Cross Country Christmas

My goodness folks.  I thought I had seen affluence, but having now seen Aspen, I see I was mistaken.  I once rented a 350 square foot studio in Manhattan for $1500 a month and I thought that was superlative.  Now in Aspen I see a 400 square footer listed for $3000 a month.  Wow.

I must say the village is incredibly picturesque.  Original late 1800s brick architecture with stained-glass transom windows.  Incredibly well-done lights on the shops and trees.  The 8,000 foot elevation all but guarantees a white Christmas.  However…

The racial divide of Hispanic workers and white skier-shoppers that remains firmly in place in 2016 is unsettling.  And all these rich white people skiing, shopping, eating—none of them are smiling or laughing.  Totally weird, and really drives the “money can’t buy happiness” point home.  However however…

It is worth a trip.  Work hard so you can afford it.

Bloomington IN to Denver CO in one day.
1197 miles.  Scenic Route via Iowa and Nebraska.
I rule  🙂

We have a Midwest; I’ve decided we therefore need a Mideast.

I’m in Bloomington Indiana.  Happy Belated Birthday DLR.
Earlier today I logged
Harrisonburg VA,
Oak Hill WV,
Lexington & Louisville.

When I’m here I remember why I moved to California.
(Everything east of OK City, north of Atlanta, and south of Boston
is basically the same.)
It is dark & depressing here in January,
just as it’s humid & disgusting in July,
but right now it’s January and yikes.
Outside in the gray cold, people scrunch their shoulders up to their ears.
Their steps are hurried, yet tentative.
Nobody seems to be happy about ANYTHING.
They seem like if they could leave, they would.
At least the ones whose souls and brains haven’t been crushed would.
Well…poverty, commitments.  What are ya gonna do?

They aren’t selling flannel shirts.  They’re selling an idea, an image of me wearing that flannel shirt while I split logs.  Me bringing those logs into the lodge, setting them by the huge stone fireplace.  Me eating hot hearty stew while outside the silent snow falls.  Me reading the classics while my faithful dogs nap on the rug.

I’ve known this for some time, but I keep looking at these catalogs despite that and the other facts I know: None of their boots will fit my wide forefeet.  All their sweaters, shirts, and coats are cut to accommodate lazy fat beer guts.  Buying them will never bring me the focus needed to do the work needed to generate the money needed to buy the property and build that lodge.

So I buy the occasional large tall flannel shirt because, well, they are value for money.  And the rest of the time I just look to remind myself to stay the course and cultivate the values.  And that there are miles to go before I sleep.

The Texas State Trooper sees me (and my California plates)
before I see him.
They’re good at that.
If I wasn’t texting I would’ve seen him.
He wasn’t even hiding.
This is Panhandle Texas: flat and devoid of trees.
There ain’t nothin’ to hide behind.

I look in my rear-view and see him start to pull onto the highway.
I don’t think I was going more than 10 mph over the limit but
I pull over immediately.
Y’know, send the message that
Okay, I see you and you got me.  I’m not a criminal.
I got no reason to run.

I reach into the glovebox for my registration and insurance.
I roll the driver’s side window down, but no,
he’s coming to the passenger side.
Okay, I’ve seen that video where a trooper gets hit by a truck
while conducting a traffic stop.  I get it.
But wait, from the passenger side
he’ll have an un-obstructed view of…
PIANO RACER 5®.
Hmmm….

“How ya doin’ today sir?”
“I’m good officer, how are you?”
He looks like he could be half Mexican or Native American.
I try to think whether that could work for me or against me.
“Fine thanks.  Where ya headed?”
“All the way to New York.”
If the California plates weren’t enough,
now he has twice as many reasons to hate me.
“What’s goin’ on there?”
I resist the temptation to blurt out
A heck of a lot more than is going on here
and instead, I’m not sure why,
play a scale on the PIANO RACER 5® gaming console.
It wasn’t powered on, thank God, but it was clearly
(if he took the time to look)
plugged right into the car stereo.
“Gigs” I say.
Now this guy is probably thinking he’s hit the frickin’ jackpot.
A weirdo loner musician from California
driving all the way across the country to New York
playing a goshdarn keyboard on the passenger seat.  He says
“Okay.  C’mon back and hop in the cruiser with me
and I’ll write ya a warning.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I have NEVER heard of this,
or even seen it on TV.
Come on back and hop in the cruiser?
Best case scenario, he’s going to try to kiss me.
Worst case, I will be chauffeured to the local police barracks
(where they have special cells for city slickers)
and PIANO RACER 5® will be taken out to the back forty and shot.

