Italy

It was August of 1990.  My girlfriend Lona and I had just spent close to 4 months backpacking around the Greek Isles.  Our money was starting to run out and the acid already had run out, so it was time to cash in our one-month Eurail passes and head to our final destination of Dublin, Ireland, with the goal of seeing as much stuff as we could in between.  We would end up visiting 10 different countries on this 6-month trip and I suppose I will get to writing about all of them eventually, but I will just do one or two at a time and not necessarily in order.  So much happened in Greece that plenty of stories will end up coming out of those 4 months, but this entry will be focused on the week we spent in Italy.

It was time to leave Greece and we were a little worried.  We had become extremely comfortable there.  We had made a lot of friends from Greece and other travelers from around the world, we had learned enough of the difficult language to get by even in towns that spoke no English, and it was very difficult leaving this place that we had come to love.  But it was time, so we cashed in our Eurail passes (which also covers boats) and literally fought our way on to a large ship from the Greek port city of Patras over to Italy's port city of Brindisi.  It was an overnight trip and we got there the next day scared shitless.  It was the same way we had felt when our plane from Chicago landed in Athens, Greece back in April.  Fear of the unknown with a new country and a different language and strange money.  But at least when we had landed in Greece it was with our best friend, roommate, and travel companion Claudia Tribbiani who had been to Greece before.  She had long since flown back to the States however and we were on our own, winging it through Europe with nothing but our backpacks and not even a travel guidebook.

There was not much to do in Brindisi so we grabbed some pizza at a local shop and headed to the train station intent on getting to Rome as soon as possible.  When we got there we found a youth hostel and checked in and took a deep breath.  We had done it!  We had left the safety of Greece and we were in Italy.  Time to explore.  Rome is such an incredible dichotomy of modern city intermixed with ruins everywhere.  It is a weird thing to see cars and taxis on a busy street whizzing by the ancient Roman Colosseum.  We toured the Colosseum and were amazed at the stuff that used to happen here all in the name of entertainment.  You think football is a violent game...try dueling it out with a pack of lions.  The Romans imported exotic animals from all over Africa, staged great land battles, lavish sea battles by filling the floor of the Coliseum with water and floating war ships, and had men fight each other to the death.  It was incredible to stand in the middle of it and picture yourself there 2,000 years ago with a massive crowd of patrons cheering your near-certain death.  It was very creepy.

Another beautiful but creepy place we visited was the Vatican.  Incredible untold wealth greet you as you wander around in amazement.  Beautiful paintings, frescoes, stained glass, jewels, crowns...and so much history.  It seemed somewhat hypocritical to me however, the centerpiece of a religion that was supposed to be about peace and love housing enough wealth within those walls to feed a starving nation many times over.  But I love history, good and bad, and it was an amazing place to visit.  We walked out of there that night feeling like we had just come from another world, and that point was driven home when we were confronted by a heroin addict on the street outside.  He was a nice guy and he just wanted a cigarette.  It was sad to listen to his story in broken English.  We went to the nearest bar and had a beer with him and then he wandered off.

After a couple of days of touring many more museums, churches, and big beautiful piazzas (sort of like town squares) throughout modern and ancient Rome it was time to move on to Florence.  This is an amazing city full of gigantic churches and cathedrals that defy the imagination of how they were built.  I can build a bird house, a tree fort, and with the help of my dad a front porch...but Florence's Cathedral, the Duomo is a miracle.  It took two centuries to be deemed finished and it is incredibly beautiful.  It dominates the city's skyline, and you can see panoramic views of Florence when you climb up the 436 steps to the top of the dome.  Another icon we had to see was the Statue of David located in the Accademia Gallery...it was cool to see in person but after a couple of minutes it doesn't seem so great.  The thing I remember most about Florence was losing Lona.

Of course this was before cell phones so in the past 4 months we had always looked for landmarks to meet each other at in case we got separated.  Or the hotel or youth hostel we were staying at...if we got lost, just meet back at the hotel.  Lona has an incredibly bad sense of direction so that is why I was always so adamant about having a plan in case one of us got lost.  But we were so excited when we got to Florence that we just checked into the hotel, threw our bags on the bed and headed out without talking about meeting places.  The first thing we did that first night in Florence was buy a huge bottle of red wine, a loaf of bread, and sat ourselves down in a piazza watching a street band play music.  We laughed and talked and ate and drank and marveled at this beautiful city.  After a couple of hours the bottle was empty and we were hammered.  Lona stood up and announced that she was going to get another bottle at the shop at the far end of the piazza.  Are you sure I said?  I'll get it.  But no, she insisted and said she would be right back.

