17. All Good Things

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION CAME TO A GLORIOUS END sometime in my elementary school years. I know this because the night of the series finale I had a little league game and my mother taped the episode on something archaeologists will one day refer to as a "VCR".

Back then, I played third base for Ditmars Bakery. I wasn't any good at baseball--neither at hitting nor fielding nor throwing--but what I did do well, and I hope that counted for something, was block the ball.

If a scorcher came down the third base line, I'd throw my body and keep the ball in front of me. This was good training for the years I would play goalkeeper on a soccer pitch, where, essentially, the only skill you need, is to throw your body in front of the ball.

I wasn't the greatest keeper on the planet, but you could do worse than send me between the posts.

By the time I was old enough to understand Star Trek, I didn't want to be a baseball player when I grew up. By then, I knew that wasn't in the cards for me. Not in baseball. Not in soccer.

You could tell the other kids were faster and more skilled.

They cared more, too, about the game. They didn't just accept that they might be good enough to be ballplayers--in the daily, narcissistic delusions we indulge in to get through our days, they thought of themselves as ballplayers.

Meanwhile, what I really wanted to be, what I walked around the halls of PS 85 thinking of myself as, was Commander of the Star Trek Enterprise.

That, at least, was realistic.

And so, the current commander of the Star Trek Enterprise, William Riker, was more or less my role model.

Riker was brave and confident and tall and good-looking and courageous and most importantly, he was trusted by the captain, by Jean-Luc Picard, the Frenchman with the British accent.

Picard called Riker "Number One" and he sent Riker on the away team missions, and whenever Picard had to disappear to host a diplomatic envoy, Riker would be left in charge of the ship.

"The bridge is yours, Number One," Picard would say, and Riker would get gassed up with a big cheese ball grin and take the captain's chair.

After spending time learning from the best, it was assumed that Riker would take over the Enterprise and be the best.

He was considered the up-and-coming star in Starfleet command. He was respected by his peers and adored by his subordinates. He could lead. He cared about others. He believed in service and discipline.

He afforded his officers leeway and encouraged their independent thought.

By all measures, Riker was the man. And by all the measures I could count, I wanted to be Riker.

But sometime early, in my elementary school years, in an episode titled, "All Good Things," the show ended.

I could no longer watch an episode of Star Trek and think, in my end, before the captain would act, what I would do as captain. I could no longer pretend I was Riker, and think, in my head, what Riker would do, before he would do it.

The end of the show took that away from me. From then on out, I knew the turns and twists, the gambits and losses, and it was all just a review.

It had all come to an end.



SO IT IS WITH THIS ROAD TRIP. I am now back in Queens, NY, after having traveled to Stroutsburg and Buffalo and Ann Arbor and Mackinac and Minneapolis and West Branch and St. Louis and Columbia and Independence and Rapid City and Cody and Yellowstone and Jackson and Bozeman and Calgary and Edmonton and Dawson's Creek and Whitehorse and Tok and Fairbanks and Anchorage and Juneau and Minnedosa and Winnipeg and the mother fucking George Washington Bridge.

It was a good trip.

And now that I'm sort of on the spot to produce a more substantive statement than "it was a good trip", I'm sort of at a loss. Am I supposed to say it was amazing or super or unbelievable?

Am I supposed to say that I got something out of it that's changed my life forever?

I don't know.

But I'll share something I wrote this on a rest area, on I-80, most of the way back home. I hope it has that sort of sweeping arc one expects out of cross-country road trips.

It's not exactly Melville about to send Ishmael on the Pequod, but I hope it'll do. I wrote this in a Hyundai after all. It came to me in Pennsylvania.

That's the moral of road trips. You keep moving all you want. The world isn't going anywhere.

So, ahem...

It is important to be great. We must all be great. Have the courage to aspire to greatness and surround ourselves with those who share this ambition. We are, none of us, in competition with the Joneses of the world. Not of the Smiths.

We are in competition with the Lincolns, the Gandhis, the Darwins, the Salks, and the Bartons. Some of these men and women achieved greatness by tackling the obvious injustices of their era. Others through ingenuity and innovation.

If the struggles of our era are not obvious, we must find them.

All achieved greatness through service.

As I return to New York, my journey has not ended. It has begun with an awesome new vigor.

I encourage all to a commitment to greatness. I have committed to greatness. The day I return to New York will be the anniversary of this day and every year this day will mark our progress.

Service is not rendered and greatness is not achieved without sacrifice. We must establish greatness as our first priority and be willing to decide and lead with this priority to guide.

Thank you.

I literally wrote "Thank you" in my notebook and spoke in the first-person plural as if I was Bill Pullman in Independence Day giving a speech to the last air wing of the human resistance: "We will not go quietly into the night, we will not go down without a fight...today will be our Independence Day."

But I stand by it.

October 3rd. That is the day that, from this point forward, I will measure my life. Not some random fluke like my birthday, just counting the years since I was born, and estimating when I will die. But a Ground Zero for the balance of my story.

Wherein the narrator has his moment of epiphany, followed by an epilogue, which previews a sequel.

Hopefully I'll stick to this ambition. It is my intention to stick to this ambition--read more books, drink less scotch, put the nose to the grindstone--and hope to see results. We'll check back in a year.

The idea is, if I work hard enough, maybe, just maybe, one day I'll even get to ride shotgun on the Enterprise.




BOX SCORE
Total time: 54 days
Total mileage: 13,000 (Oil changes: Elmurst, NY; Springfield, IL; Bozeman, MT; Fairbanks, AK; Edmonton, AB)
Miles per day: 240.75

Nights slept in WalMart: 6
Nights slept in a rest stop in Minnedosa, Manitoba: 1
Nights slept in weather so cold it produced frost on tent: 3

Furthest west I saw a bear: On the wilderness tour of Denali National Park.
Furthest east I saw a bear: On the mile 224 marker on I-80 in Pennsylvania.

Most amazing: Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota
Least amazing: Customs official's ass crack hanging out my driver's compartment

Number of bugs killed on windshield: 1983745621390874921308471239084079. As the saying goes, "Kill one bug and you're a murderer, kill a thousand, and you should change your oil at places that offer free car washes."

Speeding tickets: 1 (Anchorage, AK), 78 in a 65. Kind of schmaltzy if you ask me. Lucky they didn't catch me going 110 through the sandhills of Nebraska. Would've been hard to explain that one. "But officer, I didn't know people lived around here."

Number of people who rode in car besides me: Pascal, Queens to Rochester; Pannda, Rapid City to Jackson; Cavester, Calgary to Anchorage; Staplez, Anchorage to Edmonton; God, Queens to Queens.

Backyards of former vice-presidential candidates visited: 1 (Palin's lake in Wasilla, AK)

Best meal: Alaskan snow crab at that place in Juneau. You know the one.
Worst meal: French fries from Burger King in Toledo, OH. They were cooked in rat poison, I'm sure of it.

Favorite vocabulary word of the trip: hirsute (n.), meaning hairy. As in Z came back from Alaska fairly hirsute. The word can, for fun, be pronounced like "hair suit." Like, Z came back from Alaska in a hirsute.

Driving time-waster, 1st place: Pannda reading aloud the Presidential Flash Cards I bought in Truman's library. Who knew Woodrow Wilson used to be President of Princeton before he was Governor of New Jersey?

Driving time-waster, 2nd place: Trivial Pursuit. There is an inordinate amount of trivia about Africa, Arabs, and Egyptian history in this game, which comes in kind of handy if you're, like, an Egyptian-American.

Driving time-waster, honorable mention: Country music. "God is great, beer is good, people are crazy." You can't make up lyrics like that. Well, actually, you could. If you were guy making up those lyrics...




SO THAT'S ALL FOR THE ROAD TRIP, but what about being back to Queens? On the way across America, whenever someone would notice my New York license plate, they would instinctively ask: "You're not really from New York, are you?"

"Yup, Queens."

My sister, who is also from Queens, would find it surprising that I would say "Queens" and not "New York City" as she does, Queens, technically being, the largest component of said metropolis.

"I don't want people thinking I'm some pansy from Manhattan."

"But it's OK that you're a pansy?"

"As long as they don't think I'm a pansy from Manhattan."

She was skeptical as to whether or not people from across America, and many parts of Canada would know where Queens is. They do. They all do. I've never had one person ask, "Where is that?"

