Air Mishap #4

As you may know from my previous ‘mishaps’, I have my private pilots license.  So one night while still in training in the early 1990’s, me and my flight instructor Blaine went out to practice night flying.  Among many other requirements, you have to have a certain amount of hours of night flight before you can get your license.  Well it was a nice clear evening and we flew out of my hometown of Madison, WI down to the airport in Rockford, IL to do some touch-and-goes and other air-work in the area.

After a couple hours it was time to head back to Madison.  The airport there is a Class C airport, meaning it is relatively large, it has a tower, and you have to get permission to enter the airspace.  Once you tell them your intentions (to land in our case) the tower directs you on where to go, how fast, etc.  Well like at any large airport there are always several planes wanting to land at any given time, so it is the tower’s job to keep the planes away from each other and in line to land with enough separation so there are no mishaps and they can all get down in a safe, orderly fashion. 

So we get our instructions to enter the airspace, go on a certain heading, follow a certain plane in the pattern and we will be #2 for landing behind that plane.  We are following the assigned airplane and eventually he lands and then it is our turn and we are on the final to land.  This is probably my 5^th flight ever at most so I am still pretty green and did not know this fairly large airport that well yet.  Also, we are a very small plane in a sea of planes ranging from 2-seaters like ours all the way up to jumbo jets flying in from all over the country.

So we’re drifting over the runway and I am lining it up as best as I can and I cut the power and get her on the ground with an okay landing.  I am proudly rolling down the runway when all of a sudden all hell breaks loose!  I did not slow the plane down fast enough in time to get off the runway and on to the normal taxiway to the right that all the small private planes use, so there I was still on the main runway with a HUGE Northwest airliner right on my ass!  Blaine had assumed I was turning off on that taxiway so when I rolled past it he just said:  “Uh oh.” 

Our entire plane was enshrouded in an impossibly blinding white light that seemed like the bright lights from heaven itself as the jumbo jet that was landing right behind us was on us.  Luckily the pilot realized in time that we were still on the runway and he aborted their landing and pulled up before hitting us.  All the while this was happening the tower was frantically screaming through the radio at us to “Get off the runway!!”.

I looked back and in the middle of all that bright light I saw the wheels of the jet lifting up behind us as the plane swooped up and over us and took off again into the night.  I almost caused a major airline disaster and definitely caused a lot of confused people on the plane to be wondering what the hell was happening.  In addition to the scare, they were going to be late as they had to take off again, go around, re-enter the flight pattern and then land which can take 15 minutes for a large airplane.

Well, we got off on the next taxiway and headed back to our little hanger as it was dawning on me what had just happened.  As me and Homer Simpson are apt to do, I cannot help but believe that it was everybody else’s fault but mine.  The tower never should have left that small of a window for a little plane like ours to land in with that large plane right behind us…there should have been more separation.  And my instructor should have been more aware of my inexperience and should have made sure our plane was braking enough (there are dual foot pedals on each side of the plane as well as dual steering wheels) so that we could have gotten off the runway in time.  How was I to know we had to get off on that taxiway?  Seriously though I was the pilot so of course it was my fault.  But it was a lesson well learned…no jacking around, get off the runway as soon as possible. 

Surgery follow-up note...

Well as of last night it had been 10 days since the nose surgery and things were going well.  The pain was reduced to just that numb feeling you get when you inadvertently try and open a door with your nose or get punched right square in the schnozz.  Both of which suck, but you know it’s going to get better and does not require any medical attention.  So my nose was still swollen and will be for a month, but on the mend, looking nice and straight, and the crusty flow of dried blood and crud was starting to diminish with each daily Q-tip swabbing of peroxide.  My only complaint was the stitches left behind.  When I went in a week after the surgery for the follow-up appointment I was told that they would slowly dissolve over time, and to just ignore them. 

That is much easier said then done.  There is like a mile of stitching up in there and as it decays and comes loose in your nose it tickles and is constantly making me sneeze.  Not to mention the smell.  As the stitching thread that looks like fishing monofilament decays, it is coated with dried blood and slime and it just reeks.  It kind of smells like a very old damp washcloth that has been sitting in the bottom of a mop bucket for a few weeks.  With every inhale I can smell it and it’s hard to ignore.  

So as you can imagine, with both the tickling and the smell there is a huge urge to pick at this stuff and try to ‘help’ it the f*ck out of my nose.  All week little pieces ranging from a millimeter to a centimeter long have been showing themselves within reach, and despite warnings not to from my doctor I have been yanking them out.  Well last night I was going to bed and I felt the damn tickling and looked in the mirror and sure enough there was a thread hanging in there.  So I gave it a little tug and it came loose, but in doing so it pulled another long thread out.  One end was hanging about a centimeter out of my nose, and who knows how far up the other end was.

I gave it a little tug…nothing.  So I closed my eyes and gave a huge tug.  OUCH!!  It didn’t come free, but my eyes stung with tears, blood started pouring out of my nose, and I must have yanked a nerve because it hurt from way in the back of my nose all the way down through the roof of my mouth to my front top teeth.  Goddammit!  First I stuffed a bunch of tissue up there and eventually got the blood to stop.  Then I took a scissors and cut the part of the thread off that I could see hanging out.  Then I took some acetaphetamine and tried to go to sleep, but the pain was intense.

I was worried that I had done some permanent damage or ruined the surgery, so I called this morning and made an emergency appointment.  When I got there I told the doctor what I had done and he just shook his head, chuckled, and said he was sure that I didn’t do anything serious but he would take a look.  He poked around, removed a bunch of dried blood and more stitching, gave me another prescription of vicodin for the pain (my two front teeth are still numb), and told me there was no real damage done but to not do that again.  Lesson learned:  no matter what you do, do not yank at stuff hanging out of your nose that a doctor put there because I guess it’s there for a reason.

Why you shouldn't try to talk in the recovery room after surgery...

I have played soccer for much of my life, from a little kid growing up in upstate New York all the way up into my 30's when I moved back to Minneapolis, MN.  I eventually forced myself to quit however as soccer took it's toll on just about every part of my body from the waist down:  arthritis in my left ankle from spraining it countless times, bone spur in my right foot, torn meniscus in my right knee, ruptured hamstring, torn labrum in my right hip, vericose veins...and yes one of my top two 'getting-nailed-in-the junk' stories of all-time.  I was at soccer practice and turned around just in time to catch a direct high-speed shot from a fellow team-mate right to the groin.  I layed there gasping for air and writhing in pain for about 5 minutes, trying to decide if this one was worse than the time I was on my 10-speed bike, going down a huge hill on my paper-route peddling as fast as I could when suddenly the chain came off and I fell flush on the crossbar at high-speed.  I could not seem to regain the peddles, and so just riding on my nuts I guided the bike into the ditch in front of a house, tipped over and layed there moaning until eventually a lady came out of the house and offered her assistance.  I told her I just wanted to lay there for a few more minutes and then I would be on my way.

I digress...painfully.  But anyways, out of all of my soccer injuries probably the most dramatic one took place above the waist.  I was in 10th grade playing for a city-league team in Waukesha, WI when I went up for a header along with a guy from the other team named 'Tank'.  I got to the ball first and sent it flying at the same time that he got to my nose and sent it flying, moving it an inch or two to my right while it exploded with blood.  Ever since then I have had a hard time breathing out of my right nostril, but I just ignored it until it seemed to have gotten worse in the last year or so and my poor wife Nadia was complaining of the snoring.