Off she went with enough Italian Lira for a bottle of wine and I sat there listening to the band, looking around and marveling at the fact that I was in freaking Italy...this was so much better than working.  I waited.  And I waited.  After about 20 minutes I stood up and looked around.  She was nowhere to be seen.  I sat back down and waited another 5 minutes.  This was getting ridiculous.  I jumped back up and decided I had better go to the shop and see what is taking her so long.  I hated to leave in case she came back another way and I wasn't where she had left me.  But what other way?  The shop was just around the corner on the far end of the large square we were in.  I ran over to the shop and she was not there.  I looked around, getting more and more worried by the minute.  Then I ran back to where we had been sitting, expecting her to be sitting there with the wine wondering where I was.  But no...she wasn't there either.  What the f*ck?  What do I do??

I waited another 15 minutes and decided to head to the hotel.  I knew she didn't know where it was though...we had only been there for about 5 minutes...just long enough to check in and head out to explore the city.  But I was hoping maybe she remembered the name, or the address or at least the street it was on so she could ask someone for help finding it.  So I ran there, but no...she was not anywhere to be seen.  I waited there for a half hour and then headed back to the piazza where the band had been.  They were gone by now and there was no sign of Lona.  I was really starting to freak out now.  No way of contacting her, thousands of miles from home in a foreign country with a language we didn't know.  Should I call her parents in the states?  Give them the address of our hotel and if she calls them they can give it to her?  No...a call like that from me would totally freak them out.  That will be my last resort.  I started running up and down the streets...block by block...fanning out from the piazza.  I pictured her alone, drunk, scared, crying...my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to fall out of my chest as I ran frantically up and down the streets of Florence with people staring at me as I was calling out her name.

Suddenly I ran by 2 girls and a guy sitting at the bottom of a doorstep on a dark street.  I got about 20 feet past and stopped.  Wait a minute...was that?  No way...it couldn't have been.  Lona??  I ran back and sure enough...there she was sitting on the steps with an Italian couple, clutching a bottle of wine and laughing her ass off.  Seriously?  She wasn't alone.  She wasn't scared.  She wasn't crying.  She was having a great time partying with this couple who were also drunk and laughing.  From what I could gather they found her lost and were trying to get her to go back and stay at their place for the night.  Are you f*cking kidding me?  Like if I hadn't found her I was just going to go back to the hotel and go to sleep?!  I was relieved to see that she was alive and well, but that relief quickly turned to anger and I flipped out.  I grabbed Lona by the shoulder and started yelling in her face, telling her what my last 3 hours had been like combing the entire city for her while she was hanging out and partying without a care in the world.  She was too far gone though...just wobbly and continuing to laugh, not paying any attention to me which just made me angrier.  The dude stepped in and told me to back off, but I told HIM to back off and I gave him a look like that made him realize I was going to beat the sh*t out of him if he came one step closer to me.  I thanked them for taking care of her and then I walked her back to the hotel.

From then on I made Lona memorize and repeat back to me the name and address of every hotel and hostel that we stayed at for the rest of our time in Europe...I was never going to go through that again.  We stayed in Florence for a couple of days and then took a train up to Venice.  Our third and final stop in Italy before heading to Switzerland.  We still had no guidebooks and were basically winging it, but of course we had to stop in Venice and see this wondrous romantic city with all of its canals and gondolas and history.  We were so excited as we looked out the train window at the city growing larger and larger while we crossed the bridge over the Mediterranean to this incredible water-city.  The hotel was a little more expensive then we wanted to pay, but what the hell.  We got a nice little room overlooking a quaint canal right in the heart of the city.

We spent a couple of days there walking around, wondering at the marvel of this seemingly floating Oz, going to the large piazza on the waterfront and watching the waves lapping at the concrete walkways that are sometimes under water, sometimes not.  We took a lot of pictures on the little bridges over the canals with locals looking on in feigned amusement.  We went to a Van Gogh exhibit/sale at one of the museums and stupidly did not buy anything.  They had relatively cheap plates that he had painted, but I did not want to spend the money and weigh my backpack down with anything more than I had to.  (Little did I know that I would soon be filling my pack with concrete once we got to the Berlin Wall that had recently started to come down).  And in the end we did not spend the $80 or so dollars it cost to go on a gondola ride.  I know...how can you go to Venice and not take a gondola ride...but we decided it was a rip off, plus upon closer inspection the canals were not exactly pristine.  You could see a lot of garbage and what even looked like floating sewage drifting along past the buildings.  Gross.

Overall it was still an amazing city and we had a lot of fun there, but all too soon it was time to cash in our Italian Lira for Swiss Francs as we needed to forge on to our next country.  We realized that it was most economical to take overnight train rides from city to city, sleeping on the train and saving a night's hotel fare.  So we decided to take an overnight from Venice to Zurich, Switzerland.  I will write about Zurich and Lucerne and our scary night in 'Needle Park' in a future blog entry...

