SuperJanitor

A number of years ago, when I was both still a kid and living in New Jersey, my family and I went on a day trip to Atlantic City. The actual number of times I’ve been to that city I can count on one hand, it was kind of out of our way. There isn’t a lot that I can recall about the place, since as a kid my mind was probably elsewhere, and not concerned with committing my particular experiences to memory. But it is odd, what you end up remembering from long lost days many years ago.

Walking on the boardwalk, I was earnestly more enamored with the ocean than any cheap thrills the boardwalk might have had to offer. The ocean is free, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, is not. It was, of course, an overcast, rainy day that day, which by no means kept people from the city. It just meant those people who were without umbrellas were huddled under the awnings of all the tourist traps, or lingering in the lobbies of the casinos. We made our way through all the various stores, taking in all the sights and smells the boardwalk had to offer. I only remember but snippets of what I saw that day, until the end of the day was nearing. We we probably just taking a break from walking when we positioned ourselves outside a strip of stores to rest for a bit. The building behind where we were standing had multiple individual businesses inside it, so they could be inside, shielded away from the elements.

I remember standing in the corner formed by the building and the railing the protruded out of it, just watching the people walk by when the door into the building opens. Two people on stilts duck down to walk out of the regular sized door and shuffle way toward the boardwalk. It was obviously a man and a woman, since one was dressed in a dark blue outfit, the other in a shade of pink. It was also obvious that they were employees of one of the businesses inside, whose job it was to hand out flyers. What was not obvious to me, at that point in time, was what would happen next. Keep in mind it had been raining off and on all day, it was overcast, the sun was not out, and the fact that the boardwalk is in very close proximity to the ocean and it all adds up to some very slippery planks of wood.

The pair on stilts saunter out to the boardwalk, flyers in hand. They probably seem taller to me in retrospect because I was a kid back then, I was shorter, and everything looks bigger when you are a kid. But nevertheless the man on the stilts made a false move, which was stepping on the boardwalk to begin with. I can see it in my mind in slow motion. He puts his right foot out on the wood of the boardwalk and in the instant he begins to put any of his weight on it, the tiny stilt-foot slips out from underneath him, which in turn sends his stilt-leg flying into the air soon followed by his other stilt-leg and then with the rest of his body. The oddly proportioned man hits the boardwalk with a mighty thud, kind of like if you dropped 160 pounds of dead weight from six or seven feet up. He lays with his back on the boardwalk, the flyers in his hand, a causality of his fall, lay stuck on the wet boardwalk, which is probably where they would have ended up anyway, so it’s not like his didn’t do his job anyway. The weird thing is, I don’t remember seeing a single flyer that hadn’t landed face down, so I have no idea who they represented or what they were trying to sell.

The woman on stilts tries to bend down to see if he is alright, it’s difficult for her because she is, after all, still on stilts. She says a few words to him as best she can, all the while trying not to replicate what he just did. A few seconds later, she heads inside, most likely to alert whomever she works for, and I don’t see her again. I don’t quite remember how the next series of events unfolded, but I’m pretty sure the guy got himself sitting up, enough to remove his stilts anyway. I watched as he hobbled himself back inside where, just minutes before, he had come from.

I don’t remember how old I was that day, what time of year it was, or really who all was with me. I do remember a guy on stilts falling down though, and that’s fine with me.

I have been planning a trip up to New Jersey for a little while now, at least a few months. It has been three and a half years since I was last there, and as long since I’ve seen my family and friends who live in that area. To clarify, I grew up in the state of New Jersey, residing primarily in the most northern county in the state for seventeen years of my life.

So now, after having traveled more than halfway across the country, and even managing to make it to the west coast in two different states, as well as living in two different states in the South, and two different cities in the extreme East and West ends of one of the states, it is time for me to return, at least for a while, to what I remember, and still regard, as home.

Suffice it to say that this trip has been greatly anticipated by me, and all the pieces just fell into place for this time of year. However, for all my planning and scheming, there is one thing I have no control over: the weather. This past Sunday, the temperature was in the sixties. It was warm, balmy, just a great Sunday afternoon. Enter Monday. Monday a cold front moved in, and with it came twenty and thirty degree temperatures, and ice. Freezing rain and sleet covered most of the Plano area where I was, and where I was driving.

