Something To Say

The streets aren’t all curved, but they do all look the same. I lose my bearings in under 10 seconds and can barely keep our guides before me and Francesca behind me in sight at the same time.

This is the “Old City.” Ciudad viejo… the place where men have died running for centuries. The cobbled streets where footpads and cutpurses have shuffled down these side streets and alleys waiting for an easy mark since the city was built.

This is where they are going to murder me.

The light is gone. The door from the street to this passageway just shut and now there is nothing here but the rotting wood, the stone walls too close on either side, and the strange drunk foreigners I can’t understand. I hear them as they beckon me to follow them up the stairs.

No light. Four flights of creaking rotting precipitous stairs. No light.

I can feel the sconces on the wall; sometimes with my head, as they are placed too low. They may have help candles or light bulbs with equal likelihood. They hold no light for me now.

Suffocating minutes choking on the mold seem like much too long. Far too many stairs. Babel. We’re climbing to Heaven.

Finally a light; a bare bulb that has managed to withstand the ravages that are evident in the broken planks and score walls that form this dungeon. Now, I can see my drunken guides as they are. No longer sinister; simply well and truly drunk.

The key materializes in my hand. I didn’t know I was holding it, but the angry red outline in my flesh tells me I was and always have been; it shouts of my tension.

Key forward, I open the door.

The first fresh air in what seems like an eternity hits my nose. After the streets of vomit and urine, and the stairs of decrepitude, this wonderful aroma of laundry and home is a feast and a fortune at once. Hardwood floors greet my feet stepping off the tumbledown palace stairs behind me. there is a study to my right, a bathroom to my left, followed rapidly by a kitchen, a living room and two more bedrooms.

The entire flat is furnished. The walls of the common area are lined with bookshelves which are in turn filled with movies, books, and knick-nacks from all over the world. Africa, China, Australia, America and most of Europe are represented in the décor around the room. Much like the city surrounding us, this tiny place I’ve carved off is filled with thoughts from almost everywhere on the globe.

Joe and Rang are busy staring at Francesca’s breasts while I take in the view of the street. We are on the top floor. The balcony opens up above hard pavement with a tigh high rail made more for decoration than anything else. This isn’t the Waldorf. There are no safety railings or nets to catch jumpers. I am staring 50 feet to the cobblestone below covered with people and light refuse.

There is a guy peeing in a doorway down the street.

An Open Doorway.

I remember why my back hurts. Grabbing my backpack, I open it up and pull out the gigantic bottle of Jack Daniels, thunking it down on the round table at the edge of the room.

Joe’s voice says what we’re all thinking. “Whiskey, you mad bastard.”

I find whole pages written I don’t recognize. Maybe there is a phrase or something that makes me think it is actually me writing. Somewhere in there.

She says she is Nashville and today is only Tuesday.

but that’s not the beginning…

White light. Cold, white light. Almost too white for what is left of my stinging eyes to assimilate. The bleak environment slowly bringing itself into focus; turning from a warm white ocean into a perfectly segmented sea of cubes.

Tiles.

A tile floor.

A balcony: well kept and monochrome. After many long minutes of deliberation, I decide it is indeed a tile floor filling my vision, and not the white light of the afterlife. Within moments, the jackhammer in my head makes me think that being dead might not be such a bad thing.

The piercing pain necessitates I rise and find out the nearest route to painkillers/alcohol. The sight that greets my gaze is more than unusual.

A church yard.

And vomit.

This is a scene I’ve not been treated to previously in my lifetime; beautiful and strange in it’s Dali-like picturesque quality. Where are my pants?  This could be a red letter day.

Peeling my face off the geometric landing pad of a balcony, I scratch my head, wondering what in the hell happened. My left hand doesn’t feel right, dulled in sensation, and moist. I’m wearing a large yellow rubber kitchen glove…down to my elbow. I didn’t know they made them this large.

Tucked inside the glove is a key I have never seen before. Looks like the key to a hotel that is far behind the times. That first generation of keys after the skeleton style key finally passed on, slightly twisted and teeth ground down dangerously.
112.

