I hit the 3,000-mile mark near Cleveland, which happens to be exactly 3,075 miles from Mammoth, if you go the way I went. The first 650 miles landed me in Park City, UT, where Bryce was already drunk. I showed up a bit of a mess myself. Bryce's buddy, Lee, talked me in over the phone, directing me into a snug parking space in a condo parking garage. I turned off the car for the first time in hours, since I filled up at a 7-Eleven in Provo, finally bringing my eleven-hour drive to an end (I screwed up and went through Delta). Then I was hit with an empty feeling as I scrambled to locate my wallet, which suddenly was missing. I walked around the car, and strangely, the fuel door was open, and the cap was gone. This all came crashing down on me just as Lee came out to greet me. I was doubled-over and confused, partly from road fatigue and needing to stretch, but mostly from the fear of losing my wallet, which had somehow disappeared. And why was the fuel door open? Did everything just fall apart at that 7-Eleven, on my 600th mile of driving? Had I left my fuel cap, and my wallet, behind?
Turns out, my wallet had slid under my seat, and I found it easily the next time I looked for it. My trip was still on. Bryce and I spent the next day riding Park City. He had a new butter he wanted to show me, he said. "If I can say anything about the winter we've had, it's that I've gotten really good at buttering," he said, "if that tells you anything." Indeed, it was thin in Utah this year. Bryce talked about the storms that hammered the Eastern Sierras routinely splitting right around the Wasatch, for some reason having to do with El Nino. He was not happy when he talked about this winter.
But then he dropped in off a cat track, fast, pressed himself into a tripod, nose and hands on the snow, and buttered down the entire groomer. He was even passing people. Bryce.
That night I hopped on Rte. 40 and drove East to Breckenridge, where Jefro and Carrie were staying for the weekend. On the way I had a close encounter with a deer that would have been a serious bummer to hit. Luckily, he was not into the idea either, and dodged me as I swerved to miss him, going 70 miles per hour through the moonless night of Western Colorado. The adrenaline kicked in a few seconds later, and my body was flooded with some kind of emergency response, triggered by the close call. My heart rate shot up and my breathing became faster, and I pondered the lack of a buddy sitting shotgun, how s/he would have reacted, and how close I really was to that deer.
I made it safely to Breck, and rode Keystone the next day with Jefro, Carrie, and her distant cousin from Spain, Fernando. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from our couple of days of hanging out. Fernando and I kicked it in town for a couple hours while Jefro and Carrie listened to sales pitches for condos. Cool guy. Living in Boulder, learning how to speak English fluently. We shot some pool, talked about life, looked at some pics of Kyrgyzstan, I helped him out with his English, and reminded him to tip a buck for every beer, in America. He asked at one point if he looks American. I looked at him, his style, and thought back to how he looked on skis. Again, I wish I had pictures. Anyway, I told him he needs to learn the language better to look more American, and laughed to myself at how easy it is to spot a Euro dude in a ski town.
It's great catching up with Jefro and Carrie, because I have known them for so long, and they are such warm, intelligent people, who speak rapid-fire Spanish weaved into a conversation about current events. Fernando tried to follow along with our discussions, and it made me wonder how it will feel to try to follow a conversation in Kyrgyz. Find out soon enough. Anyway, we all went to a play, and then watched Gazers, which Carrie was really impressed by, and then I crashed. Hard.
The next morning the four of us went out for brunch in Denver, and then stopped in at a coffee shop no one had ever been to, where the owner happened to be from Peru. More Spanish. Jefro's is really getting good. Hanging out with those guys is always somewhat of an international experience, which is exactly what I need right now.
Jefro took Carrie to the airport, to fly back to Pittsburgh, where she's finishing up her job at Carnegie Mellon, and I went to REI to stock up on some essentials. I found some brown Lowa Gore-tex shoes, which are kind of like low top hiking boots, and I think will be appropriate for both muddy streets and classrooms. I also replaced my Thermarest with a lighter, newer one, and bought a Frisbee on my way out of the store.
