I was 3, and lived in Arizona. For some reason, fruit growing on trees appealed to me that day, as I walked back from a friend’s house (what a different world we lived in back then, a three year old able to walk down the sidewalk unescorted, knowing the neighbors will probably take care of him.) I got to right about across the street from my house, and decided I didn’t want to go in yet. I was too young to realize that a few more minutes in the sun and I’d be red as a plumb. Adventure waits for no child’s skin.
The neighbor across the street had a lime tree. I saw what I wanted, and started up the tree to get it. I don’t know why, I knew they didn’t taste good. I guess I just liked the texture. I got up pretty high, and went for the one that had taken my heart. As per usual, I fell off the tree going for the lime. I can’t recall if I actually got it or not. The neighbor had apparently seen me and my friends attempting to pilfer his hard earned limes earlier that month. If you have ever seen a citrus tree attempting to grow in hard ground, you’ve seen the wandering roots system. Often times the roots will come up off the ground and look like an inchworm static in its woodiness. The neighbor had taken advantage of this and cut the roots off at an angle wherever they did this. In an account from my father, he said that they looked an awful lot like sharpened pungie sticks used in traps in Vietnam. My face fell directly on one. From what I can recall of the incident, the upright stick pierced my cheek, and went into my mouth, and out past my lips. It may have been that it just pierced a little into my face as I fell past. I do recall having dirty wood in my mouth.
I don’t remember how I got off of the damn thing, but after I did, I noticed I was bleeding all over my clothes. Mom would be mad. I walked woozily across the street and knocked on the screen door. Didn’t wanna get this red stuff all over the carpet. I don’t know what my Mom must have thought when she came to the door, it was one of those screen doors with a metal part in the middle. All she would have seen was my body, covered in blood, as my head was being blocked by the metal. Mom rushed to me and Steph came around the corner. She screamed and started crying when she looked at me. That startled me. I started crying then.
In some kind of godsend, there was a plastic surgery conference in town that week, gathering some of the best plastic surgeons from around the country right near our town. My Pops got one of the better ones to stitch my face up. Apparently I was screaming my head off, thinking I looked like some kind of freak.
My Dad threatened the man across the street with his life. The roots got cut down.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
We're Sunk. Summer 2007
Written in August 2007
Sundays always start in good spirits.
I had been invited out on a "couples only" boating excursion by my good friend Byron, and the "couples only" part is in quotes because neither he nor I cared one way or the other if we had dates, we just want to be out on the water.
Jason, a good friend to both Byron and I since high school, has married and had a kid. The family man incarnate. In fact, he and his wife Yvonne are the reason this day was dubbed "Blahblahcouplesonlyblahblahblah."
Jason is quite a stubborn and good-hearted fellow. He (just by my assumption) feels kind of subverted as the man of the family because Yvonne makes all the money. This leads to him wanting to be manly and learn to drive the ski boat while were out there. No harm, Byron and I are both well decorated boating masters, and teaching is something that comes natural to us. (especially when we're together)
I promptly show up to Byron's house at the appointed time of "anywhere around 11 to 1" and Byron and Andrew (the roommate of Byron) are still at church. I make myself comfortable on the front porch with my newly borrowed Dark Elf Trilogy book. Jason and Yvonne show up about 15 minutes later, with Yvonne's friend Lauren. (meant to be Byron's "date") I introduce myself to Yvonne and Lauren, and re-acquaint myself with Jason as I haven't seen him in over 3 years. I then proceed to climb up the back yard tree, deftly jump onto the house roof and sidle over to the window that is never locked on the second story. Letting them in, we prepare the boat for the day. Loading every option I could think of into the boat seemed the right thing to do at the time, since Byron and I like to change things up on the lake. I loaded two wakeboards, two slalom skis (for Byron and I's inevitable doubles session) a lame ski for the two skiers, a knee board, and my newly acquired trick skis, which I've never tried as was very anxious to see what I could do with them.
With the food and drinks on the boat, all that was left was to wait for the two people who actually live at the house to show.
Byron arrived with his brother's truck and we hook on the trailer. Andrew is going to wait for his date and will call us to come pick him up at the dock. We're on the road to the put-in when I call Sheri, my date to the lake that day. She'll be off of work around 3-4, so she'll call me when she's ready.
As Byron sees me put my phone down he realizes that he's left his own phone and wallet at home. Not really a big deal to him so we continue on.
The boat ramp is PACKED by the time we arrive. More people than I've ever seen at this particular ramp, but thats to be expected, only a week previous did it re-open, and this is Sunday after all.
After a short wait we get the people in the boat and the boat in the water. Byron likes it when I back the trailer in, so thats my role in all of this. Once the boat is in the water I get the pleasurable task of parking about 1/2 mile away and trotting back to the dock in sandals.
A very normal very fun day begins to unfold as I watch the group dynamic, of which I must poll every time I go out on the boat with new people because, well, I like watching people I guess.
Lauren sticks out in because of one simple oddity. She brought a magazine to the lake. How boring does she think we are? When she pulled it out Byron and I met glances and he smiled as I let my disappointment be known with a hand and the forehead and a sullen shake of the head. She even leafs through it for about an hour as we attempt to teach everyone to two ski. Yvonne goes first and all while we are fitting her in the skis and telling her what to do out in the water, I can see fear building in her eyes. She certainly married the right guy. The truck ride up was mostly filled with Jason asking how bad it hurts when you fall, and what the chances of injury are.
The moment Yvonne gets in the water and holds the ski rope in her hands, she calls out "I don't wanna do this!" Byron and I didn't just invest 30 minutes of lake time teaching her to ski for nothing. We cat-call back the usual encouraging remarks and line her up to ski. Seeing she has no choice, she concedes to try it once. After 3 failed attempts to get up, she calls out that this is her last try (I like to see that 'never give up' attitude.) the fourth try she lets the ski's split (again) and does something remarkable. She holds onto the rope. I let out a long belly laugh and watch as she finally lets go, about 100 feet from where the skis are. I told her to let go if something goes wrong.
She says that she wants to see someone get up on two skis, just to observe how its done, and I take pleasure in giving that show. Since two skiing is kind of boring unless I'm trying something stupid like jumping a tube being pulled by the boat, I put all my weight on the good slalom ski and kick off the learner, tucking my foot in the back boot. I think of how I lost the other learner ski and shrug. I come back in after a few cuts, wanting to give others a try at it first. We managed to find the ski this time, too.
Next up is Jason, more of the same tutelage, more Lauren reading her magazine, which by this time is wet and soggy from us running over our own wake several times. (an intentional move by Byron) Jason, who's foot cant be any larger than my own, has the hardest time in the world getting into the boot of my favorite slalom ski (admittedly difficult, the boot is meant for competition slalom skiing, making getting into it a low priority and control a high, but with a little sunscreen lube I can get into it in about 10 seconds.) We lube the boot up real good and both me and Byron use all of our strength forcing his foot in there. That alone took about 10 minutes. The other ski is just the lame learner ski so Jason slipped right in and we shoved him off the boat. Jason nearly got up the first time he tried, and on his 3rd though 7th try he actually did get up, but ignored us when we told him to keep his arms out straight in front of him. (when you pull in on the rope you loose a lot of your control and often topple over backwards, which he did) Finally he made it up and was going quite well until we crossed the wake of another boat and threw him off.
After his slight victory, Jason moves on to being fascinated with learning to drive the boat, but refuses to actually pay any attention to what Byron and I are telling him (unbeknownst to us). Smooth control of the throttle, always go right of a boat thats heading for you, never get within 100 feet of another watercraft, etc. (the last two quite applicable since its hard to see even a drop of water left in the lake that doesn't have a boat on it. While we are teaching Jason (mostly for selfish reasons, as Byron and I needed a driver for when we both slalom together) Andrew, who couldn't call Byron since his phone was at the house, showed up next to us on a random person's boat with his date, Brenda. They thank their taxi drivers and wish them a safe day.
Brenda is a huge ball of flaming energy. Things like "OOOO I LOVE that" and "wow! I really love you girls, you're SO awesome!" came out of her mouth probably every 4 to 7 seconds.
We decide that Andrew should learn to two ski, since thats the flavor of the day, and he's already really good at knee boarding, so this should be a cake walk. But then Byron lets Jason take the helm. We run through the rule list of do's and dont's and what to do when a skier is behind you, oblivious to the fact that Jason doesn't hear a word through his nods and "uh huhs" Andrew, somehow, to his credit gets up on his first try even though Jason really didn't hammer the throttle down like we told him to, and when we told him that 40 is really too fast for a skier, he immediately slowed to 15. Poor Andrew, who somehow manages to keep balance decides to go outside of the wake. Meanwhile Byron and I are both in Jason's ear about smooth throttle control. I notice that Jason seems to want to aim directly for a large peninsula, and right in his path is the branches of a tree sticking out of the water. Incredulous I tell Jason to steer left and avoid it. Not listening, he keeps right on trucking. Flustered at this time I grab at the wheel and yell at him to turn left, the tree approaching. A small side note, not only was the water too shallow where he was aiming, but thinking of the number one priority, the skier's safety, a tree would really hurt to fall on. Byron notices our impending doom and joins the chorus of me screaming at Jason to turn. Jason finally gets the message and hits left. Hard. This slows the boat enough to sink Andrew finally. We clear the peninsula, thank the Lord. Byron and I, with full loads in our shorts, fill them even more when Jason puts the skier on the wrong side of the boat. Something that should be fresh in Jason's mind is "Always put the skier on the driver side of the boat, so you can see them better, and keep from running them over." No one said this was a perfect world. Jason manages to not kill Andrew and he turns in the skis for his knee board. Byron takes the helm back aggressively. Andrew has some fun showing off his knee boarding skills and takes a decently nasty fall after attempting a jump. With that, he turns in.
