Road Mania 1986
Warning today's blog is fairly brutal....
It was in Spring (I believe) in 1986 when I was told in no uncertain terms that I would not have a place to live come the beginning of summer.
I was living in SF at the time and living with my Mom (yea at age 25), staying in brother Greg's room while he was finishing at UC Irvine. With him coming home from college I had to find new digs.
At that time frankly my life was in the shitter. I don't remember what I was doing for work, maybe not anything. My girlfriend had kicked me out, and I was hanging out with a guy whom did nothing for motivation. We drank a lot, not drunks mind you, but evenings usually ended up playing dice, drinking tequila and talking (he was very bright).
I had failed at my attempt to be a stockbroker with Dean-Whitter-Kenmore having been let go AFTER passing my Federal exams. The manager didn't like me.... In addition I had pissed off enough friends that had come back to the bay area from my Pitzer days that I had few "old" friends left in the Bay Area.
I should mention here however that ONE friend I made during my post Pitzer days in SF is still one of my closest, if not closest buddy. In fact a few years ago I was asked to be Joe’s best man at his wedding. I cherish this friendship very much.
MW was dating a Professor of Economics at the time and he advised me that when his life was not working on all eight cylinders, a change of geography always worked. Dad always wanted me to move to the East Coast, so he suggested I take him up on it.
So I gave all my adolescent furniture to the Goodwill. Gave the rest of my junk away except my books and records, which I stored at the aforementioned MW’s boyfriend's house. Then I packed up my tapes into my 1967 Yellow VW 111 Bug and drove cross-country.
I took five days for me to go from San Francisco to Philadelphia. At that point I stopped for two weeks at an old friend's house from Jr. High (she had moved out to the East Coast in 9th grade - Kerstin Peterson). I finally landed in Old Greenwich CT at my Dad’s house, but this a story for another time.
Since the VW was an oil cooled engine and it was July when I finally set off, I was very concerned about overheating, so I had planned to drive 4 hours in the am, stop in the heat of the day, and drive four hours in the evening.
So why bring all this up? Good question.
Yesterday I found the mini cassette tape of the trip. It had 40 min of me being very manic, most of it dictated on and off during the first “day's” drive. For reasons still unbeknown to myself, I drove from 2pm from Sacrament where I had lunch with my Great Aunt Birdie, all the way through the Nevada Desert, to just outside of Salt Lake City the next morning.
So today I mastered the 40 min of Mike rambling into his mini cassette recorder to an audio CDRW on my stand-alone CD burner. Then I ripped it to my computer and fixed the gaps and such with Goldwave, then cut it up into meaningful "tracks" on CDWave and burned it to CDR. Hopefully this record will last now that it is on a more durable CDR. Someday I will give a copy to Alexander when he is old enough to appreciate it.
It was quite a hoot listening to myself. As I said I am quite manic on the tape, riffing and rambling on silly things I see on the road as well as on whatever popped up in my addled brain at the time.
So that's what I did today, well part of it.....
Warning today's blog is fairly brutal....
It was in Spring (I believe) in 1986 when I was told in no uncertain terms that I would not have a place to live come the beginning of summer.
I was living in SF at the time and living with my Mom (yea at age 25), staying in brother Greg's room while he was finishing at UC Irvine. With him coming home from college I had to find new digs.
At that time frankly my life was in the shitter. I don't remember what I was doing for work, maybe not anything. My girlfriend had kicked me out, and I was hanging out with a guy whom did nothing for motivation. We drank a lot, not drunks mind you, but evenings usually ended up playing dice, drinking tequila and talking (he was very bright).
I had failed at my attempt to be a stockbroker with Dean-Whitter-Kenmore having been let go AFTER passing my Federal exams. The manager didn't like me.... In addition I had pissed off enough friends that had come back to the bay area from my Pitzer days that I had few "old" friends left in the Bay Area.
I should mention here however that ONE friend I made during my post Pitzer days in SF is still one of my closest, if not closest buddy. In fact a few years ago I was asked to be Joe’s best man at his wedding. I cherish this friendship very much.
MW was dating a Professor of Economics at the time and he advised me that when his life was not working on all eight cylinders, a change of geography always worked. Dad always wanted me to move to the East Coast, so he suggested I take him up on it.
So I gave all my adolescent furniture to the Goodwill. Gave the rest of my junk away except my books and records, which I stored at the aforementioned MW’s boyfriend's house. Then I packed up my tapes into my 1967 Yellow VW 111 Bug and drove cross-country.
I took five days for me to go from San Francisco to Philadelphia. At that point I stopped for two weeks at an old friend's house from Jr. High (she had moved out to the East Coast in 9th grade - Kerstin Peterson). I finally landed in Old Greenwich CT at my Dad’s house, but this a story for another time.
Since the VW was an oil cooled engine and it was July when I finally set off, I was very concerned about overheating, so I had planned to drive 4 hours in the am, stop in the heat of the day, and drive four hours in the evening.
So why bring all this up? Good question.
Yesterday I found the mini cassette tape of the trip. It had 40 min of me being very manic, most of it dictated on and off during the first “day's” drive. For reasons still unbeknown to myself, I drove from 2pm from Sacrament where I had lunch with my Great Aunt Birdie, all the way through the Nevada Desert, to just outside of Salt Lake City the next morning.
So today I mastered the 40 min of Mike rambling into his mini cassette recorder to an audio CDRW on my stand-alone CD burner. Then I ripped it to my computer and fixed the gaps and such with Goldwave, then cut it up into meaningful "tracks" on CDWave and burned it to CDR. Hopefully this record will last now that it is on a more durable CDR. Someday I will give a copy to Alexander when he is old enough to appreciate it.
It was quite a hoot listening to myself. As I said I am quite manic on the tape, riffing and rambling on silly things I see on the road as well as on whatever popped up in my addled brain at the time.
So that's what I did today, well part of it.....
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