WhutsHappening

The Dirty Ole Irish Summer

It was the summer of 2002 – my Irish summer.

It’s strange to hear and even stranger to say but somehow for those three months despite living squarely in the dregs of Pacific Beach, I felt European, cosmopolitan, downright diplomatic. It is a strangely made world, sure enough, but nothing is weirder than the annual summer tradition that finds Krauts, Patties, Limeys, Russkies, and all sorts of bastard Europeans storming our American beach towns like a reverse Normandy and certainly San Diego is no exception. The thing is, normally they’re simply the waitresses at the local breakfast joint with cute little brogues working for cheap or maybe a couple rowdy drunkards yelling excitedly in a language that sounds almost like English but disheveled and disjointed. We see them and hear them but very rarely do we take the time to meet them and see their lives and why should we? They only come for the summer so a long-term friendship is out of the question. And very rarely do we see them being friendly in social settings, if we see them at all. No, they stay hidden, little Leprechauns and the such occasionally coming out of their hiding places to collect some gold from us squares and move on.

So it was with some vicious shock that I came home from visiting the past Colorado girlfriend known as VD in this blog to find a dark-haired girl sitting on a couch my roommate Brenny and I had put outside our apartment in our ghetto apartment in East PB, smoking a cigarette and smiling a warm smile. She spoke words and they sounded weird, like possibly some strange woodland nymph had descended on our happy shithole and when I discovered she was Irish I was immediately intrigued. Her name was Charlie, a right representative to be sure and after making introductions she took me to a one-bedroom next to us where a good 10 or so of these foreign bastards were holed up like possums in some goddamned den. It was overwhelming, all of these peculiar fuzzy foreigners packed into an apartment the size of a small drunk tank or possibly a large hotel bathroom. And thus began the Irish summer.

Brenny and I spent that night drinking with these grubby bastards, laughing at their stories and their strange words. After a little we couldn’t understand what the fuck they were saying but that was OK because their excitement more than made up for the lack of intelligibility of their spoken word. We had found the lair, the mother nest of the creatures and this would be our chance to learn about a different culture, a different people, to test that age-old theory that in the end all of us shared youth and joie de vivre and the universal language was booze. Apparently they’d all been staying in the Banana Bungalow hostel on the beach in West PB and I couldn’t help but admire that explorer spirit which sent them to the other side of the world with nothing but a bag and a dream. I ended up talking with one of them in particular, the posh bird of the bunch whose sunburn had matured into a native American tan, into the early hours of the morning and only slept for a few hours as the sun was taking its place in the San Diego beach sky. So began the Irish summer.

Most of them – maybe all of them? – went to University College Dublin, UCD, and they ran the rainbow from the D-4 cats, that is the ones from the posh part of town (I think it's called D-4, though I could be confusing that with a small punk rock band), to a couple heads from small seaside villages on the emerald isle and the rest spread throughout the Irish capital. I’d never met such a strange assortment of derelicts and drunkards and so naturally Brenny and I and our friend Luke quickly took to these cats and never for that whole season were we in a social setting without at least one Pattie by our side. Evetually the landlord found out a dozen aliens had turned the studio apartment into an auberge espagnole and so a couple of them even spent a few nights at Luke’s apartment down in Misison Beach or Brenny’s and my place in the ghetto. We took care of them for the first couple weeks, tryng to show them as much of the area and as much hospitality as possible, so much that they came to call us Grandpa Luke, Papa Ryan, and Uncle Brenny or something like that.

The first thing we noticed was that the girls swore like sailors and drank like pirates, a beautiful change from all the conservative, “drink a beer to fit in and that’s it” SoCal girls we’d grown accustomed to in our depraved little private college community. And they didn’t even have a television or cable or anything of that sort. No, nights were usually spent in that first place, named the hostel because it always had a couple new random Micks running through it, drinking booze and trading words. These bastards talked in groups instead of sitting around TV’s like zombies as tends to be the trademark of American gatherings. They would tell stories about their lives on the emerald isle and we’d tell them about our lives in America and we’d debate our respective countrys’ statuses in the world and then we’d all laugh as Daniel would get out his guitar to play some Radiohead and little Luke Kenny, Irish Luke, would tell stories that we couldn’t understand because of his thick speech but he would be crouched over like a small monkey and cutting out the fabric between the toes of socks shaped like feet as was his summer job while in the states and we were transported to another world while in their house. One of the girls, maybe Ruth the dark-haired girl with the sparkling eyes, would roll a joint with weed and tobacco and I’d cough as the harsh smoke singed my lungs. We felt like we’d descended into a Hobbit’s knoll, telling tales and drinking at an unhealthy clip with the strange little foreigners.

Other times we’d be at Brenny’s and my place listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, the favorite band at the time of Yolanda, a white girl with a black girl’s name that Brendo called “Boomqueefa” to emphasize the fact that in America that name is usually not found outside of African American social circles. Liz would be dancing carefree and unencumbered by the self-consciousness that restrict most white Americans while Kat and Aoife – yeah, isn’t that a weird fucking name? – were normally a bit more subdued, talking on the couch, everybody constantly pounding the sweet boozey nectar of life. We did our part and introduced them to Beirut on the table Brenny and I had constructed from scraps we’d lifted from construction sites and police barricade sawhorses. We also introduced them to 40’s, to Country Club malt liquor that cost a buck fifty each and got you good and loose.

Sharon the D-4 girl and Joanne and Maggie, dear Maggie, moved down the street to another place we named the Brothel as it was a crowd of girls living together in near-squalor as such places were considered cathouses in certain geographic circles. Our nights consisted of hopping between the houses, drink in hand and everything was fine.

Jenny and Jill arrived a little after and moved into a one-bedroom in our little complex, rounding out the group with more good vibrations, never letting the fun die, never taking anything too serious or too personal because, fer fuck’s sake, what fun can be found in life when you let yourself be bogged down by such a boring hang-ups? I remember being near black-out and rolling around on the floor hearing spunky blonde-girl Jenny’s sarcastic biting humor or jamming out with Daniel as he horribly out-played me on the old git-box or Brenny stomping out the fire Charlie set on our living room carpet because the girls all insisted on smoking cigarettes inside our big house and who were we to say no?

There was a World Cup in Japan that summer and so one night the Irish dragged me and Brenny and Luke to Aussie Pub where they were holding special game viewings at 4 in the morning and my roommate and our college friend were the only Americans in a sea of green, white and orange. Somehow we did this without ampetamines, running instead on a steady fuel of booze and adrenaline and cheering along to “C’mon yah boys in green, c’mon yah boys in green, c’mon yah boys! C’mon yah boys in green” and “Ole, ole ole ole!”

They taught us phrases like going to “the offie” to buy beers and Joanne with her “smokey Joe” and “taking the piss” and “snogging” which actually meant making out but sounded like something you did with a fat grl at 1:45 just before the bar closed. The only words the girls taught me how to say in Gaelic (what they call Irish) were “Totu anaganaysuck” (sp – means “I think you are sexy”) “Pogmahone” (Kiss my ass) and “Slonche” (cheers) and so I told every girl she was sexy at one point or another.We probably taught them a few words too, though I can’t remember which.