Talkin' Baseball

It's that time of the year again…October means post-season baseball.  Although football has always been by far my favorite sport, ever since I moved to Wisconsin in 1977 at the age of 11 I have had an on-again off-again love affair with baseball.  Prior to that move while living in upstate New York I was completely oblivious to baseball...I was all about football.  But once I found myself living in a suburb of Milwaukee I became a huge Brewers fan.  I loved them...the Brew Crew...Bambi's bombers, Stormin' Gorman.  I can still rattle off all of the main players from that late 70's team who got better and better each year until they eventually made it to the World Series in 1982.  Cecil Cooper, Don Money, Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner, Robin Yount, Sal Bando, Larry Hisle, Gorman Thomas, Sixto Lezcano, Charlie Moore... 

Baseball was everything back then.  I would go to 10-15 games a year (tailgating at County Stadium was an art form and a perfected ritual) and catch all of the rest of the games on TV or radio while poring over the players’ stats in the newspaper.  We would religiously collect and trade baseball cards, and I still have probably a dozen large moving boxes full of those cards.  I remember dragging my dad's lawnmower up the street to the big vacant lot by Gary Paulson's house and mowing out a baseball field.  It took all day in the tall, thick, weedy grass and the poor mower took a terrible beating but we got ourselves a field and we played all day, every day.  We would copy the swings and pitching motions of our favorite players and we played every game like it was game 7 of the World Series.

I remember being at the dramatic game 5 on 10/10/82 when the Brewers came from behind to beat the California Angels in the best of five AL Championship Series,  sending them to their first (and last) World Series.  Along with thousands of other fans I stormed onto the field and clapped the backs of our players, and then I ran the bases and slid into home plate.  Before being ushered off the field I filled my jean pockets with clumps of grass and infield dirt as a souvenir.  When I got home I carefully emptied the contents of my pockets into a ziplock baggie, and I am sure that I still have that baggie somewhere in one of the countless number of boxes in my basement.  The World Series was incredibly exciting that year but I was crushed when they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in 7 games.  I kind of got out of baseball after that as the next 5 years my interests shifted sharply to girls, music, and partying.

Then in 1987 I found myself working for Sims Security in Minneapolis, MN and I worked about 20 Minnesota Twins games that year.  I was still and will always be a Brewers fan, but by then I had became a converted diehard Twins fan as well.  They had a great season and I worked games 2, 6 & 7 of the 1987 World Series with our Twins against the damn Cardinals at the H.H.H. Metrodome in Minneapolis.  I could not believe I was getting paid to go to the World Series! 

I even got a Kent Hrbek home run ball that he hit during the pre-game batting practice of game 2.  All of us ushers were sitting in the lower deck seats behind 1st base getting our pre-game instructions and assignments from our supervisor when Kent clocked one into the upper-deck TV platform that hangs over the field in right-field.  I did not see it bounce out so it must still be in there!  There was nobody up there and I watched for a minute to see if anyone was going for it.  Nope...so I quietly slipped out of my seat, up the stairs and into the hallway.  I ran to the next set of stairs, up and up until I finally got to the upper hallway.  I turned to my right and I see another dude waaaay down at the opposite end of the hallway heading my way.  We both stopped and stared, sizing each other up for a second...and then we simultaneously broke into a dead sprint for the section between us where the ball was.  I got there just before him, turned the corner, jumped over the railing onto the platform and grabbed the ball!  Luckily nobody noticed and I didn't get fired.

Not only did I not get fired, but for game 2 they assigned me to the wives' section so I was right behind home plate and on TV throughout the game. It was part of a deal that I made with my supervisor, whereby I agreed to work the Warren Zevon concert just down the street during game 1 if he would give me a good assignment for game 2.  I totally won out on the deal.  The concert was great, with Warren giving game updates during the show, and I got the sweet assignment for game 2.  I got to meet Kirby Pucket's sister (she was even bigger than he was) and a few other wives and a bunch of sportscasters from around the country.  I rapped with an AP writer from New York up in the sportscaster booth behind home plate and we both had to duck as a ball somehow made it over the screen and into the booth.  Kirby's sister shared her popcorn with me and she was very nice.  It was a great night and the Twins won, taking a 2-0 lead in the Series.

The thing that sticks out most in my mind about those games was the incredible volume of noise in the Metrodome, especially during games 6 and 7.  The 'Noise' took on a life of its own and was like a living breathing entity that consumed everything and every one.  I have never experienced anything like that before or since.  I think I remember reading somewhere that it was clocked at over 120 decibels, which was louder than the sound of an airline jet taking off.  You could literally scream at the top of your lungs to the person right next to you, and if they couldn't read lips then there was no hope of them understanding you.  At the exhilarating moment when the Twins finally won it at the end of game 7, I was standing in a stairwell in the upper deck by the foul pole in left field.  A cop that was standing next to me grabbed me, picked me up, and started spinning and tossing me around in the air with glee.  Given my history with cops it was a little unnerving, but it made a 21 year old kid realize that they are just people too.