By this time I am getting quite hungry, and I remember to check my phone. A few perturbed messages from Sheri waiting around for us in Lewisville (since she doesn't know where the dock is) prompt me to call her. I give her directions to the bridge that we've been skiing next to all day and tell her to "jump off the bridge" Something Lacey and I did when we met up with Byron on the lake last time we were out. We eat a little, go under the bridge and tie off in the middle. Byron and I clamber up the tower on the boat and climb onto the bridge, ready to jump. Unfortunately we cant see where Sheri should be walking by, and she ends up walking the length of the bridge looking for us. A few jumps off the bridge later, we phone her and she walks down the rocky slope on the side of the bridge to hop in from there. I swim her over to the boat and I introduce her to the crowd.
I decide to make an executive decision and have Sheri two ski, since she has once in her life already. After a few failed attempts (she was really close to getting up, too) she decides to come in to allow some other folks to give it a go. Byron and I get our turn on the slaloms.
Stupidly, we give the reigns back to Jason and tell him what to do. The first try, he didn't hammer down the throttle and leave it, like we told him to. (for those who don't know, getting up on a single ski is pretty hard, and even harder without an experienced driver) I veered off to one angle too badly to recover, and Byron got up, so instead of keeping Byron on the line and bringing him to where I am so we can both give it another go, he tows Byron for a while and stops. Ah, well whatever. So he comes over to me and I tell him to let me get the rope and tow me over at idle to Byron. He tows me alright, but not at idle. I end up swallowing a gallon of water and let go before were all the way there. He goes and gets Byron and finally gets what "idle" means and we meet up again. We both get up this time and find that our ropes are too similar in length to cross paths, and instead of going straight, Jason veers around the lake like its Formula One. We get to the other side of the lake and I intentionally let myself fall victim to a wave, so we can tell him to go straight, and to have someone take a rope in enough for us to criss cross (will make you shout, shout). Jason explains that he'll do a U turn when we are both up and head down the coast line. We tell him to just go straight and when he runs out of room, then U turn and go back. Right off the line, I see the boat in a hard turn. I think I should reiterate that a slalom ski is hard to get out of the water, even in good conditions. I open my eyes after about 7 seconds of agonizingly slow dragging through the water to find myself encapsulated in a perfect bubble of water. It was actually pretty cool. In between my shouts for Jason to die I could hear Byron yelling for me to stay with it, funny how we could both be pulled like that and carry on a near-conversation. So finally as Jason straightens the boat out we get some speed and Byron and I exchange surprised glances and start laughing maniacally. We have enough fun criss-crossing each other and give up.
Heres where the day really got better.
We come back to the boat and blow up the tube, now that the ladies would like another go. First out after some deliberation is Jason's wife Yvonne, and guess who wants another crack at driving. Yea. Yvonne gets pulled at a pleasant speed for a while, just what you would expect from a caring husband right? Well he ramped up the speed to near full throttle. As to be expected on such a busy day on the lake, there is another boat, heading right for us. I tell Jason, "remember, in this situation you always ALWAYS go right. Just like on a road with traffic." The boat is far off enough for me to remain calm and explain as Jason begins to turn left, "Right, Jason, right." and grab at the wheel. He fends my arm off. The boat coming ominously closer, and fearing for our tuber, I begin to fret. "Right Jason! Right!" He begins to understand that its english that is his language of choice and makes a slight movement right, but thats only enough to get us back on course to crash into the oncoming boat. "RIGHT JASON!" as I paw uselessly at the wheel. He gets it, he's in trouble. Hard right it is, captain. He veers right hard enough to send his wife flying off the tube. The other boat is at this point confused enough to start slowing. Byron notices that Yvonne has fallen off the tube and is now directly in the path of the oncoming boat and tells Jason to go back for her. Instead of doing the normal, sane thing to do, which in this case would be turn the boat around and go over to our lost tuber, Jason FREAKS out and slams the boat in reverse. This is from a speed of over 35 miles per hour, by no means slow on the water. Well as expected Byron and I start screaming at him to put it in neutral, and as we begin to smell the poor boat frying something and begin to eat the rope that the tube is attached to, our voices get even more shrill. All the while, the oncoming boat has stopped to see this spectacle, and Jason gets up from the driver seat to yell at the oncoming boat (no longer oncoming) to stop. Byron and I cant reach the throttle soon enough as the tube nears the back of the boat. Jason finally hears our girlish yelping and puts in in neutral. Jason now wants to put in forward gear to go get his wife, at which time Byron gets Jason out of the driver's chair and turns off the injured boat. Jason goes to argue "what about her? I have to go see if she's ok!" Byron looks sternly at Jason and says "you've got two legs! GO SWIM!" Jason grabs a life jacket to swim to his perfectly safe wife.
Miraculously, when we go to pull the rope out of the prop, the rope had somehow navigated under the steering fin and over the prop, and no harm came to it. We get in and start the boat up. We get underway only to feel that something is terribly wrong. Any speed on the prop and it just bogs down the motor. Feeling really bad for Byron I make the obvious call, "lets just limp it back to the docks and call it a day." Agreeing a somber Byron sets the boat at a little over idle and makes his way back to the docks.
We all settle in for the long but calm drive back. Andrew, Sheri and I take the front and have a good conversation. Byron's spirits are getting higher and is able to laugh about it. A yacht passes from quite a ways away and we see the waves coming. The unexpected happens.
Water from the first wave comes into the boat, more that I had seen before, but nothing the boat couldn't handle, but the second wave combined with our slow forward momentum drives the nose of the boat down. We were sinking! I tell Byron "give it some speed!" knowing that the buoyancy of the boat will win out, but we need to use the shape of the boat to shed some of this water. He does as instructed and the motor bogs. Crap, didn't think of that. Its funny, I was calm enough to look at Byron's face to see his reaction to all this and it was priceless, a panicked look combined with looking back and forth. He shouts all of the sudden "get out of the boat!" knowing that our weight in the front wasn't helping anything, I jump ship. The rest of the crew follows suit a few seconds later when they realize he was serious. The boat gets very low on the water as we see its momentum carry it away from us. The boat was seriously 6 inches from being completely submerged, aside from the glass and the tower. Byron manages to get over to the cooler and dumps its contents into the lake. He starts paling the water out as fast as he can. I begin to swim to catch up with the boat so I can help. Finally I arrive at the boat and begin scooping water with a Pringles can that I dumped out. Byron after about 15 minutes of paling that huge cooler, with Andrew's help, begins to see progress. The bilge is on, but thats a pretty small pump. About 5 boats stop to watch us desperately trying to get the water out of the boat. I take a shift on the cooler and we pail for about 25 more minutes and finally see (semi) dry carpet. Crisis averted.
Opening the engine hatch, we notice that its still flooded down there, so we cant start the motor with it like that. we decide to let the bilge do the rest and start swimming the boat back. The girls flag down a boat (even after we tell them not to) to tow us. I explain I didn't like the idea of towing the boat because we still have alot of water inside and waves could come back over the bow and do the same thing again. After some deliberation, we decide to go for it and let them tow us back to the dock. As a precaution, I sat everyone on the back of the boat.
Getting the boat on the trailer was easy enough, I skipped the line since we were already taking a slot on the ramp. I make sure that Jason has pulled in the boat enough with the hand crank and get back in the truck. Thats when a fat man on a Kawasaki bike pulls up (obviously drunk) and starts telling us what-for. I ignore him for a while, there is a more pressing need at hand. I pull the boat out and get up to the asphalt and the tires begin to spin. The fat man remarks loudly, enough to get my attention, that "AH TOWYOOTA TUUNDRAA WOULLLNT DOO THAYAT!!!" I begin ignoring him again. He loudly claims as I put the truck back down on the concrete grippy surface that the limited slip would engage on a toyota tundra and we wouldn't have this problem. I begin to seethe. I've had a long day. I get a good run up to the asphalt and the wheels spin again. The boat still has a ton of water in it, making it way heavier than normal. "TOYOTA TUND...." starts the fat one. "SHUT UP!" I yell as I lay some rubber down, knowing that the heat will eventually win out over the slick wet surface. Some white smoke later, we've gotten the boat off the ramp.
Later that night Byron and I were able to joke about the whole thing. We tried starting the boat but there was water in the cylinders. I luckily had my tools with me and pulled the spark plugs out. While we were turning the starter over I did notice a little water come out. Put them back in, and she was running like a champ again.
Upon inspection, Jason had actually bent the prop. That hard reverse from 35 was such a huge shock to the drive train that something had to bend or break.
A microwaved lasagna later and some water, Byron and I knew that we'd never forget this day.
And I never got to try my new trick skis. Blast.
Sundays always start in good spirits.
I had been invited out on a "couples only" boating excursion by my good friend Byron, and the "couples only" part is in quotes because neither he nor I cared one way or the other if we had dates, we just want to be out on the water.
Jason, a good friend to both Byron and I since high school, has married and had a kid. The family man incarnate. In fact, he and his wife Yvonne are the reason this day was dubbed "Blahblahcouplesonlyblahblahblah."
