After a brief run I showered, wandered dreamily out of the bathroom and toweled off. When I went to grab my shirt back off the pile on the floor I realized I had no idea what I had been wearing today. Then I realized that I had no idea what day it was, nor could I even roughly approximate the time of night. In my life I have never had such singular focus over such a long period of time, and now that closure is near I have never felt so satisfied.

Last Sunday I woke up with my hair filled with confetti, my right shoulder slathered in someone else’s body odor, and my head swimming with dreamlike memories of little people in sombreros. Images began to surface in reverse chronological order as I sorted out the previous night. An afterparty at Becky’s. The lone, cold walk home. I wore a bandanna on my head and a shirt three sizes too small. Free stuff. Ginny and I got kicked off a tour bus. Concerts. Chaos. A French horn blowing maniacally over my left shoulder. Something about broken light bulbs? Pretty girls everywhere, backstage with Woj and Kim, hanging out with bands. We swiped a bunch of shirts and stuffed them in each other’s bags. Impossibly hot girls were always walking by and handing out free tequila shots. This had been a massive night.

It was the Vice Records party at the South-by-Southwest music festival in Austin. We went to the same party last year and the Ice Cream Man helped us sneak in, we had our shirts torn off, I got wrapped in toilet paper, and the balcony fell off the building (which I now think might have been planned by the organizers to make the night as surreal as possible). Last year the Vice party was a great cap-off for one of the best weeks ever, and I can say the same thing this year. Not that we were actually invited this time either - I had to sneak in the back with the others, and although Ryan was let through the front I’m pretty sure I saw him point at the doorman’s clipboard and lie, “that’s my name, I go by ‘Kyle’ sometimes.” Once again they hosted a bunch of bands I had never heard of, and once again those bands managed to melt my face right off my skull. The broken light bulbs were from some crazy rapper that Ryan said - I was outside at the time - was smashing them on his head and throwing them into the audience, antics which quickly brought out the hook from side stage. The confetti and body odor were from Dark Meat, a conglomerate of shirtless, horn-blowing, stage-diving, beer-strewing craziness that, at the time, the tequila and I had agreed was the best show of the festival.

This had not been my healthiest four days. My arteries, hardened by layers of beef brisket, crackled in my chest as I sat up from the air mattress. My stomach was churning from an average of 2.5 taco meals per day plus a cold spicy hot dog. My lungs hurt from clouds of second- and first-hand smoke. My dogs were barking - mostly at my feet, which were really sore. My liver wished I had listened to that handwritten sign we saw at Club DeVille that read “We Do Not Beer.” Amazingly, however, I didn’t feel half bad as I traveled home on Sunday. Maybe I was just riding high on new memories, maybe it was the breakfast tacos, coffee, Gatorade, ibuprofen, horse-pill of vitamins, and Bloody Mary that I took down within an hour of waking up. Either way, I landed in San Diego in a good mood, with a list of great new bands to check out and another life highlight of a trip under my belt.

People and the band Cake often ask me, “How do you afford your rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle?” In fact I didn’t spend much money at all, and I will now divulge some secrets of how I did SXSW like a rock star for practically nothing - and how you can, too!
(1) Buy your plane ticket with a year’s worth of frequent flier miles,
(2) Hang out and crash with great friends from college that live in Austin,
(3) Get a best friend from high school that has worked his way into the music industry,
(4) Act like you are also a music writer as you ride your friend’s coattails into VIP sections with free food and drinks,
(5) Sneak into a bunch of stuff

A couple of good friends of mine are in bands that played the festival this year, but they have a much lower opinion of the whole event, citing all the hipster kids too cool for school and all the insufferable industry schmoozing that goes on. Maybe I just have the perfect situation, being a huge fan of indie music and having one foot in the door through Ryan, while not being in a band or “the industry” myself. I can still get a thrill out of a VIP party or a backstage interview with the lead singer, but at the same time be enough of an outsider to convincingly feign disinterest in the whole scene. Or maybe I just have a damned rosy disposition. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’ll be coming back every year until I die.