I had left at around 8:30 that night to go buy a few last minute things and fill up on gas before I left on my long drive to New Jersey, and when I walked out, my windshields had been lightly coated with ice, which was clearly rain that had happened to freeze in the low temperatures. But I got in my car, warmed it up, had to run the defroster on both ends of the car for a while, and headed out. My first  job was to wihdraw some money to take with me, so I went to the bank, which was the opposite direction of the wal*mart, where I went next. I didn’t have to travel too far down the road before it started to rain, and even shorter still before that rain became sleet.

By the time I got to Coit road, the roads were blanketed with a thin sheet of granulated ice, and it only got worse the more South I went. Now it wasn’t bad to the point that driving slow couldn’t let you still get around, but I did slide around a bit, especially in the parking lot. Anyway, I did what I needed to, got my map and my gas, everything was glazed over with ice.

The moral of the story is why now? When time is of the essence, I am after all working with a very limited time frame, especially since it will take me three days to complete the drive to get there, and another three to drive back. Well regardless, I was supposed to leave today, but as it turns out, it wasn’t meant to happen. So tomorrow it is. I’m not sure how much updating I’ll be doing while I’m away, so I’ll post here a rough itinerary for you.

Wednesday December 17th – Leave Plano, TX and arrive in Nashville, TN

Thursday December 18th – Leave Nashville, TN and travel to somewhere between there and New Jersey.

Friday December 19th – Arrive at my destiation in New Jersey.

Saturday December 20th – Relax.

Sunday December 21st – I will be traveling into New York City with my uncle to visit my aunt and see Blue Man Group.

Monday December 22nd – Free day.

Tuesday December 23rd – My 22nd birthday is this day. :)

Wednesday December 24th – Christmas Eve.

Thursday December 25th – Christmas Day.

Friday December 26th – I will again travel into New York City, except this time I will be staying a few days.

Saturday December 27th – Go walkabout in NYC.

Sunday December 28th – More walkabout.

Monday December 29th – Still walkabouting.

Tuesday December 30th – Check out of the hotel I will be staying in, I will be going back to Hawthorne on this day, possibly.

Wednesday December 31st – The last day of the year, New Year’s Eve, most likely I will spend this day with my grandmother.

Thursday January 1st, 2009 – Leave Hawthorne, NJ and head a little farther north, to where I lived before we moved, and hang out there for the remainder of the time I have.

Thursday January 8th 2009 – I will most likely leave this day, and begin the trip back to Texas, taking the same route I took to get there. Possibly spend the weekend with my uncle and aunt in Tennessee.

Monday January 12th 2009 – Arrive back in Texas just in time for the new semester to start.

And there you have it folks.

Now that the fulfillments of the class I started this blog for are complete, the immediate question is raised: what to do with it now? In what, if any, direction should I take this blog? I should probably rule out the possibility of shutting it down, at least for the time being. I feel like there is still quite a lot of life left here, and by no means am I as a person suddenly stopping, so there will always be something to write about.

I plan to write about some subjects I didn’t get around to during the Fall semester. And while I still plan on using it as an outlet of my personal musings and observations, I’d like to write more about art. Over the past months, I mainly discussed my art creation here, on my DeviantArt site, since it felt like that was the natural place for it. But there is slightly more discussion going on here, or at least the discussion is more openly inviting here, it seems. Anyway, I’d like to put down on paper (or the electronic equivalent) some ideas I’ve been mulling over, to see what my readers think. And, being in the ATEC program, I think I could reach some talented people in the field with some of these ideas. I’ve proved that it doesn’t take much to cultivate, although meager it may be, a reader base. I haven’t had a day without a page view (and at the unlikeliest of times, tens of page views in a day) since mid October.

So I will continue, mostly for my sake. I have found an almost necessary avenue to express myself. It just so happens it’s a blog, but previously this expression was manifested in a variety of ways, and perhaps in the future, it will evolve once again.  I enjoy the writing I do, although I never fancied myself an artist with words, and hardly entertain myself with the idea now, I hope my gentle readers have enjoyed the time they spent with me.

In one short week I will be en route to the state of New Jersey. Upon completion of my final final, on the 15th of December, I will be free of this semester, and the next day I will depart. So in the very near future, expect to find (though I make no promises about the frequency of updates) an account of my travels halfway across this country, driving solo.

But right now, I sit in quiet reflection, wondering what the future holds. Whatever it may be, you’re welcome to join me in it.