barreling-ass up Interstate 75 headed for Dearborn. About the time I entered Michigan I began to hear stuff on the CB about a tanker truck overturned ahead. Traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl, and everyone was directed to exit at the first Monroe exit. It took a long time to get everyone to the exit, and the road exited onto was pretty small for all that traffic.

I didn't know which way to go, but I figured if I followed the crowd I'd be all right. It was early afternoon as we all drove through downtown Monroe. The locals were out in force, lining the street on both sides, smiling and waving as semi after semi after car after bus came crawling through. I reckoned it was the biggest event to hit Monroe, Michigan in decades.

The Case Of The Missing Cases

The first time I ever had luggage troubles was on an Amtrak trip to Baltimore in 1978. When I went for my suitcase, it wasn't there. I said to the baggage guy, "I thought the airlines were the ones who lose luggage." He said, "We get our baggage handlers from the same pool the airlines do: the human race." My suitcase went on a more adventuresome trip than I. It went to Philadelphia, rode the next train southbound, missed Baltimore again, got off in Washington, rode the next train northbound, and had a cab ride to Pasadena, Maryland.

My buddy Michael Buinickas worked for Amtrak in Washington DC. He refused to fly anywhere, so when he and his family came to visit Vero Beach in 1980, he took Amtrak to Orlando and rented a car. I told him not to check any luggage, and reminded him of my suitcase story. He scoffed and assured me there would be no problem. They arrived on Sunday afternoon, and by evening they had tracked his luggage. They split the train in Jacksonville, part of it going to Miami via Tampa, and the rest to Orlando. Their luggage- all of it!- went on the Miami train. They were told not to worry, to go on to Vero Beach, and the Miami station would send the luggage to Vero via Greyhound Package Express. Monday evening Amtrak called. The Vero Beach Greyhound station had been closed when the bus came through, so there was no-one to receive the goods. Not to worry, though, Jacksonville would send it via Greyhound Package Express. Guess what. Tuesday morning Amtrak called. The Vero Beach station had been closed...again, but not to worry...The Buinickases all went to Kmart and bought some clean new clothes. The luggage finally arrived on Wednesday morning.

In 2003 I had a cheap big blue wheeled duffle-style bag that was too big to carry onto my plane to Denver. I was to be there for two weeks to get my brother set up and running in his new wheelchair accessible apartment, so I had a lot of different clothes- for unpacking and assembling, for talking to doctors and such, for staying warm in February in Denver. I also put my keys with my Swiss Army knife in there, because I couldn't take the knife on the plane. So I got to Denver late in the afternoon, got off the plane, and went to Baggage Claim. After a while a big cheap blue wheeled duffle-style bag came around the carousel. It didn't look as full as it had the last time I'd seen it. I grabbed it, and looked at the airline label. It was a big cheap blue wheeled duffle-style bag exactly like mine, but it belonged to somebody else. I put it back, and watched it go round and round a few more times before I went to the Baggage Office. I told them I thought the owner of this bag had grabbed my bag without reading the label. They scoffed and told me my bag would likely show up soon. It didn't. Then they got a call from a ski resort a hundred miles away. Seems a guest there had picked up the wrong bag, and could the airline please deliver the right bag ASAP. I said the dumbass ought to ski his ass back to Denver with my bag and I'd teach him to read labels. But the airline was nicer than I- doesn't take much. They sent a person to the resort, traded bags, and mine was delivered to me the next afternoon, keys and knife intact.

Dodge Dart

There are several reasons why I pulled this trip out of my head and dusted it off. First of all, it's a memory of my dead brother that doesn't make me glad he's dead. Second, it was an interesting trip. Third, it was down and up the stretch of highways and rails that I've traveled more often than any other, the Baltimore to Vero Beach corridor.

Back in 1972, just days after Hurricane Agnes ripped a swath through the Northeast causing the most dollar figure damage ever wrought by a hurricane up to that time, my parents offered their 1966 Dodge Dart to my brother, Jack. My mother didn't drive any more, and they would rather have the yard space and the release from insurance etc. All he had to do was come get it. I had a week of vacation coming, so we decided to go together. I could keep him on track on the bus trip down, and help with the driving coming back. We planned to drive it in one shot, all day and all night.


The bus ride was pretty normal. There were Interstate highways partially washed away, part of the Capital Beltway was gone, but there were alternate ways to get places, so it was no problem. All the funny stuff we laughed about involves people that resembled a person we both knew in Vero Beach, and that part is too cumbersome to bother with. Jack tried to hit on some young women- trusting I wouldn't tell his wife. He crashed and burned anyway, so there was nothing worth telling.

We spent a couple of days visiting our parents, took the Dodge to a local shop to get it checked out and ready for a 1,000 mile trip, and on July 2nd we were ready to go. We planned to arrive in Baltimore on the morning of the 3rd. No problem. We drove away from Vero braced for the long drive north.