I never go to the doctor, but since we were going to meet our massive insurance deductible this year anyways with the birth of our son Jack in August, I decided to get the nose taken care of.  I had deviated septum surgery last March, but it didn't work.  The right side was still slightly collapsed and not getting in nearly as much air as the other side.  Upon their suggestion I waited and waited to see if it would finish healing and correct itself over time, but it didn't.  So I went to another specialist, a Dr. Peter Hilger who is supposed to be 'The Best'.  In addition to being a professor at the University of Minnesota, he is a plastic surgeon that people fly in from all over the country to see.  We met, he took a look and recommended I have further surgery to fix it for good.  He told me I needed Septoplasty, Vestibular Stenosis repair, and possible ear cart graft or a graft from a cadaver.

Yep, there was a good chance he was going to have to either take a chunk out of my ear to rebuild my septum, or a chunk from a dead guy.  I told him I liked my ear just the way it was and that I would prefer he use the dead guy, so he said he would try and accomodate me.  As it turned out, in the end he did not need to do either as there was enough junk left in my nose to rebuild it with that, so that was cool.  But one of the things he did do though was slit the thin part of the nose between the two nostrils, and then pull the outside part of my nose up and over the inside part so that he could expose and get at the insides...yikes.

So yeah Nadia took me to the surgery center this past Monday to get my nose hopefully fixed once and for all.  Part of the pre-op procedure is to meet with the anesthesiologist.  He comes in, smiles, shakes your hand and tells you all the things he is going to give to you to make it painless.  Seems like a cool job and I wished I had it.  My oldest friend Cire Wonhsak is an anesthesiologist and he loves it.  Anyways, besides the general anesthesia he informs me that they will be using cocaine topically in my nose.  Really??  That seemed ironic to me, as I mention to him that I bet a few of their nose patients are coming in for specifally that reason -- to undue the damage that cocaine can do to a nose.

So a few hours later after the surgery (it is a 2 1/2 hour procedure) I find myself in the recovery room blind.  What's happening?  Why can't I see?  Nadia is there and she tells me I have ice packs over my eyes and nose.  Oh, okay.  I am extremely groggy and I do not remember much, but Nadia filled in the blanks later.  Apparently the nurse and her were going over my follow-up medications...the antibiotics and painkillers I would need and I was laying there listening.  Nadia tells me that at this point I decided to try and be funny and I asked the nurse if they were going to be prescribing me some follow-up cocaine.  "Wait, what?  No?  Why not, is that still illegal in this state?"  The lady sighed and Nadia laughed nervously as she tried to shut me up, but I persisted:  "Are you sure, because I think I know a guy who might know a guy...his name is Bob, the second guy, and I could probably get the first guy to try and track him down if you think it would be helpful."

Nadia finally got me to shut up and I barely remember any of that, but she told me about it later while rolling her eyes.  In reality, I do not even know any drug dealers named Bob.  So if there are any of you out there, I am sorry.  I might have implicated you to the staff at the surgery center in Edina, so you may want to lay low for a few days.  And I learned my lesson -- do not say anything you don't have to in the recovery room and for godsakes do not try and be funny.

Go Pack Go...away please

Okay, I am going to preface this story with the fact that I am a Minnesota Viking season ticket holder and I love the Vikes.  I was born in Minnesota, have been a Viking fan since birth, and therefore despise their state border-rivals the Green Bay Packers.  I always have, always will.  In addition, my beautiful wife Nadia is perfect in every respect EXCEPT she has one glaring flaw:  she is a huge Green Bay Packer fan.  Ouch.  It sucks, but what can you do?  I will tell you what I can do...I can try and steer my 2 year old daughter Autumn and my 3 month old son Jack away from the dark side and ensure that they become Viking fans.  I have no doubt that I will succeed as failure is not an option, but the very notion that either one of them could ever turn out to be a Packer fan gnaws at the back of my brain like an insidious parasite and occasionally keeps me awake at night.

Anyways, it has been so hectic around here lately with a newborn and a toddler that I have not even had time to think about what to get Nadia for Christmas this year.  So yesterday I happen to hear about the Green Bay Packer public “stock” offering.  For the 5th time in this football team's history since 1923 the Packers are offering up public stock in the team.  A quarter of a million shares this time, as they are trying to raise money for stadium renovations.  I do a little research.  It is not real stock.  It is basically just a souvenir item.  A stupid 8x12 inch piece of green paper that says “Green Bay Packers” on it.  It can’t be traded, can’t be transferred, can’t be sold.  Completely utterly worthless.  But Nadia will love it.   So I check the price.  $250 plus a $25 handling fee.  Are you f*cking kidding me?  I am not spending that kind of cash on a piece of paper.  Then I think about it.  I love her...I have no other good ideas at the moment...it will get me huge points...and I can easily spend $275 a month on groceries, and/or beer for myself if I put my mind to it, so I suppose I can spring that amount of dough for her Christmas present no matter how silly I may think it is.  I bust out the credit card and buy her the damn Packer stock.

Then a few hours later on the way home from work she happily tells me:  “Guess what?  Me and Laura (her sister) bought each other Packer stock today for our Christmas present to each other!”

The Sneaky Sweets household now owns $550 worth of Packer “stock”.  This can’t be happening.  So I spent an hour on the phone on hold last night trying to return the one I bought.  The whole time while on hold having to listen to Packer play-by-play highlights of last year’s Super Bowl victory, in between bouts of that goddamn “Go Pack Go!” chant they do at their stadium.  (Yes, I have been to Lambeau Field...past Christmas presents have been Packer tickets.)  Eventually some Green Bay chick gets on the line, listens to my story, and tells me to hold please.  Ten more minutes of Packer highlights and chanting.  Finally she comes back and tells me she will have her supervisor call me back in exactly 2 hours.  Then she actually says to me:  “Go Pack go!” and hangs up.  It is 7pm.  I wait till 9pm...nothing.

So I call the b*stards back this morning and sit on hold again with the “Go Pack Go!” chant incessantly permeating my skull until another Green Bay chick comes on the line.  She listens to my story and tells me to hold please while she consults with her supervisor.  I wait the mandatory 10 minutes while pounding the phone on my forehead.  Then she comes back and tells me she will send the information on to another department.  What does that mean?  Is this really going to happen?  Will I get some kind of confirmation#?  An email?  A phone call to let me know my order was cancelled?  She tells me to hold please while she checks on this with her imaginary supervisor.

Ten minutes later she returns to tell me they do not have the authority to cancel it in her department, but she will send it to the department that does and they should be able to cancel it.  Again, how will I know if this is really going to happen?  She tells me I have to wait and to watch my credit card statements to see if the refund goes through.  There will be no confirmation email.  No phone calls.  No promises.  I just have to hope it happens.  But then before she hangs up she too says to me:  “Go Pack go!”  So I have that goin' for me, which is nice.

The TV Generation

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you are all still enjoying gobs of turkey, wine, pie, football and family the entire 4-day weekend...I love this holiday.  Safe travels, and enjoy every minute of it.  So anyways I was sitting at work this past Wednesday afternoon listening to the 'Monkees Greatest Hits' on cd....then I started thinking about the TV show that they did and how I used to watch it when I was VERY little.  I was born in 1966 and the show ran from 1966 to 1968 so I must have watched the syndicated episodes, but cripes that was a long time ago and I still remember it very well.

Then that got me thinking about all the other shows I used to watch when I was a kid.  The more I thought, the more and more shows came to mind that I remember very well.  And not just shows I occasionally watched and remember the names of, but shows I watched practically every single episode of...either in the morning before school, after school, at night, or before I was even in school.  And I remember the commercials from back then as well, as I have dozens of characters and theme songs in my head that will seemingly never go away...Mr. Whipple (please don't squeeze the Charmin), Madge (you're soaking in it), Rosie (the quicker picker-upper), Mikey (let's get Mikey!).  And knowing the whole:  "two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-all-on-a-sesame-seed-bun" Big Mac jingle made me one of the cool kids in 2nd grade.