The glass door rumbled and the big guy lumbered into my apartment with his fist extended, so as to raise tension until he was close enough to consummate the daps.

“Tonight we ride?” he explained.

“Yeah but I haven’t packed yet.”

“Want to know what I did to pack? I grabbed a shirt and my toothbrush and I placed them in the back seat of my car. And also I moved my melted deodorant from the hot dashboard to the shade underneath the seat, where I’m sure it will freeze up again in time to use it in the morning.”

“Ok, just hold on a second.” I went to my closet and stuffed a shirt, pair of socks, and some boxers into a backpack. It occurred to me that he hadn’t mentioned extra underwear in his list. I quickly scoured the apartment for necessities - iPod, passport, sunglasses, toothbrush, deodorant – and shoved them into my bag. I couldn’t find my sombrero but then remembered that Greg had two in the car, stuffed somewhere near the ginormous life-sized, woman-shaped pinata that he had bought on his last trip. On first glance into to the back of his car, this monstrosity looks like a kidnapped young girl; on second glance it looks disturbingly like a blow-up doll. I never could bring myself to give a third glance. On the way back, he declared it to the customs agent (“Anything in the car?” “I have an enormous woman-shaped pinata in the back”), but apparently she was smart enough to realize that real smugglers would never use such a glaring eyesore as a conduit. Or would they…?

Within minutes we had plunged into Baja. We wisely stayed on the freeway through Tijuana, what with the drug wars and everything, and cruised down to friendly, familiar territory south of Ensenada. We are becoming regulars in La Bufadora, and in three trips have befriended some bartenders, a hotel owner (whose name we were told to drop if hassled by La Buf police), two restauranteurs, a freelance chef, and a real estate agent. This little town on the peninsula is beautiful, and even though it’s chock-full of American expats it still feels authentically Mexican. And, just like a small town in America, the community here loves to drink and spill the gossip - we now know the names of the bigwig Mexican who owns all the beachfront property (Cortiiiiino!), as well as the presidential candidate with whom a Bufadora resident claims to have had an affair. Our lips are sealed regarding this Big Secret, although I suppose CNN or National Enquirer might be able to pry them open with a thick wedge made of US currency.

This morning we woke up to the glint of the sun on the ocean and set out to meet Greg’s new real-estate contact, who took us on a tour of the local property. The nicer houses were just out of price range and the affordable ones were “fixer-uppers,” to be very generous, or “shitholes” to be a bit more honest. However, the short-term rentals were very manageable and so some very big plans for some very big weekends are very much in the works. Let’s just say the American tradition of Thanksgiving in July might not be in America after all. And let’s say no more.

For brunch we followed a blazing trail of raving recommendations all the way to Baja Mama’s house. There we met BM herself, and although her cigarette-waving over the food would probably cause her to lose that “A” health rating in the States, down here she runs the place as she damn well pleases. In fact we watched her loudly fire a worker, apparently because she had misheard the phrase “you betcha” as “you bitch.” The mistake was ironed out and the woman rehired, but the customers’ jaws were still on the floor after that whole scene ended. The food was good though, with fresh clams for the omelets and a lush dessert tray, the first I had ever seen at a brunch buffet.

Waiting several hours in the customs line on the way back, even Alicia Keys on the radio and a steady stream of churros and tacos through the windows weren’t cheering us up. As we inched tantalizingly closer to the gate, cabin fever gave way to flickers of insanity as Greg slammed the car into park, stood up through the sunroof, and started to chant “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.” People first looked around, confused, but then we heard slow-claps rising from all sides. Faint U-S-A chants rang in the distance, and all around us windows started to roll down. The California license plates joined in, then the Baja cars. Taco vendors and street beggars alike got caught up in the building fervor, dropping canes and radishes to clap with the beat. Cars began honking, at first rhythmically, then chaotically as the chant collapsed into a roar. When the cacaphony reached its peak, Border Patrol agents hustled their way toward the epicenter, and, when they found us, waved our car over to the special VIP lane. After a few quick questions and a glance at our passports we were cruising on the empty interstate, a thousand confused and envious eyes burning into our backs. Viva la Mexico!