We’d have movie nights at Brenny’s and my place, called the Big House because, well, it was bigger than the rest where we’d show them such American classics as “Dazed and Confused” or the banned-in-Ireland youthploitation ditty “Kids”.

Occasionally we’d go out to PB Pub or maybe one other bar that allowed the 19 and 20-year-old girls in using faked Irish driving licenses, funny since not a single one of the Patties could drive in real life – most of these strange folks don’t get their license until their mid-20’s. They just don’t need them and can’t afford them and it’s a beautiful, happy way to live I should think.

We took them on little field trips. One time it was to Peter’s uncle’s house in La Jolla while his uncle was away and we sat in his hot tub looking down the hill towards the ocean at Windansea and marveled at the differences to be found in the eternal class struggle. For San Diego American Luke’s 21st .Brenny and I rented a little wooden collapseable tiki bar to put on his patio and we hosted an epic soiret at his little beach bungalow against Mission Bay. The cops came that night and we learned the next day they had originally responded to some guy being shot and killed by a couple kids who wanted his bicycle just 100 yards or so away at the El Carmel street parking lot.

My first time ever to Vegas was during this summer, myself freshly 21 with 4 rowdy 19 and 20-year-old Irish girls - Sharon, Joanne, Aoiffe, and Charlie in tow. I was a Cutco knife salesman at that time, shamelessly hocking the sharpest of blades to rich SD housewives and corporate types alike, and one of my customers, a larger woman in her mid-40’s who made a killing in Real Estate, was so impressed by my presentation that she got me set up with her comped hotel site at the Hotel Paris. This handful of the Irish had insisted on going and who was I to say no? We procured a rental car and set off through the desert. It was me and the 4 girls speeding up the 15 listening to Godawful pop-shit with the occasional whiny U2 songs interspersed as U2 is God in the Emerald Isle and somewhere around Baker in the middle of the Mojave I wanted to drive off the road and call it a life. Moreover they were pounding beers the whole time but when I asked for one they told me no, I was behind the wheel. Apparently the Irish take drinking and driving a bit too seriously, although we did enjoy puffing on a blunt I’d rolled as the girls didn’t know how to crack open and re-roll a cigar.

It was a dirty drunken weekend and neither day did
we get to sleep before 10 in the morning. We didn’t gamble because they weren’t of age but the great thing was that although the casinos are tough to fake your Id at, the bars hardly even looked at the girls’ cards. It was a dirty little session in international debauchery and is probably deserved f a post all it’s own. But the girls did charge it, charged it as hard as if not harder than me and that’s quite a bit because I’ve been considered by many to be a drunk. I remember drinking into the wee hours and laughing with the girls.

They tried to teach me Pikey that summer, although Sharon always reminded me my Pikey was crap. American Luke was kind of dating Jill and usually had to leave his house early in the morning to go to his phatty job at Fat Boyz Pizza by the old Mission Beach roller coaster so he’d leave her cab fare back to PB from his MB house and she’d wake up feeling like a whore with money on the dresser and no man in sight. Jenny and Jill and such hung around with a group of losers from Michigan next door who Brenny and I’d had some run-ins with, a couple dirty fucking bastards with nothing going for them but the fact that they were still alive despite their obvious lack of value in any sort of somewhat intelligent society. In the spirit of International understanding I joined a couple Irish once or twice at the neighbors’ house, though, and tried to be friends with them. At least up to the day when one of the kids, all coked up, punched me in the face out of the blue, followed by one of his friends breaking a chair on my back and me having to fight up from the ground while a bunch of bitch-ass pussies from the Great Lakes tried to pretend they were hard and stomp me. When I got up and started swinging around savagely like some fucking bear looking to kill, they dispersed. Somehow the Irish girls convinced me not to do anything to them, although since then I’ve found myself much more prone to take my anger and aggression out on less deserving people, so thanks for the hate you fucking Micks!

Once or twice I went with them to Irish parties, usually bonfires or little house parties and all the guys would give me dirty looks and occasionally say rude things although the girls were nice enough. Once or twice the guys commented on my size or my muscles, how big they were and I got kinda embarrassed. Every guy had a shaved head and every girl had that sexy accent. It was disorienting and more often than not I felt quite unwelcome by the angry stares of the Irishmen.

When Kyle came out to visit we all went to Tijuana, to Safaris of course for the 10 dollar all you can drink special and a little south-of-the-border debauchery. I knew the trick about making friends with a bartender, Hector, and so every time I needed a beer I yelled to Hector and he back to me as I strolled up in front of the line and gave him a couple buck tip for two fresh lukewarm watered-down Tecates. The Irish girls didn’t understand freak dancing or even American swing dancing so I didn’t know what to do with them. Kyle was having the time of his life, a 17-year-old high school junior as he was. The sun came up and we all made it back to the border, him in one cab watching over 4 girls and me in another watching over the rest. We got split up and by the time I’d gotten back to my place Kyle had not yet returned. I began freaking out, wondering what happened to him back in the days before cell phones. I rode a bike at 7 in the morning with a swollen liver and a thumping skull to the nearest trolley stop to our place in PB, the stop by USD, and waited for another half hour to see if he was gonna arrive. Eventually I made my way back to the ghetto and found him passed out on one of the Irish kids’ couches.

A day or two later Kyle and I went with Yolanda and Aoife to Disneyland and rode every ride there that was worth riding after having breakfast at my grandfathers’ house in San Marino. We an around Disneyland boundless and unstopping from 10 AM to 11:30PM, stopping only for lunch, hardly even walking, catching everything, even the parade and the firewalks. During the parade I put Aoife on my shoulders like she was my little kid and it was a tru spectacle to behold. A night or two later, Kyle and her commandeered my bed and I was forced to sleep on my own couch like a bum.

Of course, though, the summer had to end. Our last night for the whole group being together I spliced together a bunch of footage to make the first movie I’d ever create, using two VCR’s and my old VHS recorder to capture and cut the footage with crudely-made title cards. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I let my roommate tape over it (it was fucking Damage, that bastard, and I’m pretty sure he taped over it with fucking “The Matrix”.) We watched the tape and got sad thinking about the end. The final countdown.

The next day I flew back to Baltimore for a week and picked up Luke’s new Ford Exlorer which his parents had bought for him. My mom and I drove it back cross-country, into a new adventure and a new world than the Irish summer I’d been previously living.

I got back to San Diego and a bunch of the girls had left; a bunch more were on their way. The numbers were going down, summer was ending and school was coming back. A last couple days of laying out in the parking lot, next to the couch where we'd first met Charlie and which some tweakers had set on fire in the middle of the summer, on an old mattress and boozing it up for the last few, sad nights. It was the beginning of the very end when our classmates from USD came to a party we were having with a couple of the Irish and Luke and Brenny and I realized it was one of the first times we were partying with more than one or two other Americans – we hadn’t noticed but the whole summer every one of our friends had a strong brogue and it had been kinda nice getting away from the American assholes that plague much of this country since it is, after all, America.

It was a strange summer. Our world had grown and at the same time shrunk a little. I fell hard for the posh bird of the bunch, partially because I was coming out of the ravaging relationship I had been in with the vile girlfriend VD, but it still hurt nonetheless when things didn’t really work out; that got awkward by the end. International relations were strained.