There is a shoddy motel sign blinking “Vacancy” from across the street that seems a likely suspect. It looks like those 1950’s billboards ushering you into Vegas would look if they were still around today; faded and ragged with all the promise of hepatitis. Good thing I’m wearing the glove.

The key fits the lock of Room 112 of the Vagabond Motel. The lock looks so old, I’m fairly certain any key would have worked. Opening the door, I’m scared of what might lay inside. Have I made a horrible mistake? Should I run now while I still can? Where the hell did this glove come from?

Two girls I have never seen before are laying across one another in the king sized hotel bed. Wrapped in the sheets of the bed as they are, it’s hard to tell if either one has any clothes on. I’m not a gambling man, but I’d say no. They’re pretty… that kind of pretty that comes with a price tag. I can see the rather shapely butt of the blonder of the two, and the wrist of the brunette’s arm as it disappears between the blond’s legs. It’s like a Timex commercial.

A mess that might be my pants occupies a place of honor in the middle of the floor amid scattered alcohol bottles and shredded pages of a TV Guide. With a brief check to make sure both of the girls are breathing, I grab my pants and head for the door. There’s a glass of something that might once have been scotch on the old tv playing a snowstorm and audio static. I drink it in one gulp. Looking at my hand holding the glass, I think, I should probably leave the glove. They may want it back.

The brunette stirs slightly saying, “Jake?” as I close the door and make like a brontosaurus.

The sun is up. It’s been up. An hour? Two? Who knows? Time to find my wheels and get the fuck out of here. There is a strange mystery about this city and it’s automobiles; half of the city is a parking lot, yet there is never anywhere to park.

I’m pretty sure it is still AM, so since the sun is east and I live on the upper east side, I figure that’s a likely bet. I start walking.

I like Jiminy Cricket. I think if we all had more friends like him, we would spend less nights sleeping outdoors in our underwear. I think he got a bad rap, being called a conscience. Conscience implies a kill joy; guilt. That voice in your head that sounds an awful lot like your ex-gf who brought up every indiscretion of your life, every time you forgot to take the garbage out. I think Cell Phones are the new Jiminy Cricket.

With pictures, videos, text messaging, and instant drunk dialing available to everyone, everywhere; a cell phone is the closest thing that we in our disposable rocket fueled society can call a conscience. Proof of all your shameful and ignorant activities stored in a miniature digital database on your hip. It’s also a damn good place to start figuring out what the hell happened last night.

I am reminded sharply of this fact when my cell screams from my newly recovered pants that I am missing an appointment.

It reads, 8:00 AM. “lunch iTucsom domt.gave tm eat”

I’m really not much help to myself. Cycling through the pictures on my cell phone provides me with a number of blurry images of people I may or may not know. Some shots of a concert I attended prior to losing consciousness and a picture of a restaurant that should be nearby, judging from a street sign I just passed. I feel kind of like that guy from Memento; no clue what just happened, but I have a whole lot of pictures of whatever “it” was. I have a whole lot of pictures of her, too.

Those fucking pictures.

I haven’t deleted them, though god knows why. That guy from Memento seems more and more blessed as these days roll by like 1’s leafed off into herpetic underwear at the Last Chance strip club. Happiness is good health and a poor memory. The cigarette cough building deep in my lungs tells me I’m pretty far from that side of the tracks.

The pictures are all I have left of her, thankfully. I had the good sense in a drunken fit to take everything she had ever touched, throw it off my balcony and start a bonfire with it in the middle of the parking lot at the apartment complex I lived in before I had to leave town. Needless to say, I didn’t get the deposit back.

I’m back at the corner of Churchyard and Vagabond with the vacancy sign flashing lethargically overhead; reading only “Vacan” from this angle. I’ve just walked in a gigantic circle. Shit.

With the addition of pants to my wardrobe for the day, I remember I have pockets. The first pocket yields a pack of cigarettes and a match. I light it and drag hard, making my head spin a little. Oddly enough, in one pocket I still have my wallet. Giving my wallet a once over, I discover that I apparently paid the girls very well. For what, I have no idea. In place of the last dollars I had left is a valet check. This means wheels. This means escape.