Traveling north along the coast about a mile from my house, the road begins to spiral down from the high ridge of the golf course to the beach below, the canyons of North County panning across your right periphery as the Pacific rolls into view from the left. This time, though, I couldn’t grant myself the luxury of taking in the view, since it was my first time in 5th gear and didn’t want to break my concentration. With my eyes riveted on the road I could still admire the picturesque sliver of sand and asphalt straight ahead that separated the ocean from the lagoon. The waves were huge today, and from high up it looked like they were threatening to wash over that narrow strip of highway I was about to rocket across. My mind conjured up nightmarish images of tidal waves, a secret fear since childhood, and I allowed a split second to consider how I would fare if I was hit by a tsunami while going 50 miles an hour on a motorcycle. The outlook was grim.

Of course, that’s not what happened. At the bottom of the hill I gracefully pushed into a rightward lean, following the road like a rail as it righted itself to parallel the coast. That impossibly thin strand of beach held its defenses against the killer waves, which were now close enough that I could hear their bloodthirsty roar. From out on the ocean, where tall waves hide the isthmus from view, I probably looked like a surfer darting out from under the curl just as it collapsed into foam. During this straight, flat stretch I gave a quick glance over my left shoulder to catch the shimmering horizon, then downshifted to burn uphill into Del Mar.

I hadn’t made a plan for this trip. It was to be the first long ride (except for the nerve-racking trek from the previous owner’s house), an incremental step up after two weeks of practice with the 2-mile, 25 mph commute to campus. Earlier I had upgraded my permit to an actual license in order to be allowed to ride at night, since I often need to be in lab after sunset. But the other two restrictions of a learner’s permit – no freeways and no passengers – I decided to follow voluntarily for another couple of months. The problem with this rule is that San Diego is not a grid. This city is a set of isolated nucleii cut off by canyons and connected by freeways. It’s possible to get around without using the interstate, but it takes an in-depth knowledge of the roads that, unfortunately, in my mind fades exponentially as you move north from La Jolla. I headed east across Interstate 5 and started looking for a street that I recognized and would take me home, but I got lost in the winding residential roads and had to backtrack.

Since last week I ran out of gas near school and had to fill up from a one-gallon jug to get home, I figured a proper refill was in order. California gas pumps have some weird vapor guard of which I understand neither the hows or whys of its working, so I had to sheepishly ask the attendant how to pump gas into my own bike. Then, as I rode off, the same guy happened to be outside to hear the scraping of my kickstand against the parking lot. I stopped, paused for a second pretending to adjust my gloves, kicked the stand up where it belonged, and as I rode off I tried to summon the dignity and confidence of a person who is not a complete rookie.

I bought this bike, a 1988 Honda Shadow VT800, a couple of weeks ago off of craigslist. I tried to be discreet about it, telling only my closest friends and anyone who approached within 10 feet and understood English. I also put together a list of excuses for this irrational decision, some involving statistics, some involving nonsense, that I have brought out in defense against friends who accuse me of making an irrational decision. But deep down this is not really about rationality or gas mileage or anything like that. It comes from the same near-pathological drive toward utter, total freedom, that same desire that for me underlies a disturbing number of major life decisions (career or lack thereof, home or lack thereof, possessions or lack thereof, girlfriend or lack thereof). Now that I can vent these urges by riding off into the sunset every once in a while, probably the next time you see me I’ll have a house, a wife, a baby, and a steady job. Well, let’s just start with a job for now, no need to get crazy.

