CNN reported recently that the world’s oldest living person had died at her home in England at the age of 115. Asked what she attributed to her longevity, she said without pause “boiled onions and whiskey.” To which I add one word – “Ha!”
By that equation, my strict bacon and bourbon diet should have me burying all of you legume-crunchers by at least sixty years. This hopefully means that I can now stop living my life as if each year is my last. Which, by the following account, appears to be what I attempted in the last twelve months.
It has been the last year of the second millennium and more importantly the last year of my third decade. I thought I should make it count. Many of you didn’t think I would live to see thirty and judging by the stacks of unopened mail forming drifts around my bed, the hard drive of unanswered emails and a voice mailbox filled with cut-off messages, you have already assumed the worst. Well, I wasn’t sure I’d make it either and while I still have a month to go, I’m here to tell you that I think I’m gonna see thirty.
Medical science agrees. After a seven-year hiatus between physician visits, I thought it was about time to find out how much damage I had done to myself during my 20’s. Actually, somebody else thought it was about time and dragged me kicking and screaming into the doctor’s office, but that’s another story entirely. Sweet vindication was mine and the doctor gave me the ‘green light, go’ signal. He was even wowed by my blood pressure and cholesterol levels. I assured him that it required a daily dietary intake of a pound of bacon to maintain those levels. He stared at me like I had three heads.
Anyway, let us begin our story. You can start by granting me my usual license to embellish. Great. Thanks a bunch. Now I’m going to ask you stretch your minds back to last December. Stretch them back to that now forgotten news story – Y2K. Remember? The world was caught up in the throes of Millennium fever and for some of us Armageddon was nigh. Throughout 1999 I told anyone who’d listen to convert their assets into gold, gasoline and guard dogs. I was only half joking. I planned to sequester myself and my supplies out in the desert at Minimum Safe Distance just in case the Judean People’s Front or the People’s Front of Judea decided to get jiggy with a couple of backpack nukes. Along those lines, I arranged to meet Greg Raleigh at his grandmother’s in Palm Desert the holidays and told him to bring the shotgun (see Please Don’t Feed the Non Sequitur).
I was in the middle of this apocalyptic planning process when on July 13th; I received an email from Lt. Joseph “Hacksaw” Carnell from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. Titled ‘Hello and an Invitation’, the email contained an offer to accompany Hacksaw from Honolulu to San Diego aboard the USS Constellation on the last leg of their tour. My acceptance was immediate and enthusiastic. Taking a joyride on the USS Constellation also worked right into my contingency plans. What better way to meet the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse head-on than riding the biceps of American military muscle into battle? Why not end the Millennium in a blaze of glory? I booked my tickets and in December I made my way to Honolulu.
I shouldn’t out Hacksaw, but when I found him at Duke’s in Waikiki, the former mattress jousting competitor was noshing on sushi. My, how times change. It seems like just yesterday that I found him locked out of his dorm and happily applying his cranium to his door as an ersatz battering ram. Of course, teasing him over his new love for little fishies is hardly fair. By the time I had arrived in Hawai’i, Hacksaw had just completed his two hundredth tailhook. That is, he had taken off and landed from a moving aircraft carrier in an S-3 Torpedo Bomber two hundredlooked locked and took off anyway. So I guess I can spot Lt. Carnell a few raw fish . . . times. Imagine surviving the most harrowing aviation feat and then repeating it two hundred more times until it becomes a daily commute. On his final hop off the Constellation he was confronted with the “WINGS NOT LOCKED” warning light. Like the red-blooded American he is, Hack banged it a few times with his fist, conferred with the ground crew that wings
The first night, we drank like sailors and closed out some nefarious club on the outskirts of Honolulu in the wee hours. The line for taxis was absurd so we left on foot into a deserted industrial area hoping to find a cab elsewhere. We got lost and found no ride. Hack and I tried lying down in the middle of the soggy street hoping to slow any passing vehicle that might take us home. No luck. We eventually hiked into a Denny’s, hoovered a couple of Grand Slams and then commandeered some stranger’s rented limo to get us home. A boiler technician from the ship hopped in with us. We never learned his name but we found him asleep in the curtains of our hotel room a few hours later.
The following day was ours to kill on O’ahu. As many of you know, my parents lived on the island for several years and I had already seen everything there seven times. Judgement Day was coming and we needed to make each day count. There was one thing I’d wanted to do since I was fourteen years old that Waikiki could provide. (No, not that!) It was the one thing I needed to do in order to die happy. I wanted to rent a Ferrari.
I expressed these sentiments to Hacksaw in an email before I arrived. Fortunately, he is one of those take-charge carpe diem friends who can appreciate such folly. Instead of scoffing at me like a Muggle, he just went ahead and made the arrangements for us.
By 11 a.m., we were behind the wheel of a lipstick-red 1989 Ferrari 328 and totally locked into a Magnum PI fantasy. Actually, getting ourselves physically behind the wheel was more difficult than we imagined. Even for me. The car is basically a go-kart with a jet engine strapped to the back. We didn’t so much drive the Ferrari as we wore it. Neither of our skulls fit in the car and despite the inclement weather, we had to keep the targa top off. With the top on, Hacksaw was forced to invent a new yoga position that allowed him to cinch his spine like a nautical slipknot. Picking up chicks in this vehicle is out of the question, unless the woman is Linda Hunt or Dr. Ruth Westheimer Not really prime seat cover. Of course, that’s just my opinion.
Within minutes of starting the ignition, I almost dashed a dream and a $2500 deductible. No doubt egged on by the charging horses inches behind my head, I pulled away from a traffic light and shifted forcefully from first into second. The pressure of my back against the seat caused a precarious seat pin to give way, throwing me backwards and steering the Ferrari into the next lane. Thankfully, my maneuver only earned me a honk and not a side full of truck.
Our first stop was a child’s birthday party in Pearl Harbor. The kid’s father was a friend of Joe’s who had given him directions to his housing on base. The problem was we couldn’t determine which Pearl Harbor entrance to use. This led to several amusing conversations with gate guards more interested in our dashing conveyance than providing the proper directions.
We finally found it, but didn’t stay long. Both of us felt a little out of place in a room full of married couples and new parents. Plus the keys to gassed-up Ferrari were burning a hole in my pocket. We said our good-byes and peeled away. Eight months later, I had a knock at my door and a badge in my peephole. It turned out to be a naval police investigator who was inquiring about my presence at the child’s party. It had been reported that during the party a $20,000 diamond ring was taken. I’m pretty sure that the investigator took one look around my hovel and concluded that there was no way I could have taken it, or if I had that there was no way it would ever be found again in my apartment. He would have also concluded that had I already fenced it, I had not spent one red cent on the domestic upkeep of my domicile. During the interview, I helpfully pointed out that had Hack and I perpetrated this crime we might have selected a subtler getaway vehicle.
From the party, Hacksaw and I hit the Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru. Here we discovered three things about the car. First, it has no power steering. Apparently the Italian designers felt this car would never be required to take slow tight corners i.e. to be used in the pursuit of American drive-thru junk food. This attitude is also probably to blame for the lack of cup holders. Lastly, this particular car did not have a functional stereo system. It seemed like a colossal problem at first glance. How could we fully enjoy this fantasy automobile without the appropriate soundtrack? We began to debate the stereo issue as we pulled out of the parking lot and I believe the answer struck us both at the same time. We could barely hear one another over the sound of the engine. It was the glorious, visceral, unbridled throbbing of our own Ferrari. It didn’t matter whether we were idling or accelerating that car sounded like no other and we dropped the tunes issue for the remainder of the day.
I took Hacksaw the back way to the North Shore past my father’s old bunker under the pineapple fields and to the entrance of the Fort McCallan Army base. On my last trip to Hawaii, Dad had taken me on the military road that connects the west coast of O’ahu with the center of the island. It is a magnificent road that switchbacks over the stunning mountain range, passes through several miles of nuclear and high-explosive ammunition magazines before ending at the coast. With enough ordinance to blow the earth out of its present orbit, it is not open to the public. However, access to the road only requires one military ID per vehicle. It was the perfect Ferrari road and with Navy Lt. Carnell by my side, it was all ours.