Afterwards the entire city went crazy, with people spilling out into the streets and honking horns and screaming and yelling and partying like it was the greatest thing that had ever happened in the history of the world.  It was complete joyous chaos with everybody on the same page...hugging, kissing, high-fiving and happy with each other.  Everything was beautiful.  I got on my little Suzuki 185 Enduro motorcycle and slowly made my way from the stadium through the sea of people on the city streets.  It was total madness.  I finally made it to the freeway, across the 35W bridge, and then back to my apartment on 4th street on the other side of the Mississippi River just a mile or two from downtown.  Me and my friends hung out on the front porch drinking beers into the wee hours of the morning while listening to the celebratory noise which we could easily hear from there.

Me and baseball have had our ups and downs over the years...from my first game in Milwaukee with my 5th grade class and getting an autograph from some Chicago White Sox pitcher in the bullpen, to going to games with my dad and getting autographs from the players by the dugout before games, to going to the ballpark with friends in high school and choosing to stay in the parking lot with the keg and the brats and listening to Bob Uecker call the game on the radio instead of actually going in to the game, to eventually the long strike that started in 1994 being the all-time low point.  I was done with baseball for many years after that, but with the Twins getting a new stadium a few years ago my interest has been renewed and I have started going to games again.  Baseball has supplied me with countless fun afternoons attending, watching or listening to games over the last 4 decades.  The Twins have reverted back to being a crappy team and that is a bummer, but there will always be something magical about heading to the ballpark with your friends, getting a hot dog and a beer and settling into your seats to watch the action.  At 1 and 3 years old my kids are still a bit too young bring to games, but I am really looking forward to a couple of years from now when I can turn on the next generation to the joys of baseball.

The Law Of Diminishing Returns

Apparently this is 'National Customer Service Week', so our company sprung for a free all-you-can-eat lunch for our department on Wednesday.  Soup, salad, breadsticks...sounds harmless right?  Well the words 'free' combined with 'all-you-can-eat' always spells trouble for me.  I am not a fat man, but in the right circumstances I can be a very hungry man.  I purposely skipped breakfast that morning to save room for lunch.  I started out with a big bowl of chili, a fat breadstick, a large chocolate chunk cookie and a grape soda.  For good measure I cut up a jalapeno pepper fresh from my boss's garden and threw that in the chili with a bunch of crackers.  I was full after all that and sweating from the chili, but then they announced that the salad and more breadsticks were on their way from the cafeteria. 

I waited 10 minutes to see if I would be less full so I could eat more, but it didn't work.  I tried peeing.  Still full.  But it's free and it's right there for the taking.  F*ck it, I'm getting more.  I grabbed a plate of Caesar salad, a bowl of wild-rice chicken soup, more crackers, 2 breadsticks and headed back to my desk.  So good.  In fact the soup was even better than the chili.  I dug in, but slower now as my expanding stomach started complaining in ernest.  I finished all that and sure enough...about 15 minutes later they announced more fresh hot buttery breadsticks were on their way.  No way...I couldn't possibly eat another bite.  Back to work.  I stared at my computer and tried to forget about all that delicious food in the room just down the hall from desk.  I was in pain but I kept thinking about those breadsticks.  I had to go to the mailroom so I told myself that I would walk past the food-room on the way and look in and just see if they were any breadsticks left.  Probably not, but I really should just check to make sure.

Yep.  There was about a dozen left.  I ducked in, grabbed one and was going to leave but I noticed there was still a lot of the wild-rice soup left.  I wondered what they do with the leftover soup.  They don't just throw it away do they?  God I hope not.  Just in case I better have another bowl as it would be a shame for any of it to go to waste.  I grabbed a handful of crackers for the soup and slowly dragged my aching belly back to my desk and set about downing this latest round.  It took awhile, but I managed to do it while cranking an Ozzy Osbourne cd in my headphones to drown out my stomach pain. 

I looked at the clock.  12:30 pm.  I had been eating since 11:00 am.  Why is it so hot in here?  I am sweating profusely.  I have to pee for real this time. Coming back from the bathroom I see the food guy walking towards me carrying another big bowl of breadsticks!  They are so good, but I have already told myself that I will never eat again as I have stuffed in enough food to last my body for the rest of it's life.  I let him pass by but I can smell the breadsticks.  Wait!  Hang on a sec!  He stops, turns around and I grabbed one more.  Oh my god what is wrong with me?  It is so soft and warm and coated with the perfect amount of salty garlic butter, but it is certainly not as good as the first couple I had eaten and in fact I felt a bit like puking.  As I quickly finished it off just to get it out of my sight I started thinking about the law of diminishing returns. 

The Law of Diminishing Returns states that continually adding one more factor of something while holding all other factors constant, will at some point yield lower returns.  While it is an economic term that pertains to business models, it also holds true for almost anything in life.  Food (the 5th breadstick is not nearly as good as the 1st one), drugs (I cannot possibly get any higher, so maybe I should quit hitting the joint every time it comes around), alcohol (we have all had one too many drinks)...and maybe even sex?  No, that’s silly. 

