On Yesterday

Today, I have spent two decades on this rock that we all call home. Continuing with that analogy, it is a shame that so many roommates share this home and not only do most of them never even find time to see all the various rooms of the home, but our time as roommates is spent bickering. Either way, today is my twentieth birthday.

For my birthday, I am practicing the same reasoning behind a Fat Tuesday celebration. Being fully aware that you are going to spend the following time without a certain something, you indulge in it to get your fill ahead of time. Because of not having a laptop for the first part of this second endeavor, I will not be staying with hosts from CouchSurfing as much and so a day where I just sit back on a couch with newfound friends and smoke during episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer intertwined with time spent dismembering creatures aboard the Ishimura, a floating intergalactic vessel (or rather, playing Dead Space on the XBOX360). I will be here for the next week or so though, to attend a party at the house of the Denton hosts that invited me to stay with them previously. It seems all of them are moving out of their house locally known as the Bordello (which is Spanish for "male whorehouse"), and I offered to clean the Black Lagoon (otherwise known as their clogged bathtub; a shower where you expect Jeff Goldblum to rise out of the murky water behind you and smile before he takes you under to his underwater chambers) to thank them for letting me stay last time, and as an incentive for getting a place to stay this time as I pass through.

I'm not sure why I associate Jeff Goldblum with stalking you from his watery lair in the Bordello Black Lagoon, but the thought of it just seems frightening; an alternative being Willem Dafoe. Nobody really wants to find him lurking in their clogged bathtub, I would assume.

But no more of the randomness, for I have a day to tell of-

I left about three from College Station and headed towards Dallas; though I don't usually concern myself with time, Alex was throwing a bit of a party for my birthday and so time became a concern. However, there was one other initial concern that remained on my mind since I left directly from College Station. It seems the Kodiak managed to obtain an arrest warrant while he lived in College Station (calm down, dearies, it was only for an outstanding traffic violation; a traffic violation so remarkable that all the witness just sat around in awe and said "Outstanding!" in unison as if they were a heavenly choir) and since I had been pulled over by an officer of the law twice before, I knew that if I was pulled over in College Station that I would be postponing my current venture by about a week or so as I spent time in a county jail.

In order to possibly avoid any trouble, I tried to find some other activity so that I could use it as an alibi to tell an officer if I encountered one. I chose sitting on the rail of a small bridge and reading an issue of Rolling Stone (remember the one with Bob Dylan on the cover from the last blog? I am loving all this continuity in everything now) because that is something that doesn't look conspicuous at all. I mean, why read Rolling Stone in the comfort of your own home when you can read it on a bridge on the outside of town and be surrounded by blistering heat and traffic? Yeah, I was sure a cop would believe that reasoning.

Fortunately, my first ride of the day came before the flashing lights and sirens did. He was going to a graduation party in Tyler and the route he was taking would get me about an hour and a half closer to Dallas, so I rode with him. This is so terrible, I can't remember his name, but he had a dog in the backseat of his truck named Avery. I suppose the dog must've had more of a personality worth remembering the name associated with it.

Not really, he was a decent man, I suppose. He challenged and defied his appointed stereotype and I really loved that. He had a Southern accent and loved country music and was generally a country boy all around; and yet mentioned how he hated Fox News and how he studies different religions to keep an open mind about everything. Also, he turned me on to a newfound country singer that I actually like a little; Eric Church. He reminds me of the old country singers, singing about something that most people that listen can relate to and he has a certain Southern charm that just bleeds out through his music.

He dropped me off in Buffalo, and so I got near an on-ramp and started again, even more worried now about the time now. I tried to put it all out of my mind, and just so I didn't get hassled (even though I was out of Brazos County and didn't need to worry about the warrant), I still tried to keep an activity going. I started grooving to my trusty old iPod, and let the time pass as it happened. Eventually, I started singing a little which wouldn't have been a problem if I wasn't listening to "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" when I started.

You have no idea what kind of looks you get when you sing 'Give it to me baby, uh-huh, uh-huh' in a faux seductive female voice, certainly not looks of "I'm gonna' give that feller there a ride." so I decided to hold off on the singing for that particular moment.

At first, I thought the on-ramp didn't make much sense for hitchhiking; much less traffic and more likely than not, the people are only driving a shorter distance. After my first day back on the road, I've become the on-ramp's bitch though. Sure, there is less traffic, but that works out to your advantage considering that drivers know that there isn't much traffic either which gives them more reason to pick you up. Nevermind the fact that on most of the on-ramps I was hitchhiking on that first day, people had to slow down to nearly a crawl to get on so I had time to make eye contact with them, which almost always helps.

But after some amount of time, I was picked up by a shorter man in a silver glimmering cowboy hat that drove me to the next town about twenty miles ahead, called Fairfield. There isn't much to say about this ride really, we didn't talk much as he didn't speak much English but he was still a very outgoing man. Also, if there is ever a religion started for his silver glimmering cowboy hat (which I have named Russell; the silver glimmering cowboy hat, that is), somebody please let me know so I can give all glory to it.

Upon entering Fairfield, I saw a stand selling homegrown peaches and thought about that ideal of the lone weary hitchhiker, tired and starved after a day of travel, eating a homegrown peach on the side of the road that he bought from a stand in a small town. I thought that sounded great, so I worked on getting myself tired, starved, and weary while I walked over to buy one.

Only to find out they only sold them in containers of varying capacity, all of which would be too large for me to carry around. She couldn't make an exception, but she offered her smallest container of peaches to me again. That wasn't enough to fix her ruining my dream though; now I was just a hitchhiker that wasn't too weary or tired and maybe a little starved that attempted to buy a homegrown peach but got shut down by the woman running the peach stand.

Well, I headed out to the on-ramp and it wasn't five minutes before a white sport utility vehicle pulled up and offered me a ride to Corsicana, which was about an hour away from Dallas. At this point, I was beginning to wonder if I was even going to make the party or just arrive on his doorstep in the early hours of the morning, but obviously I took the ride. You just have to appreciate a ride that is filled with interesting firsts. The first time a newer sport utility vehicle picked me up (probably the newest car I had ever rode in, actually), the first time you rode with somebody who was drinking while driving (because it isn't enough just to drink then drive, you really have to go the distance sometimes), and the first ride to do a third thing. Sorry, that is about all I have on him. He did offer me a meal if I wanted it, and I wouldn't have turned him down but I was concerned about time again.

Corsicana. Ah, Corsicana. I was in there for about another five minutes before my next ride came, and didn't really notice anything too interesting in the five minutes I was there, so we can move on.

Now, there was a worse dilemma coming up. All of my rides at that point had just been taking me one or two towns up the road for the most part; which wasn't a problem up until then but it seems that a town coming up had a prison there and for both it and the next town close to it, there were signs warning people to not pick up hitchhikers in the area because they may be escaped convicts. If I didn't get a straight shot into Dallas with my next ride, I would most likely end up stuck in one of those towns.

Well, count it all joy, my brethren. Not only did it take about five minutes again to get a ride and not only were they outgoing and friendly people and not only did they smoke me out in their car and not only did they invite me back to their place if I didn't already have a party to go to and not only did they drive straight into Dallas and not only did they drive to Good Records which is a great locally owned record store, but they also drove me to where Alex could meet up with me so I didn't have to walk across town to reach him; all of which got me in Dallas in time for the party.

Such a good day to start back on the roads.

Regards from the Kodiak.