We were about to Daytona when we noticed the temperature gauge rising above normal. Another few miles and it was nearing the danger point. We pulled into a gas station, popped the hood and popped the release valve on the radiator cap. Hot water and steam spewed forth. We used the hose by the gas pumps to refill the radiator and cool the engine. Back on the road. This time we made it as far as St. Augustine before going through the same routine. Georgia line, same deal. In Brunswick, early afternoon, same. Up near Savannah. We pressed on into South Carolina. The first place we stopped for a cool down, the attendant told us to put in some Winn's Quick Cool. We were skeptical. The attendant said that if it didn't work, he'd gladly refund our money. Jack bought the stuff, dumped it in, and we were on our way. About five miles later it was hot already. We spewed, hosed and turned around. When we pulled back into the station, the attendant looked worried. We popped the hood and the attendant reached for the release valve. We should have had a movie camera going. He popped the release, and steam shot out straight at his face. He handed over the cash, we hosed, and pressed on.

We made it as far as Santee when the resident mechanic at the gas station told us we needed a new thermostat- or he could just take the old one out with the same result. Jack opted for that solution. The guy got his wrench, took the cover off of the thermostat housing, pulled out the old one and put the cover back on. CRACK! Oops! No problem, he'd send his guy out to find another one at a junk yard. We sat in the air conditioned office until the sun went down, went for some dinner and came back. The guy hadn't returned yet. He came along soon, though, with a cover. The mechanic put the cover on. CRACK! "Oops! Well, the junk yards are all closed, so I guess you're stuck until morning." Thanks. We hung around the gas station all night. We slept in the car some, slept in the chairs some, awakened occasionally by the ding ding of the gas island bell signal. At first light, the mechanic came back to work. He himself went out to the junk yards, and by about 9:30 he was back with the goods. He carefully peeled and scraped the old gasket fragments off of the housing and the cover, gave us a new gasket for free, and lo and behold, he put the cover on nice and tight with no oops. We paid him, thanked him, silently cursed him, and went on our way.

We didn't get far. Spew, hose, move on. The span between spews was getting shorter and shorter. Finally, late in the afternoon at Florence, SC a mechanic got his flashlight and looked in the radiator. "Oh," he said. "You've got your cooling tubes all clogged up. This needs to be rodded out." I looked. "Looks like it's pretty well rotted out already." He told us we needed a radiator repair shop to fix it. "They're probably all closed by now," he said. "Good luck finding one open tomorrow." The fourth of July. Hmmmm.

We drove to a nearby motel and spent this night sleeping horizontally. The next morning Jack got out the Florence phone book and started calling. Third try he got an answer, and the shop was open. Hurray. We drove there. The guy looked in and corroborated the rodding theory. We'd had just about enough of theories about this situation. But Jack told him to go ahead. He took out the radiator, put it on a platform over a vat of liquid, and threw the switch. The platform sank into the water. It was cool, like a Frankenstein movie or something. After a while he raised it, rinsed the radiator, and set to work with his rod. A couple of hours later, the radiator was back in the car, and we were on the road again.

All we stopped for the rest of the day was gas. Cool as a Cordoba. We got to Baltimore about 9:30 that night. We heard tell that the fireworks were spectacular.

A Run To The Diz

My first marriage was not nearly as much fun as my second, but there was some fun. We put together a camping trip to Walt Disney World's Fort Wilderness Resort. Early one Saturday morning Johanna and her son Brandon and I set out for Central Florida with Heather Bowers and Barbara Heston along for the ride (HB & BH) in Johanna's Chrysler Cordoba. We hauled ass up I-95 headed for Route 192. We almost made it to the exit when suddenly huge amounts of steam came billowing out from under the hood. Johanna pulled off the road, and a car pulled off behind us. I opened the hood and gazed stupidly at the mysterious tangle of stuff under the hood. The stranger from the car behind joined me. "Look, your coolant hose split right there." He whipped out a screwdriver, removed the offending part and said, "Come on!"

I shrugged at the four people in the Cordoba and followed the stranger to his car. He took me into Melbourne, where he knew all of the auto parts stores and all of their employees. The second one he tried was open this early. He took the hose in with him, I bought a replacement at the discount price my benefactor would pay, and we returned to the car. He reached into the back seat and pulled out a five gallon water bottle, which he filled at the spigot out front of the store, and we were on our way back. John, for that was his name, installed the new hose, refilled the cooling system with water, and watched for a minute while the engine ran cool as a Cordoba with no additional problems.

I tried to give him money, but he refused. He drove off into the sunrise. From belching steam to resuming trip had taken less than 45 minutes and five bucks. It's almost enough to make a body believe in angels.

Slowly I Turned

So I got back to Vero Beach in the depth of summer, 1982 to find that the Bowers family had been tipped out of the house they had been renting on 10th street, and were now down at the end of my street in the Bon Air Apartments. It was a tiny place- a kitchen/living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. 13-year-old Heather was sleeping on the couch in the living room/kitchen. All three of them spent a lot of time at my place, collectively or individually.