And then there was just a handful left and it was with bittersweet memories that we slowly said our
goodbyes over a last week. We assured them we’d come and visit, though that winter one of our main reasons for going up and got herself a boyfriend who might not have appreciated some tall, thick and deep-voiced ex-boyfriend American man and his average-height (which is tall in Ireland, apparently), angry musclehead friend coming to visit. After that life got in the way, money and school and careers and all the bullshit that bogs us down, limits what we can do and makes us choose priorities – Mammoth over Ireland, a year in Jackson Hole instead of a year abroad; buying a truck instead of a flight. All excuses, all of them bad and pointless though I do still plan on visiting those crazy cats some day, if they’ll even still remember me. And of course it's an amazing fact but planes do go West and I have a guest bedroom in Los Feliz in Hollywood always open for any guests, friends, and travelers.

Recently we’ve reconnected through the magic of the interweb, social networks and the such and it’s been great being able to check up on what they’re all doing, if we’re making good on the promises we made in our early 20’s about who we would be. I know I didn't mention much about each person in this post and this probably could have gone on for 50 pages or more, recounting everybody's quirks and their personalities, telling stories about random times and I know there were a couple ancillary characters who didn't get into this write-up and for that I'm sorry.

The thing is, in the end there’s little more that I could say other than I miss them, all of them. I miss the old days, the mindless liver abuse and the forties and the Beirut games and all the twisted little escapades that took place on Garnet, right next to the Subway in that dirty little apartment complex. Aging can make everything seem strange, distant – was that really 6 years ago? Jesus.

Time goes by and there’s no way to stop that. The best thing we can do is to try and savor every moment, to try and squeeze every drop of life out of our years. And if you happen upon a couple little foreigners lost in the States, looking for a good time and maybe a little mind expansion of their own, come to them with a beer in hand and a smile on your face and offer a friendship, despite how strange or grubby they may seem. Because that’s usually the beginning of a time in your life you’ll never forget – and a chance to go international while keeping your feet squarely planted at home. Summer's coming up - time to see what adventures you can conjure up, even sometimes without leaving your own back yard.

UR

P.S. - And Yes Jenny, I did use some of your pictures so there. Keep it real, homegirl.

Drunken Boxing

Fight Night and all may apply!

It’s a strange racket invented no-doubt by some back-alley huckster as a fail-safe traveling circus of sorts, the Mountain Town Fight night. This age-old tradition is a staple of life in the backwoods lands where men are men and women are, uhhh, kinda mannish as well . . .

So Josh had a couple respectable SD gapers in town visiting, having road-tripped in a Jeep Cherokee and in celebration they told me to fight in this filthy one-night amateur boxing evening. And why not? Surely a savage beast like myself would enjoy an organized fracas and the chance to earn a little money for my troubles only sweetened the deal.

I had my boy Josh drop me off at a dastardly little shithole called the Shady Lady in the basement of the Snow King hotel to sign up. I paid the bastards 15 dollars, complaining about the sheisty undercurrents that make a man pay money to provide entertainment for a crowd of bloodthirsty ski bums. But the attractive, svelte big-titted promoter girls at the check-in table calmed me down by appealing to the most punished part of any red-blooded male in a ski town, the cokkanbalz.

So I pay these carnies my money and strip down to my boxers to weigh in.

“Uhhh, we subtract weight for shoes and clothes anyway.”

“That’s fine.” I weighed in a little under 175 and so I decided that, being weighed in and having a few hours before the fight, I’d grab some food. Then I decided to knock back some of the sauce because, well, I couldn’t remember ever being in a fight while not intoxicated so I promptly ordered a shot and a beer from the Shady Lady. When I decided that wasn’t enough I asked my boy Tyler to pick me up and drive me home. Josh, my roommate, and the SD gapers (good-hearted – not gapers, really, just funny SoCal kids) greeted me with shots of Captain and beers. Knocking ‘em back, laughs, good times, I was sloppy when Tyler brought me back to the Shady Lady. When I checked in again, I stood around watching the whole deal going down, blokes fighting and all and as stumbled around Josh rolled over with a flask full of rum and a few beers. So finally I’m drunk and I’m ready and it’s my turn so I climb into the ring and get ready for my fight with Josh holding my water bottle in the corner.

The first round is a vicious flailing, throwing wild punches and crushing my opponent, a skirted little fucker, into a corner. Then he fights back, hits a couple good ones and I fall. Drunk, angry. I fall a first time before the round is over.

Round 2 starts off strong but by the end I’m falling, slipping, throwing wild punches and missing my opponent. By Round 3 it’s all but over. I’m falling out of my shoe because I'm wasted, breathing heavy, drunk and sloppy and rotten and everything is fuzzy and so when the fight’s over I don’t know whether I’ve won or not, though it should be obvious. But in my heart I won and that’s all that’s important.

So afterwards I went downstairs with my boys to the Shady Lady and ordered a couple beers, washing down the spittle and the blood. Then suddenly I had to run outside and in the cold night, in a pile of snow, I throw up all of my food and all of my booze and the fighting viciousness, rotten spew into the evening. The great spit. But when the world stopped spinning, I made my way back inside the bar and found my boys and we relaxed while random guitarists played an acoustic set and it was a good way to unwind.

(This song is "You're the Best Around" by Joe Esposito)

One of Josh’s friend, a Latin guy from Coeur d’Alene who frequented Josh’s liquor store and appreciated the fact that I fought, bought me a drink.

“Hey, can I hook my boy up with anything?”

“I’d kill for some chatch.”

“Really? Follow me.” So he and I walked back to his place in the cold night with our breaths floating in the airs above us. At his place we talked about life, ripped massive bingers, and fired down a couple sloppy ding-dongs of the old wendy white-bag and we indulged in that vile, massive stuff. What a fine evening, I thought, though soon enough it was time to go. I ran down the street to a party where Josh and the San Diegans and the rest of our friends were partying, my head all twisted and all and eventually, the night slipping away, we headed back to the house.

When we’re there two of the San Diegans immediately passed out, the only girl to come back was a chick named Anessa who was bobbing on Josh’s nob regularly that time, and soon the Beirut was taking place outside, our breath visible, and we yelled rude comments as is customary of such sausage parties and Anessa laughed as I said somethig about her blond friend who loved the kok and we put a cup of warm water on the table. When the ping pong balls fell into the snow, we had to pick them up and dip them into the warm water to heat up our hands, heat up our souls. That was the mountains. That’s what it is, what it was all about. Checking out the new life. And trying something new, no matter how stupid or poorly thought out.

(The song was Jack Johnson covering "Badfish" on the Sublime Tribute Album)

Freedom. The fight. The tour, everything that was fun and open and savage about the mountains. That’s what I miss down here. The battles, the fights. I feel like none have felt as real since.

Chaos in LAX, confusing subways in Paris, and a Family Reunion: 5 Crazy Bastards on their first European Tour

The whole point behind this blog is to show subversive travel and that has normally meant travel without family and with lots of substances. But sometimes that can mean a way to take a family trip and change it up so it's not some rotten, store bought little voyage but actually a dynamic adventure, an exploration far off the beaten trail. So I've decided to start off my first blog of International week with a crazy little journey of my family and my girlfriend and I going all over Europe and adding a few videos to these little travelogues:

So Becca and I drive to the satellite parking lot at LAX and park her car there and walk into the terminal 3 hours before our flight to commendations from the ticketing counter about how prompt and good we did by getting there so early. We wait in an hour-long line to get through security in the madhouse that is LAX on Memorial Day weekend behind a kindly old husband and wife who are professors and heading to Germany for something along the lines of international math jamboree and while they’re outlining the virtues and the educational benefit of such a thing we know it’s just going to be some nerdy international freakfest and cringe at the thoughts of them both naked and cavorting with the other intellectual derelicts.