Everyone has dreams. Some are big. Some are small. Some are impossible and some are ridiculously simple. Most of us find a few of the smaller ones will come true, although often years will pass before we recognize it. The lucky ones will nail a big dream or two. A dream stepping from behind the curtain of desire and into the hot light of reality is both a magical and dangerous experience. The danger is that the dream carries with it an expectation and a dream that fails to deliver can be devastating to the spirit. This danger is often the only obstacle between converting a dream into truth, but it can be enough. The dream that is given a chance and delivers brings with it the magic of living. The moment becomes everything. All of your senses are alive and they are actively writing their thoughts directly into your memory. It becomes a rare opportunity to have a conversation with your soul. The Ferrari delivered.
Many of you will think that the dream of piloting a Ferrari through a Hawaiian mountain range is a terribly adolescent one. A dream borne of misspent youthful hours watching Miami Vice and doodling aerodynamically-impossible air scoops on the back of your geometry homework. That it is an adolescent dream should not demean its value. Rather, the opportunity to make such a connection with the past is an extremely powerful one. In the continuum of Time, there is 14 year old boy lying in his bed wondering how his Ferrari would sound as he downshifts from fourth to third into that tight mountain corner. For a few brief awesome minutes in December, the 28 year-old Dwight and the 14 year-old boy were able to merge and answer the question together. The kid can now enjoy the answer, close his eyes and fall back to sleep.
While I can’t speak for Joe, I’m pretty sure we were on the same wavelength. The grin gave it away.
Suffice to say, we put the car through its paces. Up and down and around the mountains we went, steering, shifting, braking, accelerating and yowling like jackals on a fresh kill. We blew through the explosive plains at over 100mph until finally the MP’s cruised past us and we decided to take our menace elsewhere.
We left the base and I gave Joe the grand tour of the North Shore. I flew down Farrington Highway and passed the former Grimm estate at twice the speed limit. At Dillingham Airfield we switched places, turned around and headed back to Waialua for a fuel and photo stop.
Waialua means the Sugar Bar and we stopped for refreshments. The Sugar Bar is one of my favorite dive bars on the planet. The bar resides in the dilapidated, almost ruinous, shell of Waialua’s Bank of Hawaii. Sugar was once a major industry in Hawaii and the North Shore grew a lot of it. The small but imposing bank structure is the last physical vestige of white colonialism in the area. It’s a reminiscent of a stately Southern Plantation gone to ruin. After the haoles took what they wanted and left, the building was converted into a bar and is now the watering hole for unemployed sugar workers, soldiers, bikers, surfers and artists. It has a pleasant side patio where all the seating is provided by retired commodes. There is also a shed in the backyard with a set of pizza ovens in case you’re hungry.
We grabbed a slice, a beverage and then eased the car over Waialua’s dirt street towards the shore. The sun dropped fittingly over the massive rollers of the Sunset Beach and we nosed the car back to Honolulu in the dark tropical rain. We had a few hours to kill before boarding the Constellation, so we holed up in a friend’s high-rise apartment. Hacksaw broke out some tasty Cuban Romeo Y Julietas he picked up in Bahrain and we savored them on a balcony staring through the mist at the night-lights of Honolulu.
In my opinion the only way to board an active aircraft carrier for the first time is to do so staggering drunk at 5am, reeking of contraband tobacco and clutching greasy sacks of Jack in the Box, which is exactly what we did. We made the mistake of thinking we would be allowed to sleep it off. Three hours later we were clutching mugs of black coffee in Ready Room being briefed at length about the ‘man the rails’ departure and the Tiger Cruise in general. Despite the hangover, I was thankful for the chance to witness the Constellation’s departure from Pearl Harbor. Sailors at attention lined the perimeter of the carrier as it was quietly guided through the harbor and out to sea. Along the way, we passed the USS Arizona Memorial and were able to pay our respects. One can only give thanks to men and women who served and died to protect the future freedoms of overeducated, underworked global nomads like myself. Without their continuing sacrifices and efforts, the spoilt punks of my generation couldn’t fly halfway around the world and rent dangerously powerful Italian sports cars on a whim. May the Heavens smile on them now!
Once I learned how to use the hand-held shower nozzles, the Tiger Cruise was fantastic. I felt bad for Hacksaw, though, as he wanted nothing more than get off ‘the whistling tin-can’ that had been his erstwhile home for the last six months. I can’t say as I blame him. Six days would be plenty of aircraft carrier for me.
The highlight of the journey was the abundance of aircraft activity on the flight deck. The aircraft, which included Joe’s squadron of S-3s, F-14 Tomcats, F-18 Hornets, mini-AWACs and helicopters, went about their daily business. The entire process and the necessary precision of execution for carrier take-offs and landings was incredible. The choreography and swagger of the launch crews transformed these military exercises into its own form of performance art. Elaborate hand and body signals from teams of color-coded technicians preceded the thunderous, perilous thrust of the planes out over the ocean. These heavily armed ballet demonstrations drew hordes of gushing fans every day. From ‘Vulture’s Row’, we held our collective breath with each leg-shaking launch, not exhaling until the plane had caught its air and rose like an albatross towards the Pacific clouds.
The second day out, the Constellation staged an airshow. Since we were the goddamned U.S. of A, and we were in international waters, the aircraft and escort ships were authorized to add an extra wrinkle to the airshow format; a taxpayer- financed live ammo demonstration. Low flying F-18’s lobbed real bombs on smoking targets and the destroyer batteries blew up fish 5 miles away. Free cardiac arrests were provided by the renegade Tomcat pilot who performed not one, but two, unauthorized supersonic fly-bys. He broke the sound barrier each time right over the flight deck. The resulting sonic boom was a complete sensory experience. You see with your eyes the plane bursting through the vapor barrier and moments later your ear drums and internal organs are slammed with a tsunami of sound waves. I’m glad to say I’ve experienced a sonic boom, but I don’t need to do it again.
For the non-sailor, there’s not a whole lot to do on an aircraft carrier. Your time is divided into two activities: eating stuff that looks like food and waiting to eat stuff that looks food. Getting lost seemed to be my primary diversion while waiting to eat stuff that looked like food. The Tiger Cruise offered many intriguing tours of its non-classified areas, but this required finding the rendezvous point. The interior of an aircraft carrier is a giant maze of identical looking corridors and stairways and is labeled like the Death Star.
“The tour of the atomic-powered mizzenmast self-scuttling skiff will begin 0-six hundred in Aft Sub-Section 21-A4-38-CF-2, just behind Cell Block D.”
The passageways are long, narrow and blocked every six feet or so by ‘knee-knockers.’ These portals through the ship’s skeleton love to lurch with the ship and bite your shins wherever possible. Walking quickly and painlessly through the ship requires considerable coordination to time the head-ducks and knee-lifts accordingly.
I bunked in Joe’s officers’ quarters on a couch he had thankfully smuggled on board prior to departure. The VS-38 officer’s quarters are hardly a luxury affair. Four flight officers and their gear are wedged in a small metal room with the dimensions and atmosphere of a gardening shed. If the men had been inmates in a federal penitentiary, their living arrangements would have been deemed unconstitutionally ‘cruel and unusual.’ I didn’t get a chance to see the enlisted quarters, but I imagine they would have made Dickens cry. I was told the enlisted men don’t even have their own bunks rather three sailors have an eight-hour daily time-share so the bunks are never unoccupied! The real luxury amenity of the officers’ quarters was air conditioning. Cruising through the Persian Gulf in the summer parts of the ship can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit. The officers did pay a fairly heavy price for their cooler digs. Their metal shed was directly (i.e. mere feet) under the end of the Number 4 aircraft catapult. This meant that on a routine basis their roof enjoyed the hurricane force of a fully-laden Tomcat launching with its’ afterburners. I got caught in there once during a take-off and I thought the ship had taken a direct hit from the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Remember this the next time you find yourself shaking your fist at the ceiling and wishing your neighbor’s Lynyrd Skynyrd box set would mysteriously disappear.
In addition to the couch, Joe’s room was adorned with a large, heavy slab of broken marble. What gives? The marble had once been a tabletop in a posh Sydney hotel suite rented by 20 odd sailors, including Joe, on ‘liberty.’ There was quite a wingding one night and in the harsh light of the following day, they discovered the table had been broken. The blame was placed on large woman brought back by one of the sailors but there was no conclusive evidence. The hotel charged them an absurd amount to replace it, so in protest Hacksaw & crew humped it out and walked it through the streets of Sydney and back to the ship.
