The T. to I. Florida to New York.

They had to be real, if for no other reason than that nobody would bother to put fake ones there. But, they didn't move. Not at all. Not even their watery eyes blinked. The Troopers were real enough though. They didn't actually stop. They slowed. They admonished through cop speakers that it was illegal to hitch-hike on the Interstate. They also threatened arrest if they were still there when they returned. The threat lingered nicely in the stifled air and complimented the sight of the caged backseat and mounted shotgun gleaming like authorities best friend. The gators remained motionless in the ditchy swamp.

A beat up red convertible with South Carolina tags picked them up before the cops came back. They hopped in without using the doors and the driver said they were returning to South Carolina. But a couple hours later up around Jacksonville they were inexplicably dropped off at a gas station. Danny and Stevo watched them take the northbound I-95 on-ramp.

The monotony mounted. Two day to get from Daytona to Jacksonville and there they were. Still stuck in Florida. Might as well have been the same place as yesterday. It was of course, the same road, I-95 North. The pavement bubbled and stuck to their shoes. Reptiles still reclined in the reeds. The only palpable difference being that the cops actually stopped there.

They left the roadway, happy to do something different, even if it only meant walking down an on-ramp. A cracker-box, deep-porched shack was a convenience store. A couple of good ol' boys lounged, sipping beer, but otherwise motionless as alligators. It reminded them of the liquor store in Lake Charles by the highway that looked like a house, it was a house. And so was this place. "It makes for a short commute." suggested Dan. A couple of beers later, sinking in a swaybacked davenport and despair, Dan actually registered what he had been vacantly looking at in front of them, railroad tracks. They had been there an hour and no one had spoken. They even bought beers without words. It was close to eleven. After they broke the silence, the drunker good ol' boy responded, "Well hell yeah, there's a train station here. But it's too far to walk." With a deep satisfying swig, another beer was gone. It clinked in the old style wooden crate at his feet. He had finished one, discarded the bottle, gotten another, opened it, flicked the cap at a cat, missed, and savored the first frosty sip. Always the coldest. He accomplished all these things without moving anything more than his arms. "Thar is a bus though. Comes through eva day at four, stops right thar." He pointed with his almost empty bottle at a bench, roasted black and peeling, twenty feet away by the road. He took a last gulp, went through the whole get another beer thing again, missed the cat again and said, "Goes to the train station too."

At a quarter to four and three sheets to the wind Danny and Stevo said good bye to the one remaining boy. But he was out cold with bottle in hand. They went to the bench. To their surprise and delight a bus came rolling into sight at exactly four o clock. Sweet escape at last. They one-shouldered their packs and reached for their wallets. They had waited more than five hours for this moment. Really they had been trying to get to this moment for days, the moment when they knew for sure they were getting out of Florida. Take this bus to the train station, take a train to New York and be done with it. Then Steve told Dan to look quick. Dan looked in time to see the side of the bus. It took a right one block before reaching them and disappeared. Gone. Never to return. As Dan bent over laughing, Steve started swearing. And they both did this for several minutes.

Never take a fat mans word if he says it's too far to walk. The station was a mile and a half away. Even in their daze, disappointment and half drunkenness, they walked there with heavy packs in the heavy air in half an hour. Dan thought that was pretty funny too.

Of course the last train to New York had just left. The next one was several hours away. They had had enough sitting. They took a cab to the bars. They took another back to the station. Never tell a cabbie to take you to the train station so you can take a train to New York and never see him again and then ask him if he can get you any drugs. He can. He did. He said they were Quaaludes. They believed him and bought them. Maybe they were. They had never taken Quaaludes so how would they know. They were not druggies. They smoked when they skied. That's it.

Settled comfortably in the parlour car, they swallowed the pills with beer. A short time later they were chatting animatedly with a couple of cute city girls that were going to D.C. Steve was telling their story when his neck muscles and wrist muscles suddenly and simultaneously forgot how to work. Dan took his beer and replaced it with a cup of coffee. It didn't matter. He woke up hours later in his seat in a different car just in time to rubber-leg it to the bathroom. He mostly made it. He was in the bathroom. The door was closed. But those sleeping neck muscles made for lousy aim. With the contents of his stomach elsewhere he felt instantly better. He was even in a good mood mopping the bathroom floor with t.p.