Through the security after having followed the line up and down levels in the strangest line I’ve ever been in and passing a Linday Lohan look-alike we swear was her we are sitting at our gate in the international terminal calmly reading books and magazines and drinking overpriced Dassani waters. Just before it’s time to leave they announce our flight has been cancelled and we need to find another way to New York but that’s not our real problem because we’re not really going to New York, we’re going to Paris to meet up with my family arriving from Baltimore and catch a tightly scheduled train ride on a heavily choreographed European tour that leaves just a few hours after our flight is supposed to arrive and chugs through the night into Rome.

So we wait in line behind overweight Long Island asshole chatchies and slight Indian men and after waiting a long time they tell us we might be able to catch another flight so we run down to a side door to catch small shuttle across the tarmac, weaving in and out of planes and such just to et to the other side and have them tell us the plane just finished boarding and they’re sorry but we’ll have to go back to the other terminal and the other information both.

I call my parents to no avail and finally get the good idea to have them paged in the BWI airport and Dad comes to the phone and I tell him the deal and that we’ll try to get out and for him to turn his phone on and to call before he has to turn it off and hopefully by that point we’ll know what we’re doing.

Inside the glass customer service room we meet a black man also named Ryan who is also en route to Paris, although he’s going there to play jazz trumpet at a Christian jam session in some arondissement and we talk about that for a little while the rednecks in front of us ask questions that need not be asked only because they’re frightened of society and places like airports. Finally it’s Bec’s and my turn and we find out they have a direct 15 hour flight that on Air France that goes from LAX and Paris which would get us in only half an hour after we had been previously scheduled and so we get our seats on it thanking the lady profusely and I call Dad to give him the scoop and meet up with the jazz man as we al decide to get Starbucks to rev up and cool down, coming up on hour 6 in the airport.

4 hours later our flight is in the air, Bec and I crammed into a center and a window seat with our knees pressed against our chests because they stuff you in like chattel on most planes today and the guy next to us is some asshole who doesn’t appreciate the fact that Bec has to continually go to the bathroom.

We land in Paris and our bags had arrived before us so we have to walk around with the jazz man, three displaced travelers in Charles de Gaulle and look for a guy named Jeanne Paul who I accidentally call “John Paul” and the frogs pretend they don’t understand what I’m saying and I’m too tired to pronounce their language correctly but after a few minutes we get our oversized luggage and walk onto the curb to catch their little airport terminal shuttle which takes you to the subway station which takes you to Bercy International train station which takes you to the rest of Europe. We say goodbye to Jazzy Ryan and all but collapse onto the little shuttle, delirious and stressed and wondering how good of an idea it was for me to plan such little time between flight and train ride or even if flying into Paris and training it to Rome immediately was such a good idea.

We get off at the bus and subway stop and walk down into an underground maze of people and platforms and so much going on in such a metropolitan center and Becca and I tired and stressed and realizing we lost the paper Dad had left at our arrival gate telling us which line to take to Gare de Lyon where we took another line to Paris Bercy and neither of us speaking French and not knowing what the fuck we were doing, we decide to go our separate ways and “Good fucking luck in Paris, asshole” as our vacations ends just when it begins.

But no, for lo and behold Mom is running across the terminal waving her hands and yelling “Ryan! Becca!” as we turn and run to her like some fucking credit card commercial and we make a vow never to go to Europe without cellphones again although we do a year later in Venice. Dad is grinning while eating shit while Kyle looks happy to see us but we could tell he had been through a lot with the paranoid, worried parents and we al share big hugs and Dad directs us to the right line and off we are, through the suburbs of north Paris, our European vacation begun.

So Kyle gives me a hard case for my iPod for my birthday gift and Mom and Dad give me a silver sports coat with 6 or 7 pockets for my birthday gift and I begin playing O-Zone’s “Dragostea din Tei” on my liquid lounger backpack with the speakers and the iPod hookup over the subway and we’re off to a great start and all relaxed and happy to see each other and that, somehow, it all worked out.

In Gare de Lyon we get off and have to walk through the central crossroads and through another set of ticket-activated doors to other platforms and I realize I’ve lost the ticket I bought in the first station and with no other option I’m forced to try and sneak through behind Becca and two French police come up to arrest me for trying to break the laws and I tell them I lost it and I’m a sorry, stupid American and they frown and take me to another ticket machine where I can buy another and I apologize again and thank him and we get on our next ride for Bercy, again relieved and again anther close call and we weren’t even close to our destination, wouldn’t be there until tomorrow afternoon, but we were together and it is just another Ariano Adventure, we all say it, and I know it’s really a test to see if Becca can hang with our family of cursed immigrants.

At Bercy we actually have to get out and walk to Gare de Bercy International train station and we emerge into the street next to the Finance building which is long and white and rectangular with perfect rows of black windows and I am reminded a little of an Imperial cruiser as we walk past. We spy a few tags on the metal gates of closed businesses and see a few other restaurants and cafes and wonder if this is a good neighborhood but I judge by all the commerce it must be and I walk by an oversized poster of Zinedine Zidane’s head and an advertisement for his book coming out as he gets ready to lead France to his last World Cup and then we’re up the grand stairs into a busy train station full of other travelers all on different trips and speaking different languages.

It’s small without much room and we choose a corner of the floor against some wall space to post up while we watch the train numbers and times click clack on the mechanical train schedule high above and look for our train to Roma and Mom and Dad look for a café to get sandwiches while I go off by myself to find some wine and a cork screw and Kyle and Becca keep guard over all of our shit because in the train stations thieves and gypsies and mostly thieving gypsies abound.

Finally we’re loaded onto our train and heading southeast towards Rome and somehow we’ve all lucked out to be in the same sleeping berth, although we don’t realize that we had lucked out until later in the trip. As the train pulls away we pop open our wine bottles and drink to our success and to our departure and our arrival and our togetherness and the beginning of yet another rotten Ariano adventure. It begins picking up speed and all we can do is wait and wonder what comes next.

Music for Bercy by Gotan Project. Story continued in Nighttrain through the Alps and a Real-life History Tour   

One Man's Solo voyage Into the Wild

When Into the Wild first came out, Becca and I rushed to watch it at a little indie theater. I’d read enough about the film to know that I would probably like it. I’ve always been a wanderer at heart, a lost boy making his way through the world with  less of a plan than a man probably should have, dedicated to the idea that, all things considered, if I can go to my death bed knowing I lived my life my way, according to my desires and wants, I would die happy.

