A sunny chilly day in Worcester, Massachusetts found me driving to pick up my friend Jason Destratis for lunch at Moe’s.  As Carie and I are attempting to be wise with our money, I was jubilant about our restaurant choice because I had a coupon for a free meal at Moes.  Both Jay and I requested the attendance of our friend Steve Bramlett to join us, but he had foolishly locked himself into a staff meeting where he works.

For whatever reason I found myself quite warm driving to pick Jay up, and rolled the windows down, which of course is another way of saying I pushed a button to mechanically lower the pane of glass.  The sun shone brightly down onto my face and for a short time the 33 degrees felt like 75.  When I picked Jay up, there was no doubt where we were going and there was no doubt what we were hungry for – The Homewrecker, chips, salsa, and maybe even a bit of queso.

As I drove onto Lincoln St. the driver of a car in one lane decided very quickly to steer into my lane, causing me to face the Lincoln St. Plaza, almost perpendicular to the 5 year old haven of materialism and gluttony.  Target, Lowe’s, Barnes and Nobles, Texas Roadhouse, and Papa Gino’s are just a few of the eating and shopping establishments dedicated to causing us to stumble in the aforementioned areas of decadence.

I watched as Jason leaned over to see (perhaps for the first time) the newest restaurant being added to the  collection of “the Man” machines (thank you Homey the clown, circa 1991), 5 Guys, burgers and fries. “Is it open?” Jay said, salivating like an 13 year old girl over a Thanksgiving feast of Twilightian Vampires during a new moon. “I don’t think so man” I said almost regretfully.  Then with a glimmer of hope, while turning my right blinker on, I said, “But we can always find out!”

As we drove in, the plaza appeared a bit chaotic, but this was because of the Christmas season and shopping and had little to do with 5 Guys, so we drove past the store slowly, and though there appeared to be a few people in the newest greasy spoon in town, I hypothesized that training was going on before the big day, whenever that might be.  So Jay made the call:  ”All right, let’s just head down to Moe’s.”  Just then appeared in my vision a phone number – 508-853-2000 – you can call it right now to see if its for real.

Done?  Good, on with the story.

As I drove away I decided to call the number to see if they actually were open.  ”Hello, 5 guys,” the young lady cheerily answered as she picked up the phone.  I only assume she picked up the phone, though she could have just rolled it up, like my car window.  ”Yes,” I said happy to get a response, “Are you ‘guys’ open yet?  Even if it’s just 1 of you?”  ”Huh?”  ”Nothing, are you open for business yet?”  ”Oh, no, I’m sorry,” she said, having might as well of stabbed me with a cajun fry, and then taken it back.  ”We open tomorrow.”  ”Okay, thank you” I said trying to sound undissapointed and non desperate for the kind of grease that coats your arteries and gets people like House to theorize what’s wrong with me.

“But you can come get some free food” she countered quickly with an obvious smile in her voice that you didn’t need videophone to see.  Now I was responding “huh?”  ”Yes, from now (11:58 am) until 1:30 pm we’re giving away free food.”  I hung up.  I didn’t need to be polite.  I would be seeing her in about 26 seconds.

So Jay and I jumped out of the car and walked with springs in our step and smiles on our faces into the red and white checkered chamber of clogging.  We found what the phone answerer said to be true, ordered and then did our part to help the hour and a half event go viral.  From Twitter to Facebook to phone calls, we did it all, and eventually accompanied by our friends, Billy, Al, and Jake.

And that my friends, is how 5 guys got free food at 5 Guys.

Steve Bramlett would have made it 6.

I seem to attract phone calls between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am, or maybe it’s my job, though many of the calls I receive are not tied to my job.  The first one I remember receiving was the summer of 2000.  In the summer of 1999, The crew I hung out with at the time and I made a habit of doing foolish things.  Among those foolish thing – pick up lines.  We would make up these wretched pick up lines and practice them before going out and using them as a means to meet new people.  The lines weren’t really to be used for “picking up” females, but as a tool to start conversations.  This was, at least, what we told ourselves.  Creativity was important, as was shock value.

My favorite:  We would pass our gospel tracts to ladies we would pass in the town where a few of us lived and say:  “Excuse me, would you be interested in hanging out with me in paradise someday?”