The one other thing that I can think of where this law does not apply was going to Grateful Dead concerts.  As with most man-made laws that were ignored, many other laws did not apply with the Dead either, including the laws of time, space, gravity, reality...and yes the law of diminishing returns.  In the 10 years before Jerry Garcia died in 1995 I could not see enough Grateful Dead shows and it never got old.  I always looked forward to the next show and managed to see them exactly 100 times.  The list below is every Dead show I have been to, and each night has a story attached to it that could be a blog entry...like catching on fire in Chicago in my 1/27/12 blog entry or crossing into Canada in the 5/11/12 entry for example.  Although the number of shows I went to per year taper off towards the end, that was not for lack of interest or diminished returns but because I had cut my hair and got a real job in 1992.  Sadly, this greatly inhibited my ability to head out of town whenever the Dead were within 1,000 miles of me.  Here is the list, and watch for future Grateful Dead stories...

The Grateful Dead (100 shows) & related * (7 shows)

1985 (2 shows)

1) 6/21/85  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

2) 6/22/85  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

1986 (5 shows)

3) 6/26/86  H.H.H. Metrodome - Minneapolis, MN

4) 6/28/86  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

5) 6/29/86  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

6) 12/30/86  H.J.K. Auditorium - Oakland, CA

7) 12/31/86  H.J.K. Auditorium - Oakland, CA

1987 (6 shows)

8) 6/26/87  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

9) 6/27/87  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

10) 6/28/87  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

11) 7/8/87  Roanoke Civic Center - Roanoke, VA

12) 7/10/87  J.F.K. Stadium - Philadelphia, PA

13) 7/12/87  Giants Stadium - E. Rutherford, NJ

1988 (18 shows)

14) 3/24/88  The Omni - Atlanta, GA

15) 3/26/88  Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA

16) 3/27/88  Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA

17) 3/28/88  Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA

18) 4/13/88  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

19) 4/14/88  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

20) 4/15/88  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

21) 6/17/88  Met Center - Bloomington, MN

22) 6/19/88  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

23) 6/20/88  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

24) 6/22/88  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

25) 6/23/88  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

26) 6/25/88  Buckeye Lake Music Center - Hebron, OH

27) 6/28/88  Saratoga Performing Arts Center - Saratoga, NY

28) 6/30/88  Silver Stadium - Rochester, NY

29) 12/28/88  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

30) 12/29/88  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

31) 12/31/88  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

1989 (16 shows)

* 3/22/89 (Jerry Garcia/Bob Weir/Country Joe)  Gift Center Pavilion - San Francisco, CA

32) 4/8/89  Riverfront Arena - Cincinnati, OH

33) 4/9/89  Freedom Hall - Louisville, KY

34) 4/11/89  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

35) 4/12/89  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

36) 4/13/89  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

37) 4/15/89  Mecca Arena - Milwaukee, WI

38) 4/16/89  Mecca Arena - Milwaukee, WI

39) 4/17/89  Met Center - Bloomington, MN

40) 5/27/89  Oakland Stadium - Oakland, CA

41) 7/17/89  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

42) 7/18/89  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

43) 7/19/89  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

* 9/15/89 (Jerry Garcia Band w/Weir-Wasserman opening)  Alpine Valley - E. Troy, WI

* 9/16/89 (Jerry Garcia Band w/Weir-Wasserman opening)  Poplar Creek Music Theater - Hoffman Estates, IL

44) 12/27/89  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

45) 12/28/89  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

46) 12/30/89  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

47) 12/31/89  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

1990 (6 shows)

48) 2/25/90  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

49) 2/26/90  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

50) 2/27/90  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

* 3/1/90 (Jerry Garcia Band)  The Warfield - San Francisco, CA

51) 12/27/90  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

52) 12/28/90  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

53) 12/30/90  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

1991 (16 shows)

54) 3/17/91  Capital Centre - Landover, MD

55) 3/18/91  Capital Centre - Landover, MD

56) 3/20/91  Capital Centre - Landover, MD

57) 3/21/91  Capital Centre - Landover, MD

58) 4/28/91  UNLV Silver Bowl - Las Vegas, NV

59) 6/6/91  Deer Creek Music Center - Noblesville, IN

60) 6/7/91  Deer Creek Music Center - Noblesville, IN

61) 6/9/91  Buckeye Lake Music Center - Hebron, OH

62) 6/19/91  Pine Knob Music Theatre - Clarkston, MI

62) 6/20/91  Pine Knob Music Theatre - Clarkston, MI

63) 6/24/91  Sandstone Amphitheatre - Bonner Springs, KS

64) 6/25/91  Sandstone Amphitheatre - Bonner Springs, KS

* 11/22/91 (Jerry Garcia Band)  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

* 11/23/91 (Jerry Garcia Band)  Bradley Center - Milwaukee, WI

65) 12/27/91  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

66) 12/28/91  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

67) 12/30/91  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

68) 12/31/91  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

1992 (16 shows)

