The Roadtrip - A Memoir - Part I

Along about a very long time ago, AB and The Brother From the Black Lagoon, hereafter referred to as TBFTBL, or the Bro, or simply Bro, decided to help out some friends who were starting a pot farm. They were dyed-in-the-wool back-to-the-landers--at least she was. He was more of a toker/philosophical bullshitter--but a swell guy anyway and always fun to hang out with. He'd inherited a piece of dirt woods in Eastern Ohio, the mountainous part, and thought it a splendid and conscientious idea to thwart capitalism by cutting out the middlemen--an admirable venture in AB's opinion.

AB, was enjoying his tenuous grasp of the "Protestant Work Ethic" concept, and basking in free time; free time he used to train. The Bro was happily filling his hours as the Xerox copy "engineer" at a think tank called "Research for Better Schools"--a haven for unemployable Phds. They had a "memo" that got copied and copied and passed around from office to office: Report to the Funding Committee: "We are alive and spending the money." The Bro was rather proud of his skills, demonstrated by taking the copy output from 12K/month/72-hour-turnaround to 72K/month/4-hour-turnaround, And still having time to read from his extensive papercack sci-fi collection proudly displayed across the front of his desk. He did not, however, have any time to train. This would present "challenges", as we call them these days, later on in the story.

The Brother From the Black Lagoon--picture the slimy creature emerging from the swamp--is a Class-A, No.1, stone fuckup. Think of Pigpen from Snoopy as a neat freak. The Bro has been down since long before he began to crawl, hell, long before he drew breath. Forget the bad luck, the Bro never had any luck at all. The Bro was one of 3-in-1000 failures of an experimental contraceptive mom volunteered to test. That's pretty unlucky. The Bro, over the years, would go on to parlay this inauspicious beginning by acquiring a mild case of polio, rheumatic fever, having his fingers crushed in an encounter with a closing door, perpetually scabby knees from constantly falling down, or boils on his knees. He broke his glasses so often, mom had the eye-doctors on speed-dial. You're probably going to say, "They didn't have speed-dial in those days." but, and not many people know this, Bell Labs developed speed-dial so that mom didn't dial her fingers bloody trying to keep up with replacing the Bro's glasses. Mom got the first working model. (Dad worked for GE and "knew people" from across the campus.)

The Bro even managed to shoot himself in the leg when we didn't even have a gun in the house. We were in 5th and 6th grades and a kid brought a handful of .22 cal. bullets to school. We managed to score a few and immediately on returning home from school, went in the basement to "fire" them. No Gun? No problem, we'll lock them up in the vise and shoot them with a hammer. AB shot his into a piece of wood placed across the room. Cool! The Bro took his turn at the vice, didn't tighten up the vice enough, the bullet sagged a bit, and fired. BANG! Instant Purple Heart. AB covered for him until the limping subsided. AB and the Bro always stuck together. She beat us, so we lied to her. Fair trade. (She didn't call us "The Monsters" for nothing.)

