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.

At present most of the heavy rain has passed. But for a while there, about a half an hour to forty-five minutes, it was raining cats and dogs outside. Slightly unexpected, though it was cloudy all day, it’s just not the time of year to get this kind of weather. Or maybe that’s just the non-Texan in me talking. Where I’m from, this amount of rainfall at this point in November, more often than not, resulted in dangerous sleet, if not full blown snow. Now November 10th would be somewhat early for snow, but it certainly wouldn’t be unheard of, and definitely not unexpected. But rest assured, some of that moisture falling from the sky would be frozen.

I remember driving plenty of times in rough weather conditions. Or being driven I should say. For the majority of my life, simply because I wasn’t old enough to be driving yet, my parents would drive us kids around (obviously). And many a time did we drive through snow. And many a time did we have to make critical decisions whether or not to venture out in the precipitation. Because when you travel in white out, icy conditions, there is a very immediate danger to life and limb. But I was luckily enough to not have to deal with it for the most part. Save for one time.

This was back, not too too long ago, but certainly in a very different life. I had a job at a the local Subway, and it was probably early in the year, January maybe. Everyone kept up with the forecasts, especially in the winter. So I was no dummy, I knew that that night it was probably going to snow, and I wasn’t scheduled to work that night. But the owner of the Subway called me up and asked me to come in. I was very weary of complying, since I knew I didn’t want to be out in that kind of weather. But she threatened me with my job basically (imagine that, threatening a 16 or 17 year old kid with their job, pretty low of them if you ask me), and I decided to go to work.

To make a long story, and believe me I could turn this into a very very long story, short, it began to snow that night, pretty badly. The three of us there (all under 19 mind you), decided to shut down the store early so we could still have a hope of making it home. What followed was probably my most harrowing driving experience ever. Now it wasn’t really that far from home to work, but the many hills and curves made the trip take longer, and make it much more dangerous in bad weather. For the most part taking it slow, very slow, can afford you some measure of insurance that you will come out of it ok, but safety is not guaranteed. Around the many bends and curves, I slowly made my way. I was driving in about a half a foot of snow, maybe a little more.

About two thirds of the way home stood my greatest obstacle, a rather daunting climb. I was driving a front wheel drive car, which gave me very little grip to play with while driving, let alone driving up a hill. Not wanting to lose any momentum I might have driving at about 20mph, I began the ascend. Driving in snow is scary, and my heart was in my throat at this point, I had made it this far, and this would be the great decider. There was really no one else on the road, so I pulled onto the left hand side of the road since it was slightly less steep than the right side. I gambled that there would be no one coming down as I was going up, because there was no way either of us would be able to get out of the way in time, not with the road as slick as it was.

I could feel the wheels slipping as I went up the hill. I was running the many scenarios through my head of what could happen between now and the top of the hill. I could lose traction and slip all the way to the bottom, or maybe slip into a ditch on the side of the road, both of which meant I probably wasn’t going to be able to get up the hill. Or a car could come slipping down the hill toward me and we would both be wiped out. I had major tunnel vision. I’m sure I was gripping the steering wheel about as hard as I ever have, concentrating solely on the feel of the tires, and the car, and the hill ahead of me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a hill had such a steep incline than that night.

About halfway up the hill, the right hand side of the road became less steep than the left side, and I drifted into that lane. Apparently sometime between me beginning my climb and then, a person in a truck had began climbing the hill too, and I was oblivious to his presence. I don’t now how narrowly I missed hitting him, but luckily no accident occurred just then. I pulled to the right, and he pulled to the left, and gunned it up the hill, up and over and out of my sight, leaving me in the dust of the snow he was kicking up. Gee thanks.

Eventually the white knuckle ride of the hill was over. Going about as slow as physically possible without slipping back down, I chugged to the top where the road flattened out. At least for a few feet anyway. This was only an intersection, ahead of me lied the rest of the hill, though the worst was behind me, the taller half of the climb was over. If I could do that, I could tackle this I thought. Though I probably was giving myself spoken words of encouragement as well. I began to climb the second hill, much like the first. It wasn’t as tall as the one I had just conquered, but to the right side of the road, was a drop, not much, but not just a ditch on the side of the road, if you fell off this, your car was gone, rest assured. Which is why I felt a jolt of panic when my car suddenly lost traction.

I began to drift, my car swung clockwise, turning the front of the car toward the right hand side of the road, toward where I didn’t want to go. I would have much rather been facing the stone wall on the other side of the road, than a cliff. Everything I had been told about driving in snow suddenly kicked in. I immediately let off the gas, and didn’t make any sudden motions with the steering wheel. And let me tell you, it is not easy when you are panicking. I turned the wheel slightly to the left to try and get the car back on course, just barely feathering the gas. Thankfully the car managed to right itself, and I didn’t go off a cliff that night.

Only being able to drive at a snails pace really turns a bad experience worse. You desperately want it to be over, but you know if you rush, it will be over and sooner than you planed, as you life might be. So I continued slowly on my journey, and now the worst really was behind me. For the remainder of the trip home I took to slow and drove in the middle of the road. I only saw that one other truck on the road the whole way home. And home is where I managed to get to that night. Probably the best feeling of pulling into the driveway I’ve ever felt. And luckily I’ve not had to drive in such bad conditions since. I’ll probably be a bit wiser about evil employers trying to sucker me into doing things that are hazardous to my health in the future as well.

But this is all besides the point. What I really wanted to talk about tonight was this: Chinese Democracy. You may be familiar with it, you may not be. Either way, there’s a free Dr.Pepper in it for you. I say, enjoy a free Dr.Pepper, compliments of Dr Pepper Snapple Group and Guns N’ Roses, whether you like music 17 years in the making or not. Free stuff always tastes better.

I remember, it was a few years back, in fact it was probably 2004, yes October 31st, 2004. It was football season at Vernon Township High School, and as I had done for three years prior to my senior year, I was sitting in the bleachers with the rest of the marching band, playing pep tunes. But this particular day would end up a little more memorable than any other day at the football field. It wasn’t because our team dominated on the green, or even that this day was in fact Halloween, no, what I remember about this day four years ago is that, and without notice, it began to snow.

Now marching in snow is nothing new, really. The marching band season ended in mid November for us, and by that time it was usually pretty bitter outside, and there was possibly some snow on the ground. Luckily for the marching band though, they always got us back inside right before the frostbite set in whenever we had to be outside in that weather. But this day was particularly unusual because it was fairly early for it to be snowing, the last of October. It ended up not snowing for too long, and it didn’t stick, especially to the field where the football players were tearing it up. Read the rest of this entry »