long long long long

Holy son of a monkey! It's been a long time race fans. The G has been having a crazy, crazy time over the last couple months.

Allow me to give you a rundown of where I have been and what I have been doing.

AFTER Boise (previous post), I went to Philly to see one of our best reps. We cruised all over the place from Philly to Baltimore to Hoboken and then back to Philly. We stopped to see one of our favorite architects and the job he has been working on at his firm's headquarters. The substructure alone was riveting. The rep is as big of fan of architecture as I am. Not to mention other things. He invited me to stay an extra day (Saturday) and promised a couple of very cool things. He was right on the old monkey.

First, on Friday night, we went to see his daughter play at an open air restaurant. I won't tell you that she was fantastic, she wasn't. She was over the top fantastic! I won't tell you her name, but if you ever hear an artist with the first name of Jersey (possibly spelled with a "z"), you will know who I was talking about. The next day we went to the Barnes Foundation which has some of the best art in one of the nicest collections in the country. I can not recommend it high enough for all of you impressionist fans. That night he snagged a couple of tickets to Mark Knopfler -one of my favorite artists of all time. (Think Sultans of Swing more than the infamous MTV song when he fronted Dire Straights.) http://www.markknopfler.com/ It was a cool respite from the road. And I really enjoyed the Mann Center. (Not my photo below-blatant rip-off of the Mann site.) Thanks, MJ.

After Philly, it was off to the great white coast of Palm Beach and West Palm Beach for a regional AIA show with one of the reps. I really dig her and her husband. In spite of being hit by the hard times that have hit the five counties from WPB to Miami, they keep their humor about them and know how to relax. After a beautiful meal at a local restaurant, we headed back to their ocean front condo. We started talking cars. The reps husband (Pete) asked me if I liked older muscle cars. Um... affirmative, 455 CI with a 4-speed Hurst -like the one I used to own -wrapped in the shell of a 1975 Trans Am. Yeah! "Wait here," he said as he left me standing in the condo lobby. The rep retired upstairs as her husband vanished around a corner. The doormen looked at me as if they were looking at the whitest and most pale man they have ever seen. Lucky for them, they were right.

All of a sudden, THROUGH THE GLASS, I heard the loud rumble of a loud car. Bup-Bup-Bup-Bup. I turned to look out the window and saw a beautiful GT Clone Mustang of a 1966 vintage. Pete waved me out. I climbed in and said some sort of expletive. "Yeah," he said, "I bore her out. She's real fast." And with that he dropped the hammer. We flew into WPB. Then he stopped the car at a gas station and said, "Your turn." Well, slap me sideways and wipe the smile off my face. I was all for this piece of news. He yelled over the roar as I broke numerous laws heading back to the beach, "Speed shift it." I pseudo-speed shifted it because I was afraid of pegging the tach into the red line. "No, no, no," he yelled. "Pull over." Yes, sir. I pulled over and we switched sides. "You can't blow this engine," he said. And to prove it he set a new Palm Beach land record down a side street. We rounded a corner and he yelled, "We have to get off the streets now. The cops have surely been called." We rolled into his underground garage and parked across from a rolls. A rolls! I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING WITH MY TIME.
Thanks, Pete and Jean.

From WPB, the following week found me in Phoenix with one of the nicest reps in the business. This, of course, is where things started going sideways. It always does when you are hanging out with super nice people. I did get a great deal at the Hilton Squaw Peak Resort (or something like that) due to the off season (read "HOT!") timing of my trip.

About the second or third morning of the trip, I received a call from Mrs. G. Mrs. G, as I write this, is on modified bed rest with the newest little G still resting in the proverbial oven -he is due any day. So, when I answered the phone, I wasn't ready for the sailor drunk slurring of words that came out of the phone. She was in the hospital. Nobody knew what was wrong at that time, but something was definitely wrong. The rep showed up at this point -I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel swilling coffee. I got off the phone and made hasty excuses for ditching our plans and then ran back to my room for a quick pack and a mad dash to the airport. (Sorry, Dan H.)

Turns out that the old female body has a propensity to produce kidney stones when preggers. Or, at least it did in the case of my wife. By the time I arrived she found out what was going on. She told me that she had been crying and ralphing all over the place when this went down and that she would rather deliver babies over a kidney stone any day. I nodded sagely and stroked her hand and told her that everything would be all right.