No sooner had the limping stopped, when the Bro stepped out from between two parked cars and got hit by a van. BANG! Instant broken leg. Now AB knows what you're going to say, "Well, these things can happen to anybody", and in principle, AB would agree with you, but how many kids get a doctor who embalms a kid up to his chin in plaster for a broken leg? They had to saw half the cast off just so the Bro could breath. Then after a couple of months when the cast came off, his leg looked like it had been grafted on from a gorilla. But listen, AB doesn't want to bore you, that was just a synopsis for character development. The Bro would grow up and develop a living style best described as "crisis management." ...(Locked up for parking tickets)(twice). Much later on he sawed the tip of his thumb off with a radial-arm saw. One time AB and The Bro were surveying the foundations for a small building at some kind of military airport near Atlantic City (forgot the name). It was summer and hot. Hot. We're shooting the lines, and sweeping the grades, when a bee wriggles inside The Bro's shirt and stings him in the belly button. "Motherfucker, that hurt." Two minutes later, another bee stung him in the ear. Jesus! Stop! Enough!
~~~

(The other reason AB had so much free time was that a couple of months before the trip he came over to the Bro's basement apartment to crash for the weekend.)

Coincidentally, a couple of months before the trip, AB hooked up with a couple of Italian bicycle-makers--from Italy, the real kind--and still being fluent in Italian, and the garrulous sort full of bonhomie, stuck up an immediate friendship. (AB has a knack for making friends. It's easier than getting beaten up.)(Remind AB to tell the one about not getting arrested three times in one day.) After some schmoozing and camaraderie, AB got himself measured, arms and legs, and the Boys built him a bike--160 Washingtons. The bike was a dream machine. It drove itself. Even leaning against a wall, it looked like it was moving. AB immediately began riding it daily, all day long. In no time AB was doing centuries. So many centuries that he had to find fresh routes to bike to keep from getting bored. (In biker-ese, a "century" is 100 miles.) One day ten laps around the River Drives, the next day ten laps up and onto the unfinished segment of I-95. And on and on until "Trip Day."

Meanwhile through the benevolence of mom's friends, (mom didn't smoke, but her friends sure did), AB was able to build up the kitty, buy saddle bags, a stove, pots, food, in sum, all the gear for a camping trip. The Bro made Xerox copies. The Bro also had something called "vacation" coming up. Two weeks. Evenings: we would go over the map, smoke another doobie, (although they weren't called doobies yet, and smoking a bone has taken on a new meaning), and we'd go over our lists of shit to pack, stuff to do, things to still get, things to leave behind. The Bro having left that sort of thing until the last minute, (naturally), went to Sears and bought a Huffy bike--the kind of bike that gets ostracized by lawn ornaments. This bike could seriously not get out its own way. The bike was immediately dubbed "The Beast".

The trip was all set for May 1; a Tuesday. Everything (we could think of) was all set, packed, and we were ready to go. A couple of days before leaving, a "development" arose. A friend-of-mom's, a defrocked stockbroker, who'd lost his seat on the P-B-W exchange for a pot bust, conned AB into buying a pound of pot that he would sell while AB was off gallivanting. This in itself wasn't a big problem since in those days a pound only cost an Italian bike. The problem arose when he got cold feet at the last minute and refused to spread the joy around, or even hold it while AB was seeing the USA on his Chevrolet two-wheeled Maserati. AB was left with no choice but to cram the herb into the handlebar bag. There was just enough room left for the map.

May 1, Tuesday: 9-ish AM, weather clear, breeze light.

We head off and hit the open road, well, not the open road precisely, we'd ride through ten miles of streets before we'd see a tree that wasn't encased in concrete. But... we were off, and that was the important part. Soon, we were in the countryside, on Route 1, the main artery of the Colonial Era, and still an insanely busy, center-barriers also not having been invented yet, 4-lane highway. Despite our best efforts to keep together, AB would slide on down the road on Pegasus and wait for Bro to show. Bro, to his great credit, despite being woefully out of shape, and despite his imprecations and lavish applications of corporal punishment bordering on metal-animal-abuse, would eventually show up. Whereupon AB would administer the tranquilizer. Sssssssssp. Ssssssssp. Cough. Cough. "You OK?" "Yea, I'm fine." And we'd be off again. This procedure would set the tone for the rest of the journey. In fact, we'd roll a joint and slip it under the "pillow" (rolled up shirt) so we could have an "eye opener" before getting out of the tent in the morning.