Heather and I were talking one hot hot day. I was telling her all about my latest trip, and she was telling me she'd never been farther from Vero Beach than Daytona. In a deranged moment I told her I'd take her to see snow this winter. Little did I know then that a few short months later...

Early November, 1982. Much cooler out, the Bowers family renting a house from my parents, Craig working full time at Emerson Art Service and doing a fine job. I was sound man for Craig's new band, making fifty bucks per gig. All good stuff. So Heather says to me, she says, "So when are we going to see snow?" "Huh?" I replied. "You know. You promised you'd take me to see snow this winter." "Huh?" I replied. Thus began a new plan. A week before Christmas, when work slowed down for the holidays, Heather and I would board a bus to New York City, see the fully decorated sights, and from there figure out where to find snow. I ran it by Craig and Linda. They were cool with it. I told my boss, my dad, and he was cool with it. My mother had her usual gloom and doom message about the dangers of bus travel, plus a new disaster, being busted for traveling with a 13-year-old unrelated girl. Believe it or not, I was undeterred.

Saving up for trips was something I was good at. By mid- December I had plenty for two 7-day Ameripasses plus meals and lodgings. We boarded our bus on the afternoon of Friday, December 17th, to tearful good-byes from her mother. I told them we'd be back on Christmas Eve or die trying. They told me that if I lost Heather, I'd better not come back. I smiled. Bus trips don't scare me.

It was around 11:00 that night that we changed buses in Jacksonville. Heather and I walked around a while. She was overawed by all the tall buildings. "Just you wait, Kid," I said. Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia went by. It was late Saturday night when we hit Washington DC. We stayed on the bus. Early early Sunday morning I was back in New York City, buying another City Edition Sunday New York Times for Michael B. and another fresh bagel for me. Heather wanted a McDonalds breakfast. Easily done. There was one in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. On our way out, we watched a mean-looking guy with a tie tied around his head being led away in handcuffs by the police. Heather was dismayed.

Across the street, at the Times Square Hotel, my mother's theory of my impending incarceration was put to the test. "We want a room for one night," I said. The desk clerk looked us over. "One bed or two," he asked. "Two, please," I said.

We rested for a bit, then went out to explore. I had told her about The American Museum of Natural History, and she wanted to see it. We took the subway right to the entrance of the museum. She was flabberghasted first that such a thing was possible, and second that I could figure out how to do it. We went through the museum, and she was impressed by it. Then we came out to get some lunch. "I want spaghetti," she said. "I want pastrami on rye," I said. So we found a little hole in the wall place that served both. She was more impressed.

We returned to the hotel, and she called home. "Yeah," she told them. "We're at the Times Square Hotel. It's across the street from the 'SEX SEX SEX ALL NUDE REVUE' Theater." She told them about the subway and the museum and the guy with the tie. They didn't ask to talk to me. I guess they were cool with all this. We went to a movie in the afternoon, had supper in the restaurant in the hotel, and went to our two beds, exhausted.

First thing Monday we packed up, checked out and put our stuff in lockers at the bus station. The guy with the tie around his head was there again. Anyway, we wanted to do three things: go to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and see if there were tickets available for Letterman- there weren't; go to the top of the World Trade Center- we did; and go to the Statue of Liberty. So we left the World Trade Center and descended into the subways. Looking at the map, we decided that we needed to change trains at West 4th Street/Washington Square. We rode the train there and got off. We figured out which train to catch to the Battery. A train came, and we got on. Suddenly, Heather said, "This is the wrong train," and got off. The doors closed between us, and off I went in a total panic. I got off at the next stop, crossed over and caught the next train back- only it didn't go back the same way. I got off at the next stop, taking careful note of where I was. I got out my map, found my current location, found West 4th Street/Washington Square, and started running. On the trains, several people had told me I'd never find her, to just go to the police. Undeterred, I ran across Soho, across Greenwich Village and found the station. Thankful for my pocket full of subway tokens, I dashed through the turnstiles to the platform where she had been. I arrived just in time to see Heather and a policeman stepping onto a train. "HEATHER!!!!!!!" I called in my Dodgertown 'CHARGE!' voice. They stepped back, the doors closed, the train left, and all was well. I showed my ID to the cop. He shook his head and said we were very lucky. I knew that.

A couple of years after we were there, the Statue was refurbished and strengthened. We wound up the spiral stairs inside the rusty, crumbling Statue, and looked out the crown. That was as far as people could go in those days. It was enough. She really liked the boat ride, too.

We went back to Rockefeller Center to see the tree all lit up, and watched the skaters for a while. We ate at the deli inside, looking at the autographed pictures of people who had eaten there.