It's the home of two of the three airports you would use to fly into New York. We've got the Mets in Flushing. We also have a grand slam tennis tournament. There's been a major sitcom based in Queens for two generations: "All in the Family" and then "King of Queens."

Not to mention that George Costanza lives in Queens. He actually "lives" in the block down from my grandma.

The great Carol O'Connor was even from Queens himself. So is John McEnroe, Rodney Dangerfield, Tony Bennet, and Christopher Walken. To name a few. Oh, yeah, Simon & Garfunkel.

They filmed King Kong in Queens.

Who doesn't know Queens?

But to be away from Queens from so long, and then to suddenly return, incurs a bit of a culture shock. You never quite get used to the death trap of Queens Boulevard. Not to the tangling subway lines at Roosevelt Ave, and especially not to the Queens attitude problem.

And if you're away for awhile, your resistance to said attitude problem can atrophy.

It even did with me.

Went down to the Kew Gardens County Clerk's office my second day back. Wanted to register for a rifle license so I could legally buy a gun and learn to hunt. (Alaska puts these things in a man's mind.)

Parked my car, bought a cold bottle of water from a Korean grocer, and headed down to the basement of the clerk's office. Around the corner from their post office, through rusty, paint-pealing doors, behind a counter stood a woman all of five-feet tall with curly blond hair.

She was not happy to be working in the basement of the clerk's office on Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens.

"What do you want?" she asked me, a proud public servant, serving the needs of no one in particular.

I told her I would like to apply for a rifle license.

She handed me the application. "Here!" she literally screamed at me, "Go!"

"Somewhere else?"

"Read the instructions."

She didn't give me much time to follow her own advice. "Um, can I get another one for my friend?"

She snatched the application back from my hand. "You got a computer a home?"

"Yes."

She wrote down a URL for me to download another application. "Then use it."

Ah. Welcome back to Queens, fucker. Your hairy ass wasn't missed. Not even for a second.








Wherein the narrator returns from his trip in a hair suit.







Wherein the narrator is arrested for stealing cereal from the Pannda's lair.

16. Coming to America

I WENT TO STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY."

"And what is it you said you do for work?"

"I'm in advertising."

"At what company?"

"Well...you see. I'm sort of between companies."

"You were fired or laid off?"

"Not exactly."

"Well which one was it?"

"I quit so I could drive to Alaska."

Outside, a thousand pitter-patts crashed against the south-facing window. A custom official escorted a father and his son into the main lobby. "He's got bears," he announced to the room. "Two of them."

My own personal customs official--I don't know his name--he didn't share--even the state trooper who pulled me over in Anchorage gave me his name--let's call him Short, Fat, and Bald, or ShoFaBa, asks me to empty the contents of my pockets.

On the counter I place my wallet, a receipt from a motel on the AlCan Highway, three pens of varying colors, an iPhone with its rubber sleeve ripped at the receiver, and my car keys.

"Turn your pockets inside out, sir," he asks me.

I do.

"They call that a Hoover wallet," I inform him. "From the Great Depression. When no one had money. They blamed it on Hoover."

"Turn the waistband of your pants inside out for me."

He examines and finds nothing.

"I can see where this is going, sir."

"Lift up your pant legs for me."

He sees wicker socks I've worn for the last three days.

"And I just want to put it on the table, that I neither consume nor transport any illegal drugs, nor firearms."

"Your cap sir."

I hand it over.

"There is some alcohol in my trunk, but this will probably be a waste of time for both of us."

He pulls out my license from my wallet.

"The address on your wallet doesn't match the address you gave me."

"The address on my wallet is my summer house," I inform him. It is unclear whether I should tell him that I keep the remote Suffolk Country address so I can save money on my car insurance. This might be fraud. Or something. I don't know if customs is concerned with fraud. But he might have friends he can call. "Lived out there when I went to college. Never bothered to change that address."

"So do you live in Riverhead or in Queens?"

"Queens, sir."

"And you work in Queens."

"No, I don't work."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you said you were in advertising."

"I'm between companies."

"Which ones?"

"PantherBrain to Ogilvy & Mather."

"Never heard of them."

We are sitting in a customs office in International Falls, and a man who rifles through tourist's underwear bags for a living is telling me he's never heard of the most famous ad agency in existence. This does not surprise me.

"They're kind of a big deal."

"And that's where you'll be working soon?"

I am now officially lying to a U.S. Customs Official. "Yes, sir."

He nods his head, up and down, like an inverted grandfather clock, counting a second like any other second. "Is your car unlocked?"

I tap my keys sitting on the counter.

"This will only take a minute and I can get you on your way?"

"Is that like a metaphorical minute?"

"Have a seat, please."

Behind us are a line-up of office chairs manufactured at the pasty gray office chair depot in the sky. I take the one closest to the door. Sitting three chairs down for me is another young scruffy male traveling alone.

"What are you in for?" I ask him.

"Excuse me?"

"What are you in for?" Did he not get the joke or just not understand my mumbling? Could have been both.

"They just stopped me," he said.

"Where you coming from?"

"Nova Scotia."

"No shit. I didn't know you could drive off of Nova Scotia."

"It's the long way. The ferry is shorter."

"I'm coming from Alaska." In my head there is a map. There is string pulled taut from Alaska to International Falls, Minnesota, and another line pulled taut from Nova Scotia, Canada to International Falls, Minnesota. "We kind of traveled from the exact opposite sides of the continent," I said to him. "And ended up in the same place."

He takes a second to do the geometry himself. A car is leaving Nova Scotia traveling at 60 miles per hour..."Yeah."

"Where's your final destination?" I'm hoping he says Los Angeles. Then I would say New York. And we would live in a bizarro world of wayward travelers. But he disappoints. He tells me "North Dakota."

"On purpose?"

"Um, yeah."

"That's cool. That's like the one place I haven't been." That, and Los Angeles. Which would have been cooler. He disappoints me. He makes me want to settle for Oakland.

I take my throne.

I have a vague recollection of my friend, Pascal, who is almost a lawyer, arguing that the customs process is a violation of 4th Amendment principles. I do not remember drawing my own opinion on the matter. This is not serving me well.

It is four PM, I think Central Time. I lost count somewhere in Canada. I think Manitoba. I like the name Minnedosa. Minnedosa, Manitoba. That's even better than Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And that's a hard name to beat.

Outside, my customs official is walking away from my opened trunk back into the building.

"Is everything in that car yours?"

"Everything, everything?"

"Everything."

"Not the quilt in the back seat. That is definitely not mine."

"Who does it belong to?"

"A friend of mine."

"Where is your friend?"

"Yonkers."

"And he gave it to you?"

"I am transporting it back from Alaska on his behalf."

"Is there anything special about this quilt I should know about?"

"It might smell like drool." I think this over a second. "It might also smell like I slept with it in my car in a Manitoba rest stop."

He fixes his stare on me a second too long and then returns to the trunk. The seconds on the wall clock keep ticking along, but nothing is moving. I pull my phone out of my pocket. I open it to Paper Toss and set it to Easy.

A tiny, digital crump of paper is moved, left to right, by the gentle hum of an office fan. The paper hits the left rim of the waste-basket, bounces straight up in the air and falls in.

"Sir, you can't use that here." Another customs official has taken time away from important paperwork to inform me of this.

"Use what?"

"Your phone."

"I'm not using my phone."

"What's that in your hand?"

"It's a video game system."

"It's a phone sir."

"It's a computer, that has a phone as one of its functions. A function, I am not currently using."

"In any case, it's not allowed."

"Is that the law?"

"It's our rules, sir."

It doesn't seem fair that they can make up whatever rules they want in their little customs office and I am expected to comply by this. My congressional representative is Carolyn Maloney. I make a note of this. There's also Schumer and Gillenbrand in the Senate. Maybe I'll write them.

If I ever get back to New York.

I put the phone away.

"So you must see a lot of weird stuff come through here."

If he won't let me distract myself, then I'm going to distract him.

"Excuse me?"

"You must see a lot of weird things around here."

"Sure."

"What do people try to smuggle?"

"All sorts of things."

"What's the craziest thing you ever saw?"

He puts his papers down and takes off his glasses. "It's not that we see weird things," he tells me, "It's that we meet weird people."

I don't appreciate the tone of his voice. "Guess it takes one to know one."