Escape. I beeline to the restaurant showcase in my pictures from last night. They’re doing brunch.

The valet looks at me like he knows me. That wary stare with uncertainty and… something that might be fear mixed in. Trading him my ratty piece of paper for my ratty ass keys to my near useless car I shoot him one last look, wondering what he knows. Donning the battered old sunglasses that are shaped a little differently every time I park in the sun, I leave the scene of the evening and head back home. I don’t leave home much anymore. When I do, things like last night tend to happen.

I park the car.

I walk inside.

A madman lives here. You only have to look once to know it. And I fucking KNOW it…

My phone makes more noise and I look around the room. I haven’t changed my number since it all went down.

Down. Hill.

I walk around the tiny apartment picking up scraps of paper all banged out on the same antique typewriter I stole from the last professor to give me a shit grade before i wiped my ass with my Literary Arts degree and walked away. It’s hell to find ribbons for this fucking thing, but keyboards have no soul.

One hand answers the phone and presses it to my ear while the other hand keeps propping up pages in my vision; almost accusatory in the action. What have you done? What are you going to do now?

I find whole pages written I don’t recognize. Maybe there is a phrase or something that makes me think it is actually me writing. Somewhere in there.

She says she is Nashville and today is only Tuesday.

The voice, I recognize.

But that’s not the ending…

Getting ready for Cornerspeed was a pretty big thing for me, since it was my first day on a track and I really had no idea what to expect other than what I had read. I would not have been HALF as prepared without Voodoo, pgood, jtalerico, seriokilla, ZuluHour and his dykes, and several other people with names not quite so weird.

I made a Costco run to prepare and grabbed water, Gatorade, Rrrrred bullz, chips, snacks, sunscreen, memory cards, batteries, etc. I was probably a little overstocked. The Sunday afternoon before the big day, Jtalerico, and the crew at his house helped me out by ridiculing my safety wire job, and then showing me the right way to do it. We set up the cleaned up the brakes, disconnected and taped the lights, took off my newly painted plastics, and I was ready to rock.

The weather report was about 90% likelihood of rain all day for Monday, so I was a little sketchy without rain gear, but decided to just say Eff it and roll on. I left my house about 5:30 am, and drove my ass off to get there. I got the idea to rent a small Uhaul trailer from a local police officer, and it turned out to be perfect. The 5×8 only cost $15 and after I saw the trailer, I realized the hidden wisdom that it would be much easier to load a wrecked bike into that low trailer than into the bed of my truck. not that I would ever wreck a bike… I’m just saying. ;p

I am still kicking myself for getting there a little late. In the rush I neglected to mount either of the GoPro cameras on the bike and so I have no video footage which I was really looking forward to. That was probably the big disappointment of the whole weekend, though one of my friends said, “from the look of the pictures, all the footage would have been sideways, anyway!”

Jen from PhotoJenic came up to shoot the track and I lucked out with some great pictures, and she was a godsend when I lost the key to my bike and helped me out a lot with my general disorder.

This was a whole new experience for me. Passing another rider is something that I’ve never had to do before, as the group rides I have been on are generally static riding order. The hand signals required for the track were new but easy enough to understand. On my first session I completely forgot to raise my hand at red flag until the instructor pulled directly in front of me was pointing at me and motioning wildly. Often when our bodies are working at elevated heart rates, we experience a multitude of symptoms like auditory exclusion, slow motion time, or, as I experienced, tunnel vision. I never saw any of the corner workers or the flags during the first session. Though, I never felt nervous or panicked, I was probably running at a little higher threat level than normal.

My second session of the day was better. I was riding much cleaner lines, I started paying more attention to my body and exaggerating my position more and noticed all the things I was still doing improperly like bouncing from one side of the seat to the other; unloading the chassis and trying to reload in turns, things of that nature.

After I got over the newness of it all and Aaron’s, the head instructor for Cornerspeed, words started to sink in. I learned more in one day about motorcycle physics and theory than I have in two years of riding. My body knows what to do by feel, but before Cornerspeed I never understand what the bike was actually doing underneath me. These classroom sessions opened up huge new levels of understanding for me.