Hacksaw jumped ship with his squadron a day before the carrier docked and left me behind in the capable hands of Miss San Diego, who had be flown onboard to perform (?!) in the USO extravaganza. Our arrival at Coronado the following day was quite a spectacle. The ‘man the rails’ exercise went into effect as we glided through the San Diego harbor. Thousands upon thousands of the crew’s family and friends were on hand to welcome them home. It was a colorful and emotional affair the likes of which I had never seen. The massive boat docked agonizingly slowly for crew and family alike. On the shore, hundreds of handwritten signs were held aloft, banners waved, balloons were released and people shouted with joy and anticipation. The anchors were set and the gangplanks finally attached the ship to its home. New fathers whose children had been born while they were away were first off and they rushed forward to hold their kids for the first time. Wives, girlfriends, mothers, proud dads and anxious kids rushed this way and that through the crowds with flowers, hugs and beer.
I was reunited with Hacksaw and introduced to his girlfriend Megan. She had known Joe since high school and turned out to be a gem. She now works as my shadow operative within the walls of Gap, Inc. As many of you know, I have a sworn jihad against the Gap and their subsidiaries Old Navy and Banana Republic for their continuing discrimination against vertically-challenged persons. Several years ago, I wrote the Gap a constructive letter pointing out that their trouser stacking policy was mired in faulty logic and aggravating to persons of non-average height. Their policy is to stack the smallest inseams on shelves seven feet off the floor and likewise the longest inseams are found at floor level. Short guys like me either have to slalom through endless racks of cargo shorts in an effort to find an employee willing to help me or I have to go Lazarus and scale the shelving units. Similarly, tall customers have to get down on their knees to find their pants. The only people who can comfortably access pants in the Gap are people who conform to average height. I pointed this out to them, complete with helpful diagrams, and received a terse reply from their legal department that did not address my concerns. Several follow-up letters elicited no response. I charged Megan with the task of getting an answer from the inside. To her credit, her sleuthing turned up an answer. It is an ‘aesthetic’ decision.
First of all, ‘aesthetic’? It’s a pile of pants. Secondly, is this not the United States of America? When was the last time an ‘aesthetic’ decision superceded commerce & lawyers? One would assume that the bottom line costs of lost business and the inevitable lawsuit I will file after a post-shelf-shimmy neck fracture would negate any quasi-artistic retailing design nonsense. Basta.
I digress. Back on terra firma in San Diego, Hacksaw generously let me have use of his ailing Grand Prix. He was headed back to the East Coast for Christmas and wouldn’t need it. I was thankful not only because it saved me a rental, but also it was to be my last hurrah with the Grand Prix. He’d had the car since his freshman year in college and it played a bit part in our lives. The car had taken us twice to Southern California for spring break. It took us fishing when we should have writing papers. I’ve ridden in its trunk and it rescued me from Compadres. On my 22nd birthday, still one of my favorites, it carried six of us safely home from the Saddlerack, bruises from the mechanical bull notwithstanding. The good times had taken its toll. Fabric was fraying, the seatbelts didn’t work, one of the door handles was gone, and the AC and the CD player were busted.
Mechanically it worked fine and it faithfully got me where I needed to go. It even got Karen and I safely back from Joshua Tree National Park when we should have run out of gas in the desert. Over the next two weeks I used to it to traipse back and forth from San Diego, Palm Springs, Borrego Springs and Los Angeles catching up with Greg & Karen, Cletus, Terry & Jen, Jason & Janine.
Winter is the busy season in Palm Springs for golf, so Greg was swamped with work and a cold. We still managed to sneak out for a round before sunset at PGA West, where he works. A good thing, too, as it would have been cheaper to rent another Ferrari than pony up the green fees for two at PGA West. Not having picked up a club since we played together with the Swedish Bikini Team at Indio Muni some years back, I didn’t play too poorly. We reached the most infamous PGA West hole, the 17th ‘Alcatraz’ hole, just as the sun was dropping. The Alcatraz hole is a small round island green surrounded on all sides by water, except for a narrow cart path that connects to the course. Without a word, Greg walked over to the tee and dropped several sleeves of golf balls on the grass.
“Hope that’s enough,” he mugged.
“Bastard . . .” I replied.
I stepped up, swung and put the first ball on grass. I smiled back at him. “I guess you can pick up the rest of those up now,” nodding at the balls. Mind you, my ball didn’t land on the green. It landed on the narrow isthmus of a path to the hole. Close enough. It wasn’t in the water.
We hopped back into the golf cart and Greg stopped for a moment. “This is my job, “ he reflected staring at the sparks of orange sunlight winking off the water trap. “How cool is that . . . Someone once said ‘I’d rather live like a millionaire than be one.’ I think they were on to something.”
Greg and Karen were also able to make some time to hang out in Borrego Springs. Borrego is a quiet little hamlet isolated in a desert valley. It’s not a hot spot for the young and rambunctious, but cool in a mellow, unpretentious manner.
The whole Raleigh clan was present in Borrego for Christmas and they generously included me in their celebrations. Once the gifts were exchanged we took charge his uncle’s dune buggy and we took it out for a spin in the desert. Our Christmas gift from Mother Nature was the discovery of unbelievable series of eroded cliffs out in the desert. Like Borrego, this stunning vista remarkable for the complete lack of outside attention they command
That night the three of us soaked out a hard day of eating, opening presents and dune buggying with a three hour dip n’ drink in the hot tub. The bourbon and shooting stars were wonderful, but there is a reason they tell you to limit your submersion in a hot tub. About two hours into my slumber that night, a horrendous itching awakened me. A quick examination revealed the source of my agony; a full-body chlorine poisoning rash.
Despite the rash, I would return as promised to Borrego for the Millennium nonsense. I still thought we had an outside shot for being thrust into nuclear winter and I spent the day avoiding windows. When it became clear at midnight EST that Times Square still belonged to Disney and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse were Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy, I left the house to celebrate and drown my sorrows. We enjoyed a late dinner at a cool little hotel that had once been a de rigueur Hollywood retreat. It had fallen in a state of complete disrepair over the years and been recently restored. After a pleasant meal there we made our way to the one watering hole in town.
I could be wrong, but I think the DJ was the same fertilizer huffer from the check-your-guns bar in Baker City, Oregon His aural palette hadn’t changed and he again spun with reckless abandon from Ricky Martin to Garth Brooks. It was all great fun to carouse with the eclectic mix of desert locals and retirees who refuse to succumb to shuffleboard.
We tried to repair to the hot tub with a bottle of bubbly but we found it suspiciously ‘out of order.’ My skin said a quiet ‘thank you’ and I fell asleep to prepare for the next Millennium.
It wouldn’t be long before the whole gang congregated again. This time we chose Dr. Nieder’s turf in Colorado. Joe (Hacksaw) and Megan were driving from San Diego to Maryland and stopped to meet us in Denver. Terry, Dave and I flew in from New York. We rendezvoused at the Denver Chop House, compared tales of adulthood and promptly announced that the Maturity Boat had set sail without us aboard.
The following day we convoyed up to Glenwood Springs and I managed to convince the crew to repair to one of the natural spa centers located there. The spa’s unusual attraction is its’ sulfuric, superheated system of subterranean caverns once used for sweating rituals by the local Native American population. Over the years, I’ve put the big guys (Dave & Hacksaw) up to various dubious activities for my own amusement, most notably mattress jousting. They were naturally suspicious of my intentions here. It should be noted that Dave sweats while breathing at room temperature and as such has a great distaste for heat. They both also have medical conditions that make such an activity a tad perilous, but they gamely followed me into the smoking pits of hell. I never liked Dave anyway. I mean he did drop me on my head. As soon as the hot sulfur air licked their skin, I think Dave and Joe felt duped again. However, after a few cool buckets of water washed the toxin-filled sweat off their significant framework, I think they realized its benefits and dug it.
From Glenwood, we headed up to Aspen where Brad had set us up with a sweet hotel and contacted Leslie, our favorite fly-fishing guide. Leslie, two other guides and her faithful fish-hound Denali took us out on the Roaring Fork to try and scare up some trout. The spring thaw was beginning, so the water was high, fast and cold. I mean it was ASS-COLD. That didn’t stop Denali from frolicking around our legs and wishing we had caught more fish for him to chase. Denali looks like an ordinary black Labrador but I’m here to tell you that his fur is made out of NASA-developed cold-resistant fibers. From a fishing standpoint, it was a pretty lackluster day. Brad and I each landed a lone trout and Dave & Megan enjoyed a number of LDRs (Long Distance Releases). Nonetheless, it was a spectacular spring day in mountains surrounded by friends.