TV was huge in our house.  Me and my 2 sisters Jan and Cindy literally worshipped it.  "TV control" was always a big deal as we would fight over who got to turn the knob and decide which of the 4 available channels that we would watch.  I remember when we got our first color TV in the early 70's and it was put in 'The TV Room'.  Shortly afterwards my 3 year old sister Cindy inexplicably tried to move the 5,000 lb beast early one Saturday morning and managed to knock it off the TV stand and cracked the case...it was like the world had come to an end.  Fortunately my Dad, who can fix anything, was able to get it working and the world was right again, but those were anxious times.  One of my earliest TV memories was sitting on the couch with my Dad watching the moon-shots on our black and white TV.  It was such a huge deal and all the grown-ups were talking about it.  It was hard for a 4 year old to make sense of it when we would watch the guys on the moon on TV, and then we would go outside and look up at the moon and think that that is where they guys in my TV-room are.  I of course wanted to be an astronaut.  Actually, a football player, a cowboy and an astronaut.

I guess I also know 'TV' on another level.  I have a relative I chat with on the phone occasionally who's real name is Bruce and he shares my last name.  He has appeared on numerous TV shows, including Perry Mason, Big Valley, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Kojak, The Dukes Of Hazzard, etc.  I am also email-friends with a woman named Lydia Cornell who was on the show Too Close For Comfort that me and my sisters used to watch every week in the early 80's.  For geographic reasons with her being in California and me in Minnesota we do not know each other in person, but I have a feeling that if we lived in the same state we would be buddies.  She is a really good person, extremely cool, and I like her a lot.  Check her out at:  www.LydiaCornell.com or http://www.ustream.tv/channel/lydia-live-todhd or on Facebook.

I have a 2-year old daughter named Autumn and we let her watch one TV program per day.  Either Sesame Street or Yo Gabba Gabba.  Unless it's Sunday and football is on (poor li'l thing loves the purple Minnesota Vikings...Percy Harvin is her favorite player) she gets ONE show at the most per day.  But a quick memory check from when I was little brings up literally dozens and dozens of TV shows that I watched religiously.  Did I do anything but watch TV?  Seriously.  Mom?  What up?  I am not complaining and I do not think I am warped (as we are warned nowadays about kids and TV viewing) but holy crap I watched a LOT of TV.  Not counting all of the Saturday morning TV shows that me and my sisters would watch religiously every week, here is a quick list of the shows that I remember very well from the late 60's through the 70's.  I am sure I left out a few, but here are the shows that I remember watching regularily.  After I made this list I googled "1970 tv shows" to help jog my memory for more, but 90% of these I remembered off the top of my head.  And I don't just remember the shows, but I still remember the theme songs, the characters, plots...everything.  What is wrong with me?  Do these names bring back some memories?

The Monkees

Too Close For Comfort

The Beverly Hillbillies

Andy Griffith Show

Hogan's Heroes

That Girl

Family Affair

Price Is Right

Let’s Make A Deal

Family Feud

Wheel Of Fortune
Star Trek

Gunsmoke

Big Valley

Bonanza

Davy Crockett

Daniel Boone

I Dream Of Jeannie

Bewitched
Gilligan's Island
Flinstones
The Jetsons
McHale's Navy
The Little Rascals

Leave It To Beaver
My Three Sons

Love Boat

Fantasy Island

Baretta

Mannix

McCloud

Columbo

McMillan & Wife

Barnaby Jones

Cannon

Police Woman

Hart To Hart

Night Court

Happy Days

Laverne & Shirley

Mork & Mindy

Welcome Back Kotter

Taxi
Hee Haw

Sonny & Cher

Donny & Marie

Captain & Tennille

Tony Orlando & Dawn

Sesame Street

Electric Company

Zoom

Mr. Roger's Neighborhood

Captain Kangaroo

6 Million Dollar Man

The Bionic Woman

Love American Style

The Odd Couple

Barney Miller

WKRP In Cincinnati

Kojak

McCloud

Three’s Company

Dukes Of Hazzard

B.J. And The Bear

Grizzly Adams

Little House On The Prairie

The Waltons
The Dick Van Dyke Show
I Love Lucy

Mary Tyler Moore Show

Rhoda

Phyllis

Maude

Bob Newhart Show

All In The Family

The Jeffersons

The Gong Show

Soul Train

MASH

Brady Bunch

Eight Is Enough

The Partridge Family

Quincy

One Day At A Time

Sanford And Son

Chico & The Man

Good Times

What’s Happening

Different Strokes

The Facts Of Life

Alice

CHIPs

Starsky & Hutch

Rockford Files

The Hardy Boys

Charlie’s Angels

Greatest American Hero

Wonder Woman

The Incredible Hulk
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
Emergency
Adam-12
Man From Atlantis

Night Stalker

Kung Fu

Motorcycle Incidents

I have had a few minor motorcycle ‘incidents’ over the years.  Minor, but memorable.  The first one that comes to mind was back in December of 1988.  I had traveled to the San Francisco Bay area with my girlfriend Lona, my best friend Mark Smith and his girlfriend Christy to see the Grateful Dead’s 3-night New Year’s Eve run of shows at the Oakland Coliseum.  We were staying at our friend Vickie Page's house in El Cerrito just north of Oakland, and her brother had a sweet new Honda V65 Magna motorcycle.  This was a large powerful 1100 cc motorcycle.  At the time, the motorcycle I was riding back home in Minneapolis was a 1976 Suzuki 185cc Enduro…a very fun bike, but small, old and not that powerful.  Vickie's brother was out of town for the week, so boasting that I had been riding motorcycles for years I begged her to let me take the bike out for a ride.  After refusing at first and then hesitating, she finally relented making me promise I would go slow, just around the neighborhood once, and then bring it right back.  "Okay, no problem." I said, but the 22 year old in me was just dying to get on that thing and tear it up.

Keep in mind this is a very hilly area with houses perched on the hills and the driveways all short and steep.  The bike is in the garage which is beneath the house.  I got on the bike, which was facing out towards the 20 foot driveway that is probably on almost a 45 degree angle up to the street.  It is basically a ramp.  So I’m revving up the bike, showing off, confident in my abilities.  However with my little 185cc bike I had to turn the throttle all the way full just to get the bike to start moving forward.  With my hands used to that method, I released the clutch and turned the throttle wide-open as usual.  Well of course with this 1100cc monster engine beneath my legs, it responded to my full-throttle by instantly shooting forth like a rocket.  I held on to the handlebars for dear life as the thing shot up the driveway ramp, flew OVER the road, hitting the sidewalk on the other side of the street and bouncing into a chain-link fence.  The entire trip lasted approximately 1.2 seconds, so Vickie got her wish of me just taking it for a short ride.

On the other side of the chain-link fence was a children’s daycare center and of course all of the children were outside playing when this maniac suddenly comes roaring out from the underground bat-cave and goes airborne in a mad attempt to take them all out.  So they’re all pointing and screaming and running away as I’m laying there on the sidewalk in a heap with this big beautiful blue motorcycle on it's side.  The engine kills but the tires are still spinning as I extract myself from the bike and struggle to get it up.  All my friends who had witnessed this came running up the driveway, making sure I wasn’t hurt before laughing their asses off at the spectacle of me shooting up out of the garage like an unguided missile.  Miraculously I was unhurt besides a couple of bloody scrapes.  The only one who was not laughing was Vickie.  She was worried that her brother would kill her but a quick inspection revealed only a few scratches, and fortunately her brother had laid it down a week earlier going around a corner so it was impossible to tell the new scrapes from the old scrapes...we were off the hook.