After the first couple sessions, Aaron started explaining to us that we use our brakes as a panic button much more often than we need to. So, for the third session, we were not allowed to use our brakes to get around the course, relying solely on downshifting and intelligent speed modulation. The “No Brakes” drill was extremely eye opening. I only had to grab brake twice; once was to avoid hitting an instructor, and once was to avoid rear ending another student. After that drill I realized I could go into every corner faster than I had been. Faster! Yeeessss…. “Trust your tires,” Aaron told me with a devilish glint in his eyes. Afterward, my instructor on this session said he was having a hard time keeping up with me, but he was on a 600rr vs my 750.

After this session another one of the instructors, Pete, came and found me and we talked a little bit about what worked and what didn’t. Pete was really knowledgeable and extremely willing to help.

The next session, Pete led me and a couple others through body mechanics drills. I thought I was doing fine with this before I came to Cornerspeed, but the more the instructors spoke, the more I knew I needed to work on. I got smoother and smoother through the day, but I’ve got a long ways to go.

For the next few sessions I worked with Pete constantly, mostly one on one. I improved more swiftly and consistently with the dedicated scrutiny of an expert. Pete paid me a huge compliment when he told me it was great to actually get a chance to work with someone who didn’t mind walking it out a bit.

Some of the technical details are as follows. I started out the day going dangerously fast through turn 7, a great right hand up hill 90 degree turn with a ton of positive camber. That is until someone explained to me the magical negative camber where the patriot course comes in causes over ¾ of the first timer wrecks for VIR North Course. Turns 1,2,3 were a constantly changing equation all day. I started out slow and a little uncertain, but by the end of the day it was quite fast and nearly fluid all the way to turn 4. Turn 4 is probably my favorite, a more than 90 degree left hander, but early on I was having a lot of problems linking it properly to 5,6. Each of the instructors told me I was killing all the corners that people usually had problems with, but was in need of some work on the simpler ones. Leave it to me to do everything in reverse. Pete took me through 8,9,10,11,12 and after about two laps, I knew what to do and that became one of my favorite sections of the course to build and carry greater amounts of speed and pull off some great passes. I didn’t get it right every time, but I came pretty close and was flying through there cleanly by the end of the day. Turn 14 was daunting most of the day as I couldn’t really pick up reference points for it, it is a completely blind 90 degree right hand turn that you can’t see until you come up a hill and are already upon it. Novice stuff, I know. 16 almost gave me an ‘agricultural experience’ on my first session out with Pete because we were cooking and I panicked and grabbed front brake. 16 is a high speed left hander going downhill into a hard right hand turn (17). We were coming in plenty hot and I grabbed way too much brake, touched the rear and my back tire just started sliding all over the place. I realized I would never be able to slow down before I ran off the track so I just “trusted the tires,” shifted my body over to the and cracked the throttle. After all that panic, the Vagrant and I shot through 17 amazingly easy and it really made me realize a) what a dumbass I was, b) just how awesome my bike is. I got progressively faster and faster all day with fewer mistakes each time around the track.

I got called out by an instructor for passing another rider on the inside of a turn once, but really it was a line I had committed to in the prior turn when I was outside the guy behind the dude I passed inside, so it would have been more dangerous to not continue with the line I had committed to. This was just a symptom of the fact that I wasn’t looking far enough down the course. Shifting to a longer time frame was one of the major difficulties I had on the track. After the session, I went up to the two guys I blasted by on that pass and mentioned to them that I hadn’t meant to cut them like that and I hope there were no hard feelings. They said to me it was no big deal, asking me what happens when other people cut me off or wreck into me when it is actually a full-fledged race day instead of practice runs. When I mentioned this was the first time I had ever been on a track their faces fell in unison with their uttered, “oh” and the instructors eyes behind them got as big as saucers. Veterans apparently don’t like being smoked by the new guy.