And then the time came to go to the bus station and ask about snow. We asked at the ticket counter, but nobody knew. One of them said we should ask the drivers, that they should know. We went to the gates and asked a small gaggle of drivers. They all looked at each other and said "Buffalo. There's always snow in Buffalo. Hell, they make snow in Buffalo." As a bonus, Craig grew up just outside of Buffalo. Sold. We validated to Buffalo. It was around 9:00, and the bus was at 11:00. We wandered around the huge Port Authority Bus Terminal for a while, buying snacks and playing arcade games. She was great at Frogger and Donkey Kong.

It was sad to leave New York City, as always. But in the morning, we were sure there would be snow. I woke her up in Syracuse. It was snowing and there were a couple inches of snow on the ground. We had a twenty minute rest stop, so we got off the bus. Heather picked up a handfull of snow, and surprise played on her face. 'It's cold!" she said.

There was a foot and a half of fairly wet snow on the ground in Buffalo. There was a park nearby where we made angels, we built a snowman, we threw snowballs at each other. And when we had had enough fun playing in the snow, we went back to the bus station. There was a poster on the wall advertising trips to Niagara Falls, Ontario. Dast we go to Canada and back? We dast, we dast!

The coolest thing about Niagara Falls was that the mist had frozen on everything- trees, buildings, road signs, roads, sidewalks- everything. It was beautiful there, all decorated for Christmas and covered with snow and ice. The falls were awe-inspiring. The hot chocolate and coffee were excellent. We hung out there for a few hours, then faced the grilling to get back home. I showed my ID, Heather showed her library card, they checked their lists twice to find out if we were naughty or nice, and kindly let us come home.

We did a lot of sleeping on the way to Baltimore. When we got to the city, Heather wanted to try ice skating. We went to the outdoor rink downtown and rented skates. It was fun, even if she wasn't very good at it. Roller skating just doesn't prepare you for the ice variety.

I had called the Shetrones and Buinickases to let them know we were coming. The Shetrones picked us up downtown, and we had dinner and spent Wednesday night with them. Then we transferred to the Buinickases for a half-day or so and delivered the Times, before we caught the train from BWI Station to Washington. It was Thursday, December 23rd. We had to boogie!

All we saw of DC that night was the stretch between Union Station and the Greyhound station. I bought a one-day extension of our Ameripasses, and validated them to Vero Beach, Florida. We left around 7:00.

Heather fell in with a gaggle of teenagers headed south on Friday. She didn't acknowledge my existence until after they got off in Daytona. But we were buds again by the time we arrived in Vero Beach, unscathed, exactly on schedule, Christmas Eve 1982.

B'Gosh

For three years I suffered with the knowledge that Maine and Vermont were just sitting there waiting for me to fill in the last of the contiguous United States. Then, in 1982, another nefarious plot began to hatch. The World's Fair was in Knoxville, Tennessee; I was setting part of a story in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; there was a ferry across Lake Michigan I wanted to take; there were Provinces east of Manitoba to be discovered; and Barbara Buinickas was getting married in Maryland. Another bus trip was forming itself in my head.

May, 1982, after my work was finished for the Dodgers and the Theatre Guild, I prepared to set out on my next adventure. The bad news: the house next door to my parents was still occupied by Virginia, a recently widowed snowbird who was going back to Murfreesboro, Tennessee for the summer. She caught wind of the fact that I was heading for Knoxville, and she came up with her own nefarious plot. She wanted help with that long drive, and she enlisted my mother's help to guilt me into going with her.


We set out on a Tuesday morning. She drove as far as Tallahassee, and I drove the rest, arriving in Murfreesboro around 9:30 that night. She set up the guest room for me, and informed me that tomorrow we would be visiting all of her friends so they could meet me. My protests went unheard, and Wednesday morning she began hauling my ass all around town, to the insurance company where she used to work, to the houses of several of her friends, and back to her house to receive more visitors. I think they were all as puzzled as I about why Virginia was making such a big deal out of the twenty nine year old son of her next door neighbors in Florida.

Thursday morning I was packing up to go on with my plan, but she had other ideas. She drove me around the city, showing me the sights- all of which I've forgoten- introduced me to some more people, then cooked me a big supper. I was really getting scared now that she was planning to keep me there indefinitely. I announced at bed time that I was leaving in the morning. I would walk to the Greyhound station if I had to. She seemed hurt about this plan, but Friday morning I was ready to walk out the door- run if necessary- and she drove me to the station. I bolted from the car, said good bye on the run, and within minutes had my Ameripass booklet in my hand! Whew!


I arrived in Knoxville in the late afternoon. I asked the ticket agent which way the Fair was, and very soon I was there, on the back side of the University of Tennessee stadium, along the banks of the Tennessee River. The big attraction was a huge Ferris wheel. The line was miles long. I wandered through the exhibits for a while, reading about ecological projects and ideas, then went back to the wheel. The line was even longer. I saw signs about river cruises, so I bought a ticket for one of them. It was pleasant, much quieter out there, breezy, cool, seated in comfort. Then we watched the fireworks from the river boat. Ooooh! Aaaah! When we came back to the dock, I checked the line one more time and headed straight back to the bus station. Before midnight I was on the road again, validated to Oshkosh.