The most recent incident was just last summer when I asked my friend Ernie to come over with his pick-up truck on a Saturday afternoon to help me bring my motorcycle in to the shop...the same 1985 Yamaha Maxim 700 from my blog a couple of weeks ago.  The carbs needed work so I had to haul it in to Minneapolis to get it fixed.  It's a fairly big bike.  For some reason I assumed Ernie was bringing some wood with him for a ramp to get the bike up to the bed of the truck.  Nope...he thought I had wood.  So the trick now was how to get this 500 lb hunk of metal from the ground up onto the bed of his truck.  We hunted around and found some 2x4’s in my garage…not wide enough or long enough, but they will have to do.  Wait…Ernie spots a 2x6 up in the rafters.  We bring that down…about 6 feet long.  Better, but is it long enough and can it hold a motorcycle?  Hmm.  We decide to brace it with a metal folding ladder I have. 

So we park Ernie’s truck down by the street, with the open back of the truck facing up towards the house.  We put the ladder from the ground to the truck and then laid the board on top of that.  Unfortunately the board is about a foot shorter than the ladder.  We figured screw it, by the time the bike is that far up the board it will have enough momentum to go that last foot.   We joked that we should get the video camera from inside so Ernie could film it to send to Youtube or America’s Funniest Home Videos, but sadly we neglected to do that.

So I sit on the bike, back it up to the top of my short, steep driveway, and gave a couple of pushes with my feet and start heading the 20 feet down till I get to the ramp.  Well…it went great until I got almost to the top of the board and then the bike stopped…I didn’t have enough speed.  “Uh, oh.” I said quietly as me and the bike slowly started tipping to the right.  You know that feeling you get right before something painful is about to happen?  Like when you were a kid and you are going over a jump on your bicycle and then in mid-air the bike starts nosing downward and you know you're going to go over the handlebars and it's going to hurt a lot?  Well I got to revisit that sad, helpless feeling on this particular afternoon.  As we started to tip I instinctively put both my feet down to where there would normally be ground, but of course there was nothing but air so I braced myself for the 4 foot fall off the side of the board while sitting on this 500 lb anchor. 

I managed to jump off sideways but still hold on to the handlebars while the back of the bike hit the ground.  Somehow the front tire stayed on the bed of the truck while the back was laying on it’s side.  Ernie’s eyes were like saucers as he ran over and helped me grab the bike and lift it up off it’s side.  But now what??  The front tire is still on the truck, the back is on the ground, and I’ve got sharp pain and future deep bruises on my left ankle and right hip.  We noticed some neighbors who were having a graduation party down the street all gathered out in their driveway with beers in hand pointing at us, but they didn’t think to come over and help.  Then a neighbor from the other side of the house came running through my yard to help.  He grabs the handlebars and somehow me and Ernie muscled the back end of the bike up on to the truck. 

I was in pain and dripping sweat, but we got the b*stard safely on the truck and tied it down.  There was plenty of cosmetic damage with a broken signal-light, dented exhaust pipe and numerous scratches on the side, but we both got off pretty good considering.  Same lesson learned in both 'incidents':  never attempt a tricky motorcycle/ramp maneuver when not running video.  That was just plain dumb in both cases.

Naked Oops...

Back in the early 90’s when I was living in Madison, WI, my girlfriend Lona and I had heard about these awesome 2-day/1-night canoe/camping trips down the Wisconsin River.  You drive to the town of Prairie du Sac and park your car at the canoe outfitter place on the river.  They fit you with a canoe, paddles, life-preservers and a map, and you supply your own tent, sleeping bags, cooler, whatever…and off you go!  You paddle down the river, camp on one of the millions of ever-shifting sandbars, and then the next day about 20 or 25 miles down river you pull out at the town of Spring Green where a bus is waiting to take you and the canoe back up the river to where your car is parked.  Inexpensive, and very cool.

So day 1, it was a beautiful summer day and we were happily floating lazily down the river, occasionally paddling when we felt like it, and just enjoying the sun and nature.  I had a line in the water and wasn’t catching any fish, but I didn’t care.  We would stop at sand bars, swim, fish, fool around, eat, whatever, and then back into the canoe.  Occasionally we would see another canoe or kayaker, but it was pretty sparse and we felt like the wilderness was all ours.  But then about mid-afternoon on the first day we spotted off in the distance a whole bunch of people on a huge wide stretch of beach.

We were enjoying the beautiful wilderness so much we decided we would just blow past the crowded beach and keep to ourselves, but then as we got closer we realized everyone was naked…it was a nude beach!  Cool!  We had just got back from a 2 month trip to Greece.  It was our second trip there and all the beaches are topless and many totally nude, so being naked was nothing to us.  We loved and missed Greece and figured this would be a small way to sort of get back there in our minds.  So thinking it would be extra cool to arrive naked, we peeled off our bathing suits and happily paddled over there.

We pulled up on shore to the nearest part of the beach and while Lona lingered back at the canoe gathering some towels and beers and such, I hopped out and walked up shore a little ways to look around.  Suddenly I noticed two guys heading towards me and I flashed them a big smile and said ‘hi’ and proceeded to make small talk.  We chatted for a minute and they were incredibly nice, but then one of them offered me his towel and said I could borrow it if I wanted.  Huh?  Why?  “Uh, no thanks, we have our own.” I said, as I motioned off towards Lona who was just starting to walk up the beach with towels in hand.  They both glanced over at her, frowned, and without a word just turned around and walked away.

That was weird.  Lona walked up and I told her what happened.  She started looking around and then said:  “Do you notice anything strange about this beach?”  This was before I got lasik surgery and I did not have my glasses on, so I squinted hard and looked around at the sea of flesh.  It seemed like people were staring at us.  Maybe this was this a private beach?  Wait, that’s weird…the beach was packed but there did not appear to be any women anywhere.  Just then another dude walked up to us and with a friendly smile says:  “Um, excuse me, but you might be a little more comfortable over there.” and he points about a quarter mile down the river to the far side of the beach.

Oh crap, we were at a men’s gay beach.  The far side of the beach was full of dudes and chicks and was the hetero side, but the side that we had pulled up to was the gay side.  We tried to nonchalantly walk back to the canoe, but when we got there we quickly jumped in and paddled away, feeling all the eyes on our naked butts as we made our escape.  We were a tad embarrassed so we decided to not even stop at the hetero side…we just kept paddling as fast as we could down the river and back to nature.  We did not bother to put our suits back on however and enjoyed much of the rest of the trip au naturel.

King Of The Road

So it was the spring of 1989 and I was in college living with my girlfriend Lona and 2 other girls at a house in Dinkytown (a campus-town near the U of M in Minneapolis).  I woke up unusually early one Sunday morning, sat up in bed and for no reason at all I suddenly decided that I needed a motorcycle…not just the little dirt-bikes and enduros I had previously owned but a real motorcycle and I wanted it today.  This was of course before the internet so I grabbed the Sunday paper and a pen and started looking.

So many choices...but then one personal ad jumped off the page and caught my eye…a 1985 Yamaha Maxim XJ700 with only 28 miles?  “This is not a misprint.” it said.  Really?  No way!  So I quickly called and a scared, meek little voice of an old woman answered.  I was puzzled and she was extremely nervous and unsure of herself, but I made arrangements to drive down to her house in Bloomington, MN and check it out right away.

Well Lona gave me a ride there and left when it quickly became apparent that I was going to buy the bike.  The deal was that this little, lonely old lady owned this kickass motorcycle and was selling it because her husband had bought the bike new in 1985, rode it once, and died of cancer.  She explained that it was his dying wish to own a motorcycle and ride it before he died.  He got to do that, but it had been sitting in their garage ever since because she was afraid to sell it.  She thought that when she put the ad in the paper she would be inundated with mean, leather-clad, biker-gang types coming over in the middle of the night, riding their bikes all over her lawn and making a lot of racket. 