He rolls his eyes and goes back to his keyboard.

I turn around to watch the customs official go back through my car. The poor guy is now hanging out my driver's door, his ass against wet asphalt. There have to be better jobs in the world.

Like writing advertisements for big pharmaceutical companies.

Or driving to Alaska on a whim.

"Do you find that interesting?"

"Excuse me." I turn and it's my old friend the video-game fascist pestering me again.

"You seem to be pretty interested in the affairs of our office."

"I'm sort of a captive audience."

"Be that as it may, is there something you want to tell me?"

"What would I want to tell you?"

"Anything that would make this afternoon go more smoothly."

"Oh, I see."

He gives me one of those looks you see on the cop shows on TV when the cop wants to pretend that he's your friend.

"There is this one thing."

The face gets friendlier. We are now golf buddies. Our wives exchange pot roast recipes.

"Well..." I look back at the car. The customs official is going through my glove compartment. He is finding Radiohead CDs and a speeding ticket from Alaska. "How long does it take to get to Duluth from here?"

"Duluth?"

"Yeah, that's a city around here right."

"About three hours."

"Three real hours or three Google hours, because Google directions say they take longer than they actually do."

"Three hours sir."

"Is that driving like a girl, three hours, or driving like--"

"That's driving with a healthy respect for the safety and well being of oneself and others."

So, like two, two and a half hours. It's been a long road trip. I can't respect speed limits anymore. It's just me and the road out there. Me and God.

And points don't transfer over between states. I think. My friend, The Great Sha Rhu Khan, told me that. He's almost a doctor. I didn't double check myself.

And then I sit down again. And I am out of clever things to say and cool games to play. At the pace I am traveling, zero inches per hour, I will never make it to Duluth or Mackinac Island or Ann Arbor or DC or home, and I will die, right here, in my chair, in Minnesota.

Minnesota. At least that's a cool name. Not as good as Minnidosa. Not as good as Manitoba. But much better than Queens.

"We'll have you on your way shortly," the customs official promises. And two hours later, after they've checked through my laundry bag, camera bag, laptop bag, through my suitcase full of clothes, through my camping gear and sleeping bag, through my glove department and fuse box, under my floor guards and in my engine, with that mirror that goes under the bumper, takes out my spare and checks the rims, I am finally, mercifully, free to go.

My official hands me back my keys.

"Sorry about the mess," I tell him.

"That's alright. Have a nice day sir."

Yeah, what's left of it. "Thanks," I tell him.

Out at my car, the customs official has strangely moved the trash from my front seat and set it down on the floor. My map is stacked nicely. So are my tissues. In the back seat, my quilt is folded and my boxes of mac & cheese lined up in a row. He zipped up my suitcase.

Of all things, this custom official spent more time cleaning up after me than I spent cleaning up after myself.

Exactly two more hours.

15. Seven Things I Always Wanted To Know About Alaska

BEFORE EMBARKING ON THIS TRIP TO ALASKA, I cracked open my journal and wrote down seven questions, about Alaska, that I wanted to answer in Alaska.

As I sit in a clean motel right outside downtown Anchorage, it's about time to get to the bottom of these epic mysteries.

1. What does "Alaska" mean and in what language does it mean it?
"The great land" in the Aleut language.

Learned this as the border on the AlCan highway. You can tell it was the border because they blazed out a path through the forest to mark the border. God forbid we planted a few trees and Americans and Canadians confused who owned them.

2. When and how did Alaska become a state?
Turns out that Alaska become the 49th state exactly 50 years ago.

I know this because they have hung banners all over this state to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Alaska becoming a state.

Alaskans had been petitioning for statehood for years, at least from 1916, but hadn't gained traction. Many were resentful of the US Congress, who ruled over their fate but wouldn't grant Alaskans their own representatives.

That changed when in 1958, Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a petition to accept Alaska as the 49th state of the union, supposedly in honor for their role in World War II.

3. What were the Japanese doing in the Aleuts during World War II?
They were waging war with America, that's what they were doing. Besides Pearl Harbor, the Aleutian Islands were the only American land to see combat during World War II.

The Japanese forces, led by the great Admiral Yamamoto, were supposedly protecting Japan's northern flank from American counterattack. The invasion was of no great consequence, but due to the difficulty of the islands' terrains, it took America over a year to evict the Japanese from this perch.

4. Can you see Russia from Alaska?
You can. Head to the west coast and you can peek over the Bering Straight and catch a glimpse of Siberia. You cannot, however, see Russia from Wasilla. You cannot see Russia from Wasilla for two geological reasons: 1. there's a mountain range in the way; and, 2. the Earth is round.

This is now a linguistic argument. When Sarah Palin say she could see Russia from her backyard, did she mean her backyard in Wasilla, or the royal, collective, her backyard, which, as governor of Alaska, included, or was pertaining to the Western coast?

The world will never know.

5. Does Alaska have Native American reservations?
Actually, no. Alaska is the only state in the union without Native American reservations--and the Native Americans are much better off for it.

As it turns out, the Native Americans had sued Congress for land rights. Congress ignored them for years--until oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay and they needed to build a pipeline through indigenous territory.

The indigenous people of Alaska settled for land rights in exchange for giving America a 10-mile swath of land in which they could build said pipeline and Dalton's highway to accompany it.

The natives then formed corporations, of which each member of the community was a shareholder, and in which only members of the community and their descendants could own shares.

If I married in, I couldn't become a shareholder, but my children would be. I learned this from the tour guide after I signed up to take a United States Postal Service plane into the arctic circle.

6. Why is Juneau the capital of Alaska when you can't even drive there?
The city limit of Juneau are larger than either Rhode Island or Delaware, and almost as big as both states combined. That should just give you an idea of just how big Alaska is.

It's the largest state in the union, and they love showing maps up here of Alaska's political boundaries superimposed on a map of the "lower 48" which makes the 49th state look like that birthmark on Gorbachev's head.

Alaska makes Texas look small.

Juneau was actually the first city established after Seward's purchase. There were gold in them there hills, and Joe Juneau, of which the town is named after, went out to find it.

The Alaskans have tried to move the capital a more convenient location, but a couple of public referendums didn't pass--supposedly because Alaskans were concerned about Anchorage assuming too much importance in the state.

Over half the population of Alaska lives in the greater Anchorage municipality. Most of the interior is either pristine, or populated by tiny villages. There are no roads to connect the villages in the interior.

Juneau is the only state capital to border Canada or Mexico. Obviously, it borders Canada.

I cheated to find out this answer by looking it up in Google. Won't get to Juneau for another five days.

7. Is there archaeology in Alaska?
Not only is there archaeology in Alaska, there's in archaeology in Antarctica! They dig in the effing snow.

I learned this at the Museum of the North, at the University of Alaska, in Fairbanks. There they have the official state fossil, the Mammoth.

Back when I was in anthropology school, the cultural anthropologists, of whom I broke bread with, used to make fun of the archaeologists for digging in dirt for three long summer months a year.

If we only knew some of them had fun by digging in ice for three long summer months a year!

Let's not get started on what we said about the primatologists, who had to trek through the jungle for three long summer months, just to catch falling monkey poop in buckets.

It was all in good fun.

14. On The Alaska-Canada Highway

MORNING GREETS US WITH FRESH BUGS SPLATTERED against our windshield. A rock, kicked out from under a hulking semi leaves a crack in the passenger's vantage.

Loose gravel sent us into fishtails on curved mountain roads without guardrails. Bison chomping on grass. A caribou's carcass against the side of the road. Blood pooled in the right lane. The early effects of rigor mortis.

We hurled forward. Because we had the day to chase. Because we had another town to make. Because we could not stop for death.


A LOG TRUCK, TWO CARGOES DEEP, ASSUMES THE RIGHT LANE, lollygagging at forty kilometers on a downward slope where we could be doing one-hundred or better. The ravines run deep. A car, we find, turned upside down, shards of glass strewn against an untamed lawn.

The sun bursts into our cabin. Dust seeps through the air vents.

No room to pass him on the winding roads through the Canadian Rockies. Finally, with a turnout appearing on the road, and an opportunity to let us pass, he kindly stopped for us.


FINALLY IN WATSON LAKE, WHERE WE WILL make camp for the night. Pitching the tent is our new virtuosity, completed with perfect coordination and tame silence. Stakes go in the ground, one by one, and then they are six.