69) 2/23/92  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

70) 2/24/92  Oakland Coliseum - Oakland, CA

71) 3/20/92  Copps Coliseum - Hamilton, Ontario

72) 3/21/92  Copps Coliseum - Hamilton, Ontario

73) 3/23/92  The Palace - Auburn Hills, MI

74) 3/24/92  The Palace - Auburn Hills, MI

75) 6/8/92  Richfield Coliseum - Richfield, OH

76) 6/9/92  Richfield Coliseum - Richfield, OH

77) 6/14/92  Giants Stadium - E. Rutherford, NJ

78) 6/15/92  Giants Stadium - E. Rutherford, NJ

79) 6/17/92  Charlotte Coliseum - Charlotte, NC

80) 6/18/92  Charlotte Coliseum - Charlotte, NC

81) 6/25/92  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

82) 6/28/92  Deer Creek Music Center - Noblesville, IN

83) 6/29/92  Deer Creek Music Center - Noblesville, IN

84) 7/1/92  Buckeye Lake Music Center - Hebron, OH

* 7/15/92 (Bob Weir/Wasserman)  Marcus Amphitheater - Milwaukee, WI

1993 (9 shows)

85) 3/9/93  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

86) 3/10/93  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

87) 3/11/93  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

88) 6/18/93  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

89) 6/19/93  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

91) 6/21/93  Deer Creek Music Center - Noblesville, IN

92) 6/22/93  Deer Creek Music Center - Noblesville, IN

93) 9/17/93  Madison Square Garden - New York, NY

94) 9/18/93  Madison Square Garden - New York, NY

1994 (4 shows)

95) 3/17/94  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

96) 3/18/94  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

97) 7/23/94  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

98) 7/24/94  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

1995 (2 shows)

99) 7/8/95  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

100) 7/9/95  Soldier Field - Chicago, IL

Growin' Up In The 70's

I received an email with the picture above recently and it got me thinking about the 1970’s.  That was my time...aged 4-14.  It was a great era to grow up in and this picture perfectly captures that time.  We had long hair, parted in the middle, and carefully feathered back with large blue or black 'Goody' combs.  We wore cut-off tee-shirts, short jean-shorts, and yes we jumped everything.  We did a lot of stupid crazy stuff, but jumping stuff was huge because Evel Knievel was doing his thing back then jumping over fountains, cars, buses, and of course his rocket-cycle attempt over the Snake River Canyon in 1974.

I still remember where I was on that weird day...in my friend Greg Felson’s living-room watching on TV with his disgusted dad when Evel’s jump failed miserably.  But whenever Evel would do one of his jumps on ABC’s 'Wide World Of Sports' it was all we could talk about at school.  We also had Fonzi from 'Happy Days' who cashed in on the Evel craze in that 2-part episode in 1975 when he jumped over 14 trashcans on his motorcycle.  All of us kids were glued to the TV for those Happy Day’s episodes.  I don't know if the whole jumping thing was a nation-wide craze or not but it was huge where I lived.  Well, KISS, jumping bikes...and Wacky-Packages.  Remember those?  Huge.

My younger friend Jimmy used to jump his Big-Wheel like in the picture above, but all of us bigger kids jumped our pedal dirt-bikes.  We would put jumps anywhere and everywhere.  Just grab a shovel and make a dirt jump in the field, or a log and a piece of scrap wood and we were in business jumping on the road.  Or we would put the jump in the ditch and get a good fast start on the road before gliding down into the ditch jump.

And of course we were jumping over things...boxes, rocks, logs, garbage cans or anything we could get our hands on.  One time my mom came down from the house to the road to check on my little brother Nate only to find him obediently laying in the ditch with us taking turns jumping our bikes over him.  She made us stop that.  We would jump in the winter too.  We had a corn field across the street from my long, steep driveway so we would put a ramp on the road, tear down the driveway as fast as we could on our bikes, hit the jump and fly 25-30 feet in the air landing in the deep snow.  We didn't care if we stuck the landing because it was just as much fun to land and flip over the handlebars into the soft snow.

We were into doing some stupid sh*t, and yes we would get hurt.  I remember one trick we would do was to see how many people we could get onto one bike...like a guy on the handlebars, a guy standing up peddling, another two guys on the seat and maybe a guy standing on the back wheel peg.  Then we would go as fast as we could down a large hill by my house.  Lots of scraped and bloody knees over the years.  Jimmy's older brother Scott got a dislocated shoulder from a jump, and I still have a scar on my right knee from skeeching.

This cool trick we called 'skeeching' would take place in the winter when there was freshly fallen snow on the road.  We would get off the school bus one stop early, run around to the back of the bus and then hold on to the bumper.  The bus would then pull you down the road while you held on for dear life, gliding on your boots with snow spraying up into your face.  It was exhilarating and you felt cool with the kids on the back of the bus cheering you on, but one time I hit an unseen pot-hole and went head over heels rolling down the road at 30 mph.  My jeans were ripped to shreds and my knee was a bloody mess.  I had to tell my mom that I slipped and fell on some ice.