The movie mesmerized me. So much that for weeks afterwards it was all I could think about. This boy  had lived and died his own way, following nothing but his own guidance and his own rules. A person who listens to his heart and lets it guide him instead of all the doubting voices that surround him. It made me think of my travels and my life, how my whole existence has been a battle between two people inside of me. There’s one side which wants to be alone, to be allowed to enjoy life by himself or at least in selective seclusion, on his own terms and to feel that every day he is truly living on the brink, only the slightest regard for that unknown which lies far down the road; the other side is the social creature, a bastard who subsists on booze, parties, bright lights, group debauchery, all of the deepest pitfalls of society that a derelict should praise and at the same time curse. But Into the Wild made me pause, to think about the first self.

That loner part began to pop up next to the surface over the ensuing weeks and made me reflect on the times in my existence when it had won. When I had lived closer to the simplicity of nature, to the rejection of modern society and the crazy consumer culture, closer to personal humanity and the view that at times, solo traveling is the way to see things the best. And all other things aside, when driving by yourself there’s truly no part of the world better suited than the great west. That loner person had been on many adventures in search of answers as well as questions and he had been put to hibernation, pushed down into dormancy by soulless Orange County. But he was still there.

So in honor of the movie’s recent DVD release and Eddie Vedder’s upcoming show, I wanted to think a little about that part of my life. About that side of the voyage.

I remember the first time driving cross-country, at least partially. It was in a ’93 Ford Probe, plugging for Colorado Springs. I had no idea what the world contained at that point, or even how big and varied it truly was. Hell, I hardly even knew anything about my own country. I remember staring at the vast open plains and hills of the east. I remember thinking about what my life will be, about what it means to be a man and to be moving out with my girlfriend at the time, the awful V.D. I’ve mentioned before who poisoned my soul and turned me against my family. I was confused and young at that time but the solo drive gave me the opportunity to be alone with my own thoughts. To stare off into nothing but endless horizons. I drove mostly with the radio turned off, angry at how boring the plains of Kansas and Missouri and all those states could be but excited at what lie at the end of the road, completely alone in solitary silence. I arrived and felt like a different me, older and wiser much more than two days’ worth. I appreciated spoken words again, even as I got pulled over in the first small town I hit after pulling off the 70, the freeway you took straight from Columbia, MD to Denver, CO, around Limon to cut the corner towards Colorado Springs.

"Thank you officer, I will drive slower. No more doing 5 miles over the speed limit through small towns, no sir."

I wouldn’t make another long solo drive for quite some time, not until I was to leave for Jackson Hole, WY. I was 5 years older and ages wiser. I had come through the gauntlet of my relationship with V.D. with a vengeance, and exploded into the USD party scene with an anger and intensity never before realized. I was a fiend, a monster spending every day in pursuit of the next drink, the next drug, Skynrd’s "Ooh that Smell" and "Simple Man" playing behind angry punk rock while I fired down line after line and took shot after shot and bedded girl after girl, a vacant but intoxicating life. I lived it without any regrets and I still regret none of it, not even the DUI I got a few weeks before graduation, the grades I could have gotten if I’d studied a bit more of the school’s bullshit, nor the hours spent abusing my liver, my heart, and my brain. They all made me who I was by the time I was to take that trip to Wyoming not in a ’93 Ford Probe but an ’86 Ford Bronco. It was an old beastly rusted out 4 wheel drive creature from the glory days of Detroit, back before SUV’s were merely glorified, over-inflated hatchbacks and mini-vans with protruding engine hoods off the front.

This lonely drive was the first time I discovered that a lipper of Skoal could sometimes be a good companion on a long drive and it has remained a nice friend when I needed it ever since. I powered through the first day, cutting up to the 80. The road now meant more. My dad hadn’t wanted this, probably saw it as a waste of a year when I shoulda been out making money and a career but he knew I would do what I wanted to, whether he approved or not so he gave me my blessing and sent me on my way.

The Eastern states were boring, and the first day of the trip went slowly. I spent most of it talking to this weird blond girl from Dulaney I’d met a few days before I left at Claddagh’s in Canton because, well, when there’s naught but empty plains and rolling hills in all directions, my ADD tends to act up and you find a voice at the other end of a phone something comforting, something to do.

That first night I pulled into a hotel somewhere between Baltimore and the Rockies, somewhere in the emptiness of America’s breadbasket around Omaha Nebraska. The sunset was beautiful, ripples over the horizons of the plains. But otherwise, it was more of a day for winding down, for preparing myself for a life in secluded little mountain town nestled in the middle of a mountain range I’d never been to.

The second day I began to see the Rockies. They come up slowly first, with big rocks and sandpiles as the air gets crisper and the sky gets clearer. Cities begin to thin, including the vast farms that cover all of the fly-over states, and soon you find yourself in the forests, jagged peaks reaching skyward on every side, stabbing a bluer sky than any you’ve ever seen. I was determined to make it to Jackson Hole that night but as the road began to ascend the mountains, I noticed the Bronco slowed. While climbing it maxed out at around 50 and the road ascended and descended for most of Wyoming. In Laramie, I stopped to get gas and a fast food dinner. When I went back out to start the Red Dragon up, it clicked a few times and didn’t turn over. I thought for sure the battery was over and here I was, in Laramie, Wyoming, all of my earthly possessions packed into an old, sedentary box of steel stuck in front of a gas pump. I walked up to a random girl in a beat up old Volvo and asked her for a ride to an auto parts store I’d seen down the street. She dropped me off there and I bought a new battery, then got a ride back with two hunters. At the truck I changed the new one for the old, only to find that my problem was that my starter was coming loose. I put the original back, returned the replacement for a 40 dollar refund, clutch since I had only about 200 dollars after my first month’s rent that had to be spent on gas for the trip and survival and I didn’t know how long it would be before I’d get a job, and I got back on the road.

I arrived at Rock Springs as the sun was setting over the southern tip of the Tetons, casting a million rays of light, all colors of the rainbow opening out into space and eternity so that I wondered what was the purpose of every day but to watch a grand, life-changing sunset as night began to fall. I turned onto US-191, a highway that led right into Jackson and an all-encompassing dark, ominous cloud on the horizon. There I decided to pull over and fill up with gas. I walked inside for a water and an energy drink.

"So how far is it to Jackson Hole from here?" I asked, pointing up the 191.

"About 4 hours, maybe more. Why?"

"I’m heading up tonight."

"I’m sorry."

"Why?"

"It looks like there’s a heavy storm up ahead. The road will be slick. Probably take you a bit more than 4."

"Okay. Well thanks," I said, taking my drinks and nodding at her. As I pulled out of the city, I found an empty freeway into the mountains, mostly up and down mountain passes but there was enough light that I felt confident lighting a joint a random hippie I’d met 2 days prior had given me for my trip. Soon, though, I found myself regretting it. The Bronco had no real heat and for most of the day I’d been wearing a big corduroy and wool Appalachian-looking jacket over a heavy hoodie. By this point, though, I had also put on my snowboard gloves and a heavy hat and was still beginning to feel the temperature inside my body drop and sometimes weed only adds to me feeling colder – I’m more sensitive to the climate or something. Also, I found myself in a snowstorm that was beginning to whip up as I practically pushed my old steel relic at a steady 50 miles an hour. I was the only car on the road, neighbored only by semis and other transport vehicles. The Bronco’s wipers worked poorly and the headlights could hardly break through the dense blizzard ahead. The sky was otherwise dark, not a single star or moon to illuminate my path, and in this condition, as the road went up and down I discovered I couldn’t tell in which direction I was going. Without fence posts off the side of the road and nothing to light up the sky, a scary vertigo set in. My only enemies, the heavy semis that made me feel like they were going to push me off the road with their enormous wind every time they passed, soon became my friends and I discovered I could get somewhat of a glimpse of the road when I followed them, using their enormous headlights to set the path. I wasn’t listening to music, alone inside my empty cockpit and scared. Was I ascending the mountains or driving down into the valleys, was I in a field or fringing the edges of some cliff. What if the Bronco broke down right now? Would I freeze.