In my awesomely nerdy, super-productive dual-monitor setup at work, sometimes one screen or the other will decide it’s not worthy of the hyper-efficient workspace it is participating in, and will start to flicker like crazy. Thrice this has happened, and thrice I have punched the offending monitor right in its fat monitor face. And every time it immediately chills out and goes back to normal. I keep looking out of the corner of my eye, hoping someone will notice that I’m cool like the Fonz punch-starting the jukebox at the diner. <snap> Where’s my girls?

An idea stolen from Kara when she did it a few years ago, although I don’t think she did it this year for some reason. She’s becoming a homebody I suppose.  Pins in my bedroom wall map from the last year (overnight stays only):

Reykjavik, Iceland
San Diego, California
New York, New York
Austin, Texas
Los Angeles, California
Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin
Park City, Utah
Las Vegas, Nevada
Chicago, Illinois
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Erendira, Mexico
Ensenada, Mexico
San Francisco, California
San Felipe, Mexico
Madison, Wisconsin
Hillsboro, Wisconsin
Oostburg, Wisconsin
Jackson, Mississippi
New Orleans, Louisiana

It was a pretty good one. Here’s to rolling up frequent flier miles in 2008!

On the bus this morning, I was looking down at my latest iPod and thought:

How could I have lost so much stuff over the years? I’ve misplaced more iPods, phones, wallets, and sets of keys in the last 5 years than most people own in a lifetime. And losing an iPod is especially unforgivable since it’s easily among my top 5 treasured possessions. But I know exactly how it happens - I always start thinking about stuff and I space out, doing all my normal daily activities with my head in the clouds. I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing in the moment, and I absentmindedly leave my stuff all over the place. Well, starting now, I’m going to make a change. I’m going to concentrate on what I’m doing at all times, live in the moment, be aware of my surroundings. I’m going to take care of my things and stop letting my mind wander out the window.

At that thought I carefully placed the iPod into a special pouch in my backpack, zipped the pocket, and walked off the bus - leaving my jacket behind on the seat. True story.

I found this the other day in an old box of old stuff. Free money.

Seth, you have my address. Feel free to send me a check any time.

Tony woke up on New Year’s Day with the discovery that he had made a killing at the casino at the end of the night, quadrupling his $5 at the slots. He wouldn’t shut up about it.

After a very slow transition from pathetic lifeless mounds into animate human beings, the three of us wandered into daylight and ambled towards the restaurants of the French Quarter. For some reason, probably involving Maisa, the host at one place was really nice to us and commandeered us a table immediately. Since everyone going to the Sugar Bowl had collectively decided to eat in the French Quarter at exactly the same time, the waits were at least an hour at any place with metal silverware. The added bonus for us was that this place (forgot the name – costly) had probably the second-best bloody maries I’ve had (the Liar’s Club being the best, of course. Although it may not be a fair comparison because when they put bacon-wrapped shrimp in there, it leaps above the “bloody mary” category, and basically transcends the idea of a “drink”.) Maisa and I, feeling the pressure from wrap-around lines outside, rushed our menu decisions and ruined our first meal of the year. I should have started ‘08 with crawfish, the way Tony and I started ‘07 with grilled sheep’s heads. I think. It was a long time ago.

After lunch we used the remaining daylight to take in the city, winding through antique shops, hobbling through misleadingly named Pirate’s Alley, and taking pictures of very old things. I called Dad and asked where he used to live back when he was a vagabond and squatted in New Orleans. He told me the address over the phone, then I pointed out the old pad to Tony and Maisa from the street. Well, technically, it wasn’t the exact same place because I never found the street, but really, what difference did it make? So I told them everything I knew about Dad’s wild former life, and I believe they were regaled for some time. We walked a few blocks in quiet reflection of the tales of the Bob, but as we neared the Voodoo Museum, a very different feeling crept in. A feeling of Scare.