That was painful, but nothing other than our shattered nerves got hurt the time we were at the top of a large grain tower.  We used to climb up the ladder on the outside of this tall concrete container and sit on the sheet-metal dome on top and check out the view.  We could see for miles around and it was a good place to hang out and feel cool.  One afternoon me and Aaron Vermillion were sitting up there and the metal top collapsed from our weight!  That was not cool.  It did not collapse all the way, but the top turned from a dome into a bowl and the sudden 6-foot drop scared the living crap out of us.

A neat game we would play was 'Rock-Tag'.  Before my dad had it paved, our driveway was made up of golf-ball sized rocks.  Towards the end of summer when the corn was grown over our heads my friends and I would break up into two teams.  One team would stand at the end of my driveway and the other team would disperse into the corn field across the street.  The team in the driveway armed with rocks would yell "Marco!" and each player in the corn field would have to yell "Polo!" while tossing an ear of corn into the air.  That would signal your position so that the 'Driveway' team could then throw rocks into your general vicinity hoping to hit you.  The trick of course if you were in the field was to toss up your corn and then break into a sprint to avoid the rocks.  Your adrenaline would just skyrocket when the rocks were raining down around you.  Fortunately only a few of us ever got hit, but we quit playing after Scott took a shot to the head and was bleeding.

So many fun, stupid things.  One afternoon me, Gary Paulson, Aaron and a couple others were hanging out in the loft of an old abandoned barn down the street.  There was a long thick rope hanging down from the ceiling that we used to swing on into the hay below.  Suddenly Aaron reached out with his lighter and lit the bottom of the rope on fire, to be funny I guess.  Of course the flame started climbing up the rope.  "Holy sh*t!!"  Aaron grabbed a two-by-four and wacked the fiery end of the rope hoping to knock out the flames.  He stopped the rope-fire but in the process sent sparks flying everywhere starting at least a half dozen smaller fires in the hay.  We were all running around like crazy stomping out the fires.  A couple of them got fairly big and I remember thinking that the whole place was going to go up and it was going be one huge fire and oh-my-god we were going to get into so much trouble...but eventually we managed to get all the fires out and then we got the hell out of there.

I guess the stupid stuff we did as kids in the 70’s paved the way for the even stupider stuff we did as teenagers in the 80’s (as outlined a few weeks ago in my blog entry ‘Down By The River’).  The 70's were a fun time to grow up in though.  Bike helmets had not been invented yet, we collected baseball cards religiously and never put them in the spokes of our tires, we listened to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 every week, other than PBS we only had 3 channels on TV, and we did not have video games until ‘Pong’ came along in the late 70’s...but we sure had a lot of fun.  Thanks Mom for letting us be stupid kids.

STD

It was the summer of 1986.  I was home from my 2^nd year of college working a summer job in Waukesha, WI at a butcher shop.  It was a horrible, smelly job cutting and preparing meat.  For the entire summer the faint aroma of blood and meat was always with me, no matter how many showers I took.  I could not for the life of me scrub the blood smell off (out damn spot!).  Consequently, every morning as soon as the sun would come up and shine through the windows at my parent's house two things would happen:  the room I was sleeping in would get very hot...and the houseflies would descend upon me, landing on my face while I was trying to sleep.  There was no air conditioning so I then had to decide between hiding under the covers away from the flies while roasting, or going without covers but feeling the tickle of flies crawling all over my face and arms.  It totally sucked and neither option allowed me to get much sleep that summer anytime after 5:00 a.m.

And while we are mentioning sucky memories about that job, remember Damien the 5-foot Ball Python from my last blog entry?  One Friday afternoon that summer I was taking him to the vet and he got loose in my car.  I did not know if he had escaped the car completely or was under the dashboard or inside the seats or what.  I looked for him all weekend but could not find him.  When I went to work that Monday morning it was hot so I cracked the windows a bit in case Damien was still in there.  When I came outside on break a few hours later I looked in the car…there he was curled up on the front seat, but not moving.  I had cooked him.  I ran him into the meat cooler and tried to cool him down but it was too late…he was dead and I had to bury him the back yard at my girlfriend Lona’s house.  Sorry old friend.  I rebounded though and bought a new python, Damien II.  He lasted a couple of years but then he went on an 8-month fast.  He would not eat and I got scared that he was going to die so I sold him back to the pet store.  Then I bought Damien III, The Final Chapter.  He was with me for several years until I moved to Minneapolis in 1997 and sold him to a friend.  Then a few years later I bought my current Ball Python and her name is Annakiya which means ‘Sweet Face’ in the language from the area of Africa which she hails from.