I decided to call my parents. They told me to get a hotel room and that if I needed it they’d deposit the cost of the stay into my bank account, they just wanted me safe. The thing was, I hadn’t seen a hotel, a motel, or even a human light for an hour and didn’t know where I was or when, if ever, lodging might show up. They started singing to pick up my spirits, to wake me up and make me feel not so alone. Finally I found a place and pulled over, leaving tire tracks in the couple inches that had fallen in the lot since any other guests had arrived. I checked into the room and fell asleep quickly. The next day the snow was gone and the sun was shining and I continued on, smiling, charging down the road like an excited young kid running down the stairs on Christmas morning to a room full of presents. I passed a small little outpost just off the Raging Snake river, into up a lonely road as the mountains grew on both sides of me and soon found myself staring at the snow-covered peaks that ring the small town of Jackson, a hamlet founded in a little neck nestled in the Teton and Gros Ventre ranges by an old French trapper named Jackson.

The next couple weeks would be adapting to a new life. I had a good apartment with good roommates but little more. For a month or two I slept on a pile of blankets, sleeping bags, and warm clothes on the floor of my apartment and felt like I was always full of energy, like sleep was something needed by other people, maybe, but not me. I picked up random jobs doing construction and somehow picked up a gig doing a few granite runs despite the fact that I had no driver’s license, no insurance, not even valid registration for my Bronco.

My first run was down to Salt Lake and then Vegas. The road through Wyoming, down US 89, was a twisting run of mountain passes and sleepy one-horse towns, one of which, Alton, was the home of the Olympic Gold Medal Wrestler Rulon Gardner and even had a little burger joint on the side of the road with a bruger named after him. I got lost and found myself driving along the most beautiful azure lake, so clear and sparkling that the sun sky and the mountains above it reflected as if they actually pointed down and what I’d for so long known to be the truth was nothing more than a reflection of reality. At the foundry in Salt Lake I met a crowd of Mexicans running around yelling in each other in Spanish and a Latin manager who spoke perfect English and gave me the keys to a black Pick-up truck loaded up with big marble countertops and sinks.

The drive to Vegas found me spending the first night in a casino a little North in Mesquite, Nevada. I gambled a hand, lost all 20 bucks I’d had for spending money in about 5 minutes, and began writing what would someday become one of my novels. The next night I spent in the Tropicana in Vegas and ate a couple mushrooms with an In N Out 4 by 4 animal style. I walked the strip by myself, probably a story I’ll some point blog about, but the main thing I discovered was the beauty of humanity, of being alone and discovered how beautiful the city was where one block I’d be entombed in lights and stimulus followed by dark emptiness between casinos. On the drive home I talked to the girl again and discovered I loved her.

I had a few more drives but without boring you, all I could say is I discovered what peace there truly was in silence, that getting lost is sometimes the best way to find the answers to the questions you’d never know you ask, and that every corner of this great country, perhaps even my hated middle states, beheld their own perfect little secrets, their own beautiful scenics and their own distinctive people.

But some of my best memories of being on my own, alone and unobstructed and peaceful were in Jackson itself. My Bronco broke down a week after my last haul and I didn’t fix it for the rest of the winter. There was a bus stop about 50 yards, across a playground, from my house that I had to catch at 7 every morning to catch a connector at the K-Mart in town to my job at a little snowboard shop, Wildernest, at the base of the mountain. Most days I’d catch it and find myself alone at the bus stop in town. I would stare up at the open sky that seemed to break at the tops of the nearby peaks of Snow King’s little range. I would watch the sun rising over the jagged horizon and breathed in the air, cold and fresh, and every inch of my body felt alive. As if all the rest of my life I’d been asleep and for the first time I was truly waking up. Every moment seemed important and I felt a destiny in the stars that I could almost touch, as if all the possibilities of were life simply laid out before me and I had only to reach out ever so slightly to grab it and hold on.

Other days I wouldn’t catch the first bus and would find myself walking down the street in the early morning stillness, before the sun had begun to peek over the edge of the world, sticking my thumb out for a hitch to K-Mart or the Mountain. Those were some of my fondest memories. Alone, slight electric tingles racing down my spine as I walked in the frigid Wyoming air. Would I catch a ride? Would I have to walk to the stop?Whenever a car stopped I’d jog up in excitement and for a couple minutes I’d be part of somebody else’s trip, sharing someone else’s morning and stories. Then they’d drop me off and I be alone again, back into my own life.

Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of wild nights partying with my friends in the city, barhopping and hitting on girls and doing drugs and drinking too much. I remember one night coming out of the VFW hall, the only bowling alley in town, and laughing drunkenly with my roommate Josh and two random slores from my work as a Moose ran down the middle of Main Street in the heart of Jackson. But my favorit moments, the ones that seem to still stick with me the strongest, were the ones I spent alone. I remember one day hiking out of bounds to Cody Bowl, riding down and then trekking by myself into some of the last fresh untracked in Four Pines. I must have walked 3 or 4 miles in knee-high snow by myself that day, not a worry in the world and not a single other person in sight for miles. It might have been the happiest I’ve ever been.

Eventually I had to leave the wild west. As I said earlier, I have two sides in constant turmoil a true cusp between a Gemini and a Taurus, and they couldn’t both be fulfilled in Jackson. There was one side that wanted to accomplish something that mattered to the world, something that would use all of my energy and abilities and talents. I discovered I needed a little more living among people and lights and depravity. I had a need to return to society, to accomplish what I’d been put on this great world to accomplish. I couldn’t do that hiding away in a small corner, tucked between the emptiness of the high alpine and the glories of nature that few see and even fewer ever take the chance to really and truly experience. Once I’d done that, once I’d made my mark and contributed, hopefully made the world a better, or at least a brighter and more interesting, place, I felt like that one side should be satiated. Maybe then I’d ease enough of my restlessness to be a whole person with just one of those spirits inside me. To be able to accept the simplicity that life can offer to those seeking it. Maybe then I’d be able to go back to those solo hikes and those lonely, freezing mornings where possibility and my human spirit were boundless, free and unfettered and uncomplicated by all the poisons we prescribe to in our everyday lives. Maybe then, I’d finally be able to relax, to find a nice place outside the grid and truly be happy. So I got the Bronco up and running, descended the mountain, and made my place in Southern California, next to the heart of American creativity and commerce, a resting spot for the American dream, one final sprint towards achieving whatever it is I fell I need to achieve in the greatest place to achieve it.

Until I finally find what I’m looking for, I’ll be down here amongst the people and the places that have come to make up what we now call "society". And when the moment comes that I feel I’ve done what I need to, that I’ve finally put that one side to rest, I’ll be driving like a bastard for the mountains, one last great journey before I can settle into nature and throw off the reins of our everyday lives. Up there, my final leg of the voyage will be more internal and hopefully more peaceful. Cheers to everybody reading this, everybody seeking some great travels and some new adventures. May you find what you’re looking for. And may you discover that, in the end, the voyage is truly more important than the destination.