Jason is quite a stubborn and good-hearted fellow. He (just by my assumption) feels kind of subverted as the man of the family because Yvonne makes all the money. This leads to him wanting to be manly and learn to drive the ski boat while were out there. No harm, Byron and I are both well decorated boating masters, and teaching is something that comes natural to us. (especially when we're together)
I promptly show up to Byron's house at the appointed time of "anywhere around 11 to 1" and Byron and Andrew (the roommate of Byron) are still at church. I make myself comfortable on the front porch with my newly borrowed Dark Elf Trilogy book. Jason and Yvonne show up about 15 minutes later, with Yvonne's friend Lauren. (meant to be Byron's "date") I introduce myself to Yvonne and Lauren, and re-acquaint myself with Jason as I haven't seen him in over 3 years. I then proceed to climb up the back yard tree, deftly jump onto the house roof and sidle over to the window that is never locked on the second story. Letting them in, we prepare the boat for the day. Loading every option I could think of into the boat seemed the right thing to do at the time, since Byron and I like to change things up on the lake. I loaded two wakeboards, two slalom skis (for Byron and I's inevitable doubles session) a lame ski for the two skiers, a knee board, and my newly acquired trick skis, which I've never tried as was very anxious to see what I could do with them.
With the food and drinks on the boat, all that was left was to wait for the two people who actually live at the house to show.
Byron arrived with his brother's truck and we hook on the trailer. Andrew is going to wait for his date and will call us to come pick him up at the dock. We're on the road to the put-in when I call Sheri, my date to the lake that day. She'll be off of work around 3-4, so she'll call me when she's ready.
As Byron sees me put my phone down he realizes that he's left his own phone and wallet at home. Not really a big deal to him so we continue on.
The boat ramp is PACKED by the time we arrive. More people than I've ever seen at this particular ramp, but thats to be expected, only a week previous did it re-open, and this is Sunday after all.
After a short wait we get the people in the boat and the boat in the water. Byron likes it when I back the trailer in, so thats my role in all of this. Once the boat is in the water I get the pleasurable task of parking about 1/2 mile away and trotting back to the dock in sandals.
A very normal very fun day begins to unfold as I watch the group dynamic, of which I must poll every time I go out on the boat with new people because, well, I like watching people I guess.
Lauren sticks out in because of one simple oddity. She brought a magazine to the lake. How boring does she think we are? When she pulled it out Byron and I met glances and he smiled as I let my disappointment be known with a hand and the forehead and a sullen shake of the head. She even leafs through it for about an hour as we attempt to teach everyone to two ski. Yvonne goes first and all while we are fitting her in the skis and telling her what to do out in the water, I can see fear building in her eyes. She certainly married the right guy. The truck ride up was mostly filled with Jason asking how bad it hurts when you fall, and what the chances of injury are.
The moment Yvonne gets in the water and holds the ski rope in her hands, she calls out "I don't wanna do this!" Byron and I didn't just invest 30 minutes of lake time teaching her to ski for nothing. We cat-call back the usual encouraging remarks and line her up to ski. Seeing she has no choice, she concedes to try it once. After 3 failed attempts to get up, she calls out that this is her last try (I like to see that 'never give up' attitude.) the fourth try she lets the ski's split (again) and does something remarkable. She holds onto the rope. I let out a long belly laugh and watch as she finally lets go, about 100 feet from where the skis are. I told her to let go if something goes wrong.
She says that she wants to see someone get up on two skis, just to observe how its done, and I take pleasure in giving that show. Since two skiing is kind of boring unless I'm trying something stupid like jumping a tube being pulled by the boat, I put all my weight on the good slalom ski and kick off the learner, tucking my foot in the back boot. I think of how I lost the other learner ski and shrug. I come back in after a few cuts, wanting to give others a try at it first. We managed to find the ski this time, too.
Next up is Jason, more of the same tutelage, more Lauren reading her magazine, which by this time is wet and soggy from us running over our own wake several times. (an intentional move by Byron) Jason, who's foot cant be any larger than my own, has the hardest time in the world getting into the boot of my favorite slalom ski (admittedly difficult, the boot is meant for competition slalom skiing, making getting into it a low priority and control a high, but with a little sunscreen lube I can get into it in about 10 seconds.) We lube the boot up real good and both me and Byron use all of our strength forcing his foot in there. That alone took about 10 minutes. The other ski is just the lame learner ski so Jason slipped right in and we shoved him off the boat. Jason nearly got up the first time he tried, and on his 3rd though 7th try he actually did get up, but ignored us when we told him to keep his arms out straight in front of him. (when you pull in on the rope you loose a lot of your control and often topple over backwards, which he did) Finally he made it up and was going quite well until we crossed the wake of another boat and threw him off.
After his slight victory, Jason moves on to being fascinated with learning to drive the boat, but refuses to actually pay any attention to what Byron and I are telling him (unbeknownst to us). Smooth control of the throttle, always go right of a boat thats heading for you, never get within 100 feet of another watercraft, etc. (the last two quite applicable since its hard to see even a drop of water left in the lake that doesn't have a boat on it. While we are teaching Jason (mostly for selfish reasons, as Byron and I needed a driver for when we both slalom together) Andrew, who couldn't call Byron since his phone was at the house, showed up next to us on a random person's boat with his date, Brenda. They thank their taxi drivers and wish them a safe day.
Brenda is a huge ball of flaming energy. Things like "OOOO I LOVE that" and "wow! I really love you girls, you're SO awesome!" came out of her mouth probably every 4 to 7 seconds.
We decide that Andrew should learn to two ski, since thats the flavor of the day, and he's already really good at knee boarding, so this should be a cake walk. But then Byron lets Jason take the helm. We run through the rule list of do's and dont's and what to do when a skier is behind you, oblivious to the fact that Jason doesn't hear a word through his nods and "uh huhs" Andrew, somehow, to his credit gets up on his first try even though Jason really didn't hammer the throttle down like we told him to, and when we told him that 40 is really too fast for a skier, he immediately slowed to 15. Poor Andrew, who somehow manages to keep balance decides to go outside of the wake. Meanwhile Byron and I are both in Jason's ear about smooth throttle control. I notice that Jason seems to want to aim directly for a large peninsula, and right in his path is the branches of a tree sticking out of the water. Incredulous I tell Jason to steer left and avoid it. Not listening, he keeps right on trucking. Flustered at this time I grab at the wheel and yell at him to turn left, the tree approaching. A small side note, not only was the water too shallow where he was aiming, but thinking of the number one priority, the skier's safety, a tree would really hurt to fall on. Byron notices our impending doom and joins the chorus of me screaming at Jason to turn. Jason finally gets the message and hits left. Hard. This slows the boat enough to sink Andrew finally. We clear the peninsula, thank the Lord. Byron and I, with full loads in our shorts, fill them even more when Jason puts the skier on the wrong side of the boat. Something that should be fresh in Jason's mind is "Always put the skier on the driver side of the boat, so you can see them better, and keep from running them over." No one said this was a perfect world. Jason manages to not kill Andrew and he turns in the skis for his knee board. Byron takes the helm back aggressively. Andrew has some fun showing off his knee boarding skills and takes a decently nasty fall after attempting a jump. With that, he turns in.
By this time I am getting quite hungry, and I remember to check my phone. A few perturbed messages from Sheri waiting around for us in Lewisville (since she doesn't know where the dock is) prompt me to call her. I give her directions to the bridge that we've been skiing next to all day and tell her to "jump off the bridge" Something Lacey and I did when we met up with Byron on the lake last time we were out. We eat a little, go under the bridge and tie off in the middle. Byron and I clamber up the tower on the boat and climb onto the bridge, ready to jump. Unfortunately we cant see where Sheri should be walking by, and she ends up walking the length of the bridge looking for us. A few jumps off the bridge later, we phone her and she walks down the rocky slope on the side of the bridge to hop in from there. I swim her over to the boat and I introduce her to the crowd.
I decide to make an executive decision and have Sheri two ski, since she has once in her life already. After a few failed attempts (she was really close to getting up, too) she decides to come in to allow some other folks to give it a go. Byron and I get our turn on the slaloms.
Stupidly, we give the reigns back to Jason and tell him what to do. The first try, he didn't hammer down the throttle and leave it, like we told him to. (for those who don't know, getting up on a single ski is pretty hard, and even harder without an experienced driver) I veered off to one angle too badly to recover, and Byron got up, so instead of keeping Byron on the line and bringing him to where I am so we can both give it another go, he tows Byron for a while and stops. Ah, well whatever. So he comes over to me and I tell him to let me get the rope and tow me over at idle to Byron. He tows me alright, but not at idle. I end up swallowing a gallon of water and let go before were all the way there. He goes and gets Byron and finally gets what "idle" means and we meet up again. We both get up this time and find that our ropes are too similar in length to cross paths, and instead of going straight, Jason veers around the lake like its Formula One. We get to the other side of the lake and I intentionally let myself fall victim to a wave, so we can tell him to go straight, and to have someone take a rope in enough for us to criss cross (will make you shout, shout). Jason explains that he'll do a U turn when we are both up and head down the coast line. We tell him to just go straight and when he runs out of room, then U turn and go back. Right off the line, I see the boat in a hard turn. I think I should reiterate that a slalom ski is hard to get out of the water, even in good conditions. I open my eyes after about 7 seconds of agonizingly slow dragging through the water to find myself encapsulated in a perfect bubble of water. It was actually pretty cool. In between my shouts for Jason to die I could hear Byron yelling for me to stay with it, funny how we could both be pulled like that and carry on a near-conversation. So finally as Jason straightens the boat out we get some speed and Byron and I exchange surprised glances and start laughing maniacally. We have enough fun criss-crossing each other and give up.
Heres where the day really got better.