In the front of the Voodoo Museum sits the owner, a licensed voodologist and a dude that you would not want to be your randomly assigned roommate at summer camp. We walked in as he was telling a story about how, during the Katrina riots, some carjackers were scared away by the giant python he likes to keep in his backseat. He gave us pamphlets and went through a spiel about the history of voodoo, which was interesting at the time but unfortunately I do not remember one single iota that I could relay here now. We saw crazy shrines and statues of alligator men and paintings of werewolves, but that begs the obvious question: Well, did you see any shrunken heads or not? And the answer is: Probably not. I don’t remember any, and I’m pretty sure it would have stuck with me. Most of the bones and heads and stuff were from animals, which is only slightly less creepy. Also, we read about a special potion that, when drank, turns people into zombies – but only if you also bury the person underground in a coffin overnight. According to legend, after this treatment your new “zombie” will be submissive and will do whatever you tell them. Amazing! I wonder if the spell works better if you threaten the zombie with another night in the coffin. Must be some potion!

The game that night was painful to watch, but afterward we celebrated as if we were Georgia fans. Go Razorbacks! While we were watching football, Maisa had somehow acquired a new friend who wanted to ask her for advice about a girl. The guy talked Maisa’s ear off about a girl he liked, pointing to the girl (who was across the bar) and waxing poetic about her beauty. Then he turned to me and asked to borrow $15 so that he could take her home. When I denied him, he went over to Tony and offered to go halvsies on the girl if Tony had 8 bucks. It was a romance that would melt the coldest heart.

You can experience Day 4 of this trip for yourself if you want. Just buy 3 meals from McDonalds and a DVD of monotonous scenery and sit in a very small room for 12 straight hours. To pass the time I decided to be annoying, buying fireworks in Alabama and threatening to light them in the van once every 5 minutes for the entire drive. The electronic fart machine also played a major role in our lives this day. Near the end of our journey, Tony reenacted a scene from “Dumb and Dumber” by taking the wrong onramp on the Florida Turnpike and driving back in the direction of New Orleans for a while. At the end of the excruciating day we rolled into an unremarkable motel in an unremarkable town where we were able to slightly adjust our body position from the “sitting” state to the “lying” state, a move that provided a surprising amount of relief. And we also knew that in mere hours the three of us would be holding hands and frolicking in the hot sunny beaches of Miami.

Miami was so cold that iguanas were falling from the trees. The newspapers, TVs, and radios spent the day mercilessly reminding us that this was the coldest day in the last five years, so cold that the poor reptiles’ cold-blooded metabolisms were shutting down, loosening their grips on the branches. We were damned if we would let it ruin our vacation, so we bundled up and braved the icy winds of South Beach, Florida. On the beach, the seagulls were clearly not having any of it. They stood motionless on the sand, beaks pointing into the wind in defiance, feathers puffed to twice normal size. I have never before seen such a grim face on a bird. Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any expression on a bird except “Huh?”. But these birds were unmistakably pissed.

The only thing in South Beach colder than the weather was the reactions of the bouncers to four unwashed travelers in their travelin’ clothes. In reality we didn’t look that terrible, but compared to the beautiful people that surrounded us we looked like we were raised by a pack of very badly dressed wolves. The fourth that had joined the group was Alex, Tony’s friend from Hawaii who now lived in Miami or possibly was just passing through. He seemed very transient, like he would forever be only stopping over in places rather than living in them. We heard some good travel stories from this guy as we ate sushi in the trendiest restaurant on Earth. Later that night, after the third velvet rope cut off our entry to high society, we gave up and hung out on the patio of our hotel with Coronas and pizza, which was better than feeling ugly and poor in some silly dark club anyway. Or so we told ourselves and happily believed.

The three-leg flight home on the following day was not pleasant, nor were the rain or the mounds of work that greeted me when I got home to San Diego. But the unpleasant return was good because it made me appreciate the vacation even more. Or so I told myself.

Feeling nostalgic for New Year’s Eve 2007? Me too! Yes I know it’s almost Groundhog Day, don’t worry about it.