“Okay” I say.
Now my inner voice self-coaching begins in earnest:
This is totally fine, Joe.  It’s broad daylight and you’re on an interstate.
He seems like a perfectly nice guy.
Step out of the car the same way you always do.  Now…
to lock or not to lock?
If you lock it
(and I don’t have a clicker,
so he’ll see me put the key in the door and turn it)
he’ll think you have something to hide.
If you don’t lock it and he wants to try to search the vehicle…

I don’t lock my car.  I walk back to his cruiser.
I put my hand on the handle, lift it, open the door,
get in, sit down, and shut the door.
I am now inside a police car.  All the windows are rolled up.
As he starts writing (a good sign,
no kiss attempts or other zaniness has yet ensued)
I look around.
In the back seat is a shotgun and a frickin’ M-16.
In the front seat is a laptop mounted on a really nice swivel arm
that holds it in a very ergonomic and accessible position.
Man, I need one of those for PIANO RACER 5®!
I can’t help myself and
“This is the first time I’ve ever been inside a police car”
comes right out of my mouth,
but when I hear myself say it, I think
Good, now he surely knows I’m not a criminal.

He’s writing.  I’m sitting and trying to look relaxed.
“How long ya been out in California?”
“Oh, about three years now.”
“Ya ever exper’ment with marijuana out there?”
Oh boy, here we go.
“Oh, no, not at all.”
Thank God I have short hair, am clean-shaven, and wear glasses.
“Have ya ever been around people
that were exper’mentin’ with marijuana?”
“Oh, yeah, y’know, it’s everywhere out there.”
(You know those crazy no-good Californians!)
“Ya mind if I have a look at yer eyes?”
Huh, maybe he does want to kiss me.
I take my glasses off and look at him.  He looks at me.

In my peripheral vision I see another patrol car
coming down the other side of the highway.
It slows down and starts to pull across the median.
“Here comes one of your, uh, associates” I say.
He looks over, then gestures toward my car
and resumes the questioning.
“Ya got a lot of stuff packed in there?  Sounds like a long trip.”
“Oh, yeah, but I made sure I can see clearly out the rear window.
Safety first.”
“Who’s respons’ble for the vehicle?”
“I am.”  Where’s he going with this?
Meanwhile trooper #2
has walked up to the passenger side of trooper #1’s cruiser,
and is sizing me up while putting on some badass looking black gloves.
“Ya got anything illegal in there I should know about?”

Now kids, you should stay in school,
stay off drugs, and stay under the speed limit.
But I did have some, how shall we say… medication in my car.
A tiny bit of bud in a plastic pharmacy vial.
And oh yeah, the CBD / THC chocolate.
And oh yeah, the THC espresso beans.
And oh yeah, the pre-roll in the glove box
that lives next to my registration and insurance.
I forgot about all those!
Sheesh, maybe I need to lay off the drugs.

As I open my mouth to answer,
I glance at his badge and see his surname:
HONESTO.  I s#!t you not.
I am about to lie to a cop named Honesto.
You can’t make this stuff up.

“No, no, not at all.”
“Alrighty then, ya have a nice day.”
He hands me the warning.
I get out of the cruiser.
Cop #2 is still sizing me up but then starts looking at Honesto like
Dude, WTF?  I thought we were gonna have some fun with
crazy city-slicker occasional pot-smoker guy?

I get back in my car.
I turn the key in the ignition,
put my signal on, textbook-style,
and gently drive back onto the highway.
I’m sorry Mom, Dad, God, and George Washington.
Apparently I can tell a lie, and make it plausible, too.
But seriously, Officer Honesto,
this one was handed to you on a silver platter.
You’re giving the smart cops of the world (all six of them) a bad name.
Oh well.  Some long-haired California idiot who’s actually high
and playing PIANO RACER 5® (or maybe Djembe Racer 5)
when you pull him over is bound to come along before too long.
Until then, if you somehow happen upon this blog,
pull me over again when I head back home in a month.
I’ll buy you a beer, or maybe a joint.
It must be stressful dealing with all of us wackjobs.

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is
“Joe, how do you keep up with your piano practice on the road?”
Well, I’ll tell you.

There are a number of options:
Stop by colleges and conservatories en route and
sneak / bribe / flirt your way in.
Carry a full-sized digital keyboard into your motel every night
and annoy the crap out of your fellow guests.
But the best by far is to practice in your moving car.
How, you ask?  Why, with the new-and-improved
PIANO RACER 5®.