We come back to the boat and blow up the tube, now that the ladies would like another go. First out after some deliberation is Jason's wife Yvonne, and guess who wants another crack at driving. Yea. Yvonne gets pulled at a pleasant speed for a while, just what you would expect from a caring husband right? Well he ramped up the speed to near full throttle. As to be expected on such a busy day on the lake, there is another boat, heading right for us. I tell Jason, "remember, in this situation you always ALWAYS go right. Just like on a road with traffic." The boat is far off enough for me to remain calm and explain as Jason begins to turn left, "Right, Jason, right." and grab at the wheel. He fends my arm off. The boat coming ominously closer, and fearing for our tuber, I begin to fret. "Right Jason! Right!" He begins to understand that its english that is his language of choice and makes a slight movement right, but thats only enough to get us back on course to crash into the oncoming boat. "RIGHT JASON!" as I paw uselessly at the wheel. He gets it, he's in trouble. Hard right it is, captain. He veers right hard enough to send his wife flying off the tube. The other boat is at this point confused enough to start slowing. Byron notices that Yvonne has fallen off the tube and is now directly in the path of the oncoming boat and tells Jason to go back for her. Instead of doing the normal, sane thing to do, which in this case would be turn the boat around and go over to our lost tuber, Jason FREAKS out and slams the boat in reverse. This is from a speed of over 35 miles per hour, by no means slow on the water. Well as expected Byron and I start screaming at him to put it in neutral, and as we begin to smell the poor boat frying something and begin to eat the rope that the tube is attached to, our voices get even more shrill. All the while, the oncoming boat has stopped to see this spectacle, and Jason gets up from the driver seat to yell at the oncoming boat (no longer oncoming) to stop. Byron and I cant reach the throttle soon enough as the tube nears the back of the boat. Jason finally hears our girlish yelping and puts in in neutral. Jason now wants to put in forward gear to go get his wife, at which time Byron gets Jason out of the driver's chair and turns off the injured boat. Jason goes to argue "what about her? I have to go see if she's ok!" Byron looks sternly at Jason and says "you've got two legs! GO SWIM!" Jason grabs a life jacket to swim to his perfectly safe wife.
Miraculously, when we go to pull the rope out of the prop, the rope had somehow navigated under the steering fin and over the prop, and no harm came to it. We get in and start the boat up. We get underway only to feel that something is terribly wrong. Any speed on the prop and it just bogs down the motor. Feeling really bad for Byron I make the obvious call, "lets just limp it back to the docks and call it a day." Agreeing a somber Byron sets the boat at a little over idle and makes his way back to the docks.
We all settle in for the long but calm drive back. Andrew, Sheri and I take the front and have a good conversation. Byron's spirits are getting higher and is able to laugh about it. A yacht passes from quite a ways away and we see the waves coming. The unexpected happens.
Water from the first wave comes into the boat, more that I had seen before, but nothing the boat couldn't handle, but the second wave combined with our slow forward momentum drives the nose of the boat down. We were sinking! I tell Byron "give it some speed!" knowing that the buoyancy of the boat will win out, but we need to use the shape of the boat to shed some of this water. He does as instructed and the motor bogs. Crap, didn't think of that. Its funny, I was calm enough to look at Byron's face to see his reaction to all this and it was priceless, a panicked look combined with looking back and forth. He shouts all of the sudden "get out of the boat!" knowing that our weight in the front wasn't helping anything, I jump ship. The rest of the crew follows suit a few seconds later when they realize he was serious. The boat gets very low on the water as we see its momentum carry it away from us. The boat was seriously 6 inches from being completely submerged, aside from the glass and the tower. Byron manages to get over to the cooler and dumps its contents into the lake. He starts paling the water out as fast as he can. I begin to swim to catch up with the boat so I can help. Finally I arrive at the boat and begin scooping water with a Pringles can that I dumped out. Byron after about 15 minutes of paling that huge cooler, with Andrew's help, begins to see progress. The bilge is on, but thats a pretty small pump. About 5 boats stop to watch us desperately trying to get the water out of the boat. I take a shift on the cooler and we pail for about 25 more minutes and finally see (semi) dry carpet. Crisis averted.
Opening the engine hatch, we notice that its still flooded down there, so we cant start the motor with it like that. we decide to let the bilge do the rest and start swimming the boat back. The girls flag down a boat (even after we tell them not to) to tow us. I explain I didn't like the idea of towing the boat because we still have alot of water inside and waves could come back over the bow and do the same thing again. After some deliberation, we decide to go for it and let them tow us back to the dock. As a precaution, I sat everyone on the back of the boat.
Getting the boat on the trailer was easy enough, I skipped the line since we were already taking a slot on the ramp. I make sure that Jason has pulled in the boat enough with the hand crank and get back in the truck. Thats when a fat man on a Kawasaki bike pulls up (obviously drunk) and starts telling us what-for. I ignore him for a while, there is a more pressing need at hand. I pull the boat out and get up to the asphalt and the tires begin to spin. The fat man remarks loudly, enough to get my attention, that "AH TOWYOOTA TUUNDRAA WOULLLNT DOO THAYAT!!!" I begin ignoring him again. He loudly claims as I put the truck back down on the concrete grippy surface that the limited slip would engage on a toyota tundra and we wouldn't have this problem. I begin to seethe. I've had a long day. I get a good run up to the asphalt and the wheels spin again. The boat still has a ton of water in it, making it way heavier than normal. "TOYOTA TUND...." starts the fat one. "SHUT UP!" I yell as I lay some rubber down, knowing that the heat will eventually win out over the slick wet surface. Some white smoke later, we've gotten the boat off the ramp.
Later that night Byron and I were able to joke about the whole thing. We tried starting the boat but there was water in the cylinders. I luckily had my tools with me and pulled the spark plugs out. While we were turning the starter over I did notice a little water come out. Put them back in, and she was running like a champ again.
Upon inspection, Jason had actually bent the prop. That hard reverse from 35 was such a huge shock to the drive train that something had to bend or break.
A microwaved lasagna later and some water, Byron and I knew that we'd never forget this day.
And I never got to try my new trick skis. Blast.
Lampshading the Trope "Big, Dumb Heroes" October, 2009
A few prefaces to this particular adventure: During High School I was in a cross country team with some really good friends. One of these friends was named Mike. He and I were a few of the ‘slightly crazy’ group of kids that I hung out with. He introduced us to street racing in Dallas, where the ultimate rush of running from the cops was tantamount to bliss. So with this in mind, I’ve been staying Mike’s house here in Kauai. We usually are reigned in by more sane friends of ours when we look like we’ve decided that fun is better than safety or good judgment. Unfettered, we decided to go for a hike.
Hanakapi’ai is supposed to be a 4 miles in, 4 miles out relatively difficult hike. Knowing this, we started at about 3:00pm on Tuesday, but in trying to find a parking spot found several neat caves that we wanted to check out before embarking on the main hike. Waves and wind had hollowed out large caves in semi-circle fashion. Some of them went several hundred feet down below sea level and had nice little stagnant pools of salt water at the bottom. After a few pictures, and 30 minutes of poking around in some holes in the ancient igneous rock faces, we head out on the main trail.
Kauai is beautiful. Pictures can’t do it justice, come out and do it yourself. With a lot of energy and a lust for adventure, Mike and I half-jogged through the trails greeting other hikers as they funneled out of the trails. Several amazing views of the ocean and some neat beaches from over 1000 feet up (which we climbed in the first half mile) were breath taking. We came upon a beach that had a protected pool behind a big sandbar and I jumped in while mike took a smoke break. We started heading toward titular falls, and checked down our responsible side. “It’s getting late yeah?” Mike remarked. “Aught we to turn about?” I quipped back, thinking that a good recourse to hiking at night. “Nah, there’s supposed to be something cool at the end of this trail, lets keep going.” Mike said with finality. I didn’t argue, as ‘something cool’ stuck out to me like a side quest in a Zelda game. We crossed the river several times, hopping about on the river rocks with ninja-like balance (mine after much training, Mike’s inherent in his asian-ness) and made good time upstream. In the distance we saw a massive cascading waterfall from the top of an impossibly high cliff. I was getting excited, further locking my responsible side away in the dark corner I usually keep it in. We saw a straggling couple and asked what time it was. 5:00. Plenty of time to make it to the falls.
Another half an hour or so and we’d arrived at (and I am not exaggerating or just using superlatives) the most beautiful spot I have ever seen or been to in real life. Water fell (uh, duh) from what must have been close to 1000 to 1500 feet off of a sheer cliff to settle into a bowl of pristine, clear, fresh rain water. It was cold, and it was refreshing. We took a lot of pictures, jumped in, and felt the falls on our head and swam around a bit.
Energized, we went to the task of getting out of the valley before dark. After deciding that going down a much less traveled trail to cut through on the right side of the stream, we found familiar markings on the trail and realized we were making great time. We stuck to our blazingly fast trail only to find ourselves blazing our own trail. The trail had terminated into nothingness. We had to keep our pace up, and finding a trail would be the best use of our quickly being scratched and bruised bodies.