Head out again for food. On the corner sits a young man. Beard either tamed or impotent. A pipe in his mouth. A dog by his side. He wears a green, wool sweater. The kind you where at holiday Christmas parties.

He holds his thumb in the air. No room in back for the hitchhiker, his pipe, or his dog. We rolled on dinner. The carriage held but ourselves.


WE ARE HERE RACING AGAINST TIME. Against the days getting shorter and colder. Against the winter. Against the limits of our bodies and our wills. Against the Yukon.

Against Alaska. It is almost freezing in Fairbanks. It will be freezing in Denali. Already the ferries are returning from Anchorage. Where is Juneau, but lost within the glaciers.

We are out here, with nothing but ourselves. A few sandwiches. A map. And a compass. And the road. And immortality.

13. The Thing About Canada...

...is even when you make it all the way up to Edmonton, which is about as far North as anyone you know ever really goes, you're still about 20349850398503928058934 miles away from Alaska.

And this is not just a regular 5024809238402840218041 mile ride. It's 201402175093128503289 mile ride through the Rockies on roads that are getting colder by the day.

That are one-lane highways for ten or twelve hour stretches, and you hope you can make camp in time to break out your tent and sleeping bag and thermarest and comforter so you don't have to tuck your hands into your shorts just to stave off frost-bite.

I am at the stage right now where I would sell organs for a helicopter.

Spend many nights now having random flashbacks, some of them dreams, some of them nightmares, some of them just memories.

I'm in Spain again, and it's raining in Burgos.

I'm in Stony Brook again, setting up my slides for my first anthropology lecture. I am holding a baseball in my hand. I am saying to 200 undergraduates that there is only one definition for an atom.

My life is full of promise.

I'm in elementary school, memorizing the order of the presidents on a poster where we are lined up everyday. I am tall and I line up in the back. There are four girls who are taller than me. Girls mature faster.

I am on my way to Hunter and stop on the 96th Street sidewalk, to write in chalk, "sometimes, when I'm alone at night, I believe I can fly."

I am parodying the Harlem poet, de Silva, or de Vasco, I forget his name. Some people think I'm being original. I am not. Some people think profound. There is nothinig profound about parody.

I am in elementary school, pulling a folded sheet of paper out of my inside jacket pocket to deliver the valedictorian speech at my graduation. I do not remember what I said.

I do remember the fifth grade. Being Willy Wonka in our play. I remember making a joke about everlasting gobstobbers.

I am in Mt. Glacier national park. I am 27 years-old. It is terribly cold outside. I am alone, and it is getting dark, and I am scared. So I do not sit in my tent. I sit in my car and read the fading pages of "Don't Think of an Elephant!"

I am being punched in the face on the way to swimming class.

I am falling to the ground. Lying to the ground, there are people who step over me to reach the subway. Among those people are my classmates.

They must not be late for swimming.

I am at Stony Brook again and I am raising my hand in class. "My sister," I say aloud, "I'd save my sister and get a new wife." The class laughs.

I am still lying in the ground. The homeless man who I sometimes give spare change to does not help me. My classmates step over me. I am helped to my feet by a nurse.

"Where are you going?" she asks me.

I am crying on the street. "I was on my way to swimming class."

It is raining on my car in Mt. Glacier. It is dark and I hear the distant laughter of a campsite. There are no stars in the sky.

"Anthropologists always say you need your own definition of culture in order to become an anthropologist," I say to the class. They are all listening to me. I have their attention. "That is stupid," I say.

I am in EMT class and the professor puts up a picture of a horse. Then he puts up a picture of a bigger horse and says, "Broncho-dilator." Nobody laughts.

I remember Javier Bardem's cock and Penelope Cruz's tits from "Jamon, Jamon." It is Spain. It is raining in Spain. It's always raining.

The nurse is walking me back to school. She brings me to the school's nurse and she sees me, a welt where my eye used to be. She's seen it before, but it never gets old. She cries with me.

We hold hands and she lets me let it out.

I cannot remember Chester A. Arthur. Or Franklin Pierce. What did they ever do anyway? I know Grover Cleveland was a bachelor when elected. The only one of his kind.

I am driving from Mt. Glacier to Calgary and I don't want to go anymore. I pull over to the side of the road and get out of the car.

When you put on the ambulance siren it goes "wail, wail, wail."

I remember the man whose life I helped save. I do not know his name. I will never know his name. He was not conscious when this happened. He will never know who I am.

I lie down on the grass.

It is cold in Mt. Glacier.

It is cold in Canada.

It will be colder in Alaska.

12. A Bison Pancake

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE I would face mortal danger on this trip. My first, and hopefully, last, near-death experience of this trip came at the horns of the great American bison, a 2,000-lb. beast that is proudly the largest land animal on the continent.

The bison, many claim, is normally a fairly docile creature. But most animals are. Spend a week watching a pride of lions and they will spend ninety-percent of their time yawning at flies.

And the other ten percent of their time killing things.

For a bison, it quietly munches on grass for most of the day, when it is not, itself, lying down, yawning at flies.

But for every ten group of eager wildlife photographers, there will be the odd charge of the bison, and one times out of that ten, there will be a gorging.

Happens every year at the park. Human cars kill about a hundred animals on the road, and bison horns kill a human or two in return.

I knew the danger, and took it as a calculated risk, as I spent much of the afternoon, driving around Yellowstone National Park photographing these bison. I found them on the road in once instance, and tracked my car slowly along its flank to get a few good shots in.

Pulling into a picnic area a few miles down that road I found an entire herd of them quietly nursing their young and looking around, nonplussed by the brilliant colors a fading sun shot across the valley.

I trekked my Hyundai into their midst, an idea that was not exactly motivated by self-preservation to get a couple of good shots of a mother and her calf. The bison looked at my silver carriage without much amusement.

I left their midst without harassment and continued onto the Hayden Valley turnouts.

EVERYTHING THE LIGHT TOUCHES belongs to the bison. You can sit at the turnout and try to count their numbers. I estimated two or three hundred, though I had a hard time keeping count of the dots of beasts across the Yellowstone River (of which Yellowstone Park gets its name.)

Two nurses asked me to take their picture with the bison and I obliged nicely enough. A solitary male lurked in the background, not more than twenty yards from us—less than the distance the park rangers advised us to keep.

But he was just standing there, and though we heard the stories, we figured we were close enough to our cars to make a break for it if events turned hostile.

I snapped their pictures, hauled out my journal and celebrated the freedom of animal and Greek as the valley hemorrhaged an awesome beauty—and the paradox that I could only witness this scene with roads humans had built and fences humans had maintained.

You think too much. Just sit back and enjoy.

After half an hour at the ridge, I turned back on the road to make a campsite by nightfall.

On that road, a caravan had stopped to photograph a group of bison on the North side of the road. Let me explain: take an ice cream cone and flip it upside down. Now, imagine a road that circled the cone, halfway up.

To the left of the road would be the thinner part of the cone, and to the right of the road the flatter part of the cone.

Now, imagine a Hyundai on that road. And a small group of bison on the taller part to the left, separated from the larger group of bison on the fatter part to the right.

These are the ingredients to mortal injury.

I LOWERED MY WINDOW AND STUCK out my camera to get a good shot of the three male bison as, out of nowhere, their docility morphed into territoriality.

The bison, all three of them, started clawing at the ground, like a bull does before it charges.

An RV stood right in front of me. I couldn’t roll forward. But there were no cars behind me.

The bison to my left started grunting.

A car pulled in to block my view. That car, with their passenger taking pictures, stood before me and the bison.

So, it was in order: Bison, Car, Me, Cliff. A cliff that fell down a good ten yards, before, surely, my car would roll over and explode.

The bison’s tension accelerated. In a matter of seconds the two charged at the one, and the one, realizing his imminent defeat, decided against the fight.

The car in front of me hurtled forward and, when, at the last second, the lone bison turned, and with the momentum of a 2,000-lb animal on a slope, barreled towards me.

The bison’s eyes met mine.

A shot of wild panic ran through my balls and yanked the back of my neck.

The bison charged on a collision course into my driver’s side window.

I was sitting in the driver’s seat!

The window was down!

Without another thought, I took my foot off the break and hit the gas.

The bison surged forward.

The car surged forward.