The next morning we lost Joe & Megan and cruise director Brad signed the rest of us up to go white water rafting. Did I mention that the water in Colorado is ASS-COLD? We spent the entire previous day trying desperately to stay OUT of the water and here we were plunging in it. My lame attempt to stay towards the drier rear was too obvious and they made me take the front position for a while. That water that permeated my flesh wasn’t water at all. I suspect it was liquid nitrogen. Apparently, the U.S. Government is storing the entire national supply of liquid nitrogen in the Rockies and calling it the Colorado River. I’m not saying it was cold, but I’m pretty sure I saw the weighted body of Walt Disney tethered to the base of the I-70 bridge supports.
We attempted to warm up by lunching at the Woody Creek Tavern. Made famous by the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the bar is a crazy dive located about a mile from his place. Our additional guide, Doug, has known Hunter for a few years and the last time we fished out there he told us where to find the Owl Farm. ‘Can’t miss it,’ he said. Indeed, the atavistic and most likely stolen lawn ornamentation gives the place away. Both times we’ve driven by I’ve wanted to get out a have my photo taken in front of it. Both times I’ve chickened out. His writings always describe the Owl Farm as being ‘a fortified compound.’ It is a compound, but the only thing fortified is the good doctor himself. A typical, tubular steel farm gate serves for the entrance, but it is always open. Nonetheless, his penchant for high-powered firearms and explosives is well known and far be it from me to anger the writing Gods.
We lost Terry and his impending growler in Aspen. Brad, Dave and I made our way to Telluride via the scenic route. Along the way, the three of us started feeling hungry and stumbled through an isolated outpost with a gorgeous café that seemed ridiculously out of place. We stopped to investigate and suddenly found ourselves in a Joe Cocker Twilight Zone. Everything in the restaurant was dedicated to Joe Cocker. His gold records hung on the wall, his music played from the speakers and the entrees were named after his songs. It turned out that Cocker had bought a huge spread near Crawford (pop.32) and basically needed something for his wife to do in the middle of nowhere while he toured. So he essentially bought her the town. She eventually arrived at the restaurant not long after us and lunched cheerfully with her friends at a nearby table.
Telluride was a pleasant surprise. The town hasn’t totally lost its mountain soul like Aspen but it’s probably heading that way. The bohemian-granola scene appeared alive and well, though given the local price of real estate I suspect most of the outdoorsy bards are already-retired dot-com moguls. Being the off-season, a lot of the town was shut down. The places that were open were awesome and not crowded. At one restaurant, the chef was hanging out at the bar between meals and after talking to him he hooked us up strong with one of the best steaks I’ve ever tasted.
The altitude in Telluride did reek some havoc and the three of us didn’t get much sleep. An excessive diet of Krakauer had Dave convinced he was suffering from HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) and/or HACE (high altitude cerebral edema). I had sleep apnea and Brad was grinding his teeth precipitated by stress (?)! I can’t possibly identify the source of his anxiety. I recently overheard a couple of vacationing Kennedy’s discussing how much they admired his lifestyle.
Back in Denver, the Nieders took us to Coors Field to catch a Rockies game with a spectacular view of the gale-oppressed mountains before the storm engulfed us in the 9th inning. Speaking of baseball, 2000 was a great one for those of us in New York. Okay, so the Mets and Yankees have a combined payroll greater than the GNP of Switzerland. It was good to see the Mets in the Big One with the Damn Yankees even if they did falter at the hands of Clay Bellinger and company.
Is this what it felt like to be a Brooklyn Dodgers fan?
In the spring, a group of waiters, bartenders and office temps conspired to put me out of work for a while. The Screen Actor’s Guild, which protects these thespians for the seven days a year they work as commercial actors, felt the conditions of their continued employment were unacceptable.
Their Stalinist provisions consist of:
(1) being spirited away by van to such fierce foreign lands like New Jersey or Connecticut;
(2) being forced to consume unlimited gourmet food and coffee for the entire day;
(3) being made to walk in front of a running camera for about sixteen minutes and;
(4) receiving a neurologist’s remuneration for the effort.
Appalling, isn’t it? I suggest you contact your state’s federal representatives on their behalf.
To be honest, I actually understood their beef, which primarily focused on their future Internet and cable residual coverage. The problem is no one yet really knows what is fair compensation for commercials using new media so there is really nothing to agree to.
The result wasn’t so much to put me out of work; rather it made us hit the road. Caught in the Michelin tractor beam, we ended up working from Gainesville, Florida to Toronto in search of mad, mad ducats.
One task required me to drive to Lake Placid and interview some cat who had converted a former Titan II nuclear missile silo into a residence. On paper, this guy sounded like a gem. He runs a construction company, owns and dances with a Chippendale-style male revue, writes books, flies his own plane and owns a nuke silo. He was, however, the most droll, uninteresting free spirit I’ve ever met.
And I was mildly disappointed with his silo renovation. First of all, he hadn’t touched the silo itself. He had only renovated the crew quarters which amounted to a small two-bedroom unit. Furthermore, while the quarters’ renovation was tastefully appointed, he had done nothing to retain anything of its original aesthetic and result was a complete absence of character or originality. It looked simply like a contemporary condo unit, only with no windows and a 20,000-lb. blast door. The silo itself was ghastly, but original. Thirty years of decay had turned this icon of the Cold War into a 110-foot pit of dripping slime and rusting metal. It was ghoulishly cool.
The U.S. government poured millions into this site during the sixties only to declare on its completion that it was obsolete. This dullard bought the silo and the 300 acres around it for under 200 grand from the government years later, put probably another 200 grand into fixing it up and now is asking $2.5 million for the whole thing. God bless America.
That was just the beginning of that job. The commercial was actually a short industrial film for the web company Trellix. They wanted a short documentary on how real people used their software to create unusual personal web sites. Scores of freaks sent us videotapes from all over the country about their sites. We settled on three: a character actress from New Jersey, a clambake ‘entrepreneur’ in Nantucket and a woman who breeds rabbits in Gainesville.
Two of the stalwarts of the Michelin regime, Pat Gallo & Mike Vernola, came with us to Nantucket. Presented with a typically impossible-but-needs-to-happen task they drove the entire camera package and a camera assistant named Nik Naz (her real name) from Manhattan to Nantucket in record time. Pat drove like a banshee and Vernola provided commentary. He declared that he didn’t like Connecticut because “the entire state is soaked in the blood of Indians” and sang sea shanties about a shrimper named old Shrimpy who never caught any shrimp. The last ferry for Nantucket departed at 8:30 and in a monumental driving effort spurred on by this deadline, or perhaps a strong desire to escape from Vernola’s shanties, Gallo made it. He arrived with twelve minutes to spare only to be told there was no more room on the ferry for the van. Agitated, Pat called in. Mike and I told them to unload the dozens of heavy equipment cases onto their rolling carts and wheel them onto the ferry as foot passengers. At midnight, the ferry pulled in, and we had our camera package thanks to the guys. Vernola’s day didn’t get any better when he went to his room and discovered there was a naked man passed out in his bed, clutching a beer and surrounded by adult magazines.
In the end we got the shots, but got mugged by the locals on the way out. The entire island is in cahoots with each other, at least as far as the mainlanders’ money is concerned. We could have picked up the tab for the Sultan of Brunei’s wedding and still had cab fare for what we paid to feed a dozen of this shyster’s billionaire clients.
Florida was a pleasure by contrast. Except for the rank smell of 300 confined cable-chewing rabbits, the VTR guy who wouldn’t shut up, the gaffer who put his golf clubs in the wrong vehicle (and somehow this was our fault) and an insane airport guard who wouldn’t let me on the plane with our film. In a rare turn of events the local production personnel took care of just about everything for us and we found a little time to enjoy ourselves. Pat and I discovered the local liquor chain had an excellent selection of Australian wines, so we took it upon ourselves to host a pleasant wine & cheese soiree followed by a port & cigar nightcap at the hotel.
Our other Southern business foray was in Charleston. We arrived in South Carolina just in time to see the state take a bold step into 1870 by removing the Confederate flag from its Capitol. It was sad day for all when the symbol of a vanquished posse of julep-addled bigoted horse thieves was removed 130 years after their ignominious defeat. Political atrophies aside, our two-week stay in Charleston rocked. It was marked by excellent food, a juiced-up music scene, free happy hour at our hotel, southern hospitality at its finest and a generous if not heavenly ratio of three Southern belles to every man.