We found no trail. Quickly darkness began enveloping us as we made our way toward the beach one painful foot at a time. For every time Mike fell several feet into an unseen ditch, I’d find the thorniest bush or tree and throw myself longingly at it. We soon were relying more on the moon for light than the waning sun. “Mike, I’m glad that its you and me in this situation, most people would be freaking out.” I calmly remarked. “I need a cigarette.” Mike said, for about the third time since we started churning through the dense tropical underbrush. “Lets just keep heading towards the beach, that’s where we’ll see the main trail.” I reassuringly let out. We trudged forward. Many times one of us would exclaim “It’s the trail!” only to follow it for a few meters and find we were had, once again. Never letting the adventure devolve into frustration, we kept our chins up. We could see the beach! After many cuts and bruises we’d made it back in sight of where the real trail should be. I celebrated by falling into the river and dowsing my camera and iPhone. Mike celebrated by slipping on the same stone as I and dropped his lighter. We’d thought of camping out for the night at the beach before, but fatigue had run its course on our minds, and we decided to press on. Being that the Moon was shining from the Southeast, we were completely in the dark as we went north and east up the cliff side, leaving us with no recourse but to use a Mike’s cell phone as a flash light. This is not as easy as it sounds, as after the leader gets over a particularly difficult area, he has to stop and shine the spot so the follower can get over it. When trying to make good time, this is not very conducive.
After what was another hour of night walking on a slippery high-incline trail, I’d started cramping and Mike had started dying energy wise. He wanted to stop for a bit, and I couldn’t or risk cramping up entirely. We were the perfect team. I convince Mike to keep going and we trudge up, around and back down the mountain ridge. Two hours and fifteen minutes after sundown we finally make it out of the hellish hiking trail. We walk the 10 minutes up the road to where Mike parked and settle in for the long road home, to find that more than the lighter went into the river when Mike slipped. The keys went as well. A perfect end to a perfect night.
Hanakapi’ai is supposed to be a 4 miles in, 4 miles out relatively difficult hike. Knowing this, we started at about 3:00pm on Tuesday, but in trying to find a parking spot found several neat caves that we wanted to check out before embarking on the main hike. Waves and wind had hollowed out large caves in semi-circle fashion. Some of them went several hundred feet down below sea level and had nice little stagnant pools of salt water at the bottom. After a few pictures, and 30 minutes of poking around in some holes in the ancient igneous rock faces, we head out on the main trail.
Kauai is beautiful. Pictures can’t do it justice, come out and do it yourself. With a lot of energy and a lust for adventure, Mike and I half-jogged through the trails greeting other hikers as they funneled out of the trails. Several amazing views of the ocean and some neat beaches from over 1000 feet up (which we climbed in the first half mile) were breath taking. We came upon a beach that had a protected pool behind a big sandbar and I jumped in while mike took a smoke break. We started heading toward titular falls, and checked down our responsible side. “It’s getting late yeah?” Mike remarked. “Aught we to turn about?” I quipped back, thinking that a good recourse to hiking at night. “Nah, there’s supposed to be something cool at the end of this trail, lets keep going.” Mike said with finality. I didn’t argue, as ‘something cool’ stuck out to me like a side quest in a Zelda game. We crossed the river several times, hopping about on the river rocks with ninja-like balance (mine after much training, Mike’s inherent in his asian-ness) and made good time upstream. In the distance we saw a massive cascading waterfall from the top of an impossibly high cliff. I was getting excited, further locking my responsible side away in the dark corner I usually keep it in. We saw a straggling couple and asked what time it was. 5:00. Plenty of time to make it to the falls.
Another half an hour or so and we’d arrived at (and I am not exaggerating or just using superlatives) the most beautiful spot I have ever seen or been to in real life. Water fell (uh, duh) from what must have been close to 1000 to 1500 feet off of a sheer cliff to settle into a bowl of pristine, clear, fresh rain water. It was cold, and it was refreshing. We took a lot of pictures, jumped in, and felt the falls on our head and swam around a bit.
Energized, we went to the task of getting out of the valley before dark. After deciding that going down a much less traveled trail to cut through on the right side of the stream, we found familiar markings on the trail and realized we were making great time. We stuck to our blazingly fast trail only to find ourselves blazing our own trail. The trail had terminated into nothingness. We had to keep our pace up, and finding a trail would be the best use of our quickly being scratched and bruised bodies.
We found no trail. Quickly darkness began enveloping us as we made our way toward the beach one painful foot at a time. For every time Mike fell several feet into an unseen ditch, I’d find the thorniest bush or tree and throw myself longingly at it. We soon were relying more on the moon for light than the waning sun. “Mike, I’m glad that its you and me in this situation, most people would be freaking out.” I calmly remarked. “I need a cigarette.” Mike said, for about the third time since we started churning through the dense tropical underbrush. “Lets just keep heading towards the beach, that’s where we’ll see the main trail.” I reassuringly let out. We trudged forward. Many times one of us would exclaim “It’s the trail!” only to follow it for a few meters and find we were had, once again. Never letting the adventure devolve into frustration, we kept our chins up. We could see the beach! After many cuts and bruises we’d made it back in sight of where the real trail should be. I celebrated by falling into the river and dowsing my camera and iPhone. Mike celebrated by slipping on the same stone as I and dropped his lighter. We’d thought of camping out for the night at the beach before, but fatigue had run its course on our minds, and we decided to press on. Being that the Moon was shining from the Southeast, we were completely in the dark as we went north and east up the cliff side, leaving us with no recourse but to use a Mike’s cell phone as a flash light. This is not as easy as it sounds, as after the leader gets over a particularly difficult area, he has to stop and shine the spot so the follower can get over it. When trying to make good time, this is not very conducive.
After what was another hour of night walking on a slippery high-incline trail, I’d started cramping and Mike had started dying energy wise. He wanted to stop for a bit, and I couldn’t or risk cramping up entirely. We were the perfect team. I convince Mike to keep going and we trudge up, around and back down the mountain ridge. Two hours and fifteen minutes after sundown we finally make it out of the hellish hiking trail. We walk the 10 minutes up the road to where Mike parked and settle in for the long road home, to find that more than the lighter went into the river when Mike slipped. The keys went as well. A perfect end to a perfect night.
Coming of age, Summer of 1998
So when I was 13-14 my father owned a boat rental company in a small harbor cut out of cove on the St. John’s river in Florida. I went out there with my sisters for the whole summer (it was a visitation thing between my parents, she got us all year and for summer we’d live with Pops.) I was ridiculously shy (but also entirely too adventurous and curious to fit into that for very long) at the time. I’d been driving boats for several years already so my dad trusted me to take a boat out every once in a while. One day, early, he had me load up a big pontoon party barge with beer and hors d’ voeures and told me I’d be a captain for a day and give a tour of the river to some old people. I think that was one of those ‘coming out of your shell’ moments for me (possibly the beginnings of that arrogant asshole Drunk Chuck tm) and I confidently drove the boat full of people three to four times my age out onto the water with no instructions other than “show them the river, and feed them the crap I had you load up.”
I guess I was doing a good job being a tour guide as I pointed out my favorite places to visit along the river (gator holes, places where I could find snakes, manatee hangouts, cool looking rocks and trees etc.) because to a one, they all stared at me wide-eyed as I set the boat at a slow speed in a direction and started setting up their little snacks on a table and asked who wanted what for drinks. I’d kept my eye on where we were going and go back every minute or so and make course corrections or point something out (usually a big gator haha. I might have been obsessed with them at the time.) All of them asked how old I was and told me I was comporting myself with the competence and maturity of one twice my age. It really boosted my self esteem, as I’d always seem to eff up everything I tried to do. Some of them told me they weren’t sure that they could even do what I was doing, even with training. After a few hours of tour guiding, I took them back to the marina and skillfully parked and tied off the boat, then cleaned up after them. I got a few bucks from my Dad, but the best reward was the proud look on his face. He would bring my uncle’s around and talk me up, saying that my tour group was way happier with the excursion than any of theirs had been. It was good times.
I messed with gators all the time, learning how to approximate their mating call with my throat and get them to swim up to my little inflatable dingy. (never said I was smart back then…) and feed them chicken skins or whatever I’d pilfered from the kitchen (excuse me, GALLEY. Nautical terms and all.) We also had a pet gator we’d feed off the docks most days named ‘Stumpy’ since he was missing a rear foot. He was only about 2.5 feet long nose to tail and was not scared of human interaction at all. I was the only one who would pet him when he was swimming by. A few times I grabbed him by the midsection and stuck him on the dock, just to see how he’d walk with only three legs (wasn’t pretty) but he never snapped at me. Good gator, nice gator.
One overcast day my Dad, two sisters and I were out on the river teaching my youngest sister Kalie to ski in our little skiff. Kalie got up for the second time ever and we all cheered. A large houseboat then came up behind us with Kalie on the rope. What. The. Fuck. (If you have ever been out boating, this is probably close to rule #1 of no-no’s) She was barely holding on out there and some douchebag decided to follow us? My Dad and I started yelling and waving them off, when Kalie caught wind of the danger and looked behind her. She immediately fell. My Dad, with fire burning in his eyes and the reddened skin of someone on an unholy dose of adrenaline yelled “HOLD ON!” to my older sister and I. We did and he punched the little boat’s oversized motor to full throttle and pulled a ski-doo like turn and played chicken with the fuckstick that was bearing down on helpless Kalie. I screamed a battleshout (which did not, at any point crack and sound like a crazed yowling cat. Don’t look at me that way. It just didn’t.) at the boat as we made it clear that we would without hesitation plow right into that son of a bitch if he didn’t change course. We got to Kalie before they did and my Dad put the brakes on, perfectly putting us in between the behemoth and Kalie. The drunk at the wheel must have finally taken notice and slowed, coming down off a plane and turning off our course. The party on board looked at first like we were crazy, then saw my father and I’s wild eyes, my older sister weeping, and our youngest in the water with huge watery eyes. They started telling us how sorry they were and I started telling them to fuck off and showed them a few middle fingers. My Dad calmed me with a look and a hand swept through the air. He then said to the helmsman “You better watch where the fuck you are going next time or I will personally fuck your day up.” (I hadn’t heard my Dad curse like that since my parents were still married.) They immediately went on their way, and we packed my scared sisters and my furious adolescent self in for the day.