Saturday morning I awoke in Indianapolis, to crowded streets and banners touting the Indy 500. Oh yeah. Memorial Day weekend. Back to sleep. At lunch time I had to change buses in Chicago. I had time to follow my nose to that barbecue place Jerrell had taken me to back in '78, eat and catch the next bus north. In Milwaukee I changed buses to a local through West Bend and Fond du Lac.

As the dusk was falling, I arrived in the charming little city of Oshkosh. This was the home town of the main characters in the novel, Kentucky Crude, dreamed up by Michael Buinickas and me back in 1978. If you never heard of it, it's because it never made it past a hand written first draft, many years before I found the joy of word processing. The next in the series, Orange Peel Express, was to include a trip home to Oshkosh for our heroes. I checked into the hotel across the street from the bus station, showered and changed clothes before wandering the town in the evening. It was a beer town, with a tavern on every corner- perfect for our heroes. I was hit on by a local young woman looking for the father of her first baby to be conceived later, but I was completely clueless about how to play that game, so she moved on. Whew!

Sunday I wandered some more, collecting local color and history, marvelling at how Michael and I had randomly picked Oshkosh because we liked the name, and it had turned out to have just the right ambience for the origin of our characters. Lake Winnebago was awesome, the old abandoned brewery was a great piece of local history, and the people were very friendly and happy to tell me about their fair city. That evening I drank quite a few beers, went back to my room and scribbled a lot of notes. Since then I've moved ten times. All of my scribbles, including Kentucky Crude, are in landfills scattered around Florida.

Monday I went to the bus station and asked to be validated to Kewaunee, Wisconsin, where the ferry to Ludington, Michigan docked. The ticket agent didn't have Kewaunee on his list of destinations, so he validated me to Green Bay and was done. I had some time to look for some Wisconsin cheese for the road, but it seemed every cheese shop was closed. I found an open grocery store and bought cheese- from Minnesota!

The ticket agent in Green Bay didn't know anything about ferries in Kewaunee. The closest he could get me was Two Rivers, about twenty miles away. I decided to try it. You only go around once. But by the time I got to Two Rivers, it was pouring rain. I bagged the plan and high-tailed it back to Green Bay. BTW, I looked up the history of the Lake Michigan ferry system just now. All ferries across the lake were discontinued in April of 1982. Good thing I bagged it when I did.

It was the same ticket agent in Green Bay. I told him I wanted to go to Ontario, and he started to route me through Detroit- back around the south end of the lake. I told him no, I'd already been down there, I wanted to go through Upper Peninsula Michigan. His eyes got real big, and he pulled out the other book. Getting to Sault St. Marie from Green Bay meant changing buses in Menominee, Escanaba and St. Ignace. It took me all night, from dusk to dawn, to slog my way through the Upper Peninsula, dealing with the grouchiest people I've ever dealt with in all of my bus travels. That's going some!

Customer service didn't improve on the other side of the bridge. The Voyageur Bus Company agent was barely willing to validate my Ameripass to Montreal, definitely not to Quebec City. He was absolutely unwilling to issue me another book of tickets. He told me to get it in Montreal. Thank you, too! Onward I went through Espanola, Sudbury, North Bay, Pembroke, Ottowa and finally Montreal.

It was early evening, and I had time, after cajoling a new book of tickets and validating the last page of the old one, to wander the surrounding blocks of the city before boarding the bus to Quebec, Quebec, la cite si belle on deux fois l'appelle (the city so nice they name it twice.) I had a conversation with the person in the seat next to me. He knew a little English, I knew a little French, and we discovered that we were in the same business. He did layout, paste-up and illustration of textbooks in Quebec. He invited me to come by tomorrow to check it out. He also advised me not to stay in the city, but to end my ride in Sainte Foy. I did. After a much-too-long tirade about the US-Canadian dollar exchange rate, the hotel manager in Sainte Foy took my traveler's checks and gave me a key. It was 1:00am on Wednesday.

Wednesday late morning I cleaned up, paid for another night in the hotel, and set out for the city. I rode a city bus part of the way, bought a map and walked into the heart of the city. It was a charming old French city, and it took all of my High School French to barely make myself understood. I found the textbook company, found my fellow passenger and his girlfriend (who had much more English than he) and was given the deluxe tour of the place. I said my au revoirs and mercis, and was on my way again.

I was hungry, so when a sidewalk cafe all but blocked the sidewalk, I sat down. I ordered the Salade Gargantuesque- a really really big salad- and a cup of coffee. My favorite part was when a leaf from the tree overhead fell into my salad, and I couldn't find it. I guess it was delicieux, because I ate it. I walked over to the Parc Des Champs Du Bataille- Battlefield Park, and gazed out over the St. Lawrence for a spell before heading back in the direction of Sainte Foy.