I lean. That is about the shortest complete sentence possible in the English language, but there is a lot being said there. I lean the hell out of the bike because before anyone told me it was difficult, I just went out and did it. I watched a MotoGP race where they were doing up to 72 degree lean angles like it was nothing. The following weekend I went on an amazing high speed switchback ride through the Arizona mountains outside Yarnell and just did what I had seen the riders do on television. After the ride, a couple more experienced friends, white in the face, came up and asked me to dial it back a bit so they didn’t have to scrape anyone up off the canyon walls. I didn’t realize anything I was doing was extraordinary, I just thought you had to do it to get down the twisties.

As I tend to lean so much, I was raking both knees, my toe sliders, my pegs, and even my exhaust on the ground all day. Some of the pics have plenty of sparks coming off. I’m just crazy like that.

Brakes-and-Blip-Brian was there in the class and on the track with me. As he can attest to, I need to learn how to effing launch. At the end of the day, all the students who wanted to were allowed to participate in a full “mock” race; no trophies, but everything else was the real deal. I was given pole position, front row, outside. The green flag shot up and I killed the engine and sat there with a stupid look in my helmet while everyone else rode by me. I started the race about 20 seconds behind the last person. It SUCKED! I went out and had a blast anyways, even had a great run with Brian, whom I passed in style! I would up rolling in two bike lengths behind first place on an R1 for a solid second place. No trophies, no flashbulbs, no boobs, just a good hard run with some passing practice and crossing a finish line. About halfway around the track on a ‘cool down lap’ Brian rode up beside me and started slapping me on the back in congratulations, scaring the ever loving bejebus out of me. He got a good laugh out of that.

One of the interesting points of the day was riding 2-up on the back of a racer’s bike. I’ve always wondered what it was like to be a passenger, but never trusted any of you bastards enough to ask for a ride. Riding a motorcycle is a wonderful experience, often skirting a line between life and death, but I am always in control, not a passenger. It was interesting to me and while other students who got the opportunity to ride as passengers were impressed by the speed of the ride, I was impressed by the amount of work I was putting into the balls of my feet and my hands to stay on the bike. I think that experience is going to make me a much better pilot when I have someone on the back. It was not scary, but very physically demanding and I have been taking special concerns when I have had a passenger since then.

At the end of the day, I am reminded why I came here: to get a license to race. Cornerspeed is an accredited Race School that gives you a diploma to start racing with Semi-Pro racing groups all around the nation. I aced the test, got my diploma (YAY!) and asked the remaining instructors and Aaron to pose with me for a Polaroid. After handshakes and loading out, the clouds got dark and thick quite quickly. As I was finishing tie-ing down the bike, the rain started coming down. Whoever prayed to the rain gods, you are my hero, we had a completely dry day and it made for one amazing experience. I’ll be going back for Cornerspeed track days (June 1!) and practicing my ass off. I’m an addict. This is a whole new world.

So one year ago today, on a very warm Phoenix afternoon, four friends stood obtusely in the middle of a parking lot, unsure of what to do or say to mark the occasion. They clasped hands, said strange goodbyes in alien words and one by one, they opened doors to cars or homes and left. Only one of them really had far to go: the seeker… The Outcast.

You can tell yourself it is the sweat that stings your eyes; in that weather, it’s easy to do. You would still be lying. When you see that much death, when there is so much lost, those that remain become more valuable than we can imagine.

He spent the 2.5 weeks prior to that day, all the notice that he had, liquidating everything he owned save for a bookshelf, a table, and 6 boxes. Selling his car, he bought a black truck. He donated everything that I hadn’t worn in the last month. Those few items that had value were sold to the first person who would take them and everything else was simply given away.

Mindlessly, from a list the Outcast bought packing materials like some sort of Zen ritual. Removing any meaning from the act or the materials, lest he actually take a second to think about what it entailed; what this all led up to.

An Outcast, he left, accompanied by a girl who loved him very much, in the careless way that a child will still love a toy, long after it is irrevocably broken.