The shoot was not without incident. The last shoot day I witnessed my first twister. The sky over the beach went dark and a silver funnel protruded from the sky over the sea. I still can’t figure out why I was the only one freaking out over it. I can’t think of more heavenly target for a tornado than a gathering of motorhomes on a deserted beach.
Our work also put us into contact with a few weird celebrities. When you mention to people outside of production that you occasionally work with celebrities like James Brown, the first response is “Hey, wow! That’s cool! How do I get a gig like that?” What they fail to appreciate is the literal and metaphorical baggage that is part and parcel of this celebrity’s life. James Brown’s baggage, incidentally, smells like a high-test astringent. We believe it is the preservative they’re using to keep him supple.
Then the requests start, usually by way of some tertiary sycophant. In this case, the lackey’s name was Roosevelt.
“Mister Brown would like to know where his Mr. Pibb is.”
“Mr.Pibb?”
“Mister Brown only drinks Mr.Pibb.”
“I see. We weren’t told that.”
“Well, Mister Brown would like his Mr.Pibb now.”
“See… this is Philly. I can check, but I don’t think they sell Mr.Pibb north of the Mason-Dixon Line.”
“Mister Brown only drinks Mr.Pibb.”
“Got it. Mr. Pibb. Doctor Pepper is no good right?
“Mister Pibb.”
“I’ll see what we can do.”
And then the fun begins. A PA runs out to the supermarket to look for Mr. Pibb. The futile phone calls are made to local distributors and then to the New York distributors. Someone brings up www.mrpibb.com on a laptop, which confirms our suspicion that the greater Northeast corridor is a Mr.Pibb-free zone. So it’s a phone call to TNT in Atlanta.
“Yeah, hiiiii. I’m gonna go ahead and just have to ask you to Fed Ex First three cases of Mr.Pibb up to us here in Philly.”
“That’s gonna cost you like $200 a case.”
“Here’s our Fed Ex account number.”
While James Brown and the rest of the posse provided more than their share of logistical and protocol issues, the Godfather made up for it with surrealism. The first shoot day had 70 year-old James Brown trying to teach NBA stars Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady how to dance. I pray to whatever deity controls this universe that I can move like Mr. Brown when I reach his age. Spins, leg kicks and pelvic thrusts popped out of that little septuagenarian iguana as if he had a car battery clamped to his earlobes.
My favorite JB moments occurred when the public was ambushed. We did a pretty good job of keeping the Godfather’s presence under wraps giving us the element of surprise. At one point, James Brown and his handlers burst through a team meeting of bored 19 year-old collegiate baseball players. James Brown was in his total Bad Soul Brother #1 ensemble: sequined tuxedo, black silk shirt, silver tipped leather boots. It was like something out of a bad 80’s music video and the whole room went silent with astonishment. He stopped and looked around the room without a word to the slack-jawed youngsters. He turned his body, wound up like El Duque on the mound and pitched a regulation James Brown “HEH!” at the room. The kids exploded.
He later pulled a similar stunt on room being prepared for a power tool sales demonstration. James ambled over to the display, mumbled a few jovial, incoherent sentences about a belt sander and then sashayed his bad self right past the stunned salesman. Incidentally, Eddie Murphy’s incomprehensible James Brown impression in Delirious is absolutely accurate. I ‘ll give anyone out there a thousand dollars if they can accurately transcribe a complete James Brown paragraph.
He posed for pictures, left a lengthy message on the key grip’s home machine telling the grip’s wife not to leave him and declared “YA”LL MY CHILDREN AND I LOVE YOU” when we thanked him for his approachability.
James Brown wasn’t the only cat getting dressed up and shaking his moneymaker this year. In New York, I attended my first couple of black-tie Galas. January had me at the Tavern on the Green for the Australian-American Association’s Australia Day celebration accompanied by my friend Lisa Gans. The Triple AAA, not surprisingly, is a formidable group of hard-drinking, hard-partying Australian accountants and bankers. The Australia Day Celebration was no exception. Even the witty gnome who serves as New York’s Consul-General was wheeling around to ABBA on the dance floor with us and spilling drinks on himself.
I guess my white-bread gyrations didn’t scare Lisa too much as she and her friend Melissa were kind enough to join me in the spring for the Sailor’s Ball Harbor Benefit held downtown in a massive 19th century five-story mansion. Each floor was sponsored by a different beverage company and offered dancing. I expected it to be a little crazier, given that every real sailor I’ve ever met is cuckoo for coconuts. Alas, it was more of a cravat and cognac crowd measuring their blue-blood manhoods by hull length. That didn’t stop us from getting funky in our finery. And I enjoyed watching a couple of suitors tipping the wait staff for introductions to Lisa and Melissa. The same waiters would later coin the truism;“Guys with money can’t dance.”
The tuxedo came in handy again in August when the Stanford crew reconvened in San Diego for Raleigh’s wedding. And again I fell for Dollar’s sucker bet and upgraded to a Mustang convertible. The Pony underwhelmed me, but it was nice to go topless again. The wedding went off without a hitch or a plan. Greg actually showed, but given that they were married on a golf course I suspect he arrived to make his tee time. A foursome played through the ceremony and the wedding party departed in golf carts. The reception was fairly low-key and none of the wedding party was led away in shackles for assaulting their escorts.
Eric & Heather drove down the next day and met us all in La Jolla. We walked down to the shore and attempted to go swimming in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the water was so cold I suspected the mouth of the Colorado River lay nearby. The only person who comfortably enjoyed the waves was the thermally-challenged Dave Noren.
I hit the water again at home with Ian and Pat on Ian’s sailboat. We figured that Wednesday afternoon was as good a time as any to cruise Manhattan. We pulled up alongside a major commercial building in the financial district, cranked up the reggae and began spilling merlot on ourselves (maybe it was just me). Eventually, we noticed that several women on the second floor were checking us out with binoculars. We waved and they waved back from the window.
“You know what would be cool?” I said. A few lazy clouds passed over us before Ian finally replied, “No. What?”
“If we had some poster board and giant pen we could write down our cell phone number and hold it up. Maybe they would call us.”
Without a word, Ian disappeared below and emerged moments later with three pieces of white poster board and a black sharpie. Understand that this boat is so small it’s lucky it has an anchor let alone a stash of perfect art supplies. I swear this story is true. I couldn’t make it up. I took the pen and wrote the numbers out as large as I could. We waited until they were looking again and I began holding the boards up. A few minutes later the phone rang.
“What are y’all up to?”
“Just chillin’”
“But it’s Wednesday afternoon, why aren’t you all at work?”
“Oh, we don’t work.”
The conversation went nowhere and eventually their boss unexpectedly appeared and ruined everything, but for one brief shining moment we scored one for the little guys – both literally and metaphorically.
When Sydney was awarded the 2000 Summer Olympics in 1993, I vowed that I would be there. To that end, I sent out a mass email in 1998 to all of my friends inviting them to join me in Australia for the Olympics and a two-month jaunt around the country. There was some interest but no solid takers.
In 1999, Brad Nieder called me and mentioned he was considering postponing his indentured servitude (i.e. his medical residency) for a year but needed to find some form of meaningful educational experience to justify the hiatus. I told him the Dwight Grimm Liver Foundation was in need of a staff physician to collect data on the administration of large doses of the recreational medicine Victoria Bitter on the human body. Unfortunately the DGLF lacked any international accreditation, so I suggested the Royal Flying Doctor’s Service. The RFDS serves as an aerial ambulance for many of the remote communities in the outback regions of Australia and I thought it would be a truly unique experience in emergency medicine. Through my mother, I was able to get some contacts and ultimately they informed Brad that there were no such opportunities available to non-citizens, but they were able to hook him up with contacts at some of the University hospitals in a few of the major cities. After a few months of correspondence, Brad was offered a rotation in emergency medicine at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney the month before the Olympics. Shortly thereafter, he received another ER rotation in Brisbane following the Olympics. It worked out perfectly.