After 4 years she finally worked up the courage to sell the bike.  I was the first person to come look at it and she was so happy to see that I was a nice, normal fellow who had no intention of hurting her or her lawn that she immediately took to me and hugged me, gave me milk and cookies, and proceeded to tell me all about her husband.  I was there in her kitchen for what seemed like hours as she told me all about his life, his sickness, and his death.  Then she wanted to hear my life story.  Eventually we came around to talking about a price for the motorcycle.  The thing was of course in mint condition and had been $3,000 new I believe.  She had only been asking $2,100 but she gave it to me for $1,800.  A way cool, basically new, black Yamaha Maxim 700 for $1,800!

I thought I was finally going to get to ride off into the sunset on my new bike, but then she said she had something she wanted to give to me.  She went upstairs and came down a few minutes later with a leather keychain that read:  “King Of The Road”.  She said:  "I know it seems silly..." and then went on to explain that she had gotten it for her husband after he died and put it in his Christmas stocking on her first Christmas without him...and she wanted me to have it.  So of course she starts crying and then I’m practically crying and we’re hugging each other and I was starting to think that maybe she was going to try and adopt me.  Then she insists on getting the camera.  So we go out to the driveway and she takes a bunch of pictures of me on the bike in various poses, and then she has a neighbor come over and take pictures of the two of us.

Finally it was over, we hugged some more, said our goodbyes, and as I rode off I was trembling with a mixture of excitement and sadness at how I got the bike.  I still have and love it to this day.  It has been my main bike ever since, I take good care of it, and often-times I think of that sweet old lady and her 'King Of The Road' when I am riding it.

When you absolutely positively have to be there THAT night...

I first saw the Radiators in 1984 during my college years in Minneapolis and they have been my favorite band ever since.  Of course there were a few times when I was faced with the choice of seeing the Grateful Dead or the Radiators on a particular night or weekend.  At first I always chose the Grateful Dead because...well...they were the Grateful Dead.  I followed the Dead all around the country for 10 years and my devotion to them was deep and unwavering.  I actually traveled all over the country seeing both bands whenever I could, but the Dead shows were the holy grail for us college-hippies.  After awhile though, especially in the 1990's, I came to realize that the Dead shows were hit and miss on whether or not it would be a good show, but the Rads never failed to deliver...they put on a great show night after night and you were always guaranteed to have an incredible evening of music and fun. 

Eventually I ended up cutting my hair and getting a real job in 1992, and this coincided with me winding down the perpetual touring with the Dead and amped up my ability to see the Radiators even more.  Maybe I was growing up at the same time that I wasn't?  Brent Mydland from the Dead died in 1990, Bill Graham in 1991, and then when Jerry Garcia died in 1995 it sealed the deal...all of my New Years Eves, Halloweens, Easters, Summers, etc. were now devoted entirely to seeing the Radiators.

As it turns out the Radiators were much more accessable than the Grateful Dead and in 1995 I was fortunate enough to meet them through my friend Dirty Dan at a concert in Madison, WI.  I then began to get to know the band on a personal level in addition to just being a huge fan.  Eventually this led to the moment when one day Dave Malone from the band suddenly handed me a Radiators laminate pass.  Holy crap!  I was not sure what it meant exactly, but I felt like I had been given the key to the greatest city in the world and I was ecstatic.  It basically meant that I had access to the backstage areas when the tour manager gave me the nod, but it also made me feel special and somehow part of the band, or more accurately part of the large Radiator family.

The pass proved to have other uses as well.  One time outside the busy House of Blues nightclub in New Orleans I had my laminate on, but with money in hand for a ticket I was suddenly ushered into the venue before I even had a chance to buy the ticket.  I also happened to get into a few festivals with it, and a couple times at the '10,000 Lakes Fest' in Detroit Lakes, MN I got to park in the artists section, camping a stone's throw from the Allman Brother's tour bus one year.  The biggest side-perk I ever realized from the pass though was on the dark and stormy night of April 30th, 1997.

In addition to the Radiators, Dave Malone has a side band called Monkey Ranch.  This is an amazing band with the core consisting of him on guitar/vocals, Reggie Scanlon from the Radiators on bass, and Mean Willie Green from the Neville Brothers on drums.  The rest of the band has been a revolving door of great New Orleans musicians that over the years have included Tommy Malone, Anders Osborne, Theresa Andersson, John Gros, David Torkanowski and others.  It's been a few years, but they used to play once or twice a year, usually for the annual New Orleans Jazz Festival which was the case in 1997. 

My friend Brad Pronger and I were heading down to New Orleans for the 2nd weekend of Jazz Fest to see tons of music, including 4 Radiator concerts and a Monkey Ranch show on our first night there.  I was living in Madison, WI at the time, and Brad and I had a flight down that night on 4/30/97.  It was not direct as we had to make a connecting flight in St. Louis, but we were due to arrive in New Orleans by 7 pm which gave us plenty of time to get to our friend's apartment that we were crashing at, unload our luggage, and then get to the bar called Benny's where Monkey Ranch was starting at 11:11 pm.

Unfortunately it was a rainy, windy afternoon in Madison as Brad and I sat in the terminal waiting and waiting for them to let us board the plane to take off.  It was funny at first as we joked about what if we missed the concert that night...but after awhile it was not so funny when that turned out to be a real possibility as we waited for a couple of hours to get the hell out of town.  Finally we boarded the plane and took off for St. Louis, but of course by the time we landed we had missed our connecting flight to New Orleans.

I was not too worried however.  There is always the 'next flight' right?  So when we got to St. Louis at 7 pm I confidentally walked over to the Customer Service desk and casually told the lady that we needed to get on the next flight to New Orleans.  "There is only 1 more flight out leaving at 8:30 pm...but that is all booked up." she said.  What?!  What about standby, or other airlines??  She tapped away at her computer for awhile and then told me that all the other airline flights were booked as well.  She said that she would put me and Brad on standby with their last flight, but it was overbooked and we would probably not be able to get on.  She then went on to explain that we would most likely be spending the night in St. Louis, but with a big smile said she would get us out first thing in the morning.

I walked away from the desk dazed and confused as I headed over to where Brad was waiting with our carry-on luggage.  This was not happening.  Did she really mean to tell me that we weren't going to New Orleans that night?  It did not seem possible.  I could not wrap my head around the idea and I refused to believe it.  There has got to be another way.  I told Brad our situation and he shrugged his shoulders.  What choice did we have? 

Like the Grinch, I stood there puzzling and puzzling 'till my puzzler was sore, and then I got pissed.  There was no way I could comprehend us missing Monkey Ranch that night.  We were meeting our friend Mitch Manson, his beautiful girlfriend (now wife) Kara and a host of other friends that night at the concert and the idea of us sitting in St. Louis while our friends and the band were all raging down at the bottom end of the river was inconceivable. 

Suddenly I remembered my Radiator laminate.  I was grasping at straws but I was desperate.  I pawed through my bag till I came up with the pass and told Brad to hang tight.  I marched up to the desk, this time with attitude.  I got the same lady, and as I made eye contact with her I slammed the laminate down on the counter and said:  "Look!  I am the drummer in a band called the Radiators.  You have probably heard of us.  That guy over there is my drum tech Brad.  Our band is playing tonight in New Orleans and we have GOT to be there!  I don't care if you have to rent a private plane, a private helicopter, a high-speed turbo limo, or simply get us on this last flight, but if you cannot figure out a way to get us to New Orleans by 11 pm there is going to be hell to pay!"

Her eyes grew huge as she looked down at the laminate, then at me, then at Brad.  Suddenly she started hammering away at her keyboard in ernest with a scared look on her face.  It took a couple of minutes, with her nervously glancing up at me from time to time, but eventually the printer started whirring away and with a sigh of relief she handed me two boarding passes for their last flight out of St. Louis getting us into New Orleans at 10:30pm.  I tried to act cool, but I was freaking out inside...it f*cking worked!