While we were there, the Big Easy was completely dominated by the Georgia-Hawaii Sugar Bowl. In the French Quarter, where we couldn’t help but spend most of our time, we were surrounded by cheek tattoos, chalked-up car windows, and all sorts of different manifestations of the UGA and U of H school colors. Georgia, being thousands of miles closer than Hawaii, provided most of the college kids, while Hawaii stepped in to fill out the over-30 age bracket. I guess you can expect this when flights from HI to NO break 3 digits.

Every trip teaches at least one life lesson, and for Tony and I that lesson was this: we should have strongly considered going to school in the South. Every time we turned around on Bourbon Street we smacked into Georgia belles rolling in baskets of 4 or more, identically blonde, pretty, and as sweet as a peach (which — little known fact — is how the fruit got its name). I had heard raves from Greg about his year in Wake Forest, and for once I can lend one of his bold, hair-brained claims a shred of credit. However, Tony also made the interesting observation that it was as hard to find an attractive older Georgia lady as it was to find an unattractive younger one. I offered the solution that, no matter how old you get, you just have to only date college girls. Brillant!

But that’s for shallow people. That’s the attitude of people who don’t appreciate beauty and talent that lies beneath the skin. For example, we met a nice young girl hiding a very impressive talent right beneath her skin – specifically the lip part of her skin. Sometime after midnight on NYE we ordered a round of shots, and, in order to make the shot less awful by comparison, I asked the girl next to me to kindly sock me in the jaw right after I swallowed. The idea caught on, and this New Orleans native gladly punched each of us hard in the face as we downed the liquor. Then, her friend invited us to take a picture of him pretending to take a swing at her. Our bruised jaws dropped as all of the girl’s front teeth fell right out of her mouth in mid-faux-punch. We revisited that picture once every 3 hours for the remainder of the trip, and you can see it for yourself in the picture album linked at the end of this post.

The pictures include a few other scenes from NYE (BTW, that obviously stands for New Year’s Eve, and BTW is “by the way”, BTW). Some of the titles of these scenes include “An Hour and A Half Wait for a Mediocre Meal,” “Squatting to Fit Within a Narrow Camera Field of View,” “The Entire Capacity of the Superdome on a 30-Foot Wide Street”, and “Absolutely No Reason To Still Be Out At This Hour.” The pictures also include a few shots of what appears to be public urination by Tony. I can assure you that he is probably not, and if he is then I am against it. Also, several strange people pop up in these photos, and although we don’t remember them all, we can at least be sure that every single one had a thick Southern accent that I envied the hell out of. The only thing that I regret from this night was not taking a “Shark Shot,” which, according to a girl that we befriended and were sadly forced to ditch, is a shot that you take out of a plastic shark. Although we did steal some plastic baby alligators to make up for it. In the movie at the end of the album I am simultaneously talking to my dad, getting a picture taken, and pocketing several baby gators for later redistribution and plastic-creature-shots.

The next morning at around 8:30 AM, the hotel phone rang.

Maisa: <inaudible>

Girl [thick accent]: Hullow?

Maisa: Hello.

Girl: Ohhh, hayyy!!! Ah’m jest cawlin’ to see if y’all were rewtin’ for Geohgia tonaht in the footbawl game!!!

Maisa: Um, no, sorry.

Girl: Ahr yew shoore?

Maisa: <click>

[Phone rings again]

Maisa: Hello?

Girl: Hiya! Jest seein’ if yew awl were Geohgia fans!

Tony [quickly snatches phone]: If you call here again I’m going to kill you.

Girl [shocked]: Yer gonna keeeyyyill meeeeee?

We said the line “Yer gonna keeeyyyill meeee?” once per hour for the rest of the trip.

Next: The long drive through the Bible Belt, fireworks, wrong way on the turnpike, iguanas, and the Velvet Rope. For now, enjoy the pictures!

New Orleans