The rear driver’s window was in his sights.

He pulled his head to the right, and the gas lid was in his sights, and stumbled to his right, the rear bumper was in his sights, and tumbled down the southern slope, kicking up dirt in a triangular plume.

Without me knowing, the RV ahead of me had pulled on, giving me just enough space to pass it to the right, and pull into a turnout, and shrieked on the brakes.

Looked into the passenger seat. Just a mess of maps and souvenirs. Nobody saw this with me. Nobody to share it with.

I threw the car in park, and fell out of the driver’s seat, and gripped the floor. My heart was up in my chest. I looked down at the cliff.

If the bison hadn’t succeeded in gorging me, surely the impact would have knocked my car off the cliff. He barely missed me with me shooting forward.

What if I had put the car in park? What if the RV hadn’t pulled up? What if I hesitated for a second?

I looked up. A crowd of onlookers, photographing the bison had just seen what happened.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

A salt-and-pepper grandpa screamed out, “Hell yeah.”

“That bison had it out for me. It was either going to impale me, or knock my car into the ravine.”

“You were going to be a bison pancake!” the old man hollered.

“A bison patty, served rare,” I quipped back.

He laughed with the experience that suggested, in his youth, he had driven a landing boat at D-Day, or fought back the Chinese army on the Korean peninsula: “I thought you were a goner!”

I LOST CONTROL OF MY BREATHING FOR A MOMENT and sat slumped on the pavement, still in my bathing suit from my afternoon’s dip in Jenny Lake.

I lied down on the pavement and looked up into the air. The setting sun was pushing the sky from blue to purple to red.

“What a way to go,” I said to the old man.

“Where you from son?” he asked.

“Queens,” I told him.

“That’s a long way to come to get knocked off a cliff by a bison.”

”Wasn’t exactly in my itinerary,” I confessed.

He helped me off the ground.

“You going to be alright, son? You need some water or something.”

I looked back and the lone bison had made its way back up to his feet and back to the edge of the road. He grunted at his two nemeses playing king of the hill.

“I'm good,” I said to him. “I’ll be fine.”

He patted me on the back and made my way back into the driver’s seat. I grabbed my balls to make sure they were still there. One, two. Had them. My dick, too. All ten fingers.

Ten toes. Two ears. Everything seemed to be in order.

The window was still lowered. And as I pulled out, the old man offered one last bit of advice. “Drive safe, young man!”

“Thanks,” I waved, and pulled out the turnout passed another herd of bison and drove off, carefully and slowly and deliberately before they proved, again, that there is no such thing, as a harmless 2,000-lb animal.

11. Take Me To Your Monument

LOOK AROUND ALL THE great cities of the world, and almost without exception, they will have one thing in common: Water. And lots of it.

Because of the principles of shipping costs, and the obvious need for settlements to have access to water, any group of people looking to establish a permanent civilization will take up shop around water, preferably the fresh, moving variety, what we call rivers.

New York, of course, is fed by the Hudson and East River. (Which isn't so much a river as a tidal strait, but I digress.)

Paris sits on the Seine. London on the Thames. Baghdad sleeps in a nook of the River Tigris.

Delhi feasts on the Yamuna. Cairo has the Nile.

And then there's the great city of St. Louis, sitting right on the Mississippi.


ST LOUIS WAS FOUNDED in 1763 by colonial French fur traders and sold to the United States by Napolean Bonaparte in what we call the Louisiana Purchase.

The young city figured prominently in America's expansion west, an era now commemorated with the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, where the world-famous Gateway Arch now sits.

Jefferson, of course, was the president that bought the territory from Napolean.

The arch was designed by Finnish-American architest Eero Saarinen (who appears regularly in crossword puzzles as either "______ Saarinen," "Architect Saarinen," or "TWA Terminal architect"), and was originally intended to be a perfect parabola.

Unfortunately, the parabola proved too difficult an engineering challenge to be completed, and the monument was modified to a catenary--the shape a chain makes when it hangs according to its own weight.

The Arch's shape can be expressed in a simple mathematical formula, something about the ratio between sines, cosines, tangents, and other ratios of triangles I was too depressed in high school to properly learn.


I FIND MYSELF irresistibly attracted to the Arch. I love its shape. The way sunlight glistens off its base. The way it doesn't look like a building or even a monument--which is bizarre, since it is a monument.

What the Arch feels like to me is math. It's as if we, as a civilization, constructed the Number 1. Not an actual giant Number 1, but the pure, abstraction of the Number 1, and turned it into steel and glass and tiny little elevator carts than can take you up to centrally-placed observation desks.

Christians have the cross. Jews the star of David. Muslims the Crescent.

And we that worship in the halls of Science, that believe in Constants and Forces and Parsimony and Principles, we have this catenary.

If aliens beamed down to a WalMart parking lot, woke me up, and asked me to take me to our leader, I would skip the White House, clean out the back seat of pretzel debris and motor oil stained napkins, and drive them to the Arch.

"There," I would argue, "our leader is science and reasoning and logic and philosophy and law."

"Really?" the aliens would respond, genuinely impressed. "Is that all true?"

"Yes," I would say. "Just look at the arch. We worship math."

They'd nod to each other, and conclude that an intelligent species does inhabit this planet, and I'd hope they'd skip over the civil wars in Eastern Europe, the famines in Africa, the tyranny in North Korea, and the Republicans in America violently opposed to public health care, and deem us worthy of life.


THE GREAT SHAH RUKH, he of Washington University School of Medicine, in the great city of St. Louis, and his young flame, Chevre, took me down to the Arch at night. A bank of high-powered search lights illuminated the bottom edges of the Arch.

The lights are so potent that they cast a shadow of the Arch on low-flying clouds.

We ran up the steps that double as an amphitheater in the summer months when Jimmy Eat World is in town, and catapulted full speed toward the spotlights.

They are strong and blinding. If you look right into their bulbs, your eyes will hurt and soon will your head. Better to stand over them and let the light hit the back of your head, like you do in the shower, when you need to take a second and relax.

You'll be immersed in light and watch the rays stream out to the sky, bouncing off the bottom-facing hull of the Arch, and your head will be a gray shadow on its skin.

Take pictures with your friends while you're at it. All the stupid things you'll do when presented with a giant spotlight beneath a world-famous monument.

All the things you would have done in Paris if they put the lights on the ground and not on the Eiffel Tower itself.

You will run around the legs of the Arch and play in its grasses and laugh about its ways, and then a police office will roll up in his patrol car and announce through his megaphone in a timbre usually reserved for Shakespearean soliloquies: "The park is closed."


"THE PARK CLOSES at 11pm. The park is closed."

So, like any educated, young citizens, we turned and left.

"Where are you going?" asked the voice.

We screamed out that we were leaving the park. We were returning to our cars and heading home. We walked in the opposite direction of the patrol car. The direction of home.

"Come here and tell me where you're going!"

Excuse us?

The voice demanded, "I said come here and tell me where you're going!"

We obeyed. We turned and walked toward the squad car. Our shoulders slumped with the nuisance.

"The park is closed," it barked at us. "The park closes at 11pm."

Yeah, we know, we screamed out. We're leaving.

"The park is closed. The park closes at 11pm."

We turned around. We left the park. It was past 11pm. It was closed.

"The park is closed."

Down the steps, we paused one last time to turn and take another picture of the arch at night. As I framed the catenary, the patrol car rolled in front of us, and barked at a group of teenagers to our right.

"The park is closed. The park closes at 11pm. The park is closed."


IT IS UNFORTUNATE to me that the municipality of St Louis decides to close the Arch at night, when it can be enjoyed with so much delight. Paris never closes the Eiffel Tower's park.

You can sit under it at three in the morning with a bottle of wine and no one will tap you on the shoulder and ask for ID.

What if aliens landed on Earth?

What if we had one chance to prove to them our merit as a modern civilization? What if we had one stroke in the night to take them to our monument of science, if, with their Sonic burgers in one hand, they hopped on the spotlight to make funny shapes and were greeted, in a moment of intergalactic peace, with the gruffy statement: "The park is closed."

Is the last chance of saving mankind then going to be an spaceship parked for the night outside a 24-hour WalMart?

God help us all, St Louis.























Chevre and The Great Shah Rukh strike a pose.





















Wherein the young narrator believes he can fly.
