But there was one that we all had in our minds was amazing, that as I look back now, I think was really kind of stupid.  But it was the one no one would try.  One night we stayed out till late doing whatever it is that we did, and eventually I had to leave and go to bed.  I worked as a DJ for a radio station at the time and had to be up at 4:00 am, so I figured I should at least be asleep by 2 am.  The rest of our crew went to Denny’s for a late night snack.  While they were there, Roo (one of the crew) saw this “amazingly beautiful” girl and decided to walk over the the booth where this girl sat with three of her friends and try the line that had not been tested.

So he strutted over to the booth that held the girls in place, and sat next to the girl in question.  With his deep blue eyes (please understand, Roo had deep blue eyes), he smiled at her and said the words, “Those are nice shoes you’re wearing, wanna make out?”  A dramatic pause hung over both tables as the girls at the table digested what the strange young man had said, and then as the “amazingly beautiful” girl mulled over what her response would be.

“No.  But you guys can come over here and talk to us.”  She replied.  More awkward silence, and then everyone laughed.

Ironically after an evening of conversation and fun, the “amazingly beautiful” girl decided to ask another one of the guys in the crew out, and they went out.  (We’ll call him Joe)  Joe was much younger than Roo and “AB girl”, but evidently they had a fabulous time on their “date” and decided to go out again.  This relationship took off, but the problem was that they lived two very different lives.  Joe was a missionary kid who was currently enrolled in Bible college, and “AB girl” was none of those things and more.

To make a long story short, “AB girl” never became a Bible college student or a missionary, but Joe became the opposite of those things, eventually deciding to start living with “AB girl” and hanging out with a different crew of people all together.  I don’t judge him for that, but I do judge me for not knowing how to encourage him properly through the process.

One summer night  in the summer of 2000 while I slept deeply as I like to do, I received a call from Joe, crying his eyes out, and begging me to come get him.  I said, “Where are you?”  I asked in my normal voice at 3:30 am, which I’ve been told, sounds a lot like Katherine Hepburn talking over a vacuum.  “At her house,” he responded, sounding defeated and lost.  “Just come get me quick.”  I woke my eyes up, jumped out of bed, and drove the 10 minutes to his new/old house, where I picked him up on the curb that humid summer morning.

I never went back to bed.

I have a friend who hosted Thanksgiving dinner at his house last week.  After the dinner when his and her entire family sat sprawled out on their couches and chairs, half-heartedly peering at the ‘good-for-nothing’ football games that take up airwave space on T-giving, his wife got the idea to take this opportunity and pick names for the upcoming Christmas swap.  So my friend rounded up the names of everyone present (pun intended) and they all joyfully picked a name of the family member to whom they will be giving a gift.

After the cheery fun of picking the names had commenced, my friends wife walked sheepishly over to him and said, “Honey, I just thought of something.”  “Yes?” He answered inquisitively.  “I already bought all the gifts for everyone in our family.”

After much thought, they came up with a solution:  They would give their family members they had picked the gifts they had purchased for them, and they would sell the other gifts to the people who had picked the recipients of the gift they had purchased.  That way they wouldn’t really have to pay for everyone’s gifts, which is the reason for the swap in the first place, and the other people wouldn’t have to sacrifice to go out amidst the hustle ad bustle of the shopping world and get a gift for their pick.

Aaaaaahhhh the joy of Christmas and the spirit of giving.

Mike Burns.

As Mike sits in my living room doing work while I write this post, I think of the first time I met him.  He sported a white baseball shirt with yellow sleeves, Royal blue shorts with a white stripe down the sides that said he stole the outfit from the set of “The Royal Tennenbaums”, and had in his hand his Les Paul electric guitar that he was uniquely qualified to make sound like he was born to play.  So I use this Fridays edition of “3 reasons you should know” to highlight one of my closest friends, who lives in Germany.  So here they are:

1.  He will question in order to find the truth.
You don’t want to walk into a conversation with Mr.  Burns without knowing what you believe, and even if you know what you believe, it would be idiotic of you to make outlandish statements that you read in a forward email in order to make your point.  Mike has a thirst for the truth, and seems to focus his life on eventually finding it.  He will seek an answer and research every possible option before coming to his conclusion.

2.  He is one of the most talented people I’ve met.
Whether it has been playing the guitar (he’s one of the best guitarists I know), or making a video, building a web site design or engineering his own sound equipment from chewing gum and an earring the same way MacGyver builds a bomb, Burns can do it.  I’ve only met a handful of people just as talented, and I’m thinking even fewer than that more so.