They got off at Grand Central and decided to visit Bruce in New London before they flew to old London. They returned from Connecticut and Steve went to visit his parents up in Hilton. Dan went to Greenwich Village and made a new friend. They split up at Grand Central Station. They would meet up again in a few days. That sounded easy enough.

The T. to I. Miami/Naussau/Miami

"You boys lookin' ta' crew?" He was an odd looking sort with a Captain Kangaroo flair. The moustache was pure silver pomposity. Matching eyebrows danced independently and the mouth seemed to be trying to flee his face. It squirted left and right back and forth to its edges, unable to decide what to do next. But the eyeballs were piercing little tight blue rivets same color as the Carib aimed straight at the boys. They were young and dumb and dumbfounded. "Sorry, I say, are you boys looking to crew?" This question went searching for the first one through the heat waves above the gas rainbowed water. "Well no, we're just looking at boats." With this, the captain shrugged and walked away. The boys fought their way through their incomprehension enough to say, "What did he say?" They quickly decided it was worth finding out what the man was up to. A really big marina for small boats is nothing more than a unintended maze. It constitutes one hell of a place to try to find someone. Each catwalklike dock 45 degrees off behind bulkheads and zigzags away forever. But every one of these wooden forevers dead ends. It's like a contiguous looking plateau that suddenly yawns it's hidden canyon walls, dropping thousands of feet at a never imagined uncrossable void. The only recourse being a long circuitous backtrack around. Uncountable masts of varying height and color served to distract their search like a windy Bamboo forest. Ultimately he was easy enough to spot once they were on the right dock. Chief among his other oddities, he was inexplicably wearing long pants in the middle of the day in Miami in May. He saw them coming and smiled broadly under his silver broomy fan. "Either you boys ever sailed before?" He shot this question at them like a weapon. "No, never." said the smaller boy. "I did a month on a shrimper in the gulf." said Dan. Neither of the boys thought of asking the captain if he knew how to sail. It didn't cross their minds, yet. "Sailin' for Nassau tonight, I need a crew of two. Meet me here at ten." They did.

Thus decided, the boys made their way onto a city bus for the heart of the bureaucratic badlands of downtown. After an interminable government office waiting room wait, they fled triumphant to South Beach, Danny's brand new overnight passport in hand. Getting that passport being the only reason they were in Florida at all. They were on their way to Ireland . . . from Colorado. Luckily, the sun finally set behind the Art Deco hotels and bars. Between the tropical heat, the endless beers, the clandestine puffs and the topless girls on the beach, they could quite easily have forgotten that they were sailing to the Bahamas tonight. With little more than time and money, they boarded Captain Tom's boat at ten p.m. In between shifts at the helm, Danny and Steve-O didn't even have to suffer the indignity of sharing the bow. It was a catamaran. No, they sat across from each other at the apex of their own private bow waving. "I'm Jimmy Buffett." "No, I'm Jimmy Buffett." And they both were. Florida receded and tomorrow approached. It was an overnight voyage to Bimini. Flying fish flashed in the phosphorescence and they steered by the stars. Steve was amazed that people could actually do that.

"You boys sit tight. I'll land 'er." They sidled up to a tiny rocking dock. Suddenly Captain Tom figured out how to smash his boat right into it. The noise was deafening. Unperturbed, Captain Tom tied off to the still quivering structure. He suggested the boys go explore the island. They happily abliged. He jauntily opened a can of boat Bondo and prepared to fix the damage as if this was normal. Black faces as black as the sand was white stared out from what looked like, and they hoped was, a bar. It was. It was dark and cool and plain inside. It felt safe, and served beer. This place was the most interesting authentic thing Steve had ever seen. It was so real it should have been fake. A few days earlier they had tripped around Disney World. Who's to say what's really real? Danny had had the misfortune of actually working there one desperate summer before he escaped Orlando. They did the behind the scenes, no public access, employees only tour. They ate no cotton candy. They didn't shake Mickey's hand. Considering the little pieces of paper they had eaten, it was a good thing they stayed off the rides. The bar could well have been a feature in some 'Caribbean World' exhibit, sand floor, ratty three bladed rattan fan, walls lashed together from local pulp, complete with actors, ragged and dread locked, playing their parts like a ethnic Williamsburg. They refreshed with Red Stripe and ate Conch. They joined the others at the window and watched the captain Bondo his cracks. Watching since the crash shattered their torpor, they had seen Dan and Steve hastily disembark. They welcomed them openly to the bar. The incident served as an ice breaker. By the way they had hurried away, the locals correctly deduced that they were mere hitch-hikers and blamed them not for the damage done to their only dock.