The Arch at night from the steps after our first encounter with the patrol car but before our second.

10. Drink, Responsibly

ONE PROMISE I MADE to myself at the beginning of this road trip was that under no circumstances would I do any sort of driving under the influence of alcohol.

It's too much of a slippery slope to say to myself, hey, I just had a beer, I'll drive for another hour--and then, I just had two beers, I can make it four hours to West Branch, Iowa, in the dead of night.

Better not to try it all than find myself upside down in a ditch on the lower peninsula of Michigan.

But what I discovered is--much to my surprise, but I guess you learn things about yourself on trips like these --that even if I don't drink alcohol, under these circumstances, I still like bars.

I never thought I would like bars without the context of either alcohol--or, while we're on the topic of celibacy, sex, as I am traveling sans the Panda, and dutifully, and again, kind of surprisingly if you knew me in my younger years, monogamous--but it turns out that I am a creature of habit or maybe I just like dark places with loud music full of lonely people.

Bars, it seems, are my natural habitat.

And when I enter these watering holes now, I stroll right in, take my seat at the bar, and signal for one refreshingly delicious Pink Lemonade. Generous with the ice.

The bartenders tend to look at me a bit cross.

"Pink lemonade?"

Yes, you heard me.

The bartenders may accept that fact that I enjoy pink lemonade. That it's my thing. That I wake up in the morning sweating bullets from pink lemonade withdrawal. But what they can't piece together is why I came to a bar to drink pink lemonade.

They almost want to serve it to me for free.

"Is that all?"

"I don't know, you got wings?"

And invariably they'll think that I'm a recovering alcoholic. (I assure you, there is no recovering aspect to my alcoholism.)

They will accept the fact that, for the sake of my physical and mental health, I have forsaken alcohol. They can respect that.

They just can't understand why I'm abstaining from alcohol by going to a bar to drink pink lemonade.

Be sober at home. Buy a pink lemonade at the deli. But don't sit at my bar to drink that powdered sugar nonsense.

But what choice do they have? They bring it to me. I ask for a straw. And I sit at the bar, sipping my drink, checking the baseball scores, and charting my next stop.

Grand Rapids to Minneapolis. That's like nine and a half hours. Minneapolis to West Branch. Hmmm, I'll need four hours for that. West Branch to Moline? That's a two hour cakewalk.

It's what you do on a road trip.

9. The Will of Sam Walton

MADE IT TO SPRINGFIELD, IL, on a weary Tuesday night and immediately pulled into a local campsite for a night of rest.

The attendant greeted me at her station and I told her that I wanted the most basic package they had--no bells, no whistles--and she described the "primitive" option which was basically a patch of ground to park your car, and another patch to pitch your tent.

"How big is your tent?" she asked.

I replied that I honestly did not know how big my tent was. First of all, it wasn’t my tent. I was borrowing the tent from a friend. Second of all, even if it were my tent, I’ve never pitched a tent in my life. So I don’t know how big tents normally are.

And third of all, I had no intention of learning to pitch a tent in my fading condition in the dark of night. The first two I should have thought about before embarking on the trip, the last one I only should have thought about something that late afternoon or early evening.

"Honestly," I said to her, "considering the hassle, I think I’m just going to sleep in my car."

She rolled her eyes and returned to some paperwork which did not appear to keep her all that busy.

"Well,” she said, ”if you just want to sleep in your car, why don’t go just sleep in the WalMart parking lot? That’s free.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, Sam Walton left it in his will that anyone can sleep in his parking lots for the night.”

“And people go there and purpose and don’t get eaten by serial killers?”

She looked up at me. “I’m actually just about ready to close up here.”

I DON’T KNOW much about WalMart. We don’t have WalMarts in Queens. All I know comes from what I read about WalMart business practices and the general idea that there is a giant box store run amok across America where you can buy, at big discounts, anything from shaving cream to rifles to pizza.

As far as I know, Queens never said, “There shall be no WalMarts here!” the way Brooklyn has stood up against them and Home Depot.

(Even though Brooklyn has a Lowe’s, Barnes & Noble, and now a gigantic and stylish Ikea. Don’t get me started here, Brooklyn. They think Home Depot will ruin the neighborhood.)

Queens has a Home Depot in College Point. It’s tucked behind the DMV, the New York Times printing plant, and a bowling alley. Guess you can’t say a store will ruin the neighborhood if there is no neighborhood.

The people of Queens seem generally happy to have a place to buy cheap wood and mix paint for them on the spot. I don’t know of anyone who complains about the Home Depot of Queens.

We even a Home Depot on Northern Blvd. But Northern Blvd will accept any business. If boulevards were high school students, Northern would be the kid that would join the Debate Team, sit on the bench for soccer, and coordinate the band’s travels, just to make friends—but no one would talk to him outside of his responsibilities.

“Hey, Jimmy, can you pass me my shin guards?”

“Sure, buddy, here you go. Hey, are you going—”

“Thanks Jimmy.”

That’s what Northern is. The place where you do your business and hope no one sees you doing it there.

You think Northern would protest a WalMart? You could open Soylent Green and Northern wouldn’t protest.

THERE ARE FOUR WALMARTS in Springfield, IL, all more or less located on the outskirts of town where there is enough room to build giant parking lots you could sit your RV in for the night.

The lot I found had three such RVs lurking on their west flank. Not sure exactly what the protocol was, I parked near the entrance and headed inside.

There was a security guard who greeted me as I made it through the automatic doors—a promising sign if I was allowed to sleep there, but a disaster if I wasn’t.

To my left, the deli section. To my right, the cashiers. And before me, thousands of square feet of discount merchandise. Flashlights, blue jeans, softball mitts. You name it.

If zombies ever took over the Earth, I would make a fort of WalMart.

A laminated sheet in the bathroom scrolled the regular cleanings. I suppose this was as good a place as any to brush my teeth.

And wash my face.

And rinse my hair.

Freshened up for the night, I returned to my car, drove it between two RVs. They sat standing over my shoulder like twin older brothers.

Too much junk in the passenger seat to move things around, so I just reclined the driver’s seat all the way back, stuck my cap over my eyes to cover the gleam from the parking lot night lamps, and tried to fall asleep.

AT FIRST I WAS ANXIOUS. Every passing car carried thirteen migrant workers out to carjack and rape me. They had nothing better to do with their time. And in their hierarchy of Carjack-Rape Meat, Greeks from Queens ranked the highest.

We were the stuff of legends. What they told their Carjacking friends about at Carjacking conventions.

“This one time, swear to God, found a Greek sleeping in a Grey Hyundai in get this—Springfield, Illinois! You believe that.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

But the sleep did come. And when it came, it fell down on me—as it always does—like a ton of bricks. Toes twinkling approvingly. Drool on my forearm. I slept like a babe, only to be awoken by a vicious thunderstorm. Rain lashed the parking lot and lightning tore strips through the sky.

After initially rousing me, the rain served as a security blanket. A protective cover of discomfort and wetness. “Thank you, Zeus,” I said aloud.

The rain was my bodyguard. Who gets carjacked in the rain? No one.

Carjackers stay home when it rains.

Everyone knows that. The rain. The snow. Any kind of precipitation. Cold, even. All these are carjacker deterrents. Carjackers are the opposite of mailmen. Everything keeps carjackers from their stated goals.

Carjacking is a fair-weather sport. It’s for Florida and Southern California. In New York, all the muggings take place in dark alleys where criminals can keep warm by a burning oil drum.

In Alaska, there are no carjackings. And no muggings.

Except for maybe in July. But I won’t even get there until September. Safety first, after all.

As for that night, I woke in the early morning to the sound of my alarm, returned my seat to its upright position and headed inside to wash up again in their restroom and buy breakfast from their deli section.

Why don’t you just sleep at WalMart? Good call, cranky reception lady, good call.

MY POSITIVE EXPERIENCE IN a WalMart parking lot does not guarantee that, indeed, Sam Walton left such a provision in his will. A quick search on the internet finds plenty of sites that also argue it was his dying wish, with many anecdotes of successful parking there for a night.

But individual results may vary.

Some accounts have people being evicted by WalMart security, mostly in more urbanized areas. I can see Springfield, Illinois, tolerating campers, but Northern Blvd in Queens? Or Valley Stream in Nassau? Somewhat doubtful.