Miles Driven: 35,042

In the days after the Phoenix, the world was green and blue; the color change was drastic to the outcast after the landscape the color of cracked flame, and dust, and ash. it would be shocking to his eyes for the first few months. In the coming months, the cracked lips would subside, the eternally parched feeling would stay, but it was simply psychological now. but in the days after the Phoenix, the days close enough to be called such, the lips still bled if the outcast opened his mouth too wide. he tasted the sand and dust in his breath and hid from the sun as if it were still necessity.

Motorcycles: 3

In the Triangle city, people were different; less distinct, more fat. they smiled, but it was only because they land around them was friendly, not because they were. In the days of the Phoenix, a smile was something marvelous and genuine because it came from the inside when it did come… never spawned by the parched world around it.

The trip into the city center was less hectic, less restricted. The city seemed less structured but it flowed well.

As a conscript of the ruling powers, the Its, the Outcast wasn’t trusted initially. He was hired to perform a service that no one really understood, but everyone seemed to think they needed. Organization, structure, help but only insomuch as it didn’t step on any of the ITs toes or infringe upon their sense of mastery over their little domain.

Each day he arrived at the gates to the Center and was escorted by guards, or officials, or sub-officials to the places he was thought to be needed to gather the information he asked for and turn it into something that was beneficial to those that watched over him. Soon they lost interest and simply expected he knew what to do. He was provided a pin; a badge of sorts with which he could gain access to the Center and it’s antechambers.

Hours at work: 2080

The outcast changed too. Became dedicated. Wholly absorbed within himself; his body, his mind. Every day was fully engaged. He became aware of his body and his abilities. The weight, the fighting, the water, the struggle. Free time was everywhere and nowhere because he filled it with semi-purpose and rage and intent.

Trophies: 6

Max Depth: 126

Rising before the sun, when the simple fact of the suns return was carried by faith alone, he left the small room provided him at the outskirts of Triangle and traveled to the gymnasium to destroy himself, the old self… the one from yesterday, and recreate a new, better, stronger man in his place. Still the outcast, but there among the titans he was allowed the opportunity to change.

Certifications: 12

Leaving the gymnasium the sun had returned, each day without fail, it came back; not with the strength of the Phoenix, that rebirth in flame, but with the warmth of life. Gentle, coaxing, enough to settle the surrounding populace into quiet obeisance and obesity.

The Outcast fought the laziness in the air around him, rode recklessly and with abandon, thinking that feeling the cruch or the crash would be better than feeling nothing.

Motorcycle wrecks: 1

Life was not without romance, the hint of amorous, but it never stayed long.

Broken Hearts: 2

He went without sleep for days, trying to find the edge, but it will always elude those that seek it. Such is the nature of these things. And so he seeks, for meaning in numbers, for purpose in himself, for emotion in another, finding nothing…

Leo todo lo que tenga que ver con nosotros y me siento denuevo en el momento… me siento contigo… y denuevo me haces feliz, aunque no estes aquí…

On Friday, I rode and rode and rode. when i wanted to speed, i sped. when i was enthralled i slowed. mostly i let the scenery determine the pace, and it was pleasant.

i drove down streets i had never seen and would not recognize again. i drove until i ran out of road, and then i got off and walked for a while before returning to my ride.

i rode past ponds and lakes suffused with the death of so many petals that only a week ago heralded spring in it’s crowning.

i tasted every instant of that hour. i breathed flowers and grass and manure and water. my knee felt the grass along the side of the road while my face felt the breeze off the farm fields around me. I watched lives end on my visor and never knew those tiny names.

i drove past farms and homes that i wanted to stop and walk up to the door and knock and go inside and share these peoples lives. To touch and taste and savor every morsel like candy i could eat from the inside out.

i rode until it was simply too dark to make out the green of the trees versus the grass through the dark tint of my visor. and in the dying light of this day of failures, i found me. I was a doddering old man, destroying unknown mushrooms with a cane, miles from civilization on a road that no one remembered existed. And I looked up and reminded me, go home.

Sometimes, I need that.