I can’t say enough about how astonished I was by Sydney’s preparation and execution of the Summer Olympics. In the years between its award and the Opening Ceremonies every media outlet not affiliated with the IOC ran scuttlebutt about Sydney’s ability to host the Games. Indeed there were some atrocious chapters in the tale. One couldn’t help feeling sorry for the thousands of Australians who got screwed by the soulless plutocrats who hoarded 800,000 tickets to be scalped to VIP’s. I suspect that unfortunate episode in the Sydney Olympics actually contributed to its success for the foreign visitors. It seemed that the majority of the locals feared the worst and left town without any tickets or reason to participate. When word that everyone in Sydney was having a great time and tickets were still available they rushed back. It’s a shame that the US broadcast of the Olympics was so poorly received, as the event itself was nothing short of magic.
My initial take on the Olympics was that Sydney would deliver one hell of a party for the world, but like any great party it would be a logistical nightmare. Brad and I planned on staying only five days as I figured that would be more than enough of crowds, lines, price gouging, bad seats, confusion etc. I was absolutely mistaken. The venues were excellent and even our worst seats (women’s gymnastics) were still decent. The events were all busy, but not crowded. People, trains and buses all moved in an orderly fashion. The Australian volunteers shepherded the world through Sydney and all the events with a smile and wave. The longest line we had to stand in each day was to get through the metal detectors and the volunteers handled even that expediently and cheerfully. The prices around Sydney, with the exception of the taxis, stayed the same.
Even when problems did arise, the spectators and organizers reacted with humor and cooperation. Brad and I hopped on one bus out of Bondi and after ten minutes of haphazard navigation, the bus driver finally admitted he was a volunteer from another part of Australia and wasn’t quite sure where he was going. Instead of barking at him, several of the passengers walked up front, grabbed the map and laughingly guided all of us to the terminal
The spectators around us fell into two categories. They were either passionate, knowledgeable fans of the sport (and in many cases related to the athletes) or they were like us and simply in awe of watching the world’s best athletes at the Olympics. As a result, all the crowds were friendly, spirited and engaging. It was a pleasant surprise to attend a sporting event and not have to dodge throngs of beer-spilling suits and burly satin-jacketed Teamsters. Pockets of national pride, marked by scores of painted faces and silly hats, offered inspired and amusing support for their athletes. A dark, six-hundred pound Brazilian man armed with a trombone, a blond wig and taking up three seats, stood up at each volleyball intermission and led a Brazilian contingent of drummers in entertaining the crowd. Brazil wasn’t even playing that day. Everywhere we went in Sydney, we heard the Australian hurrah, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi…Aussie, Oi, Aussie, Oi…Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.” Not only were the Aussies shouting it, but also half of the world was joining in
All together Brad and I caught six events: women’s water polo, women’s gymnastics, judo, women’s beach volleyball, tennis and table tennis. We missed most of the table tennis event based on the fact that our tennis tickets turned out to six hours of centre court action featuring Monica Seles, Pat Rafter and Mark Philopoussis. All the events except judo were non-medal events. While judo was the sport we were least familiar with, seeing a human win an Olympic medal is truly a joyous thing. One giant Ukrainian competitor with a fierce, shaved head did a back flip and almost broke his coach in half with a bear hug after sharing a bronze medal. The Italian gold medallist was weeping so hard he almost had to be helped to the podium.
After a lifetime of being spoon-fed artificial hokey Hollywood/Spielberg-esque “magic” with an overbearing soundtrack, I was suddenly faced with the real deal. Strangers of various nationalities were dancing with each other in the streets, laughing together and helping each other out with smiles and hand signals. It was the first time in my life I felt true hope for the human race and was happy to be a part of it. I will be in Athens for the 2004 Summer Games whether Athens is ready or not. All are welcome. Please bring your own life jacket.
While the Olympics was the major event of my trip to Australia, I was also there to visit my parents in the Northern Territory and do some sightseeing with Brad. In six weeks, we drove several thousand miles, flew a few more thousand, visited every state in Australia but Western Australia & Tasmania and caught up with dozens of friends.
Driving was one of the bigger challenges of the trip. I learned to drive in Australia, shifting lefty and all, but it had been a solid five years since I had done so and I was nervous about driving. Brad wanted no part of driving and I can’t blame him. He proved to be an excellent Goose and we did pretty well. I didn’t have any misadventures on the wrong side of the road until I got back to New York and I found myself exiting the Queensboro Bridge into oncoming traffic. Oops.
Speeding tickets are another matter. Over the course of my international driving career I have only been ticketed twice for speeding. Both have been courtesy of Aussie cops. Both were given to me while I was on vacation and with a visiting American friend in the passenger seat. The first time I was stopped I was sixteen years old, driving my mother’s American left-hand drive Datsun down Bradshaw Drive in Alice Springs. The officer motioned the vehicle over to the side of the road and approached my friend Mike Marino who was in the right-hand passenger seat. Mike rolled down the window and the officer began questioning him, assuming he was behind the wheel. Mike looked bewildered and the cop grew agitated with his reticence until he saw my hand come across from the other side of the car with my license. He stopped, stared at the car for a moment and realized that Mike was missing a steering wheel
“Damn,” he said, “Look at this Bill. There’s no wheel here. It’s one of those funny cars,” and walked to the other side to hand me my ticket.
This time I got stopped just outside of Mildura, Victoria. However, it was during the middle of the Australian Rules Grand Final and I figured I was as safe speeding through Victoria as I would be speeding through Nebraska during a Cornhuskers-Sooners game. Nevertheless, I was about twenty minutes away from Heather’s house in Mildura when I got nabbed 20 clicks over the line. I stopped and pulled out my New York driver’s license figuring I get diplomatic immunity. No dice. “Gotta give write ya up mate. But I suggest ya don’t pay. Doubt they’ll find ya in ‘Merikah.” Ta, mate.
Our first drive took us two weeks from Adelaide to Mildura, down to Melbourne and then back along the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide. In Adelaide, we stayed with the ‘shambled’ Adam Gamble, with the Pennas (Heather Laity) in Mildura, and the Nelsons in Melbourne. Being winter the whole drive was fairly cold and rainy in patches, but we still got funky with Mother Nature and then ate her in the big cities. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, the Aussie dollar was at a record low and as a result Brad and I chomped like dope-addled Sultans. In all the major cities, and a few of the smaller ones, we ate in the best restaurants and enjoyed a lot of gourmet game like kangaroo, crocodile, camel, emu, venison, buffalo, Morton Bay bugs and shark lips
While we ate a fair number of critters, we spotted even more in the bush. Brad has a bit of a Ferris Bueller lucky charm aura around him and the result was I saw more game on this excursion than any previous Australian odyssey. We watched Southern Right Whales frolic in the waves off Warrnambool. Kookaburras laughed at us from the trees. We set a posse of emu scampering through the scrub during a hike in the Riverland. Outside of the Grampians, dozens of kangaroos bounded alongside our car, dodging trees and leaping fences. Elusive lyrebirds made appearances and sang to me in a Victorian rain forest. We spotlighted a swimming platypus under a full moon while tiny poteroos and quokkas ran over our feet in the Adelaide Hills. A sanctuary kangaroo fielded a call on our cell phone from Lisa, who was vacationing in Mexico (unfortunately, the kangaroo’s Spanish was poor (though better than mine is) and Lisa’s kangaroo needs work (her wombat is impeccable) so the conversation was short). On Philip Island, we walked along the shore with scores of miniature fairy penguins as they made their way home for the night. It was a zoological fantasy. While we both dug the cute furry and feathery creatures, Brad was having some issues with Australia’s creepy-crawlies. The emergency doctor, who will soon be faced with nearly headless motorcycle victims and gunshot wounds, announced that they were all “the venom spitters,” after a confrontation with the innocuous family of fat, fuzzy caterpillars which lived in Adam’s bathroom.
I tried to immerse Brad and reconnect myself with the Australian lifestyle and culture during the trip. This was made a lot easier by virtue of the fact that we stayed with and visited numerous Australian friends. Naturally, some of that culture is liquid. We drank middies, schooners and pints in pubs large and small. We sat out in the beer garden under the magnificent tree at the Oaks in Cremorne and watched a possum pad over the fairy lights in its branches. We had pints at all three of Sydney’s “oldest” pubs in the Rocks. We drank wine at some of the world’s best vineyards in Barossa Valley, discovered the joys of loch schnicken and accidently broke into a stranger’s home. Brad learned (sort of) how to bounce and kick and Aussie Rules football after taking in a local playoff match in Mildura. We both discovered that cooped-up mothers don’t take their free nights lightly and we had our asses danced off from one end of Mildura to the other. Techno is alive and well in the hinterland agricultural regions of Australia (somebody answer the damn phone) Laundry for Adam Gamble is an all night affair that requires a map, a phone book and a healthy supply of gasoline. We got ghastly glimpse into Australia’s criminal roots with a nighttime tour the Victorian Melbourne Gaol and stood on the gallows where the outlaw-hero Ned Kelly was hanged. I declined an offer in King’s Cross to make me taller. And thanks to Brad’s meticulous planning, we stood at the apex of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at sunset and descended with the cities lights before us.