I think I learned that day that righteous anger and pounds upon pounds of adrenaline can be used very effectively with the right mind behind it and for great good. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore after that. I could take action without freezing up. I used that to great effect in school from then on. (I got beat up a lot, till I came back from that summer.)
Funny, I still get mad recalling that story. Those assholes.
I guess I was doing a good job being a tour guide as I pointed out my favorite places to visit along the river (gator holes, places where I could find snakes, manatee hangouts, cool looking rocks and trees etc.) because to a one, they all stared at me wide-eyed as I set the boat at a slow speed in a direction and started setting up their little snacks on a table and asked who wanted what for drinks. I’d kept my eye on where we were going and go back every minute or so and make course corrections or point something out (usually a big gator haha. I might have been obsessed with them at the time.) All of them asked how old I was and told me I was comporting myself with the competence and maturity of one twice my age. It really boosted my self esteem, as I’d always seem to eff up everything I tried to do. Some of them told me they weren’t sure that they could even do what I was doing, even with training. After a few hours of tour guiding, I took them back to the marina and skillfully parked and tied off the boat, then cleaned up after them. I got a few bucks from my Dad, but the best reward was the proud look on his face. He would bring my uncle’s around and talk me up, saying that my tour group was way happier with the excursion than any of theirs had been. It was good times.
I messed with gators all the time, learning how to approximate their mating call with my throat and get them to swim up to my little inflatable dingy. (never said I was smart back then…) and feed them chicken skins or whatever I’d pilfered from the kitchen (excuse me, GALLEY. Nautical terms and all.) We also had a pet gator we’d feed off the docks most days named ‘Stumpy’ since he was missing a rear foot. He was only about 2.5 feet long nose to tail and was not scared of human interaction at all. I was the only one who would pet him when he was swimming by. A few times I grabbed him by the midsection and stuck him on the dock, just to see how he’d walk with only three legs (wasn’t pretty) but he never snapped at me. Good gator, nice gator.
One overcast day my Dad, two sisters and I were out on the river teaching my youngest sister Kalie to ski in our little skiff. Kalie got up for the second time ever and we all cheered. A large houseboat then came up behind us with Kalie on the rope. What. The. Fuck. (If you have ever been out boating, this is probably close to rule #1 of no-no’s) She was barely holding on out there and some douchebag decided to follow us? My Dad and I started yelling and waving them off, when Kalie caught wind of the danger and looked behind her. She immediately fell. My Dad, with fire burning in his eyes and the reddened skin of someone on an unholy dose of adrenaline yelled “HOLD ON!” to my older sister and I. We did and he punched the little boat’s oversized motor to full throttle and pulled a ski-doo like turn and played chicken with the fuckstick that was bearing down on helpless Kalie. I screamed a battleshout (which did not, at any point crack and sound like a crazed yowling cat. Don’t look at me that way. It just didn’t.) at the boat as we made it clear that we would without hesitation plow right into that son of a bitch if he didn’t change course. We got to Kalie before they did and my Dad put the brakes on, perfectly putting us in between the behemoth and Kalie. The drunk at the wheel must have finally taken notice and slowed, coming down off a plane and turning off our course. The party on board looked at first like we were crazy, then saw my father and I’s wild eyes, my older sister weeping, and our youngest in the water with huge watery eyes. They started telling us how sorry they were and I started telling them to fuck off and showed them a few middle fingers. My Dad calmed me with a look and a hand swept through the air. He then said to the helmsman “You better watch where the fuck you are going next time or I will personally fuck your day up.” (I hadn’t heard my Dad curse like that since my parents were still married.) They immediately went on their way, and we packed my scared sisters and my furious adolescent self in for the day.
I think I learned that day that righteous anger and pounds upon pounds of adrenaline can be used very effectively with the right mind behind it and for great good. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore after that. I could take action without freezing up. I used that to great effect in school from then on. (I got beat up a lot, till I came back from that summer.)
Funny, I still get mad recalling that story. Those assholes.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Texas Heat Wave, July 2004
Disclaimer: This chronicle happened directly after coming back from 7 weeks of basic training then 3 months of tech training in the military. I hadn’t seen an attractive female in about that long, and I had just gotten all of my freedoms back. I was… intense at the time. Also, I had just turned 20, and was still invincibly stupid. Don’t judge me bro!
Me and 3 friends (Shawn, Nick, and Aaron) decided one July (in 2004) to go to a huge state-wide carshow called “Texas Heat Wave.” It was hosted in Austin and my friend Shawn was willing to drive us down. Shawn’s mother worked in the hotel field and got us a room at the downtown La Quinta for free. This trip practically planned itself! On the road down we discussed what we were going to do, and having been to Austin several times (where the other guys hadn’t been at all) I was the main source of information. “We’ve got to do two things for certain; #1, take a ride over to west Austin and visit my favorite road, Lime Creek, and #2, hit up 6th street at night. All else is negotiable.” I told the boys. They all agreed and soon enough, we were in Austin.
We checked into out La Quinta and plopped our bags on the beds, then went straight out to hook up with Shawn’s friends. We drove up to a ratty roach motel-esque place on the side of 35 and I started to smell burning rubber immediately. As we pulled around the side, we saw that a lot of the show cars that were to be in the show were holed up here for the weekend. We also saw that many of them were down off of their trailers, doing massive burnouts. They were slowly making a circuit around the hotel stopping by people they knew, chatting, drinking beer and then doing more burnouts. We went on the slow circuit, parked and walked inside the U shaped structure of the motel. More people! There had to be ten people here for every room at that motel. Most of them were already stumbling drunk and probably 1/3 of them had video cameras out and were drunkenly laughing at peoples’ antics. We met up with Shawn’s friends (Josh, Garret, Ross and Adrian) whom I’d never met before, and we started drinking. They had rented a room at that motel (as they explained it) almost 8 months before and had just barely gotten the reservation. Apparently this was one of the hotels where a lot of the car show attendants liked to be during Texas Heat Wave. We walked over to a Bennigans (I believe) and ate, then walked back to the motel. Shawn gave me his video camera with the instructions “don’t break it, and bring me back some boobs.” I had gotten enough beers in me to make this a reality I thought, and agreed to his solemn instructions.
Walking around the motel, I tried to get some (read: all) of the girls I came across to show me T/A. It worked several times and I started to get on a roll. I walked up to a huge lifted truck with a gorgeous dancing latina girl in it. I started chanting “show your tits” and almost immediately the entire crowd joined in. She acquiesced, and I got some pretty good footage. She let the foaming masses grab at her for a while, then had her driver move along. Crazy, I wasn’t used to having that kind of authority with my voice, it must have been the booze. I showed the footage to my boys (who were much further away from the truck than I) and we decide to hit up 6th street.
(Insert unremembered 6th street antics here) Apparently I am a ladies’ man when I get wasted, because the guys reported the next day that I was chatting up some hotties all night. Boo for blackouts.
The next morning we awoke and went to the carshow that everyone was making such a big deal about. It was by far the biggest carshow I’ve ever seen, with thousands of entered cars and even more people coming to see them, but it was all pretty uninteresting. Lots of caddies on hydraulics, lowriders, and general Mexican filth. There was a section of the car show that housed a few cool imports, and a section that had some of the biggest lifted trucks I’ve ever laid eyes on in real life. They were literally 80% the size of a monster truck, and somehow street legal. We got bored (and entirely hot, it was probably 107 that day.) and went from there to go visit the famed Lime Creek road. I’d been on it only twice before, once in a friends’ souped up RX7, and the next in my 240sx, both were very fun and memorable experiences. The first time I went, I saw an older RX7 flip. I relayed this to Shawn, who was driving and owned a two door Honda Accord and bid him be careful. We turned onto Lime Creek and started tackling the dragon. Shawn’s car was not built for this kind of abuse. He still had stock brakes and suspension, and a lot of weight in passengers. We went in on a decreasing radius right hand corner, and a truck coming the opposite way met us hugging the inside of his lane. Shawn under-steered and we made contact with the rear bumper of the old truck with his front driver side headlight and fender. The damage was negligible to the truck, and Shawn’s car was still functional, if a bit messed up looking.
Seeking relief and comfort we stopped by my older sister Steph’s house and she cooked us up some grub over hearing our tale of the weekend thus far. As we got to the car crash part, she bid us take her outside to see the Accord. In a moment of coincidence and irony, as soon as we got to the Accord we heard a loud bang and looked down the street to see that someone had just crashed! After making sure no one was hurt, we all went in to eat.
As the sun set, we rolled toward the highway-side motel and into one of the craziest nights of morass and carnage that I’ve been subject to. Somehow even more people had descended upon the little place, and even more show cars were there. We went into the middle of the motel where the pool was to find a congregation of people surrounding the pool. With cameras, beer and shocked faces the crowd had to number around 300. We pushed our way through the masses to get at what everyone was so slack-jawed about, only to find that Shawn’s friend (I think his name was Ross) eating out his girlfriend Adrian right there, her on the side of the pool, him standing in it. They were just finishing up when we got there, and our eyes had to be as big as saucers when we greeted them, because they just looked at us and laughed. What the hell. There was plenty of night left, give me a beer.