3.  He acts like a child.
I mean this in a very literal way, both good and bad.  He will do anything, anytime, and anywhere.  He is into experiences, and this thirst brought him from Maine to Massachusetts and presently to Munich where he has an amazing job that allows him to travel as far as Ireland, Italy, and the Ukraine.  This has been one of the things that has impressed me the most about Mike.  We are called to be childlike in our approach to God, and though he’s far from perfect, I have this sneaking suspicion that this approach to life allows him to hold God as an important part of his life, despite all the questions that haven’t been answered in his mind.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Mike Burns.

My sister Amie, the summer in question, and the house I was trying to get home to

I began these stories by telling you:  For whatever reason, sometimes we have the opportunity to be thankful in spite of the most horrific circumstances.  And I fully intend to illustrate this by the end of the story, but not at the beginning of the end.

I was so tired of the trip taking forever and being scared of gang wars or driving through Thunderstorms or being hit by other cars and almost running out of gas. I just wanted to be home.  Of course this was the first time I would ever live at this home, as my parents had moved from Ohio to Arizona on the same day as they dropped me off at college, but that didn’t matter.  Not now. I was simply read to be done with this journey.

By the time I woke up from my 3 hour nap, I was a bit refreshed and ready to talk to my fellow travelers, Kim, Jon, and Allison.  We laughed and talked for the rest of the day, starting to forget about the proverbial rain that poured into our trip.  Around 1:00 pm (or late lunch time, as I like to call it), we decided to stop into a Dairy Queen restaurant to eat.  After lunch, we waddled back into our car and drove off into the New Mexico border.  Then it happened – quite suddenly – Jon said, “I’m not feeling very we….(blahhhhhhhhhhhhh)!”  And he spewed all over the seat in front of him.  For those of you who don’t know, spewed is yet another term for vomit or barf or puke or hurl or blowing chunks.  And when I see puke or even hear it actually, I get sick too.

So we drove into a rest area that conveniently was only about a mile away and cleaned up the car thoroughly so we could reenter without wanting to spew ourselves.

Eventually we got back in the car and drove steady into Arizona.  Allison was driving about 4:00 pm when an older couple in a Cadillac decided not to pay attention to our car being on the road next to them.  They just crossed over literally while I was eye to eye with the driver in the passenger seat so I yelled, “Allison you’re gonna have to get over.”  She responded, “I can’t, there’s a ditch over there.”
“Then you have a choice to make” was the last thing heard out of my mouth as Allison drove into the ditch off the side of the road, and the white Cadillac drove off into the sunset, literally.

We just laughed.  No one said a word, but just laughed until we cried.

After we found ourselves about an hour a way from the Tucson suburb where my family lived, I pulled the last drive responsibility before my house.  I drove proudly through the desert, excited to see my new home and be with my family.  Approximately 30 miles from Tucson, the car died.

I don’t mean it sputtered or moved slowly or hacked up a motorized lung, I mean it died.  So my dad and a tow truck came to get us, and eventually Jon and Allison and Kim rented a car and continued to drive west.  One to Phoenix.  One to Mesa.  And one to LA.

I guess you could say that on the trip nothing good was ever accomplished, but eventually good things do happen, though sometimes we don’t expect it.  Because 3 years later or so two people who had never met each other before were married.

Congratulations Jon and Allison!

Ya know, sometimes I’m self-centered enough to think that there are people who wouldn’t care or not if I talked to them, so I sheepishly ignore what could be meeting a new friend or at the very least what could be a very interesting conversation because I’m afraid they’ll reject me.  What I’m really saying, of course, is my comfort is way more important than whether or not they might gain a new friend in me.

Sam decided to jump on my shoulders for this picture, maybe in celebration of going to someone and saying "hello"?

As a single 23 year old however, there is a completely different dynamic involved in going and up to a complete stranger who happens to be a member of the opposite gender and introducing yourself.  At least this was my perception, as a self centered egotist juvenile. (I can be quite hard on myself, huh?)  In the summer of 1999, I traveled with a group of my friends to Creation Music Festival in the middle of Nowhere, Pa to embark on a pluthera of christian concerts and a large amount of fun.  I traveled that year with Ruben, Al, Sam,  and Sherry.  We were all close and I had wanted to attend Creation since my days as a DC Talk lovin wannabee rapper from the North Side (Of Ohio, that is).