We bid a heartfelt adieu to the Olympics and Sydney, making air tracks to Brisbane. The mission in Brisbane was to locate some accommodation for Brad’s upcoming rotation and to hang with Ross Irby. For those of you unfamiliar with Ross, I’m sorry to say that my few descriptive words here can’t possibly do Ross or his legend justice. I hope one day I find enough time to do a complete biography on him. Like all friends of the Grimm family, he is a one-of-a-kind original. I have known him since I was a kid when he worked as a journalist with my mother at the Centralian Advocate during our first tour in the early 80’s. While Ross is the most nomadic global traveler I know, he has never lost contact with the Grimms for very long and has made regular appearances over the years at the Grimm household both in the U.S. and Australia. His last appearance was at my brother’s college graduation in 1999 and he tagged along during our convertible road trip through California and Nevada.
This was the first time I had ever crashed with Ross (first time for any Grimm, I think) and it did not disappoint. He had warned me in advance that the décor of his shared flat was ‘a bit odd’ and it was. His flatmate was a friendly gay man with unkempt hair that had been dyed blond with blue tips and sat on his head like a pair of horns. The apartment was a comfortable older bungalow nestled between several youth hostels. The ‘odd’ décor consisted of dozens of irrelevantly displayed icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Busts of Jesus were garnished with feather boas, a statue of a crucified Christ reclined on a genuine church pew and the tall walls were lined with large painted visions of Mary and Jesus. Whether his roommate was just being weird or whether it was some psychosexual manifestation of consuming Catholic guilt I can’t say. I think it is safe to say, though, that he had some issues.
The only issue I had in Brisbane was how fast to take the mountain corners in my rented BMW Z3 convertible. Killing time on a day Brad was using finding some digs, I stumbled out of a great used bookstore and into the hood of a blue Z3 parked in front of Hertz. As noted previously, I am unable to resist the siren song of an awesome rental car and I just happened to ask after its rate. It turned out with the exchange rate and the lack of usurious insurance premiums in Australia, it cost less than mid-size at my local Dollar. So off we went. Ross called in ‘sick’ to the office and served as my wingman through the winding mountain roads between Queensland and New South Wales. He grew up in that area and had an excellent knowledge of its sights and its best driving roads. I couldn’t have conjured up a better day for topless driving. The sun was out, the temperature held steady around eighty and the car handled like a dream. It lacked the pure, raw thrill and sound of the Ferrari, but it zipped smoothly and responsively around the curves. I did manage to bottom it out at about 95 mph in a straightaway, but it also got me out of the way of a crossing snake in a hurry and without anxiety.
I still consider Alice Springs home and that’s where Brad and I headed from Brisbane. My parents moved back to Alice last year after a difficult three-year stint in Hawaii. Brad had met my folks before but only in brief doses around Stanford. He was about to get a full-frontal assault of the Grimms and there was no way to prepare him. You would think that by the time thirty rolls around you could lose the “dude, my parents are kind of … weird.” speech. Not so in my case.
The scene at my parents’ house is akin to watching an Orwellian novel performed by Monty Python. For those of you not acquainted with my parents, they are, like most parents, detailed studies in paradox. My mother despises the media, yet is still a practicing journalist who watches three identical sets of news each day. She has become a ranting Bolshevik with Luddite aspirations. She hates anything that contains a for-profit agenda or employs technology more sophisticated than a butter churn. My father is a victorious Cold War Warrior who battled Communists for his entire career, only to find a Red living under his roof. He works in areas of the US government that employs high-tech equipment and has been the target of conspiracy theorists for years. Yet he will threaten you with bodily harm if you change the settings on his 15 year-old VCR because he still doesn’t know how to work it and he is convinced that an evil oligarchy headed by Gates is running the planet. He too is a Luddite.
Poor Brad. Nevertheless, my parents remained fairly well behaved for the course of our visit and Brad got to meet the coterie of characters who possess the unflagging sense of humor required to maintain friendly contact with Grimm household.
Our first destination after arriving in Alice was Ayer’s Rock. Now known by its aboriginal name, Uluru, the Rock is one of the most overrated natural splendors of the world. However, foreign visitors are obliged to see it if they make it out to the Centre. I had two reasons for going there. Besides taking Brad, I had the unenviable task of trying to rectify Ross Irby’s karma. In 1982, Ross tagged along with the Grimm family on our first trip to the Rock. In those days, there was no Yulara tourist center, the road was still dirt and a four-wheel drive vehicle was recommended. An 11 year-old Dwight and a 20-something Ross bounded up Ayers Rock (a considerable feat) and signed their names in the book. My father trudged up some time later. The three of us marveled quietly at the magnificent panoramic vista that stood before us. Encircling the Rock, the flat desert runs out to the horizon in every direction and defines the curvature of the earth. Ross suddenly broke the splendid silence and blurted, “I just forgot something… I’m afraid of heights.”
My father sighed and no doubt envisioned the helicopter operation that might be required to get Ross down. Thankfully, Ross checked his panic and made it back safely to the base, but not before taking several souvenirs from the top. He would later mail these chunks of Ayer’s Rock to his parents in New South Wales.
Depending on whose story you believe, Uluru is a source of incredible spiritual significance to several of Central Australia’s nomadic aboriginal tribes and disrespectful behavior towards the Rock is thought to bring about bad mojo. Taking part of it for paperweight purposes is a big cosmic no-no.
Ross is the original Aquarian rolling stone and a leaf blown by the winds of Fate. I think Ross has felt the winds have had it in for him for years and has often blamed his bad luck on the stones he took from Uluru. He asked if I wouldn’t take his sacrilegious acquisitions back to their rightful home. As part of our Z3 excursion, we stopped at his mother’s home in Murwillimbah and picked them up. I did so with some trepidation. Ross has been shot at, run over, drowned, mugged, arrested, contracted exotic viruses and generally has a close relationship with the Angel of Death. I couldn’t get rid of these rocks fast enough.
We drove to Ayer’s Rock in record time, our tires occasionally touching the bitumen. Unfortunately, the climb to the top of the Rock was closed due to extreme heat so I had to settle for an area near the bottom of the Rock. I found a suitable nook about altar height in a secluded corner near (but definitely not in) a sacred men’s site. I said a few words to the spirits hoping that they could find it in their hearts to forgive Ross and release him from their ill will. The jury is still out on the lasting effects of their return, but we are praying for Ross.
As I mentioned, I don’t like Ayer’s Rock and we beat a hasty retreat to Kings Canyon for the night. This was also my first trip to Kings Canyon. A bus-friendly paved road has recently replaced the once-treacherous outback track to the national park. The problem with bus-friendly roads is that they invite buses. The new European-style camping facility at Kings Canyon, with its shower blocks, pool, groomed lawns and lack of firepits is an affront to everything Territorian. However, it did provide competent help when two book-smart guys found themselves humbled and out-foxed by an inanimate object and eventually the tent went up.
The following morning, we took the expeditious route through the bottom of Kings Canyon. It was beautiful but not as magnificent as I was lead to believe and it still paled against the Western MacDonnell Ranges.
On the way back, I desperately wanted to get off the beaten path, so we cut across a washboard gravel track to the Henbury meteor craters. Brad and his contused coccyx gamely co-piloted us into the bush. Australia is internationally known for its flies and as I pulled in to the craters I remembered that Henbury craters is one of the most fly-dense areas in Australia. It did not disappoint and we beat a hasty lap through the meteorite fields.
Our second night out delivered the Territorian camping experience I had been seeking. The 15-mile track of gravel and drifting bull dust back to Rainbow Valley was old-school Territory and served to keep the masses at bay. We made it well before sunset this time and prepped up a pretty decent campsite. The tent even went up in record time. We knocked out some e.coli steaks and spuds and watched the sunset illuminate the polychromatic outcropping. The perfect Central Australia night engulfed us quickly. Relinquishing his concern of ‘venom spitters’ for an evening, Dr. Nieder kept a vigilant watch for prowling baby-noshing dingoes. Self-preservation soon gave way to absolute wonder, as we both savored the celestial smorgasbord above us. The entire universe was visible to us. Only little will-o-wisps of eucalyptus sparks from the fire and a thin cumulous of Cuban cigar smoke briefly obscured our view. Staring into crowded domain of the universe is a humbling and auspicious undertaking. Once the trappings of human civilization are pulled away one is left to converse freely with God.