We got to New Orleans without further incident, took a taxi from the airport directly to Benny's, and got there just as the band was starting so we did not miss a note.  We hooked up with Mitch and the gang and had a great night and a great Jazz Fest full of lifelong memories.  Thinking back, I suspect that the airline lady may have had to bump 2 other passengers to get us on that plane and I feel bad about that, but at the time I was just enormously relieved and amazed at the power of the laminate.  The Radiators finally called it quits in June of 2011 after 33 1/3rd years, but they are still my favorite band and an endless source of stories and memories...stay tuned...

P.S.  As I said it was a great night with Monkey Ranch and a great concert in that crazy-cool weird place called Benny's.  I have a soundboard copy of the concert that fits on 3 discs.  If anybody should happen to want a copy of the show, just post a comment with your address below and I will send it out to you.

Costly Pier-party

Okay, do not try this one at home.  In fact, it might be in your best interest to view a lot of these stories as things to 'not-try-at-home'...sort of a public service message.  So about 10 years ago I was living on my own in a 2 bedroom condo on Medicine Lake near Minneapolis, MN.  As was often the case, there was a party that warm summer night down on our large condo-pier in our secluded bay on the lake.  Almost every weekend all of us who had boats on the pier would bring them in for the evening, tie up, and inevitably somebody would start cranking the stereo on their pontoon boat.  Then we would dip into our coolers and pass cold ones around and pretty soon the entire pier was rocking.  We would hang out, show off the fish we had caught that day, flirt with the pretty girls in their bikinis, crank tunes and fish for catfish off the dock late into the night. 

So after this one particularly large, late-night pier-party I woke up the next morning fully clothed and spread-eagled on my back on the floor of my bedroom.  A sharp ray of sunlight was streaming through the window burning a hole into the side of my skull.  My mouth tasted like wallpaper glue.  My everything hurt...and what was that incessant noise?  The TV was on.  I sat up confused, looked around, and saw my wallet laying on the floor next to me.  Then I noticed that the TV was tuned to the Home Shopping Network.  I never watch those stupid shopping channels.  Uh, oh...what did I do?! 

I could not for the life of me remember the end of the night so I was just kind of hoping for the best and pretty much forgot about the whole TV-still-on-the-next-morning thing.  But then of course about two weeks later an incredibly large, heavy box showed up at my house chock FULL of pocket knives...$119.99 worth!  And I guess I must have "Acted now!" or was one of the first 20 callers or something like that, because the next day I got ANOTHER huge, long box loaded with some bonus swords...like decorative medieval dragon swords, I suppose for hanging on the wall or killing dragons.  What the hell?  I don’t even like knives and I have nothing against dragons. 

As I said that was about 10 years ago and I am still to this day giving away knives every year to my poor relatives as Christmas and birthday gifts.  I even keep a detailed list in the box charting who has gotten what.  I have given them to my friends, I have sold some to the kids who lived down the hall, I have even made each member of the Radiators take some home to New Orleans with them...and yet I still have a pile of these damn 'Frost Cutlery' knives taking up space in my closet.  Hey...does anybody need any knives?  We've got The Tracker, we've got The Vulture, The Apache, Delta Ranger, Eagle Eye, Magnum Force, and even a Magnum Force III!  They're all here!  Don't delay!  In fact if you act now, every caller in the next 10 minutes will receive a voucher for a free round of golf with Frank The Tank!  Oh my god don't think, just do it!

Weird Phone Call

A few months ago my favorite band the Radiators were in town for the weekend and I had to call my friend Ted Booker to get the Friday flight arrival info and hotel info as I needed to finalize my plans for the weekend.  So I call Ted from my work phone, holding the phone up to my right ear.  I am sitting there waiting for the call to go through when suddenly my cell phone on my desk in front of me starts ringing.  I am a little annoyed at the bad timing of this intrusion, but my call to Ted was still ringing so I dutifully picked up the cell with my left hand and put it to my left ear.  “Hello?  Hello?  Who is this?” 

Nobody is answering, and for some strange reason I can totally hear myself loud and clear in my right ear.  What the hell?  Then I think to look at the caller ID on my cell phone and it was the general phone number from work.  Huh?  Why is somebody from my office calling me on my cell phone??

Oh cripes...suddenly I realized that I had accidentally called my cell phone number instead of Ted’s cell phone.  So…the right side of my head was talking to the left side of my head…very weird.  I abruptly hung up on myself and took a quick glance around the office to see if anyone had seen me talking to myself.  Nope, all good!   

Air Mishap #3

Have you ever had that sudden insanely strong feeling that you were going to die?  That huge instant rush where every single muscle in your body tenses and your adrenaline goes from zero to a million in less than a second as your body physically prepares for death?  That has happened to me twice.

The first time was in the panhandle of Florida one hot summer day in the late 1980’s.  I was laying on the beach with my girlfriend Lona next to me and a quarter on each eye.  For some reason I did not have my shades with me but I did happen to have some quarters so I put one on each eye to help block out the sun rays.  We were laying there on a very desolate stretch of beach peacefully listening to the waves gently lapping on the shore.  I was thinking about how these damn quarters were getting pretty hot though when suddenly I was sure the world was ending as this impossibly loud noise was instantly upon us, surrounding us, inside of us, part of us...I bolted straight up, quarters flying, opened my eyes and my entire world was filled with helicopter!

There was a huge green army helicopter about 20 feet above us and going at least a 100 mph.  My first thought was that it was crashing into us, but in that split second that they were above us I caught a glimpse of the pilot and a passenger looking out the window and they were both laughing!  It was just an army copter cruising along the beach and they must have spotted us and decided to buzz us.  And just as fast as my world went from calm and peaceful to certain death, they were gone…down the beach and out of sight, probably looking for more people to freak out.  It took several minutes for my heartbeat to get back down from 300 to 72 and then I was pissed.  Ah well…a good joke I suppose, but I would still like to punch that pilot in the mouth.

The only other time I had that kind of an instant death-rush was a few years later on a clear sunny day when I was flying solo in a two-seat Cessna 152.  I was practicing touch-and-goes at a small, non-tower airport east of Madison, WI.  A 'touch-and-go' is where you power down, make the landing, and instead of coming to a complete stop you power up again as soon as you are safely on the runway and take off again…then you circle around and do it again.  When you are in the flying space of any airport you are required to turn your airplane's radio on to a certain frequency.  Every airport has their own frequency, so when you enter an airport’s airspace (which is anywhere from a 5 to 30 mile radius depending on the size of the airport) you turn your plane’s radio to that airport’s frequency.  Then with a tower airport they tell you where to go, but with a non-tower airport you have to take it upon yourself to announce your presence and your intentions and movements to anyone in the area on that frequency.  At the same time, you are listening to other pilots so you know where everyone is and you can avoid any mid-air collisions.

So on this particular day I am doing touch-and-goes and announcing my position over the radio at every turn.  I had just landed, took off, was climbing back up to 2,000 feet and just finishing my left-hand turn into the downwind leg of the next touch-and-go when all of a sudden BLAMMO!  To my immediate back-left is another freakin’ airplane coming right at me!  (The picture above is about what I was seeing.)  It's a low-wing 4-seat Beechcraft and we are just about to hit each other.  I am on the left side of my plane, and the passenger on the right side of that plane locked eyes with me for a split second and we both thought we were dead.  He was so close I could see the map in his lap, the yellow #2 pencil in his hand, another map on the dashboard, and various items in the plane like a cup of coffee and another pair of headphones.  There was nothing but airplane in my vision, and then just as fast as he was there the plane slid right underneath my plane and he was gone…off to my right now and making a beeline out of there.