Next a.m., Captain Tom fractured the quiet again. The motor flared loud because he started it instead of unfurling sails. They had motored the entire first leg. If fact, Dan and Steve were destined never to see the sails unfurled. They began to pull away. The skeletal dock revealed its damage but Captain Tom never saw it. He was too busy not seeing the slow fish-tailing motion he was putting his boat into. Apparently he never saw the other boat either. "We're gonna hit that boat." Dan and Steve nodded in unbelieving agreement. Shaking their heads no, but thinking, yes we are, they hit it. The ladder on the stern ripped partially away. It hung useless above the water in the once again interrupted quiet. The man in his undies, rightly screaming obscenities, stood shaking his fists. He became smaller and quieter as Tom serenely motored away. Dan and Steve looked at the man and each other. They looked at Tom but Tom never looked. They hadn't even had enough time to yell apologies and that they were just hitch-hikers before it was over and they were out of there. There was one dock and one boat. Captain Tom had managed to hit everything. There was nothing to be done but roll two big ones and return to their private bows and wonder if they really were Jimmy Buffett. They weren't. But, Captain Tom was no longer Captain Tom either. He wasn't even Captain Kangaroo. His new moniker struck them both so hard, they could have gone overboard. For the rest of the trip, to his face, because there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it because it was so indisputably true, he was from from the last crash forward forever referred to by his finally reveiled secret super hero identity . . . Captain Crunch.

Away they motored off the shelf into deeper blue. The sails remained securely lashed to the mast. The seas remained calm. Captain Crunch had built this boat himself. The table in the cabin below deck was centered squarely between the hulls. Apparently he had opted for a flat bottom design between the hulls under the table. For though there were virtually no waves (or wind), nothing, and I mean nothing, would stay on the table. The table shuddered violently with every little love tapped wave. The racket was a dull but constant durge to bad design. It was like a skipping c.d. at half volume on a boom box from hell. Steve slept on deck, suffering spray and salt and sunburn.

It had become obvious that Captain Crunch didn't much care for Dan. Steve steered his three hour shift. Dan sailed his three and turned it over to the captain. Captain Crunch went off crazy, looking so much like his namesake on the cereal box that Dan and Steve almost went overboard again, for laughing this time. He hopped around like some twisted morph of the captains, Tom, Crunch and Kangaroo. Words spurted out through spittle like the flying fish in the spray. Something about Danny steering us off course slowly coalesced out of the fragmented sentences. He swung the wheel as if to suggest that if he hadn't done it at that very moment with all the gusto his skinny arms with the shrivelled 'Anchors Away' tattoo could muster, they would have all died instantly. He rolled open charts. Dan and Steve went back to their bows. Steve had given Dan his heading. They had been sailing off course for six hours not three. They were definitely not Jimmy Buffett and they wondered where the Bermuda Triangle might be. There was no telling Captain Crunch so they enjoyed their situation and casually scanned the horizon. Maybe it was the all too often ignorant luck that men like these sometimes have or his time in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but to their everlasting amazement and gratitude, Captain Crunch had done it. Though it took many extra hours, there it was, land ho! A faint little scrape of land punctured the horizon. It deflated their lost-at-sea epic. It became a mere bumbling adventure again. Captain Crunches high fives seemed a bit hysterical and overly exuberant. They left Dan and Steve with the distinctly disconcerting impression that Captain Crunch might not have known if they were ever going to see land again either. No matter, it was Nassau. Even a mile or so out, they could tell that much. Dan and Steve returned to their bows and were Jimmy Buffett again. Captain Crunch remained Captain Crunch. The world slowed down. It got quiet. At first, it seemed a manifestation of their shared sense of relief, but this was no emotional hallucination. The world had slowed down. It was quiet. The motor had quit. They were dead in the water. You need wind to sail. You need gas to motor sail. There was no wind. While steering off course for who knows how long in what kind of crazy detour they had, of course, been using gas. They had been on this thirty footer for fourteen hours. They should have landed long ago. They were dead in the water. God damn it, they were not Jimmy Buffett.