- RA

Flying Standby, the Conclusion

Continued from Flying Standby

So when I last left off I was sleeping under a threadbare blanket in Philly with cheesesteak hanging off my mouth. The following morning - well that's a bit of an overstatement, I only got 2 hours of miserable sleep before my alarm woke me up close to 4:15 AM. I made it to the airport, back to the same terminal I had flown into the night before, accompanied by tired hotel-goers and an attractive young Philly girl, tall and thin in sweatpants with heavy bags under her eyes. Helluva time for a flight, I thought.I checked in without any problem and strolled up to my gate, arriving two and a half hours before my flight. I ordered a blueberry coffee and an everything bagel with my final meal voucher and posted up alone at the gate, watching the news coverage about the Assassination of Benzahir Bhutto earlier this morning. It was strange watching riots erupting in another country a million light years from Philadelphia, PA; watching desperate citizens lash out with violent protests, explosions erupting through the streets against a the terrorists and the government, watching their great white hope for freedom go down in the streets of Pakistan.

Eventually other people began filing in. An older man showed up behind the counter and I checked in. The flight was relatively open and as I read more Film Flam I was called up to get my ticket for Kansas City. Finally I was on my way.

I landed in the small airport and called Becca and Dan. Eventually they showed up, swerving all over the road like a couple of miscreants en route to a heathen execution in the great Bible Belt. They picked me up 40 minutes after I arrived in the PT cruiser we had rented and took me the 45 minutes to the hotel room.

We acted like assholes, we drank unhealthy amounts of vodka and bourbon, we celebrated a marriage, all the great stuff I might describe in another post. But this post isn't about the destination. It's about the stand-by journey there.

Me, Becca, Dan and Milhouse ascended into the misery of life with the pain of a hundred drinks coursing through our brains. Our livers were bleeding and shriveled, very close to death, and our brains were all swollen from the poisons we had poured into our bodies the night before as our bodies strove to heal themselves. It was a rough morning to be sure.

The 4 of us packed up quickly, then drove to the airport to return the rental car. After that we shuttled it to the airport, a small regional in the middle of the heartland. Why is an airport from one of the biggest cities in the middle of the country, with no other airports anywhere nearby, so goddamn small? It was disconcerting as we began to discover the fact that the airport was small and seemingly everybody had decided to fly out of Kansas City on this day. All the flights were packed and there were paid standbys ahead of us. As I went to check in, hungover and pained, I found I was having trouble getting my info. Once the lady behind the check-in came over I knew it was done. She told me my flight was not a possibility - my only hope was a 2 o'clock flight to Charlotte which would get me into baltimore closer to 9 than 4. I turned to Dan with my hands on my cheeks, a la Kevin McAllister, and yelled through my bloodshot eyes blowing alcoholic flames out of my mouth at Dan -

"How could you do this to me?" All they could do was laugh. Yeah, sorry I got you and Becca $80 dolar flights to the wedding of the year. I accepted my fate and we all walked away. Dan and Milhouse had a similar flight to Philly and Becca had the worst of all - her flight, the only flight going west the whole day, was a small commuter plane to Phoenix,  already filled to the brim and in addition with 6 paid standbys ahead of her if any assigned passengers were late.

All we could do was wait. Hungover and stressed, chewing our nails, hoping we wouldn't have to spend the night in Kansas City, 4 adults way too old to be traveling like 5th-class citizens. We tried to eat some rancid Quizno's, with rubbery chicken and rotten ranch over 3-day-old plastic bacon, and scowled at a  gril from the wedding who told us about her secured flight and how she was definitely going to be in her bed this night.

After a good 4 hours in the airport, Becca's flight left on-time - and because of that, so did she. Dan and I stood there as we watched a piece of white trash run up to the desk and yell at the head gate attendant.

"Ma'am, your flight's gone."

"No it's not, it's right there you stupid bitch."

"Ma'am, I'm gonna escort you back out to the front desk so you can rebook. Thank you."

Becca was lucky. But Dan and Milhouse and I were not. Our flights all left over an hour late. When flying standby, late flights give late flyers more time to arrive. And apparently USAir is notorious for being late. So after waiting, fearing having to tell my parents I wasn't going to see them the night before I had to fly back out for California (the next morning, from Baltimore), chewing my fingernails, beginning to reek of body sweat and sour booze, the depravity from the night before oozing out of my every pore, I found myself alongside Dan and Milhouse being booked for the later flight into Charlotte. Dan and Milhouse had said that from there we would need to get a rental car and drive back up north. Miserable and painful and a frightening prospect for me in that state. As the two of them walked out to a bar to get a few drinks I asked the lady, an frustrated woman who had told me 6 times already that she had something else to finish up, how her day was. I expressed surprise when I overheard the fact that she had been working there for 19 years and acted like Kansas City and in particular her role in it was amazing. She soon melted, gave me an actual seat (not just a standby slip) and found me a flight getting into Philly at midnight. So I would need to call Mom and Dad and ask them to drive 2 hours north around Midnight to pick me up from a wedding none of them cared about and ruining the prospect of spending any time with them before I left, to return possibly not for another year. But at least I would get in.

I walked out and met up with Dan and Milhouse, drinking a few beers and waiting for our next flight. It felt like I had been traveling for days, a  homeless nomad destined to spend eternity waiting for flights in crappy airports until Armageddon. I told them about the Philly connector so they booked themselves on that and reserved a rental car not in Charlotte like originally but in Philly to drive themselves home to Manhattan. Just as we were loading in, Dan realized he couldn't find his boarding pass. After close to 8 hours, he loses his ticket right as we're loading. Milhouse asked me if I would wait for Dan if he couldn't find his ticket. I said no, in standby everybody's on his or her own and as much as I could sympathize, I had other concerns on my mind.

Somehow he found it and we all got on and I was immediately asleep for the short flight. In Charlotte we were informed that we could upgrade to first class for $20 for the flight to Philly and so we waited in line in front of a Mexican couple, the boy saying in Spanish he would get her home and wait for the next flight out in the morning and she saying she didn't want to leave him. Then she said he would probably find some puta at the airport to fuck and he got angry and exclaimed at her. Regardless, I found behind the special services counter a kind black girl who seemed to have more than enough time and absolutely no problem taking care of me. Her desk was much more efficient and much quicker working than the overworked, understaffed services desks in Philly and I thought back to the debacle that seemed like a week ago but was in fact just 2 days before.

Finally we were on our flights, me Dan and Milhouse, sitting First Class although we stank in soiled clothes full of nervous sweat spilled out over cheap airport carpet and trapped in my corduroy coat and travel jacket. Never again would I fly this way, I said to myself. The nervous feeling that now permeates flight, having to wait until just before your flight leaves to know if you're even going to be allowed on not to mention the standard worries about delays, lost baggage, and ruined plans, is too much for me. I'm hitting that age where my nerves are regularly frayed by things like rent and family and love and the endeavor to establish a career and make my name in this world. Any more flights like this might wreck the last bit of sane sensibilities that exist in my life-addled brain. Inner tension is put at a premium as one ages and so I must bring an end to my standby experiences.