A week or two later I was out on a pseudo-date with the now free from stone and pain Mrs. G. Suddenly I felt the need to ...um ...use the restroom. We went home because the G man suffers from a strong fear of pooping on rarely cleaned public toilets. (Wow! Good thing I don't travel a lot.) Long story short, I ended up on the floor in our bedroom two hours later writhing in pain from, yep, you guessed it, kidney stones. I didn't know that they were kidney stones at the time, but the next day at the local doc-in-a-box, I found out. The funny part was when they asked for a specimen. I went to the "room" and almost fell over laughing. Why? I looked over at the metal box for the specimen sample. I finished up and decided the only appropriate thing to write on the bottle was "IGOR."

Thanks to the Chi-town rep, Jim for the pre-season Bears game the week that preceded this Friday night discovery that I have been married way too long -my wife and I are suffering the same ailments. What's next. "Congrats, Mr. G! You're the first cowboy to get knocked up. You will be famous."

I really dig Chicago, even though it took me a long, long time to get over the summer of 1986 that I spent at Great Mistakes Naval Boot Camp North of the great city. For years, I would get a sinking feeling in my gut whenever I got near the Windy City. All this time I thought it was a visceral thing revolting against dark images of the longest summer of my life. Turns out it was kidney stones. "Your left, your left, your left, right, left kidney. Your left, your left, your right..." I told my wife, when we finally went in to the doctor, "At least I didn't puke and cry like a pussy." She laughed. She laughed harder a week later when I disgorged all over the grass of the old employer's North American HQ. "Baby come get me! One of the colony residents is trying to escape!" At least I didn't cry ...yet.

The saga isn't over. I have stones much worse than my wife did. She had one. And I indeed have a flippin' colony. Multiple visits and mucho quid to the old doc and it is still not over. FUN! But hey, race fans! You didn't come here to hear me bitch and moan about stones or the fact that I have renamed my manhood "Frightened Turtle, Hidden Stent."

Let's move on, shall we?

Two weeks later, I went to Boston and the Big Apple with the boss. Nothing like a road show with the man. WoW! I was heavily medicated, so I am sure that his overall opinion of me skyrocketed through the roof. I was in this gig due to the fact that my old East German boss split -flew the coop and went into the rep business. His boss is now my boss. Overall, though, it was a pretty pleasant gig. We took the train from Bean Town to the Big Apple. Nice way to fly. Then we ended up taking trains to the valley above the city. We called upon architects and installers. COOL! I dig trains. Not in the plywood-sheet-in-the-basement-pretending-like-I-am-three way, but in the kick-back-and-drink-a-drink-as-the-world-goes-by way. My favorite train ride is the Empire Builder from Fargo, North Dakota to Portland, Oregon. Beautiful ride. The trip was fine even though I was prone to the old 30,000 mile stare and slight drooling from time to time thanks to the Endocet and other meds for the stones. Thanks, Bill, Warren and Norbert for not nudging one another and saying things like, "Hey, hey! Check it out. He's going to drool again."

After a good three weeks or so after the Boston/NYC trip, I ended up in Birmingham, Alabama. IF you go... and I think you should ... check out the Hot and Hot Fish Club. Great food. Although the drunk middle aged woman who hit on me while I dined outside with our rep and his lovely wife, provided a little too much entertainment. I highly suggest you check out this restaurant. Birmingham is cool. Check out one of my first posts way back when.

After din-din, the rep's wife took off in her car (she met us there) and we headed back towards the Hampton Inn I was staying at. The rep suggested that I get a skyline type of view of the city and took me up near Vulcan park. (again, see the earlier post). I told him that I was going to put the drive in the old blog. "We had a nice meal and then our rep took me for a romantic drive." Just as a quick note... I don't play for that team, pal. Neither does he. Thanks, Randy.

I am going to stop here... it's getting late in Denver... where I am now and tomorrow is coming early. We can pick this up in a day, or week or a couple of months. However, I do promise... More later.

Thanks for hanging in there...

_G

(Sorry. No disclosure tonight. The old melon is fried from this mile high air.)