We followed our desert excursion with an equally rewarding trip to the tropical end of the Northern Territory. Understand my home ‘state’ is twice the size of Texas and its entire population wouldn’t fill the Rose Bowl. The Territory starts well below the Tropic of Capricorn and stretches almost to the equator. Only one two-lane paved road connects the north and south of the N.T. and it is a sixteen-hour straight haul by car. We elected to fly.
This is a good time to reflect on Australian hospitality. It should be noted that over our entire seven-week odyssey, Brad and I only stayed a total of four nights in hotel space. Our accommodation, along with occasional meals and transport, were cheerfully provided by John Clarke & Karina in Sydney, Katherine McConnell in Bondi, Adam Gamble in Adelaide, Heather Penna (nee Laity) in Mildura, the Nelson Family in Melbourne, Ross Irby in Brisbane, my parents in Alice Springs and the Sharp family in Darwin. These are only the people we stayed with and don’t include the countless generous offers we received. The Sharp family is an excellent example of how awesome the Australian attitude is. Adam Sharp is one of my brother’s grade school friends. I knew Adam from his days hanging out in the Grimm house, but had never met his family. When Brad and I arrived they arranged a car for us, put us up, cooked dinner for us, showed us Darwin and took us for a pleasant Thai dinner on the pier where we watched a school of giant pancake-shaped moonfish frolic over food scraps in the bay. In Sydney, John & Karina invited Brad to live in their apartment while they were away after only meeting him once. ‘Good on ‘ya, Aussie’ – don’t ever change.
The Top End provided one of the best days of the whole whimsical Willy Wonka Tour. Since I was teenager, I’ve wanted to fish for barramundi. Through my brother’s contacts, I tracked down a young guide with a boat to take us out. He picked us up half past ass-early and drove us to Corroboree Billabong adjoining Kakadu National Park. As soon as I saw the water I knew we would be seeing some savage reptiles. I looked at my watch as Scott eased the boat into the water. It was 6:38 a.m. “It’ll be 6:52 by the time we see our first croc, “ I predicted. At 7:06 a.m. we heard a guttural howling from the nearby shore and discovered a small ‘freshie’. It was enjoying a nice barramundi breakfast and voiced its displeasure before disappearing into our wake.
The boat was about 16 feet long. The largest crocs in Australia can exceed 25 feet. I did not want to meet any of them, but wasn’t worried. I wasn’t alone in my disregard for personal safety. Quite a few of these Australian nutjobs were camped less than hundred yards from the shore. This was in spite of the fact that the Corrobree billabong is considered one of the most crocodile dense areas on earth. According to Scott, the 5km stretch of water held some 400 ‘freshies’ and 500 ‘salties.’ The only thing missing was the always-asinine Steve Irwin (aka the Crocodile Hunter). Bad luck that he wasn’t there though, as I would have happily bound him in monofilament, weighted him down with fish tails and kicked him headlong into the lily pads.
While Steve was nowhere to be seen, the entire day was worthy of a Discovery Channel special. Besides numerous crocodiles, we were treated all day long to close encounters with water buffalo, wallabies, jabiru, brolgas and fish eagles the size of bloody pterodactyls. This is what the Great Outdoors should be.
We knew it would a special day of fishing when the first cast of the morning among three absolute novices landed a beautiful 6 pound barramundi. I ran the middle part of the day fighting a half dozen barra and landing three. A six, a thirteen and a seventeen pounder all came aboard to say ‘G’day.’ Brad ran the latter part of the day landing a four and a nine pounder. Interspersed among the barra landings we caught a number of sleepy cod and catfish. The sleepy cod may be the most boring organism with gills. After getting hooked, the cod literally feigns sleep and you drag this sucker like a soggy boot back to the craft. I’d rather catch a branch.
Lunch was magic. Scott cleaned a couple of the barra, breaded them and fried them right on the back of the boat. We chomped the most delicious fresh barramundi sandwiches while watching an antediluvian saurian circle our craft. We arrived triumphantly back at the Sharps with a bag of fresh barra fillets and a half hour of killer video proof.
It was impossible to follow that act, and the following day we elected to find some chill space in Litchfield Park. Attempting to beat the sweltering tropical heat, we enjoyed a prolonged swim under the falls and in the rock pools of Wangi Falls. We were told that this body of water was crocodile-free. Signs around the falls noted that while the local conservation officials ‘did their best’ it was still possible for the Falls to be inhabited by both freshwater and saltwater crocodiles. The water was filled with fresh tourist meat and it seemed safe enough to take out chances. Our bravery was rewarded by a magnificent dip.
A few weeks later, Brad happened to catch an episode of Australia’s Funniest Home videos where several tourists put into a rock hole on inflatable rafts. The cameraman and several bystanders began shouting frantically at the rafters. They looked back and watched as a crocodile nonchalantly glided beneath their raft. With some horror, Brad recognized the location of the video as being Wangi Falls.
We flew back to Alice and prepped for the trip’s finale. It had been my intention since the beginning to finish the Whimsical Willy Wonka Tour with the most whimsical event Australia has to offer: Alice Springs’ Henley-on-Todd Regatta. What started out as a drunken lark has become an internationally-recognized fund raising extrgza. Every year people come from all over the globe to compete in this water-free nautical event. Boats are raced Flintstone-style (no bottoms, power provided by feet) through a course in the dry Todd River bed. The Henley-on-Todd routinely draws crowds in the thousands. As a photographer, I had covered the Regatta regularly, but had never entered as a competitor. Brad and I both signed up and competed in three events. The first race was by far our worst. We hopped into a two-man ‘canoe’ which comprised of a steel tray on a wheeled track. Propulsion is provided by ‘paddling’ the sand with shovels. The starter gun fired and we started digging in against two other ‘craft.’ I immediately began cursing the ballast of Victoria Bitter around my midsection and the coarse sand grinding into my knees. We progressed so poorly that at one point we thought we had come off the track. We hadn’t. We were so far behind that the PA announcers started shouting encouragement to us like we were the Olympic entry from Equatorial Guinea and the crowd joined in. It was embarrassing and upon finishing we made haste to hide behind a dumpster and drink beer.
The second race, the bathtub derby, was a better effort despite being teamed up with three kids. This event had four people carrying a lightweight bathtub containing the fifth team member. We put the lightest kid in the tub and came in second with the help of nearest competitor losing their grip in the home stretch.
The final race would have been our best and most glorious race. Brad and I teamed up with two strangers (a local yokel and a professor of geography from Germany) and entered a four-man scull. We opted for the ‘cheating’ method, that is we shifted the boat from its single-file configuration to a sideways sprint that put us in contention for the win. Unfortunately, as we rounded the ‘buoy’ our configuration took us too wide and another boat collided with our rear. The rear position was manned by Brad, who was felled by the collision. He pulled himself up quickly, but we weren’t able to make up the lost ground and finished second. It was a good effort and we both left with massive souvenier bruises to show off to our respective ladies. More glory was to come. Two days later I happened to be watching Australia’s national Today show and they featured the Henley. Sure enough, there we were for all of Australia to see. Brad & Dwight, looking more like Fred & Barney, were chugging our craft through the sandy Todd. The editors were kind enough to cut the shot just as we approached the barrel buoy. Thank heavens.
For the three of you who are still reading, I should wrap this sucker up. I could spend another whole year writing about the last one (I think I’ve come close). I’ve left out so many wonderful people and stories that it saddens me. I had fabulous trips to Princeton & Boston, enjoyed bizarre nights fuelled by caipirinhas & karaoke and was immortalized in paint by Nora Riggs. I’ll have to save these stories for another manuscript down the road.
I know that my friends on both sides of thirty would love to tell me that it is an arbitrary number like any other. I’m here to tell you that will not be the case for me. The tide of change is upon me and my life. The one lifeline I have to cling to is that of friendship. Never in my life have I needed all of you more. I hope that you will exercise the same patience with me as you have with my tale.
Thanks and have a great year!
P.S. Right now, as I write this, my wife and my friends are bribing their way into the New York Chocolate Show.
God bless this town.
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