But I did it the right way. First class, though shabby looking as first class goes, reminiscent of a run-down but wide open seat and lacking the leather and insignias I'd come to associate with the first class seats I could never sit in, was still first class. I spread out my legs as the flight attendant, a nice middle-aged woman, brought me 3 rounds of Vodka tonics from the second I first loaded on the flight to a final one just before we began descent. I drank my drinks and finished my book and stared out the window at whatever was below. I sat next to an old woman who stared distrustfully at my drinks but I didn't care. A few rows Dan and Milhouse sat together joking and talking about whatever silly mental farts they wanted to discuss. I enjoyed my flight and wondered how I would be able to finish getting packed up during the 4 hours between finally arriving in Baltimore and leaving for BWI. Oh well. Such is the life when flying standby on a dollar and best wishes.

Flying Standby

I just spent the last 3 days flying standby into and out of Kansas City for a wedding, a harrowing experience which can leave a man broken, sick, and desirous of never again flying anywhere, let alone spending more than 15 minutes in the vicinity of anything containing the words "air" or "port".

Now there was a good reason for this flight. It was a wedding of a friend of mine from college who had been a very central character to my social circle, the most respectable one of us and a fitting counterbalance to my perceived debauchery and reputation for being the bad seed. I had roomed with him for 2 of my 5 San Diego apartments and his brother during one other and while he played goalie on our lacrosse team and taqught me how to be kind and patient with everybody, I played defense and taught him how to have fun in jail and hopefully made his college experience a little more colorful.

So now you know the why, let me explain the how - that is, how I got to the wedding. I flew from Baltimore on tickets purchased for only the price of taxes and fees - a "non-rev" ticket, as it were. You see, I have another friend whose brother is a pilot, freshly minted and recently hired by US Air, and he had a few of his extra tickets lying around so I used one, my friend Dan another, Dan's roommate Milhouse another, and my girlfriend Becca a 4th. She was coming in from Orange County, I was flying from Baltimore, and Dan and Milhouse from La Guardia.

The whole process is complicated so I'll just relate my side of it. I walked up to the US Airways counter at BWI carrying my garment bag with a freshly-pressed suit, shirt, and tie as well as some dress shoes, my portfolio planner containing my passport and my checkbook, and a paper lunch bag with cookies and a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich packed by my mom. On my back I wore a travel sports jacket without about a dozen pockets full of trinkets and cellphones and my wallet, on top of which I wore my trusty traveling coat, a heavy corduroy construction with fake sheep's fur lining the neck that I all but lived in when I called Jackson Hole my home.

At the counter they gave me a piece of paper naming my gate and my flight but without a seat. I strolled up to the gate and checked in. They called my name out right before boarding began and I was ready to relax. I started reading McMurtry's "Film Flam" and relaxed for the short flight to Philly.

In Philly I casually strolled to my gate and continued reading. We were told the flight was delayed an hour and that didn't worry me. An old woman sitting next to me with useless water-filled calves covered in several old sores that were oozing on the floor of the waiting area, dripping through the foot supports of her wheelchair, asked me what they said. After I explained the delay, the woman sitting next to her told me that she had just flown from the Netherlands and that flight had been delayed as well. She expanded on the fact that she had developed a vile cold from all the moisture in the air and mold in the cracks. She then went on to tell me she and her husband had been booked for an earlier flight but since they were late she had been moved onto this flight.

"Never book the last flight of the night because if you miss it, you have to wait until the next day," she told me before launching into a dissertation of how interesting and beautiful Kansas City was. That fucking bitch! Didn't she know that if anybody tells me stuff like that, very likely I'm going to experience the worst possible fate influenced by either proving her point right or wrong?

So I was called up to receive my ticket and went on reading "Film Flam". They boarded everybody, eventually calling my group. I loaded myself onboard, stowing my corduroy jacket and my garment bag in the compartment above and my portfolio in the seatback in front of me. I went on reading, thinking everything was fine and I would soon be with my friends and my girlfriend in Kansas City, partying hard the night before the big wedding.

"Ryan _________, would you please come up to the front?" It felt like being called up to the front of the classroom, even to the point that a collective "ooh" escaped the seats. I grabbed my jacket and my garment bag and hurried up to the front, past all the glaring eyes, past the old lady with the invalid legs and the woman returning home from the Netherlands. At the front the flight attendants greeted me with apologetic eyes - "Mr. Ariano? I'm sorry, you're going to have to deplane."

It was all happening as if in a bad dream. I walked back through the gate and talked to the woman at the counter, a Latin lady with a smooth complexion for a 40-year-old. She explained that since it was snowing in Kansas City, there was a weight restriction. Myself and another man kicked off were the two over the 80-person limit. The interesting thing was that he was a 360-pound man, a pilot himself, over 6-foot 5 (why are pilots usually so tall?) and I couldn't help but wonder what kind of weight restriction counted him and I equal?

As I walked up to the desk to rebook my next flight, I realized I no longer had the portfolio. It was still on the airplane - and the plane was backing out of the gate with no chance of coming back. I had lost my passport, my checkbook, and pages of important personal information, passwords, and accounting particular to my movie production business. I ran frantically to the lady at the counter and told her about it so she could call them and get it sent back. She gave me the info of the lost baggage in Kansas City and directed me to the special services desk. There I waited in line behind a stinky hippie, an angry boy from Burlington Vermont who obviously takes himself way too seriously and decided to pick a fight with the angry, tired black woman behind the counter, and in front of a group of Norwegian youths. Once I got up to the front, I spoke with a white boy named Jose Etcheverry and he booked me on the next flight - leaving the following day at 7:30. I made sure to get a hotel and meal vouchers from him and he took care of everything, despite some obvious exhaustion from working during holiday time and some confusion resulting from having to fix  too many hostile people's problems.

I then had to make the call I was dreading - I had to call my girlfriend Becca and tell her that she would be arriving in Kansas City without me - and would be destined to spend the night with my derelictive friends partying in KC without me. She threatened to go back to Orange County except that she was already in Phoenix and was getting on her flight. I told her to contnue on and transferred the rental car and hotel reservations into her name.

Down at the lobby I caught a shuttle to the Ramada. In the lobby I was checked in behind a family of 5, a group of Long Island chachies with a tall thin father who looked like a 20th Century American Lit Professor, and in front of the disgruntled young man from Burlington. When we talked to the cute Asian girl behind the counter, she apologized and told us we should expect it - about 70% of the people they get with free vouchers are from US Airways, on delayed or cancelled flights through Philly.

I sidled up to the bar and ordered a Philly Cheesesteak with my free dinner voucher. I took it upstairs to my room, curled under the 5-threadcount comforter, and ate probably the best cheesesteak I'd had in years. I fell asleep with meat hanging out of my mouth after talking to Becca who had met up with my other friends in Kansas City and was now en router with Dan and Milhouse to the car rental. I would have 2 hours of sleep before I would have to wake up at 4 the next morning to get to the airport 3 hours before flight time, a suggestion Jose gave me for making sure I got on the first flight out. I remember feeling lonely and angry as I shivered under thin sheets looking out a window at a strip mine and dumptrucks behind the hotel. (To be continued in Flying Standby, the Conclusion)