An hour and a half later, Steve was excitedly leaning over the heaving bow retrieving a Jerri can from the coast guard. With not an inkling of boarding them and searching, the coast guard rapidly departed with the empty can. They were obviously not smugglers. Moving again, they motored toward the hectic harbor. This was no Bimini. Seaplanes and windsurfers, ships and sloops, pleasure craft pulling skiers, jet skis and Sunfish, ocean liners and freighters and cruise ships and, Jesus Christ, even snorkelers all frolicked between them and safe passage. It would take weeks to crash into everything there.

A man with a bull horn barked them their slip number. Slip number? After Bimini, that was a very scary concept indeed. Captain Crunch didn't say anything about "You boys just sit tight . . . " He didn't have to, they were. They saw their designated sliver of water ahead in this very busy, mostly full, floating parking lot. On the port side stood a high solid concrete dock. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. To starboard was an equally solid looking gleaming white yacht. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. It was so high out of the water that it wasn't until later they noticed all the formally dressed people mingling up there, cocktails in hand. This time, it was an emotional hallucination as the world slowed down and got quiet. It stood perfectly still. You could have heard ice cubes tinkling in martini glasses up on that far distant deck. The little Cat inched for its slip. Nothing was falling off the table down below. Time left and, it was done. The Captain of Crunch hit nothing, except his palm to his forehead with barely concealed relief. He couldn't get off the boat fast enough. "The key's right there, stay as long as you like." That said, he strode off the dock carrying a folding lawn chair some unmarked box Danny and Steve O hadn't seen before. The captain joined the throngs and was gone. They never saw him again. They stayed on his boat a few nights. They ate at the free buffets at the casinos and tried to empty the bag. They couldn't do it. They abandoned it and its accoutrements under a plunger in the restroom at the airport. They sea-planed it to Miami. They Amtraked to Orlando. They tried to hitch to New York from Daytona. Two days later having only made Jacksonville, they Amtraked it to the Big Apple and flew to London. They never did decide if they were Jimmy Buffet. They wondered about that unmarked box. Had they been smugglers? In one of his songs, Buffett said he had been.

Not Normal NORBA Nationals, the Downhill.

And then there is the Downhill. The 4 crossers might get hurt more but the downhillers are not right. Although often they are one in the same. Cross countriers typically only do cross country, maybe some do the short track. Short track being a grueling dirt criterium a half hour long. You get points for your position each time around the track. When the half hour is up there are four more laps. Basically it's an half hour sprint followed by four laps going even harder. Lots of lovely puking and threatening exhaustion at the finish. But the downhillers and 4 crossers do the crash and burn and break bones events. I've decided the difference is that cross countriers are into pain where as downhillers are into injuries.

Lonely Planet

He waved somewhat maniacally with the frustration that only incessant insects can bring. The flies were not deterred or dissuaded. They dive bombed the plate like seagulls around a fishing boat. It was hunger and no other choices that had brought him in here at all. It didn't look like much of a restaurant and, by that point of the trip, he had become a pretty good judge. The food was an exercise in necessity. He was far enough south to have dropped off the Altiplano, but not yet far enough to benefit from the European influences of northern Argentina. Having partially shrugged off the Gringo Trail, he was at once happy and uncomfortable. Hardened salt flats that you couldn't really get to and diminishing elevations, populations and prices were the attraction. Basking in the latter two, he none the less coveted the higher climes he had left behind. Cold at night equals no bugs. He could only imagine the battalions of backward kneed flamingos said to inhabit the relentless salt flats in numbers that complemented its eternal expanses. He had not enough time to try to get that far. The flies tried to die a gluttonous death and put his world weary self image and patience to the test.

He flash backed to a time a thousand years before when he had angrily reclaimed his tattered seat on a three day, third class trip across the Chihuahua Desert. It was the second day of the first time he had ever been in the third world. He didn't speak Spanish. He never once got off the train for fear of it leaving without him. The day before he had barely managed to buy a few tamales and liquados through a broken window as the train pulled away. He was half starved and fully dehydrated. It was six a.m. and he was sleep deprived. The old wrinkled Mestiza he woke up was stooped and four and a half feet tall. She was laden with all manner of third world essentials including chickens and a child. To his eternal wannabe world traveler shame, he insisted she vacate his seat. She, sad-eyed and exhausted, moved off and stood. He, hard-hearted and exhausted, sat down and slumped. Up a moment later, he couldn't do it. She refused his offer. It went vacant but a short time. He and the old woman stood at opposing ends of the car, all the rattling way to Mexico City. She shunned his every attempt at apology, preferring instead to let him sink in self loathing. And sink he did. He sunk as deep as that train sunk into Mexico.