I keep dreaming about the ocean. It spills over into my waking hours and fills up the cracks in between minutes; all liquid. I blame it on my coworker that told me about “blue water” a couple weeks back. Since then, I’ve thought about this concept often. This idea of pure water with no additives or preservatives; not even the animal pee you get with most “spring” water. Deep, cold, bracing; Blue. Depth creates the image. Depth shows water for what it truly is.

When the bottom falls out, things change. Life is like this. People are like this. The particulate that all those shallow currents play with disappears; stops obscuring everything. Far enough from shore, things become simple; reverting to their nature.

I think there is a small portion of humanity (the lost ones. The broken angels limping away from the crash sites in the history of the heart) that is looking for this; honesty, no matter how much it breaks you. There isn’t any bottom out there, in all that true blue, but at least you know what you are getting. You can see it.

If I go far enough, will I find something like that? Is it just waiting for me somewhere out there in the middle of the Ocean? Something true? Or, if I ever do make it out there, will I just drown?

I was walking around this morning talking to Krystle, a friend of mine from Puerto Rico, and was laughing at her fascination with pop culture, models, etc… Things which i believe have almost no value other than providing an interesting insight into the strange undercurrents that control our backwards society.

I quoted one of my favorite phrases (Thanks Jen!) by Thoreau saying, “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”

Krystle paused for a moment, then said to me, “Well, what are YOU good for?”

I’m forced to say this stopped me in my tracks. In fact, maybe it was the early hour, or perhaps the late hour at which i retired after a night of great comedy food and drink with my friend Voodoo, but I had no response.

So, in an attempt to be good for something today, I am going out riding my motorcycle.

Oh yeah, big deal, I do this every chance I get. Today, however is not for me, but for the novice riders in the area. It will be boring and slow in comparison to my usual pace, but it will give me a chance to speak to new riders, caution them regarding the stupid mistakes they make, explain what they are doing wrong, how to ride in a group, proper hand signals, and a number of other things that I have learned by hard knocks and friendly guidance.

Today, I’m not just being good, I’ll be good for something.

So,while not exactly “thrown”, I was certainly at their mercy… and wow… These kids are awesome.

I showed up early to the school last night and I’m glad I did. The juniors class was going on and I got to watch my personal hero in action. We have a kid named Dane who is stone cold. This guy is so intense he makes me back down. I was pretty uncertain of myself and my ability to give these kids (and their parents) their moneys worth. After I saw Dane and how much he kicked ass at 7 years old, somehow that kid gave me renewed confidence in my place there.

Thankfully, some cosmic balance decided to take it easy on me and only about 1/3 of the kids showed up for class. The (almost) twins, the Sensei’s son, Jack and his pink belt, Killer and Michael. I ran class like a 73 buick. Choppy, ugly, and with a lot of stalling, but no one complained or gave me any trouble. I was continually stopping and trying to figure out what to have the students do next and though the breaks were measurable in seconds, they felt like lifetimes.

Killer in particular is a project of mine. She needs some help with exercise in general and self image it seems too. She is a great kid and has a lot of dedication and if I can do right by the class, then she will get the exercise and self esteem she needs along with everyone else.

Sensei’s wife, Miss Yune, and I sat down after class and talked about what I felt I had problems with and she gave me ideas that she had seen her husband do and I feel a little better about it today. I’m going to run the first half of class, and let Eddy take over for fight club. After a month, I think we’ll really get into a rhythm… I just hope everyone sticks around long enough for us to get used to it!

Ok, so today is my first solo day as karate instructor. I’ve taught karate before, years ago, and I’ve been helping out at this dojo for a while, but I always had an assistant or I was the assistant. Now I have to go solo against 20 little kids with parents watching over me to see if I am still worthy of their time and money.

I feel like I have a huge responsibility to my Sensei, not just because of our personal interaction, but because he is now going to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country. I don’t want to let him down by lowering the quality of his school while he is away. As scary as the prospect of failure is, I need to use that as fuel to excel at this and really pay back my instructor and these kids for all the benefit they bring to my life.

First Sergeant Carlson, I salute you for the man you are, and the man you make me want to be. Godspeed and Good luck. I’ll hold down the fort till you return.