On the way I passed a park with a baseball diamond, where a bunch of Quebecois were engaged in a lively game of baseball. I sat down by a tree and watched and listened to this game I knew so well being shouted in French. It would have been fun to play, but I didn't want to intrude, so I chased down the occasional foul ball for them, and continued to watch. After a while I saw a father with his son arriving at the park. The son was around eleven or twelve, and obviously Down's Syndrome. The dad had a baseball and a glove. The son had a glove, but when he saw the swingset, he threw down the glove and took off running. The dad stared wistfully after him. I picked up the boy's glove and put it on, signalling my readiness to catch. Dad and I never said a word to each other, but played catch for nearly a half hour until the boy was bored with the swings and came back. I handed over the glove and faded away, noting the gratitude on Dad's face as I did so.

I bought some snacks and drinks on the way back to Ste. Foy, and retired to my room, ready to move on. Thursday morning early I was checked out, packed and at the bus station, trying to convince the ticket guy to validate me to New Brunswick. All he was willing to do was to send me back to Montreal. Batard! Pardon my French. Four hours back to Montreal, a four hour wait for the next bus east. Batard! While in the Montreal bus station I happened upon a scruffy young Quebecois playing his guitar and singing songs I'd never heard before in French. I sat down near him and listened, enchanted. He saw me, and when he finished the next song, he handed the guitar to me. I played and sang "Catch The Wind" by Donovan, and it was his turn to be enchanted. Then his bus was called, and he was gone. A magical brief moment in time.

The bus to Fredericton, New Brunswick took all that night and part of the next day. Dawn was breaking when we crossed the Quebec-New Brunswick line. This was when I heard my favorite quote I've ever heard in my whole life. The guy across the aisle saw the border go by and said, in a thick French Canadian accent, "Haw haw, I yam so happeee to get out of Quebec backause in Quebec all zey speak ees zee French, and I do not speak zee French!" My head twitched involuntarily for several minutes afterward.

Looking at the schedules in Fredericton, I realized that if I were going to get to Prince Edward Island and back, I would probably need to extend my Ameripass in order to make it all the way to Baltimore. The ticket agent looked at me doubtfully when I asked him about it. I made a quick decision: bag the PEI leg and get to Maine and Vermont, the whole reason for the trip. I validated to Saint John and got right back on the bus I came in on.

Lunch in Saint John was memorable. I found a little restaurant that claimed "Fresh Fried Clams" on the sign out front. I liked fried clams. I went in. There were two long tables inside. Working class people were seated around both tables, talking, laughing, drinking beer with their lunch. I turned to leave, but Mama, the hostess, cook and waitress, grabbed my arm and steered me to an empty seat at one of the tables. Nobody seemed to pay any attention. "What would you like?" she asked me. "Fried clams?" I answered. She bustled away, and within a few minutes I had a big heap of plump, juicy fried clams, the best I've ever had, on a plate in front of me. Somebody asked me where I was from, which sparked a rowdy discussion of the pros and cons of Florida. I didn't say much. I had clams to eat.

The bus ride from Saint John to Saint Stephen was narrated by my seatmate, a ten-year-old boy who knew everything about this region of the world, the climate, the tidal flows, the history, the economy. I wish I could remember half of what he told me. I remember that I was mightily impressed. That kid is probably governor of New Brunswick now.

Re-entering the United States from Canada was way harder than entering Canada. I felt like saying "You know, if you really don't want me back, I'll just stay here." One person I talked to in Canada told me he'd been all over the States- Florida, Carolinas, Midwest, California, New York, and he always went back to Canada "because it's a free country." That hurt.

BUT! The good news- I was in Calais, Maine, validated to Burlington, Vermont. By this time tomorrow, the contiguous US would all be mine! Mine, I tell you! HA HA! The bad news- Greyhound had to route me through Boston. No matter. Such is life with the hound.

Bangor was in the dead of night, Boston early in the morning- let's see, that would be Saturday. My ninth day on the road. In Burlington I wandered the streets for a few hours. I was looking for a University of Vermont T-shirt for my friend Fay back in Vero Beach. She was born in Burlington, and her parents had been teachers at UV. I'm guessing today one could easily buy one anywhere, but back then the only place was on campus, and the store was closed. I bought her a Burlington shirt, and was on the next bus to New York. I had to stop in New York City to pick up a City Edition Sunday New York Times for Michael Buinickas. It was the only way he could get the full Classified Ads section. So on early Sunday morning a fresh New York bagel went in me, and a big fat Sunday New York Times went into my bag.

So that about wraps it up. I arrived in Baltimore that afternoon, spent a couple of days with the Shetrone family, and went to a wedding with the Buinickases. Michael was excited to hear all about Oshkosh, but sadly, our heroes never arrived there. I doubt they ever will.