Shawn wielded the video camera this night, and after I had gotten a few beers in me, my inner superhero “Drunk Chuck tm” arose. I got several girls to pose for some photos with me (with their shirts off) and started feeling like the entire crowd here was gathering some sort of raucous, wildly inhibition-free energy. I was toying with letting it sweep me away when I saw that same hot latina girl from the first night we were here. She was dancing again, and called me over when she saw me. Off came the top, and onto her boobs went my hands. A few minutes later I found my party again. Chagrinned that Shawn hadn’t gotten that bit on film I told him to video me and nick and watch what we were about to do. People had been tipping her as a stripper and her g-string was starting to get laden with singles. After Nick and I fought our way to her again, I looked back at Shawn’s camera and winked. Nick, having been briefed on our caper, was laughing incessantly as I reached up and grabbed a handful of latin softness, then grabbed a bill from her undergarments, just for the trouble. Nick followed suit.
Then the night dialed the insanity to 11.
Cops showed up. There were about 5 squad cars at first, and they tried to pull over some of the burn-out cars, but the energy of the night had taken on a viscous tone. People booed. The cops got scared and started maceing people that got close to them, hands on their guns. They then got back in their cars to leave. (presumably to get backup.) I don’t know who threw the first beer bottle, but who ever that was had tapped something ugly in everyone’s heart. Someone was brave enough to light off one of those bottle-rocket batteries (the kind that go on for like 2 minutes shooting) and set it on a cop’s car. Another ran up and pissed on one of the cruisers. They were nearly blocked in by all the people shouting and flipping them off. They muscled through the crowd fearing for their lives and the crowd started cheering as they left the scene. What in the hell is going on?
I was beginning to wonder if my lungs were being coated in rubber from all the burnouts we were watching when we saw and heard a helicopter above. At some point in the night, the beat cops had upgraded from little mace canisters to actual tear-gas. They all came to the little motel en force, probably twenty patrol cars with more on the way. I don’t know how they first started spreading the gas, from hand thrown canisters or some kind of gun, as accounts wildly varied, but it started getting to the people pretty badly. I had just finished up basic training for the Air Force, where you are required to be gassed, to know what you are in for if the enemy uses it on you. Let me tell you, either the cops got some kind of pussy gas or I was just used to it, because it was barely making me cough and cry. The crowd of people started going inward into our little compound of a motel to get away from the gas, and they were pissed. People started trying to rip the coke machines out of the ground to throw them in the pool. They failed as the gas encroached on the outer areas. They moved to the next thing they saw, the massive grill. Into the pool it went, along with every table and piece of lawn furniture around the motel’s inner area. “EVERYONE NOT IN A ROOM IS GOING TO JAIL.” Came a booming voice from the helicopter. The crowd, no longer dispersed along the outside of the motel, is what I consider a mob. They flipped off the ‘ghetto bird’ hovering over us and some idiots even thought they could throw beer bottles high enough to hit it. Uniforms then started throwing canisters of gas into the mob and their spirit broke. Everyone started for their rooms, and soon enough, no one cared if it was their room, a friends’ room, or even a complete stranger. I, being about the only one of us who could still see (since a can of gas landed right next to me and my friends) shuffled us into the nearest open room we could find. We thanked the man for his hospitality, and he offered us some beer. We took it, and started talking excitedly about what craziness each one of us had seen. Shawn got some pretty good footage of the cops coming in on us. We drank and told stories for an hour or so until we couldn’t hear the bustling about of the police. Finished with that crazy ass place, but not with the night, the boys and I packed up and went to 6th street once more.
By this time I was well and good hammered. Drunk Chuck tm was in full force. My friends found that their new favorite super hero worked best with a beer in hand, and I was never found wanting for one. Nick spotted her first. A tall blonde with a body that made my eyes hurt. Or was that still the tear gas? Nick lined me up and pointed her out. He said “Go get her, Chuck.” Off I went. She was on the phone when I reached her, and she was with a really fat chick. I made eye contact with her and gave her what I hoped was my most dashing grin. Her eyes lit up and a smile crept across her face. As she was finishing up her conversation I asked for their names from the land-whale. Her name was Shawn, and Whaley’s name stayed Whaley in my head. (I blurted it out later in the conversation but played it off like I thought her name was Bailey. Smooooth.) She hung up and we chatted about Austin, the night life, and finally came around to what each of us were doing here. I told her we were in town for the carshow, and she told me that she lived here, but was actually a model at the carshow. Holy cow, Drunk Chuck tm, you are chatting up an honest-to-goodness carshow model. Awesome. I asked for her number, and got it, then she told me to come find her tomorrow at the show. I promised I would and went back to the slack-jawed friends (who had been creeper-style videoing the whole thing) as a victor. We went back to the La Quinta and after some pre-sleep cavorting and antics, went to bed.
Sunday we got a bit of a late start. Tear gas and mob-mentality apparently takes it out of you. After noticing that Shawn’s brakes were toasted from Lime Creek, we dropped by an Auto Zone and did a brake job there in the parking lot. We arrived at the carshow with a renewed sense of purpose, we were going to see Shawn! (the hot, blonde model, not the beaded fat football player of a friend) I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t have the ability to ‘use the Drunk, Luke’ since I hadn’t had anything to drink, and she’d see me as the dork I saw myself as. I battered the thought out of my head with a nice big stem of machismo. Fake confidence. I’d have to let it out soon or I’d start pouring liquid arrogance everywhere I went. As the day went on, it started to rain, limiting our movements around the massive grounds that held the carshow. My chest puffed out, I was getting more and more cavalier with cat-calling to random people. This isn’t good, If I come in hot and audacious to Shawn, she might be put off. I shrugged, instantly thinking my sheer pulchritude would win the day.
We finally found her, in a nearly empty arena. There was a newer Lambo and a type of Lotus that I didn’t immediately recognize that she and an equally exquisite brunette were posing by. Without preamble, we walked right over to them (apparently interrupting a professional photo shoot) and she shrilled my name (she remembered my name?? wow…) and came bouncing over to give me a hug on her 7 inch platforms, wearing naught but a small bikini top and tiny, tight spandex shorts. Shawn had left the video camera at the room, as we’d forgotten to charge the insipid thing the night previous, but he still had brought his holdout digital camera. She beckoned me over to the cars and instructed fatShawn to snap a few of us. Both girls crowded around me (both unnervingly taller than me, in those heels) and the arrogance was a narcotic effluvium as it flowed out of me. I grabbed her ass and winked at the camera, she merely responded by further pressing her bust against me and giggling. I had broken through, and channeled Drunk Chuck tm through sheer force of confidence and determination. I asked what she was doing later and she said her manager was taking them to dinner but we could hang out later. She had to get back to the shoot, but she laid a peck on my cheek as we left. The feeling as I walked away was somehow even more alien than the night before with the mob threatening violence against the police. I… Won the day, I guess. Now for the night.
From a Chuy’s in downtown I called her around the time she said she was getting out from dinner, and she gave us the ‘too tired’ excuse. I murmured that I saw that one coming, and she sounded genuinely sorry as she rebuffed me. She said that she was coming to Hot Import Nights in Dallas soon, and that she had my number. She’d call me then and we could hang out. We went home the next morning, full of the energy of just having made an amazing story.
The account two months later when she DID come to HIN and she DID call me, is another adventure all by itself.
Me and 3 friends (Shawn, Nick, and Aaron) decided one July (in 2004) to go to a huge state-wide carshow called “Texas Heat Wave.” It was hosted in Austin and my friend Shawn was willing to drive us down. Shawn’s mother worked in the hotel field and got us a room at the downtown La Quinta for free. This trip practically planned itself! On the road down we discussed what we were going to do, and having been to Austin several times (where the other guys hadn’t been at all) I was the main source of information. “We’ve got to do two things for certain; #1, take a ride over to west Austin and visit my favorite road, Lime Creek, and #2, hit up 6th street at night. All else is negotiable.” I told the boys. They all agreed and soon enough, we were in Austin.
We checked into out La Quinta and plopped our bags on the beds, then went straight out to hook up with Shawn’s friends. We drove up to a ratty roach motel-esque place on the side of 35 and I started to smell burning rubber immediately. As we pulled around the side, we saw that a lot of the show cars that were to be in the show were holed up here for the weekend. We also saw that many of them were down off of their trailers, doing massive burnouts. They were slowly making a circuit around the hotel stopping by people they knew, chatting, drinking beer and then doing more burnouts. We went on the slow circuit, parked and walked inside the U shaped structure of the motel. More people! There had to be ten people here for every room at that motel. Most of them were already stumbling drunk and probably 1/3 of them had video cameras out and were drunkenly laughing at peoples’ antics. We met up with Shawn’s friends (Josh, Garret, Ross and Adrian) whom I’d never met before, and we started drinking. They had rented a room at that motel (as they explained it) almost 8 months before and had just barely gotten the reservation. Apparently this was one of the hotels where a lot of the car show attendants liked to be during Texas Heat Wave. We walked over to a Bennigans (I believe) and ate, then walked back to the motel. Shawn gave me his video camera with the instructions “don’t break it, and bring me back some boobs.” I had gotten enough beers in me to make this a reality I thought, and agreed to his solemn instructions.
Walking around the motel, I tried to get some (read: all) of the girls I came across to show me T/A. It worked several times and I started to get on a roll. I walked up to a huge lifted truck with a gorgeous dancing latina girl in it. I started chanting “show your tits” and almost immediately the entire crowd joined in. She acquiesced, and I got some pretty good footage. She let the foaming masses grab at her for a while, then had her driver move along. Crazy, I wasn’t used to having that kind of authority with my voice, it must have been the booze. I showed the footage to my boys (who were much further away from the truck than I) and we decide to hit up 6th street.
(Insert unremembered 6th street antics here) Apparently I am a ladies’ man when I get wasted, because the guys reported the next day that I was chatting up some hotties all night. Boo for blackouts.