Then it started raining. A little rain can't hurt, right? Then it started pouring. We rode on for another few miles when The Beast got a flat tire. Good reason to stop. We arrange the two bikes leaning against each other, spread the fly out over them, crawl underneath, and Sssssssssp. Ssssssssp. Cough. Cough. How to proceed?

TB: "Which bag is the repair kit in?"
AB: "Repair kit?"
TB: "You didn't bring a repair kit?"
AB: "You didn't bring a repair kit?"
TB: "I was making Xerox copies."
AB: "Here, have a hit."

I mean, really, who needed a repair kit in those days when city streets looked like the blacktop in front of the White House, not Mare Insularum like they do now?

The rain let up a bit and we spied a laundromat across the road. Dodging traffic, one of us got to a phone book and looked up a bike shop. The nearest one was eighteen miles away in Westchester. Problem solved! AB strips every single thing off his bike that doesn't require tools to remove and heads off. Halfway to Westchester, AB has an epiphany, what happens if AB has a flat? Oh well, fuck it, "Fools rush in..." Find Westchester, find the bike shop, buy a couple of inner tubes and flat kits, head eighteen miles back to Bro and The Beast. No problems. The Angels watch over morons. Bro had dug out the Primus stove and made tea. Hot tea in a Sierra cup. All's right with the world. Sssssssssp. Ssssssssp. Cough. Cough. He was much mellower than before and had lost much of his typical condescending opinion that AB was a degenerate mongoloid libertine. We fix The Beast and ride off.

By now it's getting on toward late afternoon, and it's time to start thinking about a campsite. Route 1 was all businesses, and we weren't quite brazen enough to pitch the tent on the shoulder of the highway. No need to remind anyone (the Man) that we smelled like pair of pot parlor escapees, or have to explain the pound of "freeze-dried lettuce" we had for the camping trip, especially when it smelled like AB'd brought the entire pot parlor along every time the handlebar bag was opened. Consulting the map, we discovered a small road that paralleled Rt-1, so we turned and headed into the real countryside. In no time at all we'd left the bustle of the thoroughfare and all you could hear were birds, and the plaintive little squeaks of corn growing. It had stopped raining.

We kept looking for a likely spot to pitch the tent but it was crops horizon to horizon. And then as if in answer to a prayer, there was a nice little salt-box house with a car in the driveway, and a freshly-clipped lawn.

AB, the natural-born schmoozer: [Knock, knock]

Mr. Salt of the Earth: "Yes, can I help you?"
AB: "Hi, My name's A, and my brother and I are going to Ohio on our bikes and would like to pitch our tent on your lawn. Would that be OK?"
Mr. SotE: "Excuse me?"
AB: "Could we pitch our tent on your lawn? We're going to Ohio."
Mr. SotE: (looks around to make sure we didn't have a gang of thugs stashed in the field next to the house) "Oh, sure. Be our guests."
Mrs. SotE: "Who is it, dear?"
Mr. SotE: "Some kids biking to Ohio, dear."
Mrs. SotE: (coming to the door) "Ohio? Well, we're just sitting down to dinner."
AB: "That's OK, Ma'am. We just need a flat spot to set up our tent."
Mrs. SotE: "Well then, when you're all fixed up, please come in and have a piece of pie with us and tell us all about your journey."
AB: "Thank you. That's so nice of you."

Meanwhile, The Bro had gotten the tent up by himself. This wasn't difficult. He was very practiced at it and could have it up in five minutes. The tent was about as big as a loose-fitting condom--a backpacker's delight, and The Bro had been camping on numerous occasions. The little stove was roaring away under a tiny pot filled with Dinty Moore beef stew or Campbell's Something Something. Agreeing that perhaps prudence being the better part of valor in this case, we should forego the normal apres dinner tranquilizer, and headed in to have some pie.

AB didn't think to keep a diary, (or it got lost,) until the 2300 mile trip down the Alcan from Anchorage to Seattle years later, but the people were delighted to hear all about our 8-hour adventure and our projected plans for the rest of the journey. The pie was yummy. We thanked them and said our "Good Nights" and went out and settled down for the night. Sssssssssp. Ssssssssp. Cough. Cough.

We'd come about thirty-five miles from home and were camped on the outskirts of metropolitan Kennet Square.

End of Part I

And now a word for our sponsors

"We'll Keep the Lights On For You." That's a grandiose promise considering we're burning this shit up like there's no tomorrow. This place has grown ten-fold in a month.

If you can see your way clear to foregoing three cups of coffee a month, (a sawbuck), send the man behind the curtain some love so he doesn't have to sell the kids to the next traveling circus that passes through Johnnyville.