We have made many improvements
over PIANO RACER 4®.
The PIANO RACER 5® gaming console
comes complete with 3-octave keyboard
and 1/8″ audio cables
that connect to your vehicle’s AUX port.
With a male-to-female splitter (sold separately)
you can then connect your smartphone
and play along with your favorite songs.

Now I’ve heard of laws that prohibit
texting, drinking, and even canoodling
in a moving vehicle, but I’ve never heard of a law
that says “Don’t PLAY and drive.”
With PIANO RACER 5®
there’s no more arriving at the gig un-prepared.
No more musicians falling asleep at the wheel due to boredom.
And no more listening to a song on the radio and wondering
“what exactly is that cool chord progression?”

PIANO RACER 5®, available everywhere.

**Professional musician (read: crazy person).  Do not attempt.

Alpine to Albuquerque.  795 miles.  11.5 hours.

Up the green Laguna Mountains into the Cleveland National Forest.
Down the other side over piles and piles of rocks
into the brown Colorado Desert:

Past the factory farms of the Imperial Valley, elevation -95 feet,
just south of the Salton Sea:

**If you’ve not yet seen ransriggs’s eerie short film,
watch it now:

Through the Imperial Sand Dunes,
crossing the All-American Canal,
the largest irrigation canal on the planet:

Across the Colorado river into Yuma, Arizona:
The farms give way to feedlots.
Then Gila (Monster) Bend, AZ.
Turn left and head north on 85.
Thousands of proud tall Saguaro cacti:

Turn right onto I-10 and go through Phoenix,
a pleasant 75 deg F in the winter.
Heading north out of Phoenix, I-17 climbs steadily
and the cacti disappear, replaced by Piñon and then
the taller (Ponderosa?) pines:

Humphrey’s Peak, 12,637 ft high and snowcapped.
Turn right onto I-40.
Soft magic-hour sunlight at your back,
painting the high desert brush
an even warmer shade of golden tan:

Past Winona and Winslow.
Eventually into New Mexico, and across the Rio Grande.

Soundtrack:

“Take It Easy” the Eagles
“The Ballad of Billy the Kid” Billy Joel

Departure prefigures death.
What will I do when it’s time for me to leave this earth?

I’ve got 2,000+ miles
in the next 4 days
to ponder that one.
Today what am I to do?
Hope that I’ve packed well.
Hope that I’ve left everything in order.
Take that deep breath and just go.
All one can really do is utter a prayer:

Dear Lord,
Please please please don’t let me realize
100 miles down the road that I left the
gas on / water running / door un-locked.
Thanks,
Me

Have you seen VIKINGS on the History Channel?
I know, they rebranded as just plain ol’ History
(and I just revealed that I entrust my historical education
to televised drama)
but Disney is all about the one-word titles these days:
Cars, Up, Frozen, Tangled, Brave.
Sometimes they themselves become incredibly brave
and they’ll put an article before or a suffix after:
the Incredibles, Monsters Inc.
No one in this world has ever lost money
by underestimating the intelligence of the [not so] great masses,
and so many young men get their blog ideas from Mencken.
I digress…

So, the Vikings.
Men from these and many other dare we say, cultures,
would for centuries get into a wooden boat
constructed from trees felled with axes they made,
and set sail not knowing where the wind might take them.
They didn’t have the frickin’ Weather Channel,
GPS navigation, Gore-Tex, Chex mix, or Sudoku.
They kissed their loved ones goodbye, quite possibly for the last time,
sailed and rowed across cold oceans, landed in strange hostile places,
met the local inhabitants, took all their stuff, and killed them.
The last part seems a little dickish,
but the rest of it really drives the point home:
we are complete softies.
Some of us barely even get off the couch.
We make some poor kid deliver hot prepared food
and we cue up Netflix with the remote.
The truly adventurous among us get into our heated car,
sit our fat lazy butts down on the heated seat,
grasp the heated steering wheel,
and listen to a computer-generated voice
that tells us exactly which paved bandit-free road to follow.
She doesn’t even yell at you when you make a wrong turn.
The voice should turn into Sam Kinison or Lewis Black:
“Oh my God, you flipping idiot, you missed the exit!  Are you blind?!
There’s a HUGE green sign with white reflective letters!
Cheese and crackers!”

For the record,
my car has neither heated seats nor a heated steering wheel.
Life is rough.