By Way Of Vancouver

During the last days of TR Transport, I was marking up my road atlas with the routes I had taken all around the US over the years. I ascertained that I had visited thirty two states. A plan began taking shape that would, in one long bus trip, bring my total to forty six- if I was lucky, maybe forty seven.

In March of 1978 I moved back to Vero Beach, Florida and began to work with my dad upgrading Gil Emerson Commercial Art to the new Emerson Art Service. The best part of this situation, from a Gospel point of view, was that my summers were free from pressure. During the summer of '79 I snagged my next opportunity.

There was a booklet of tickets offered by Greyhound called the Ameripass, either seven or fifteen days of unlimited travel in the US and Canada. My plan was to clean up the holes on my map: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I didn't want to waste precious days retracing states I'd already touched, so my plan was to enter Canada from Washington and reenter the US south of Winnipeg, Manitoba. I figured fifteen days would do the trick. Plus, I had the option of adding more days if the need arose.

On a Sunday evening in July I set out from Vero Beach. The bus station didn't have any Ameripasses in stock, so they sold me a ticket to Orlando, the price of which would be deducted from the pass when I bought it there. That all worked out well. At 11:00 Saturday night I was on my way with a page of my pass validated to Los Angeles. I found out that this schedule, Miami to Los Angeles, was the longest single bus route in the world. How 'bout them apples!

Monday morning I awoke in DeFuniak Springs, Florida. We had breakfast and continued on. This was when I learned that getting out of Florida across the panhandle takes a looooong time. Lunch was in Mobile, in my first new state. That little chunk Mississippi that hangs down to the Gulf went by the windows, and we were in Louisiana. This was when I learned that the causeway over Lake Ponchartrain gives me the willies- for a looooong time! Supper and buying post cards happened in New Orleans. It was getting dark as we approached Baton Rouge. I missed the Mississippi completely.

Tuesday morning we were in San Antonio, with two hours to spend eating breakfast etc. while they cleaned and refueled the bus. I, of course, went for a walk around the area of the bus station. I didn't see the Alamo. The most exciting thing: I was approached by a guy who was hanging out by a phone booth on the street. He wanted me to call some guy and tell him some line of shit, and I would get twenty bucks for my trouble. All I could see was the trouble. I told him no, repeatedly and vehemently.

Later that morning, the longest bus route in the world broke down just oustide if Midland, Texas. They called in a replacement bus from the Kerrville Bus Company, which took us all the way to El Paso. It was 9:30pm when we stopped, and a hundred five degrees in the dark. I don't know what the humidity was, but it was hot hot hot in El Paso.

The T-shirt I bought after breakfast Wednesday morning said, "Dateland Arizona: Two Miles From Water, Two Feet From Hell." Before we stopped, I had been awake for a little while watching the shadowy forms of sajuaro cacti stretching their arms to the sunrise. Very cool. I was really in the desert now. Western Arizona and eastern California went by the windows, and lunch was in San Diego. I peed next to a guy who kept leaning over the divider to try to see my business. He's really the only weirdo I've ever encountered in bus stations around North America. This is completely contrary to my mother's repeated warnings about the dangers of bus travel.

Los Angeles seemed completely uncomfortable to me. I had anticipated spending a night there to get cleaned up and sleep lying down. After walking around the blocks adjacent to the station, being offered ten or twelve different kinds of illegal substances, I returned to the ticket counter and got my next page validated to San Francisco.

I arrived there early Thursday morning and got a room in the first hotel I came to. I didn't sleep at all. I took a shower, changed clothes, put my stuff in a locker and set out to explore the city. My primary objective: to dip my toe in the Pacific. Secondary: buy a sweatshirt. Mark Twain said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." He was right. It was coooold! I never found a sweatshirt for less than sixteen bucks (a lot in 1979) and my mother's voice in my head wouldn't let me buy one. But with the help of a map and a homeless guy, I figured out where to grab a trolley to the ocean. A twenty minute ride later I got off, walked out onto the beach, which was strewn with hundreds of sand dollars, took off my shoes and let the Pacific wash my feet. I picked up three sand dollars, got back on the same trolley to the bus station, and validated my next pages to Reno, Nevada by way of Sacramento. The scenery on the ride through northeastern California was among the most beautiful I've ever seen, a long stretch of green rolling countryside.

Reno seemed like a total waste of energy. Gambling doesn't appeal to me, and that's all I saw during the four hours I was there waiting for the next bus back to Sacramento. I bought some snacks, and my change was in Eisenhower silver dollars, which I was expected to drop into the nearest slot machine- two feet away from the cash register in the convenience store. I returned to the bus station and watched people, who were obviously weighed down by way too much money, dump it all into slot machines. I don't get it.