The next morning we awoke and went to the carshow that everyone was making such a big deal about. It was by far the biggest carshow I’ve ever seen, with thousands of entered cars and even more people coming to see them, but it was all pretty uninteresting. Lots of caddies on hydraulics, lowriders, and general Mexican filth. There was a section of the car show that housed a few cool imports, and a section that had some of the biggest lifted trucks I’ve ever laid eyes on in real life. They were literally 80% the size of a monster truck, and somehow street legal. We got bored (and entirely hot, it was probably 107 that day.) and went from there to go visit the famed Lime Creek road. I’d been on it only twice before, once in a friends’ souped up RX7, and the next in my 240sx, both were very fun and memorable experiences. The first time I went, I saw an older RX7 flip. I relayed this to Shawn, who was driving and owned a two door Honda Accord and bid him be careful. We turned onto Lime Creek and started tackling the dragon. Shawn’s car was not built for this kind of abuse. He still had stock brakes and suspension, and a lot of weight in passengers. We went in on a decreasing radius right hand corner, and a truck coming the opposite way met us hugging the inside of his lane. Shawn under-steered and we made contact with the rear bumper of the old truck with his front driver side headlight and fender. The damage was negligible to the truck, and Shawn’s car was still functional, if a bit messed up looking.
Seeking relief and comfort we stopped by my older sister Steph’s house and she cooked us up some grub over hearing our tale of the weekend thus far. As we got to the car crash part, she bid us take her outside to see the Accord. In a moment of coincidence and irony, as soon as we got to the Accord we heard a loud bang and looked down the street to see that someone had just crashed! After making sure no one was hurt, we all went in to eat.
As the sun set, we rolled toward the highway-side motel and into one of the craziest nights of morass and carnage that I’ve been subject to. Somehow even more people had descended upon the little place, and even more show cars were there. We went into the middle of the motel where the pool was to find a congregation of people surrounding the pool. With cameras, beer and shocked faces the crowd had to number around 300. We pushed our way through the masses to get at what everyone was so slack-jawed about, only to find that Shawn’s friend (I think his name was Ross) eating out his girlfriend Adrian right there, her on the side of the pool, him standing in it. They were just finishing up when we got there, and our eyes had to be as big as saucers when we greeted them, because they just looked at us and laughed. What the hell. There was plenty of night left, give me a beer.
Shawn wielded the video camera this night, and after I had gotten a few beers in me, my inner superhero “Drunk Chuck tm” arose. I got several girls to pose for some photos with me (with their shirts off) and started feeling like the entire crowd here was gathering some sort of raucous, wildly inhibition-free energy. I was toying with letting it sweep me away when I saw that same hot latina girl from the first night we were here. She was dancing again, and called me over when she saw me. Off came the top, and onto her boobs went my hands. A few minutes later I found my party again. Chagrinned that Shawn hadn’t gotten that bit on film I told him to video me and nick and watch what we were about to do. People had been tipping her as a stripper and her g-string was starting to get laden with singles. After Nick and I fought our way to her again, I looked back at Shawn’s camera and winked. Nick, having been briefed on our caper, was laughing incessantly as I reached up and grabbed a handful of latin softness, then grabbed a bill from her undergarments, just for the trouble. Nick followed suit.
Then the night dialed the insanity to 11.
Cops showed up. There were about 5 squad cars at first, and they tried to pull over some of the burn-out cars, but the energy of the night had taken on a viscous tone. People booed. The cops got scared and started maceing people that got close to them, hands on their guns. They then got back in their cars to leave. (presumably to get backup.) I don’t know who threw the first beer bottle, but who ever that was had tapped something ugly in everyone’s heart. Someone was brave enough to light off one of those bottle-rocket batteries (the kind that go on for like 2 minutes shooting) and set it on a cop’s car. Another ran up and pissed on one of the cruisers. They were nearly blocked in by all the people shouting and flipping them off. They muscled through the crowd fearing for their lives and the crowd started cheering as they left the scene. What in the hell is going on?
I was beginning to wonder if my lungs were being coated in rubber from all the burnouts we were watching when we saw and heard a helicopter above. At some point in the night, the beat cops had upgraded from little mace canisters to actual tear-gas. They all came to the little motel en force, probably twenty patrol cars with more on the way. I don’t know how they first started spreading the gas, from hand thrown canisters or some kind of gun, as accounts wildly varied, but it started getting to the people pretty badly. I had just finished up basic training for the Air Force, where you are required to be gassed, to know what you are in for if the enemy uses it on you. Let me tell you, either the cops got some kind of pussy gas or I was just used to it, because it was barely making me cough and cry. The crowd of people started going inward into our little compound of a motel to get away from the gas, and they were pissed. People started trying to rip the coke machines out of the ground to throw them in the pool. They failed as the gas encroached on the outer areas. They moved to the next thing they saw, the massive grill. Into the pool it went, along with every table and piece of lawn furniture around the motel’s inner area. “EVERYONE NOT IN A ROOM IS GOING TO JAIL.” Came a booming voice from the helicopter. The crowd, no longer dispersed along the outside of the motel, is what I consider a mob. They flipped off the ‘ghetto bird’ hovering over us and some idiots even thought they could throw beer bottles high enough to hit it. Uniforms then started throwing canisters of gas into the mob and their spirit broke. Everyone started for their rooms, and soon enough, no one cared if it was their room, a friends’ room, or even a complete stranger. I, being about the only one of us who could still see (since a can of gas landed right next to me and my friends) shuffled us into the nearest open room we could find. We thanked the man for his hospitality, and he offered us some beer. We took it, and started talking excitedly about what craziness each one of us had seen. Shawn got some pretty good footage of the cops coming in on us. We drank and told stories for an hour or so until we couldn’t hear the bustling about of the police. Finished with that crazy ass place, but not with the night, the boys and I packed up and went to 6th street once more.
By this time I was well and good hammered. Drunk Chuck tm was in full force. My friends found that their new favorite super hero worked best with a beer in hand, and I was never found wanting for one. Nick spotted her first. A tall blonde with a body that made my eyes hurt. Or was that still the tear gas? Nick lined me up and pointed her out. He said “Go get her, Chuck.” Off I went. She was on the phone when I reached her, and she was with a really fat chick. I made eye contact with her and gave her what I hoped was my most dashing grin. Her eyes lit up and a smile crept across her face. As she was finishing up her conversation I asked for their names from the land-whale. Her name was Shawn, and Whaley’s name stayed Whaley in my head. (I blurted it out later in the conversation but played it off like I thought her name was Bailey. Smooooth.) She hung up and we chatted about Austin, the night life, and finally came around to what each of us were doing here. I told her we were in town for the carshow, and she told me that she lived here, but was actually a model at the carshow. Holy cow, Drunk Chuck tm, you are chatting up an honest-to-goodness carshow model. Awesome. I asked for her number, and got it, then she told me to come find her tomorrow at the show. I promised I would and went back to the slack-jawed friends (who had been creeper-style videoing the whole thing) as a victor. We went back to the La Quinta and after some pre-sleep cavorting and antics, went to bed.
Sunday we got a bit of a late start. Tear gas and mob-mentality apparently takes it out of you. After noticing that Shawn’s brakes were toasted from Lime Creek, we dropped by an Auto Zone and did a brake job there in the parking lot. We arrived at the carshow with a renewed sense of purpose, we were going to see Shawn! (the hot, blonde model, not the beaded fat football player of a friend) I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t have the ability to ‘use the Drunk, Luke’ since I hadn’t had anything to drink, and she’d see me as the dork I saw myself as. I battered the thought out of my head with a nice big stem of machismo. Fake confidence. I’d have to let it out soon or I’d start pouring liquid arrogance everywhere I went. As the day went on, it started to rain, limiting our movements around the massive grounds that held the carshow. My chest puffed out, I was getting more and more cavalier with cat-calling to random people. This isn’t good, If I come in hot and audacious to Shawn, she might be put off. I shrugged, instantly thinking my sheer pulchritude would win the day.
We finally found her, in a nearly empty arena. There was a newer Lambo and a type of Lotus that I didn’t immediately recognize that she and an equally exquisite brunette were posing by. Without preamble, we walked right over to them (apparently interrupting a professional photo shoot) and she shrilled my name (she remembered my name?? wow…) and came bouncing over to give me a hug on her 7 inch platforms, wearing naught but a small bikini top and tiny, tight spandex shorts. Shawn had left the video camera at the room, as we’d forgotten to charge the insipid thing the night previous, but he still had brought his holdout digital camera. She beckoned me over to the cars and instructed fatShawn to snap a few of us. Both girls crowded around me (both unnervingly taller than me, in those heels) and the arrogance was a narcotic effluvium as it flowed out of me. I grabbed her ass and winked at the camera, she merely responded by further pressing her bust against me and giggling. I had broken through, and channeled Drunk Chuck tm through sheer force of confidence and determination. I asked what she was doing later and she said her manager was taking them to dinner but we could hang out later. She had to get back to the shoot, but she laid a peck on my cheek as we left. The feeling as I walked away was somehow even more alien than the night before with the mob threatening violence against the police. I… Won the day, I guess. Now for the night.
From a Chuy’s in downtown I called her around the time she said she was getting out from dinner, and she gave us the ‘too tired’ excuse. I murmured that I saw that one coming, and she sounded genuinely sorry as she rebuffed me. She said that she was coming to Hot Import Nights in Dallas soon, and that she had my number. She’d call me then and we could hang out. We went home the next morning, full of the energy of just having made an amazing story.
The account two months later when she DID come to HIN and she DID call me, is another adventure all by itself.
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