Sleeping in a WalMart parking lot reminds me of my college days when I used to sleep on a floor. Who needs a mattress? People would always ask me, first, if that’s comfortable. It really is. Second, if that was an issue with the femmes. It never was.

And third, why I never really got a mat or something?

I didn’t like to give my boilerplate, the human race has gone two million years without a mattress, what need do we have of one now, speech. What was relevant to a poor student at the time was, if you can sleep without a mattress, the whole world is your mattress.

I feel that way now about WalMart. If you can sleep in a WalMart parking lot. All of America is to me a WalMart parking lot.

Go west, young man, go west, and sleep throughout the country.

8. For the Child Drowning In The Mall's Fountain

SITTING IN THE Mall of America in Bloomington, MN, a suburb of the Twin Cities, the day after the President of the United States of America announced, in reaction to town hall protests, that a public option health insurance is not a critical part of his reform plan.

I now find it only appropriate to take up the example of the great humanist, Peter Singer, in one's moral obligation to help others.

Singer's parable revolves around a child drowning in a mall's fountain. (Or maybe just in a pool in general. I think he said it was a mall fountain. In any case, I'm in the mall now, and I'm using the fountain.)

So sue me.

Here it goes from the Mall with an aquarium in its basement, an amusement park in its living room, and an airport in its backyard.



AS HUMAN BEINGS we would consider it unconscionable to, as we were walking through the mall, see a child drowning in the fountain and do nothing to help them. Of course we should simply reach over, pull the child’s face out of the water and save their life, as the story goes.

The issue or right and wrong is that simple.

But what if, in the process of saving that child’s life, your shoes got wet? For those of us wearing waterproof hiking boots we wouldn’t mind. Even those in sandals or flip-flops could walk it off.

Sneakers would lead to an afternoon of discomfort.

But if you were wearing three-hundred dollar alligator loafers, are you the one jumping in the water to help that child or hoping that barefoot hippie beats you to it?

Hopefully, no matter what shoes you are wearing, you will go out of your way to help that child, because you will, and rightfully so, value that child's life over said shoes.



LET'S UP THE ANTE. Now, the child is still drowning in the mall’s fountain...but there’s a whirlpool!

And, in the process of saving that child’s life, there’s a chance, but not a certainty, that you’d get sucked into that whirlpool, and break your arm.

(It’s not a very deep whirlpool.)

Will you still save that child? And, would you, if you decided not to save that child’s life, commit an ethical wrong?

The answer is, if your health is at risk, according to the tenets, rules, and standard operating procedures of Emergency Medicine, you are neither ethically nor legally required to provide care. You can declare the scene as unsafe, and decide not to proceed. That is your prerogative.

There are those who will risk their own health, safety, and lives to help that child regardless. Those people are heroes. But the opposite is not true. Those people who do not risk their health, safety, and lives to help the child are not monsters.

They're just ordinary people. And that's fine with me. I'm probably one of them too.



SO, IN OUR CASE, the uninsured (and those who are insured but pay too much for coverage) people of America are drowning. And there are those, who we will call "advocates" who want to help. But there are other Americans, who we will call "Lobbyists" who want the American people to continue drowning.

Who have it in their self-interest to let that child drown. (Those bastards.)

They see a man in three-hundred dollar alligator loafers and they scream out, “If you go in there, your shoes will be ruined.” But the man doesn’t listen. The man is the American People. He is the public. He is now, thanks to the prosperity of America, no longer tired, nor poor. He is free and he is brave.

His conscience tells him to save the child. He is a good person and he is doing the right thing.

But wait! The lobbyist screams from above. He cannot reach the fountain. Neither can the advocate. It is for the man to decide.

The lobbyists tells the man with the alligator shoes that if he attempts to save the child’s life, he may be sucked into a whirlpool!

“Where?” asks the man. “Where is this whirlpool?”

“Right behind the child. The second you pull her out, you will get sucked in yourself.”

“Really?” he asks.

“Yes, absolutely.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

So the man backs away for a second. A twinge of fear shoots up his spine. But he looks over at the child kicking its arms, its head in the water, desperate for help, and he says, what the hell, damn the whirlpool, I’ve got to help this kid.

The man is strong. The strongest man in the world. The child would be in good hands.

He runs over to the lip of the pool. Pennies glisten on the pool’s bottom. A soft sunlight leaks in from the open roof. He leans forward. His marble chin carves a path through the air.

He reaches for the child's hand.

“Wait!” screams out the lobbyist. “Stop right there. If you grab that child, you will, for sure, be sucked up in a whirlpool and die.”

The man stops. He looks up.

“Are you sure?”

“I am absolutely sure that saving that child’s life will result in personal harm to you.”



WHAT IS THE MAN TO DO? He thinks about his family. His children. His mother. His father. Himself. He stops. He can’t help that poor child. He hangs his head in shame and turns his attention away.

He can’t bear to look.

But there, from the rafters, is the advocate for the drowning child.

“What are you doing?” asks the advocate. “Aren’t you going to pull that child out of the fountain?”

“No,” says the man.

“Why, because of your shoes?” asks the advocate. The advocate is outraged. “You won’t save the child because of your shoes!? Your shoes!?”

“No,” replies the man. “Because if I save the child, I will be hurt myself.”

“How?” asks the advocate.

“By the whirlpool.”

“What whirlpool?” asks the advocate.

“The whirlpool that is sucking that child and that will suck me if I go to grab that child,”

“There’s no whirlpool,” explains the advocate. “There’s just water. Water, and a child no one is helping.”

The man can’t. He looks away from the advocate. He is sorry.

This only angers the advocate. “Do it,” he screams. “Go save the child!”

“No,” screams back the man.

“You won’t be hurt!” The advocate jumps up and down. "Go help! Go help!" He's beside himself. He can't think straight anymore. "Go help! Go help! You'll be fine! Think of the child!"

“Don’t tell me what to do,” the man replies. He rolls his sleeves up past his elbows.

“All you have to do is step in and take him out of there. That’s all it’ll take. Please.” His eyes water up. "Please, man. Please."

The man shakes his head. “What do you know? There’s a whirlpool back there. You come down and do it!”

But the advocate can’t. The man knows this. The advocate needs the man to pull the child out of the water. But he won’t. He’s afraid of being hurt, and so long as that fear is real, his actions are justified.

The man can become angry and belligerent. He can hate the advocate for expecting him to save the child at the expense of his own life; the advocate is some sort of communist monster for deciding that the child’s life is more important than his.

"Damn you, you son-of-a-bitch!" he screams at the advocate. "What do you know about anything?"

The child’s fate is the child’s fate, he decides. There is nothing that can be done and nothing that should be done, and as far as he is concerned the advocate should just shut his trap and accept this.

With a final flair of his nostrils, he lets the advocate know this. And the advocate sinks to his knees. He thinks there is nothing that can be done.

Maybe the child drowning isn't so bad after all, he negotiates. Maybe we'll get him next time.



SO THIS IS WHERE we now stand in the health care debate. Those who wish to save the child—Proponents of health care reform—are considered by those who have the power to save the child—The American People—to be considered obnoxious idiots because of the wild lies of those whose interest it is to let the child drown—The Private Insurance Lobby and their Right-Wing Yahoo Goons.

The lobby, which because the cost of public health care was not too great a burden--Getting our alligator loafers wet--had to invent a danger of public health care--Losing Your Doctor, Death Panels, and Communist Politics--in order to impede the American people from taking appropriate action--Saving the child.

The advocate is mad at the man for not understanding the lies of the lobbyist. How could the man be so stupid, wonders the advocate. And the man, how can the advocate be so presumptuous as to take away MY right to health and MY right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Meanwhile, while the two who should be allies fight it out, it’s the uninsured who continue to suffer and the lobbyists who continue to profit--the medicine lobby that profits when Americans don't receive medicine, that do well when the child drowns.

That is what we have come to, on this day, in the Mall of America. Those who should be allies, now locked in inane combat, while the predators continue to feast on its prey.

The man is strong. He rolls his sleeves back down. Buttons them at the wrist. And walks away.

What a scene at the mall. What a country.

7. On the Road Again

NOT MUCH TIME to post the last couple of days, but just wanted to let everyone know that I made it out of Stroutsburg, PA, and all the way to Minneapolis, MN.

Funny thing about karma is, on the first night that I set out, Tuesday evening, my dad had warned me that it takes eight hours to get to Buffalo.