Anyways, let’s get back to the story.  For several days at work I had been noticing I was getting itchy down below.  Not the normal guy itch were you occasionally have to adjust and itch…but really itchy and getting worse.  I found myself sneaking off into the meat locker to be by myself just so I could itch the hell out of it.  Oh no…what is this?  We had no Internet back then to look this stuff up.  What is wrong with me?  That question was answered for me on day 3 of my mad itching in the form of Lona showing up at the butcher shop crying.  She had just came from her annual ob/gyn appointment and was told that she had chlamydia.  She was 18, I was 20, and I was the only guy she had ever been with, so obviously I gave it to her.  Uh oh.

She told me that a guy can have it for up to a year before the symptoms show up, so we reasoned that I must have got it the summer before when I was with another girl.  So the crying stopped and she told me that I needed to go in and get tested.  Okay, fine…anything to stop this itching I thought.  I had no real idea of what ‘getting tested’ meant.  I just assumed I would go in and the doctor would look at my weiner and say:  “Yep, you’ve got chlamydia, here’s a pill, now get out of here you little scamp.”  Or maybe at worst they would have to take a blood test.

But no, that is not how they do it.  As per usual at a doctor’s office I waited and waited in the big room until they finally called my name.  I was led back to my own private room and told to take my pants off.  Okay, cool, no blood sample…they just want to look at my little friend.  A tad bit embarrassing, but no big deal.  I waited some more until suddenly Beulah Balbricker walked in with a nasty look on her face.  Do you remember Beulah Balbricker from the movie Porky’s?  That is exactly what this woman looked like.  Short, wide, and with a very sour disposition like she would rather be anywhere than here with you.  Well when I saw what she had in her hand my heart skipped a beat, I started to sweat and I shared her feelings of wanting to be anywhere but here.

She was carrying 2 thin sticks about 10 inches long each.  One was silvery metal and one was wood and they each had a cotton tip.  Wait a minute…those aren’t for…she can’t possibly…there is no way…not in my...no...please...no.  “What are you going to do with those?”, I stammered.  She was about 4 ½ feet tall and she looked up at me and growled:  “We need to take two samples.”  Dear god in heaven no.  Not my tallywacker.

I tried to reason with her.  I explained that my girlfriend has chlamydia...I am the only guy she has ever been with...therefore I obviously have it too so there is no need to test me for it.  Just give me the f*cking pill.  She shook her head and told me that without a positive test they cannot prescribe me the pill.  There did not seem to be any way out of this and she ordered me to drop my boxers.  Then she reached for my weiner but I was as un-turned on as I have ever been in my entire life.  Like a scared turtle my johnson was hiding from Beulah and he did not want any part of her or her sadistic sticks of death.

Noticing my incredibly flaccid state, she then began tugging on him...trying to "firm him up a bit" is how she put it.  She was the perfect height for the job and she took it seriously.  She was tugging on my wiener with one hand and trying to jab the metal stick up me with the other hand.  It hurt and I was starting to freak out.  She got maybe a half inch in and I gasped:  "How far do you have to go?!"  She paused, held up her finger to show me for reference and said grimly:  “Two knuckles deep.”  Then she went back to work.

That was it.  I lost it.  My vision started to get spotty and grey and I began to faint.  I had been standing in front of her but when my legs gave out I fell back into an examining table.  As I began to slide down to the floor Beulah reached over and bear-hugged me to hold me up.  As my vision slowly came back I realized that my descent into hell was complete.  I was standing in a doctor's office naked from the waist down locked in an embrace with a short, fat, ornery woman who was determined to do great personal harm to my penis.

She had me sit on the table and when she decided that I was not going to fall over she let me go.  I told her that this was not going to happen...there was no way she was going to stick anything up in me anymore...and that I would rather live the rest of my life with the itch than go through any more of that.  She looked at me long and hard and must have decided it wasn't worth it to try anymore, so she said:  “Fine.” and walked out.  I don't know if she fudged the charts or what, but after getting dressed and walking back to the main room the lady at the front desk handed me a prescription.  I believe it was for just one pill.  I took it and the chlamydia was gone.  Easy come, easy go.

The reason I remembered this story is because the other morning I was driving to work listening to the "Half-Assed Morning Show" on 93X with Weasel, Josh & Nick.  They were asking for people to call in with painful stories of gonorrhea or syphilis.  I didn't have either of those, but I thought my chlamydia story might be a good one so I called in.  Sure enough, I was told to hang on and about 5 minutes later I was on the air!  The whole chlamydia thing was not a good experience, but it was fun being on the radio.  We talked for 5 or 6 minutes and had some laughs.  Nick commented that I had been sexually abused by Beulah with all that weiner-tugging, but that it was kind of cool and it maybe would have turned him on.  He could not have been more wrong.

The funny thing was that my wife Nadia and I work together and usually drive together, but she was going to have to stay late that day so we took separate cars.  She was in her car listening to 93X, but I guess my voice sounded different on the radio because she did not even realize it was me.  She said she was listening to the story and feeling sorry for whoever ended up with that guy, and then when she got to work I asked her if she had heard me on the radio.  She stopped, stared at me for a second, and then the light bulb went on.  She rolled her eyes, sighed and said:  “Oh man…of course that was you.”