Again, every single nerve in my entire body had tensed up as I braced for the crash and my heart had leapt up into my mouth while my heartbeat had accelerated to pounding levels.  I opened my eyes and suddenly realized I was alive.  Relief quickly turned to anger though and as soon as I was able to breathe again and my body had calmed down to a level that allowed my to talk, I got on the radio and started screaming at the guy, “What the f*ck are you doing!!”  He had never announced his presence and I never had a clue he was there until he almost hit me.  He never responded however so he either did not have his radio on the correct frequency or he was too embarrassed to talk.

It was exciting and quite a rush, but I would still like to punch that pilot in the mouth as an in-air near-miss is something I would never like to repeat again.

The Who - Now and Then

For anybody that knows me, you know that music is huge in my life.  I mean, it is right up there with food-and-air important.  Growing up as a kid from as early as I can remember there was always music in our house cranking on my dad’s stereo, and I was always planted right in front of a speaker listening intently and memorizing all of the words.  Until I got into college and was introduced to the Grateful Dead and the Radiators, music had 4 levels for me.  Way way alone up at the top level was the Beatles….stand on your tippy-toes and reach as high as you can and that is where the Beatles were at.  Then below that down on Earth the 2^nd level was Pink Floyd, again on a level all their own as there is no band like them then or now, and they were about head high.  Then just below that in the 3^rd level at shoulder height were the ‘Big Three’…the super-groups…Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Who.  Then way below that the 4^th level starts from about the waist down and that was all of the other bands in the world mucking about together.

Well a couple of nights ago me and my buddy Frank ‘The Tank’ Hoffman went and saw one of the ‘Big Three’…Roger Daltrey from the Who at the Target Center in Minneapolis, MN.  The arena was cut in half making it extremely intimate and I don’t think there was a bad seat in the house.  We had two okay $38 seats in the back of the arena, but by a lucky quirk we ended up with six $125 seats all to ourselves in the 8^th row dead center on the floor in front of Roger!  I have been to a lot of concerts with Frank, but this was right up there with one of the coolest things ever.  It was an amazing show that had me mesmerized and goosebumped the entire show and left me so thankful that I got to see one of my musical heroes still performing at any level, much less at an exceptional level. 

He opened with the ‘Tommy’ album performed in it’s entirety, and it was perfect.  His band was energetic and right on the money, and Pete Townshend’s younger brother Simon on guitar/vocals was incredible.  It was eerie watching him on stage as he channeled his brother almost to a spooky level.  Minus Pete’s signature bloody-fingered windmill guitar strumming, the rest was there as Simon had all of his brother's jumps, motions, upside-down smile, nods, and grins that must run in the family.  He also sang all of Pete’s vocal parts and if you closed your eyes you’d swear it was Pete up there. 

After an hour of ‘Tommy’, Roger talked for a bit and then broke into over an hour of sweet classic and not-so-classic Who songs, a couple of his solo tunes, and a nice long medley of Johnny Cash songs.  He peppered the songs with stories in between of his childhood, his Who bandmates, his health, and he made it an intimate feel-good mood in the arena.  And for the doubters out there thinking this was just a Who cover-band…this was a kickass rocking band that had me smiling, clapping, dancing, jumping up and down and yelling for more.  Frank even managed to stay awake for the entire show despite the pre-show martini’s and Jameson’s and beers we had enjoyed.  I thought we were going to lose him about 2 hours into the 2 ½ hour show when Frank sat down in his chair while the rest of us were standing and screaming, but it was just a brief rest and then he stood back up.  It was a great concert that left me smiling and loving life and I recommend Daltrey to anybody lucky enough to have him coming to your town.

As I was driving home humming ‘The Kids Are Alright’ and thinking about what I had just seen, I started reminiscing about the one and only other time I had seen Roger Daltrey, 29 years earlier.  It was with The Who, December 7^th, 1982 in Milwaukee, WI.  It was supposedly their ‘Farewell Tour’ and the hype was HUGE.  Everybody was talking about it and it was the concert tour of the century.  Of course they have regrouped countless times since then, but it was awesome and unique at the time.  At first they were not even going to come to Milwaukee, but they had an open night right between their shows in St. Louis and Chicago so the city lobbied hard to get them to come to Milwaukee.  Nothing.  Then our DJ ‘Tim The Rock and Roll Animal’ from 93QFM radio literally went out on a ledge to get The Who to come to Milwaukee.  He ate, slept, and broadcast his show from up on the ledge of the radio station in downtown Milwaukee for like 19 days or so until the Who finally agreed to come.  The city went nuts.

Tickets were going to be impossible to get though.  The old Milwaukee Mecca arena only held 12,000 people, so they held a lottery run by the Milwaukee Journal newspaper where you could submit your name for the chance to buy 2 tickets.  They got over 90,000 entries.  I entered and won the right to buy a pair, but tickets were $17 apiece…double what normal concert tickets cost in those days.  I was only in 11^th grade and certainly didn’t have that kind of loot.  Luckily my mom stepped up and bought them for me, god bless her. 

Next it was time to pick a lucky companion.  I knew this girl Cindy Burelli from French class…she was totally hot.  I had been flirting with her all that fall and we got friendly, but not ‘lets go out’ friendly.  I can still picture her long wavy perfectly feathered reddish-brown hair…her tight blue jeans and tight tee-shirt accentuating both her perfect ass and exquisite chest…her badass jean jacket…and her cool black suede G.A.S.S. shoes.  I desperately wanted to kiss those lips and run my fingers through her beautiful hair.  I had to have her.  So when I got the tickets I pulled out the big guns and casually let her know that I scored a pair of Who tickets and did not have anyone picked out yet to go with.  Her attitude immediately went from ‘just friends’ to ‘Omg-Sneaks-is-the-greatest-thing-since-the-dawn-of-time’, and she strongly hinted that the lucky knight in shining armor who took her to the Who concert would get huge dividends in return.  It’s a date I proclaimed!  I was so psyched…me, Sneaky Sweets, with freaking Who tickets in hand and taking one of the hottest chicks in 11^th grade!  I was a damn hero…if not in anyone else’s mind, certainly my own.

So the night of the show I went to her house, picked her up, went to meet some other friends and then we were off for the show.  The concert was amazing and the two of us had fairly good seats in the lower deck, but as we were standing there I tried to hold her hand a couple of times and was thwarted each time as she didn’t take my hand and sort of brushed it aside.  I was puzzled at first and then full of doubt.  For the first time in the couple of months leading up to this night, the thought suddenly crept into my head that maybe I had been had.  Was this chick just using me for my tickets?  No!  Really?!  But then that question was answered definitively about two-thirds of the way through the show when she started talking to this tall, long-haired, good looking dude next to her wearing cowboy boots who was probably 10 years older than us.  Over the music I overheard him ask her if I was her boyfriend.  “No no!” she said smiling up at him, “We’re just friends".  I was crushed.

For the rest of the night I decided to try and make the most of it and just enjoy the music, but for a 16 year old kid it was tough watching my ‘date’ flirt with this creepy old douchebag.  I did my best to ignore them though and it was still one of the best concerts I have ever seen.  There were two lessons I learned from all of this:  1) Girls can be pretty damn sneaky, so watch out for them and learn from your mistakes; and 2) Go see your musical heros whenever/wherever you can before one of you are dead.  No matter what it costs, in twenty years you will not miss the money but you will certainly remember that night.