Eight hours?

It's 400 miles away on roads where you average 85. It may take him eight hours to get to Buffalo--stopping every hour for a piss and a coffee--but it was not going to take me eight hours to get to Buffalo.

It took me three days.


BUT I AM NOT in Buffalo anymore, not after eating at the Anchor Bar, the origin of the Buffalo wing, and taking The Lorax to both side of Niagara Falls, and even driving east, in the opposite direction, to drop him off at the Rochester airport.

No, now I am in Minnesota, in the land of "wide lawns and friendly trees" hoping to take in the Walker Art Museum and the Mall of America.

I am about 1200 miles from New York, one fifth into the distance I expect to travel on this road trip, and with the exception of those two days in Stroutsburg, PA, and now what appears to be a leak of motor oil, everything is going smooth.

I think.


WHAT I HAVE learned is a road trip can be fun and adventurous and exciting, but none of those qualities make it relaxing. This is not a vacation in any sense of the word (except for the sense of the word that says a vacation is when you do not work).

Traveling across country, especially driving by yourself for thirteen hours, with nothing but local radio stations--country, Christian, classical, some more country, anarchist, Christian--is a physical feat that leaves your butt sore and your ankle tender.

There is only me and the road out there. The dot-dot-dot of the divider spaces. The woosh of a passing car. The hum of a churning engine.

Another mile marker blown off the side of the road. Another interstate gone from one end through the other. Another city and its blinking lights twinkling goodbye.

It is only me as far as I want to go. And good lord, is that not beautiful?

6. Forty-Eight Hours in Stroudsburg, PA

I MEAN THIS as no offense to the greater township of Stroudsburg, PA, but if I have to spend another day in Stroudsburg, PA--this will be my second day here, after having originally planned to spend exactly zero minutes here--then I vow to abandon all my worldly possessions and take to the road as a vagabond and hitchhiker.

There is nothing wrong with Stroudsburg, PA, per se. There is something wrong with my car.

Specifically, its "harmonic balancer", which broke on I-80 the very first night of said road trip, less than two hours into the road trip.

In a scene best described as the five layers of panic, first the speedometer went out, then the dashboard lights, then the power windows, then the headlights, each of which had me pull right, and then right, and then right, until I was parking on the grass off of the shoulder as the car shuddered to a stop.

It was not long before a state trooper was shining his flashlight into my face and asking if I had AAA.

"Yes, officer, I do."

"Would you like me to call them in?"

"Please."

So if you set out on a Tuesday evening, and you get towed by the friendly neighborhood tow truck driver, from New Jersey, seven miles to the Pennsylvania border, and then a couple more miles into the Hyundai dealership in Stroudsburg, and when they finally look at your car the next morning and tell you they have to overnight a harmonic balancer because no one in driving distance carries one for your car...

Well, then, it's Thursday already and you're still in Stroudsburg, PA.

You will not make it to Niagara Falls or the fist in Detroit or Ford's Presidential Library in Ann Arbor or Mackinaw Island in Michigan--the only place in America which has outlawed cars--and not to Mystery Spot or the Northern Star of the US, Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they elect wrestlers for governors, and comedians for senators.

You will not do any of this.

Instead, you will sit in the local cafe on Main St, in Stroudsburg, PA, playing chess with your friend. You will read comic books in the comic book stores for three hours while the owner of said comic book store complains to his patrons that there's never enough people around to get a decent Magic tournament started.

You will eat peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches.

You will bring your own oatmeal to the motel breakfast because they don't even have the decency to serve a single fresh fruit.

And you will read on the cover of USA Today that, in a two-to-one margin, the insane hecklers barnstorming town hall meetings, standing in opposition to the most humane of public measures, health care for all, have swayed independent thinkers to sympathize with their cause.

You will sit impotent in the motel's lobby and throw the paper in the air and know that even if you were granted all the power in the world--

If you, yourself, could go down to Washington, DC, and pull a single level--

The label on that lever being "Universal Health Care for Every Man, Woman, Child, and Dog in This Great Nation"--

If you had this great power in the palm of your hand--

That this measure would still not pass because you are in Stroudsburg, PA, asking the Napa auto parts store if they carry spare alternators for 2001 Hyundai XG 300's.


ON THE WALK TO Main St., yesterday, after the dealership told me it'd be another day, and after I dipped in the motel pool to cool my heels, The Lorax and I encountered, on the side of the road that nobody walks, a groundhog, of all things, here, on our personal little Groundhog's Day.

Punxsutawny Phil.

In the flesh.

We watched him nibble on an acorn or something he had found in someone's backyard. We watched him for a second.

"Is that you Phil?" we called out.

Phil looked up from his nugget. He sniffed left and right.

"Phil," we asked, "how are you?"

He noticed us staring at him and disappeared behind a concrete stairway.

"Is that supposed to mean something?" asked The Lorax.

"What do you mean, like a metaphor. For my trip?"

"Yeah, like a metaphor."

"If it does, it can't be a good one."

We also discussed what it meant for a cross-country road trip if your car breaks down on the first night. No, not the first night, within the first 100 miles.

If your car breaks down and you're still in Jersey. You haven't even made it to Pennsylvania.

"It's ominous, I admit." I wrinkled my nose. "You think I should turn around?"

"Do you think you should turn around?"

"This is America," I said. "We are not a country built by quitters." I shook my fist in the air. "Besides," I asked, "What am I supposed to do? Go back to work?"

He laughed a big choke of a laugh. "Let's not talk crazy here."



THE DEBATE IN Groundhog Day is whether Bill Murray escapes Groundhog Day because he became a good person, or because he learned how to love.

Let us then consider what I have to do, if this is my curse, to escape Stroudsburg, PA.

Do I have to become a good person? This argument assumes that I am a bad person. And while I am certainly no saint, I find it hard to believe that if you reviewed my life, on balance, that I, being some percentile of "goodness" and some percentile of "badness" would fall toward the evil end of the spectrum.

There is malice implied in badness, and I don't believe that I go around doing people harm. And that, in the abstract, if you examined my "badness", it is on the most part self-destructive nonsense, and some rudimentary sexual excess, of which I blame the hormones of my youth.

It's not that I couldn't help myself, it's that I didn't want to.

And if consensual sex is the worst Punxsatawny Phil has against me, then he should just suck it up and let me get on my way.

I've never killed anyone or hit someone with my car and drove away. I never laughed at people who were getting laid off.

(Though, I did laugh at some who were laughable, but I didn't laugh at them because they were laid off. I laughed at them because they couldn't catch a softball which, I guess, is mean in its own respect and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for that.)

I donate to charities and to Democrats (who are no longer a charity cause).

I give money to the arts and tip well. And I always try to help people out, even strangers, and not just women on the subway who need help carrying their baby strollers.

OK, if you want to nitpick, I'm not perfect, but who are you to judge, Punxsutawny Phil?



NOW, THEN, TO THE question of love. Which is a valid question, and I will say, that I do love.

I love myself with a deep respect, a love for oneself that I encourage all people to have, because John Lennon encouraged all people to have, and he knows, of all people, a thing or two about love.

(And about consensual sex. And about charity and Democrats.)

Lennon sang:

I don't believe in magic/
I don't believe in Elvis/
I don't believe in Beatles/
I just believe in me

I want to comment on this quote further, but Ferris Bueller beat me to it, and it's only appropriate that I quote from Ferris Bueller, here on my two months off:

"Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, 'I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.' Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people."

And I'd still have to bum rides off of people because my car is sitting in the Hyundai dealership of Stroudsburg, PA, waiting for a harmonic balancer--whatever that means!

Do I have to learn to love? No, I know how to love.

I love life and freedom and letters and books and my mother and air that is clean and skies that are blue and the road and my sisters and fishing and bourbon and chicken crisps from Fay Da bakery in Elmhurst and the Pannda and big, fat, Greek dinners with lamb and lemon potatoes and taramasalata.

I know love, Punxsutawny Phil, so let me go! Let me go, Phil! Let me go!

Phil! Do you hear me? I will hunt you down and squeeze the life out of your body. Let me go, Phil!

Let me go!



















Day 1: Waiting to hear the verdict at the dealership in Stroudsburg, PA.


















Day 2: In which the narrator sits in his bed, reading a book, in Stroudsburg, PA.