That night, I partied with Dragotta, who I hadn't seen in ten years. In fact, I had spent the eve of the millennium with Mark, along with Sean, Chrissa, Todd, McGill, Matt Bent, Bradley, and others; the night of the Y2K scare, when someone at the house in South Oakland shut the power off, right at midnight. Now, over ten years later, Mark looked good, and was up to the same stuff. He's starting a magazine called the Umbrella Factory, and has a professional-looking business card. In his down time, hangs out with the chicks he works with at his restaurant. He wondered if I was going to visit Sean and Chrissa in Milwaukee.
I decided two days later, from the road, that I would. It's easy to be spontaneous when you're solo.
A few years ago, in 2004, when I moved back to Mammoth from Boulder, I had just missed Tom Miaskiewizc, who I had started PIST with back in the late nineties at Pitt. He moved to Boulder from Boston in early 2005, and earned his Masters, and then his Ph.D. in marketing. I called him up and arranged to have dinner at his place in Boulder, with his new fiance, Carrie, who I have known since my Pitt days, and a friend of her's who she knows from Americorps in Boston. Wow, my friends are really cool people. Anyway, I brought my Kyrgyz Republic book inside for them, as I have a few times on this trip, and told them about "guesting," and eating sheep eyeballs. "You're going to need to practice," Tom said, and broke out some of his own vodka. He admitted that his vodkas were "girlie," but drinking vodka with a friend from Poland sounded like good training to me. Tom and Carrie are moving to Portugal soon, where Tom will be working as a professor. I may see them again soon, since we'll be on the same side of the Atlantic.
The next day, I had to drive from Denver to South Bend, where I was going to spend St. Patty's Day. Seemed fitting to go to the home of the Fighting Irish! It was a long, flat drive across the Bible Belt, and I was just coming to terms with the fact that my speakers were out on the right side of the car, rendering half the sounds in my music inaudible. I was missing good guitar riffs. Unacceptable. I decided to drive with my iPod plugged into my ears, and tuned into the rhythm of the highway.
The cruise control set on 80, the long stretches of road in between turns are hypnotic. I think about conserving gas. The trucks--they're nice to draft, but after a while it feels claustrophobic to be behind one. I slingshot past it and let the openness of the mid-West surround me.
As I entered Nebraska, I snapped a picture of the sign to send to Wolf and Pete. Wolf got back to me: she was also in Nebraska! She'd be in Lincoln in a few hours. I looked at the map. Fittingly, I would also be in Lincoln in a few hours. What a coincidence! So, after a funny game of cat and mouse through Lincoln, I met Wolf at her dad's house on the South end of town. We exchanged a couple laughs, hugged, and I was out of there, before I wore out my welcome with her dad. What a cool thing, to run into a California friend, a house mate, in Nebraska on a 3,400-mile drive across the country. That we were able to meet at that time and space was one of the fortuitous encounters of travel, which I have always embraced as good kharma.
The next day, I called Sean, and got directions to Milwaukee. Conveniently, he had the night off, and the next day, which was his 35th birthday. So I went out with Sean and Chrissa, and two of their friends, for St. Patrick's Day, another lucky chance to cash in on. Sean and Chrissa are doing well. They own their own house, which has a huge yard backed up to a conservancy, where their two dogs and two cats can stretch their legs. Sean is a GM at a Mitchell's Fish Market, and works like 65 hours a week, and Chrissa is a server at a steak house, and makes just as much as Sean. Now they are talking about kids, and whether to settle down in Milwaukee, or somewhere back East, closer to family.
We went to dinner at an international restaurant where we all shared our entrees, and then went to a brand new, quiet Irish pub called Dubliner's. We caught up on mutual friends who I have completely lost touch with, and reminisced about Phish shows and the Hot Coal Game. Then, we went back to their house for more Jameson and Guinness.
I've been listening to my Kyrgyz mp3s on the drive, but I've been living by the philosophy that the best way to prepare for this move is to reconnect with old friends, and spend time with my family. Soon I will look inward, get organized, and cram to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, probably over a couple Yuenglings.
On day seven, I reached Pennsylvania. The view of the Pittsburgh skyline along the 279 S was not as dramatic as I remembered. I wondered if there was a better place to view it from. Couldn't remember. I headed straight for familiar turf--Oakland--and found a room on the seventh floor of the Quality Inn, along the Boulevard of the Allies, with a view of the Cathedral. I was on the home stretch.