He slapped himself in the head ostensibly chasing a fly but effectively bringing himself back from Mexico to Bolivia. He was as likely to make contact with a fly as you are of touching a single student in a school of fish. No, his frantic waving only managed to garner the unwanted attention of three men across the room at the single other occupied table. They had sauntered in, tightly whispering, a few minutes after he had sat down. They glanced his way, then away. He instinctively averted his eyes. Out in the wide world, it's best to leave some encounters unencountered. Avoidance, though never desirable, is occasionally the correct tactic. He'd already ordered and in fact the hostess/waitress/cook/dishwasher/cashier/owner was serving him as they entered. She didn't make eye contact with them either. They used the pretence of misunderstanding the waving as an invite. One of them approached. The man wasn't obviously menacing, he didn't lean hard on the wooden table and stare. Though neither did he smile. The man barked out, slightly aggressively one word . . . 'passport.' Looking up from his fly spotted meal, he replied, 'What for?' 'Passport, por favor.' He stood up as if maybe to get his passport out of a pocket but stopped short. Acting as brave as he thought he could, he looked eye level at this low key demanding man and asked in Spanish, 'Who are you?' The other two men began to rise but he sat them back down with a palm of his hand. The man announced that he was the police and wanted the passport. The Lonely Planet lay open on the table. He had read what he could before arriving. He was finishing the section on Sucre when the men had entered. This city was known for the earlier mentioned things but there was also a passport scam that for some reason was more prevalent here than other places. Even the most ignorant traveler knows not to let go of your passport easily. The events unfolding at the table were textbook passport scam, if you were consider Lonely Planet a textbook. The man and the other men were not wearing uniforms or any identifying markings. The book mentioned that some times it is the police pulling this scam. The man became a bit more menacing with the ticking clock in the music less room. With much better Spanish than he had had in Mexico he said, 'If you are the police, identification please.' He wasn't fluent and never would be. He knew though that he had said 'identification please' correctly. The man's friends did join him then. The proprietress intervened and scolded these big men back to their table. Flies no longer a nuisance, he finished his meal, paid, tipped large and thanked the woman profusely. She modestly accepted this gratitude as the three men rapidly got up and exited before he could. They managed with her broken English and his busted up Spanish to communicate. They indeed were the police. But, no matter, he had done the right thing. It's not such a big thing from police to prisoner here, she smiled. Stepping out into the street, the men were gone. Feeling like a savvy world citizen again, he brazenly spent a few more days in Sucre. He avoided the police station. He always had a good reason to go the other way. His curiosity as to why a crowd might be gathering up ahead was easily quelled by his desire not to see the men again. And he almost didn't.

The bus started moving, customarily behind schedule, but came to a stop a couple blocks later. He looked out the window and there they were. His world traveler self image took a dive like the flies at his food. This time they were wearing uniforms, thus eliminating any lingering doubt that the woman at the restaurant might have been lying. He lowered himself halfway down the seat, halfway down the aisle, hidden behind his book and thankful for his window seat. He had a brand new appreciation for the gruff character who only moments before had unceremoniously flopped down in the seat next to him. The men were wearing shades and hats and clubs and guns. The man, the man that came over to the table first, flanked his men around the bus with a gun-toting gesture. They might as well have been banditos brandishing rifles with cartridge belts crisscrossing their chests. The man, the very man, the same man, the boss man, boarded the bus and walked halfway down the aisle. Completely menacingly now, the man spotted who he was looking for and violently escorted him off. The door closed and the bus lurched away, chasing other peoples dust. It spun off down the street, taking its noise with it. Smoke and dirt merged and swirled. It made its very own grey paisley eddies.

He stood at the back window. His stomach churned as the air churned. The spinning gritty air quickly obscuring the image of the man and the men doing whatever it was they were doing to their detainee. He shut his eyes because it wasn't obscuring fast enough. He sighed relief. He returned to his seat and his Lonely Planet guide. The seat next to him was empty as an unanswered question. It went vacant but a short time.

NORBA Nationals

The NORBA Nationals came to Snowmass last week. This is '4-cross', four racers at a time on a bermed, bumped out, table topped track. More trauma happens here than any other event. But the downhill is scarier, because I'm the guy that gets to run over when they crash and make sure they are alive. So far they always have been.