Golfing With Frank

You know how there is that fine line with alcohol and playing pool?  You play well buzzed up to a point, but if you cross that line you start to suck?  When I shoot pool I like to have a couple of beers, but I have to nurse them along if I want to play well.  I play more relaxed and much better with a slight buzz…up to a point…but if I cross the line and have too many beers my play suffers noticeably.  Well golf is the same way for me.  A few beers are fine, but if I get too buzzed I begin losing care and concentration and start slicing the hell out of the ball into the adjoining fairway or I top it and watch it limp up to the ladies tee.  It was a slight problem when I first started playing, but now I have a system.  I just keep the beers to one every 5 holes…1^st, 5^th, 10^th and 15^th tees.  I’m relaxed, I’m playing up to my abilities, and I’m having fun. 

I have a friend who does not have a system.  Or maybe his system is flawed.  Or maybe his system is perfect if his goal is to get trashed and play horrible golf.  My buddy Frank ‘The Tank’ Hoffman loves golf but his love of beer usually trumps the golf.  Let me quickly describe Frank.  He is a large man who gets into the gym a couple of times per year whether he needs it or not.  He has a passion for tacos, chocolate, shots, and German beer.  Sometimes his passions get the best of him, like the time we went to see Robert Plant on Frank’s birthday.  We met up for pre-show drinks, which turned into numerous shots and soon he was hammered.  We eventually get to the theatre, but Frank did not have enough left in the tank as he was fast asleep in his seat a couple of songs into the concert.  Frank LOVES Led Zeppelin, but Plant proved to be too mellow for him that night as he nodded in and out the whole show, not fully awake until the encore.  I asked him, “WTF Frank?!  How could you pay $125 to sleep through an entire Robert Plant concert??”  He replied, “Well I didn’t know he was going to be playing lullabies all night.”  Frank is actually a pretty smart guy, but he makes mistakes like the rest of us.  Here is a good example:

One time at work he had been emailing his wife Sarah back and forth…nice husband-and-wife emails that as you know can sometimes get a little bit saucy.  While emailing Sarah however, Frank had also been emailing back and forth on a work issue with another workmate…a woman from the other side of the building in another department that he knew only through work emails.  Intending to wrap up her conversation with Frank, this other woman writes him:  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”  Getting confused by the two email conversations that he is simultaneously engaged in, and thinking that he is responding to his wife, Frank responds to this woman’s final email with a simple one-word answer:  “P*ssy.”  And then Frank logged off and went home.  This was on a Friday afternoon.  Not only was this email out there for the rest of that day and then the whole weekend, Frank also happened to have Monday and Tuesday off.  He comes back to work on Wednesday and was going through his old emails and deleting them when he happened upon this one.  (OH MY GOD!!)  He calls me and says, “Sneaks, I think I'm in real trouble this time.”  This woman does not get an apology email from Frank on Friday…not on Monday…not on Tuesday.  It is now Wednesday and the “P*ssy” email been out there since Friday!  The poor woman must have thought he meant it.  Holy crap!  Frank quickly emailed her an apology that Wednesday morning and she said she'd let it go, but he spent an entire tense day at his desk anyways, expecting every phone call or email to be from his boss with word of his firing. 

So anyways, when we golf Frank likes to play the front nine with a new beer on every hole.  Soon his already questionable swing degenerates into complete hopelessness.  It looks like the swing of an axe-murderer who has set his sights on killing the ball.  Here is a typical scenario for him teeing off on the par three 8^th hole:  Slam the rest of his beer from the 7^th hole.  Crack open a new beer and take a huge swig.  Grab his driver, ball, tee and slowly approach the tee box.  (The driver is his favorite club and he uses it on almost every hole, including the par 3’s.)  So using his driver as a crutch he leans down and puts his tee into the ground on a 45 degree angle.  Because he too is bent over on a 45 degree angle the tee looks perfectly straight up and down to him.  Then he stands up, retrieves the ball from his pocket, and bends down again to place the ball on the tee.  Of course the ball just rolls off the tee, over and over and over, until eventually I go and straighten it out for him. 

Then with eyes narrowed to slits and murder in his heart he backs up and eyes the ball as his mortal enemy.  He steps up, raising the club high above him in anticipation of crushing the offensive little white globe, and releases down in a murderous axe-swing of death.  If he happens to make contact with the ball, it occasionally will go screaming down the center of the fairway low and hard.  “Holy sh*t, nice shot Frank!” we all say.  But usually he tops it and it goes maybe 20 feet, or skips off to the right and hits the golf cart or the adjoining lake, or the ball just gets pounded into the ground and bounces straight back up.  After a few mulligans I’ll just tell him to drop his ball next to wherever mine landed and we move on.

It is important to note that every single shot by Frank is immediately followed by a volley of cursing…an extremely loud string of swear words that would make any sailor proud is a typical response to almost any swing while smashing his club repeatedly into the ground.  Or sometimes when the mood is right he just goes with a simple:  “Fuuuuuuck!” followed by 3 seconds of silence and then a:  "Goddammit!"  Besides the curious stares from adjoining tee boxes or fairways, there of course have been a few incidents.

One time we were on the 17^th tee, golfing with Mitch Manson and Ernie Hagen in one cart, and me and Frank in the other cart.  Frank, Ernie and I had already teed off and we were waiting on Mitch.  Ernie was sitting in the front cart, Frank was sitting in the cart behind him, and I was standing next to the carts as we all watched Mitch getting ready to tee off with his slow approach and numerous waggles.  Frank was of course wasted by now, out of beer, and getting impatient as he sensed the clubhouse full of beer was near.  Mitch was still waggling on the tee box when all of a sudden Frank lost it.  He couldn’t take it any more and yelled out, “Hurry up g*ddammit!” as he stomped down on the accelerator of our cart, mashing the pedal all the way to the floor.  Well the cart jumps up like a rocket and the front right tire is somehow propelled up and over the back left tire of Ernie’s cart and onto the actual cart itself!   “Whoa ho hey!” shouts a startled Ernie as the two carts were now one.  “Frank’s trying to kill Ernie!” I yelled out while Mitch and I ran over to help Ernie lift Frank’s cart off of his cart.  I am not sure Frank was even aware of what he had done as he just sat there waiting impatiently while tapping his toes.

Another time we were golfing with Mitch and Ernie again and we were heading to the 16^th hole to tee off.  Frank was pretty loaded by now, even for his standards.  When we pulled up to the tee box in our cart Frank mumbled that he had to pee.  We got out of the cart, I pointed to a port-a-pottie about 20 feet away, and I gave Frank a little push to send him in the right direction.  Me, Mitch and Ernie all teed off and then it was Frank’s turn.  “Where’s Frank?” said Mitch.  I motioned behind us to the port-a-pottie and then we all turned around to see what was keeping him.  Frank was not in the port-a-pottie.  He never quite made it.  Right next to the port-a-pottie was a large tree and Frank was standing next to the tree, leaning forward, balancing himself with the top of his head on the side of the tree, penis in hand, sleeping.  He must not have seen the port-a-pottie and decided to use the tree instead, and then fell asleep before he could put his friend away.  Of course there was a foursome at the adjoining tee box and one of the ladies had come over to use the port-a-pottie but was unsure about it with Frank standing there.  “Frank!”  we all yelled.  He awoke with a start, leaned back, put it away and walked back to tee up like nothing had happened while we were all rolling with laughter.

Why would you even want to golf with Frank you may be asking.  Well in my circle of friends who golf, none of us take ‘golf’ too seriously.  We are just out there to have fun with our friends, swill a couple of beers and get away from the real world for awhile.  Golfing with Frank can be frustrating at times as he staggers across your lie on the green, or he’s standing over a divot pounding it over and over deep into the fairway with his 5 iron while cursing violently and the group behind us watching in disbelief…but it is never boring golfing with him.  Plus Frank is a good guy, a good friend and a good father.  Despite his complaints you can tell that he has almost as much fun raising his numerous kids as he had making them.  And at least once a round he will actually make a great shot…then he’ll look up at you with a huge smile and say, “Isn’t this fun!”  That makes it all worthwhile.