Friday morning I was rolling through the northern end of California. Mount Shasta was my first encounter with a mountain that just rose up out of the landscape with no preliminary hills. It just jumped straight up from the surrounding city like a huge conical wall. Oregon was charming, green and hilly, and Washington was a continuation of it.

Around 8:00 Friday night I arrived at my first real destination: Seattle. My hope was to catch a ferry to Alaska. A police officer directed me to the Savoy hotel, around the corner from the station. I took a bath in the claw-foot tub, and went to bed. It was 10:00am Saturday when my phone rang. It was the front desk person asking me if I was checking out or what. I told him I'd call him right back. I called the Alaska Ferry number. The ferry had left Friday morning and would be back in time to leave Tuesday morning. Damn! I called the desk to report that I would stay one more night. I set out to explore the city. I didn't have to ask where the Space Needle was. I could see it from nearly everywhere in the city. On my way there I passed a movie theater showing The Muppet Movie, noted the times, and continued on.

The area around the Space Needle was now the Pacific Science Center. I wandered it for a while, went to the top of the needle, and hustled back to the movie theater for the 2:30 show. Did I like it? Let's see, I saw it six times in theaters, twice on HBO, bought the soundtrack album on vinyl, then cassette, then CD, and now it's on my MP3 player; I bought the VHS and then the DVD. I think it's safe to say I liked it. Anyway, I wandered down to Pike Place Market and bought a few items, then went to a pizza place where they advertised free pizza if you didn't get it in twenty minutes. Mine came in twenty three, and it was free!

Sunday morning I packed up and checked out. Now maybe it's just on Sundays when I'm departing a city I really like, but the diarrhea tradition picked up where it left off in Chicago in 1974. I was in that bus rest room most of the way to Vancouver, and wasn't any better in Canada for the first few hours. That passed. The next affliction: it was cooooold on that bus eastbound across Canada. It was so cold that when a fellow passenger went to the back of the bus to smoke, I pulled his coat over me. He came right back and rousted me out of his coat.


Monday morning, my first waking moments were a picture I'll retain for the rest of my life. We were in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, rugged mountains, huge rocks, sparse trees and ice-rimmed meandering streams abounded. I looked down into a valley where two big deer were drinking from a stream. They heard the bus and looked up at me, then continued drinking.


Breakfast was in Banff, lunch in Medicine Hat, and that afternoon I finally got my cheap sweatshirt in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Of course, it never got cold again the whole trip. Tuesday morning we were in Manitoba, having breakfast in Brandon. It was about 8:30 when we arrived in Winnipeg, and I was enchanted by the string of parklands along the highway. When I got off the bus I checked the schedule. The next bus south was at 4:30pm. I had eight hours to stow my stuff in a locker and wander the city. It was wonderful, sitting in cool grass watching red squirrels, breathing crisp clean air. Mmmmm

Back to reality. I tried to get another book of tickets from the guy at the desk in Winnepeg. He scowled and told me to get it in the States. Thank you too! I got it later that night in Fargo, North Dakota. That guy validated me to Sioux Falls South Dakota- a Reno-styled in-and-out stealth state collection. Greyhound didn't serve South Dakota or Nebraska. I had to go by way of Minneapolis. In Minneapolis Wednesday morning I rode to Worthington with a very chatty woman from whom I learned the midwestern accent. She asked me where I was going. I explained my mission. "Oh, well, you're almost home!" she said. I pulled out my Rand McNally Road Atlas. She was right.

The bus station in Sioux Falls (pronounced SUCKS! Falls) was a menagerie. Obviously the guy that operated it was a big game hunter, because there were bears, antelope, mountain sheep, deer, moose, caribou etc. stuffed and on display. I had two hours to sit there and wait for the bus to Omaha. I tried walking around, but there was nothing to see. It was worse than Reno!

The best thing about Omaha was that the next bus to Tulsa left soon after the one from Sucks Falls arrived. It was pretty late Wednesday night, and I didn't have time for anything but to validate my ticket and get on the bus. But I've been to Nebraska! That's the important thing.

There was a lot of grass in northern Oklahoma, grass and farm land. It was hot in Tulsa, too hot to walk around much. I had lunch and dozed in front of one of those quarter TV sets until the next bus to Memphis. Eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas were very pretty, especially the Ozark foothills. supper was in Fayetteville, and I could see outside most of the way to Fort Smith. Breakfast was in Memphis. I shaved in Memphis, then validated to Vero Beach, Florida. After supper in Atlanta I called my dad to tell him I would be arriving Saturday morning around 11:00. I was back on familiar territory now, and did a lot of sleeping all the way home. I was out of money after Atlanta, so it worked out well.

So there you have it- my longest bus trip ever, from Vero Beach, Florida to Vero Beach, Florida by way of Vancouver, British Columbia. Fourteen new States were added to my list, and four Provinces of Canada. I still had one day left on my Ameripass. I told Greyhound they could keep it.