One day during the festival, Sam and I were sitting next to a tree in between day concerts outside the enormous outdoor amphitheater which hosted the main events.  Watching people walk back and forth wasted a lot of down time throughout the 4 days, and we had been sitting talking for about an hour.  All of a sudden, 18 year old Sam looks out at the port a potties, about 50 feet away across a busy walking path, and his mouth drops open.  I quickly said, “What are you staring at?”  To which all he could do was point.  Then he pointed at her, the female my friends (though not Sherry) would eventually nickname, “The Italian Goddess”.

After taking time to soak everything in, Sam says to me, “You have to go talk to her.”  I said, “Should I step over your tongue first?  You clearly are awe struck.  You go talk to her.”  He replied, “I can’t.  She’s a bit too old for me.  But not for you.”  I quipped as he continued to stare, “No offense taken in case you were wondering.  I can’t talk to her.”  “Why not?” Sam inquired.
“Because the minute I go talk to her, some 7 foot male model with no shirt is going to walk up to her, take her arm, and I’m going to be stuck there, watching you laugh your tail off at my failure.”
For the next half hour, he pushed me and pushed me to walk across to port a pot row and talk to her.  But it was more evident now that she wasn’t standing there waiting for the little blue buildings to open up, but she was waiting for someone specific to come and whisk her away from the place where she stood.

The more he pushed, the more I pulled.  I wanted to stand up and walk over there, but I couldn’t.  Something kept me down and it’s full name was pride full jackass.  Finally after almost 45 minutes of intense pushing, I stood up and walked her direction.  As I did, she started walking away.  I couldn’t believe it!  How did she know?  Oh, I thought, she’s walking toward the concession stand. It was a steamy hot day in the end of June, and no doubt a cold beverage was on the menu.  Like a creepy old man I followed her to the line, then someone stepped in front of me, so if I stayed in line, I would have to wait till  impatient guy finished ordering and got his food or drink.

She ordered water.  Then walked a few steps away and stopped, staring back at the place she stood at for the previous 45 minutes.  Still no one she recognized.  The impatient guy ordered a burger, of course, causing the wait to be longer for me then necessary.  Then it was my turn to order.  Not many people could say when they ordered and drank their first ever bottled water, but I can tell you right now that June 29, 1999 was the first time I ever bought anything at a concession stand other than a carbonated beverage.  It really was the first time I ever bit into the biggest money making hoax in all of history – bottled water.

Now when I got into the line, Sam, understanding me better than many did at that time, walked over to two other females (that were more his age, I guess) and asked them to him a favor.  He told them my story and how he had pushed me to talk to this lady-in-waiting, and he asked them to – if I got out of the line and stopped short of starting a conversation with her- say to me in unison, “You should have talked to her.”

So I get out of line, and she’s standing about 15 feet away.  I walk 8 feet and stop.  She is slowly walking away, when Sam’s two little elf girls say to me in unison, “You should have talked to her.”  I looked over at they are laughing and laughing and there I am, realizing how weak I was.  Then I had a strange thought.  Even if I get rejected by the Port O Pot Princess, Sam and I have already met some new new friends.  So gathering all my strength, I walked up to the future nicknamed, “Italian Goddess” and said…

“Hello.  How do you like Creation so far?”

There are times you love life, and believe it’s all going your way, and then there are other times, when screaming, “Why me?” and “Why does everything always happen to me?” seems appropriate to the present circumstance.  The latter makes you feel small and insignificant, like the only thing you’re good for is God’s little play toy.  So we have a choice:  Do we give in or go screaming?

After a major thunderstorm and what seemed to be a million other problems, it was finally time for breakfast.  And really what is a trip across the lower half of the country without at least one breakfast at the golden arches?  So hour number 15 of this amazing road trip meant that we would participate in the scrumptious ritual of the McD’s value meal – hash brown included of course.

For some reason now 15 years later I remember that I ordered a breakfast burrito.  Kim and Allison and John ordered and we ate.  Sounds ordinary right?  We decided after breakfast that I would drive to the gas station across the street to finish my all night driving escapades.  So I slowly pulled out of our parking spot.  Unfortunately another car opposite of me slowly did the same thing.  I backed out and turned, and just after I had come to a stop, shifting my gears from reverse to forward, the rear of that opposite car hit the rear of our car.  This caused an accident.  While no one was hurt, I muttered to myself, “Why me?”

Thankfully there was no damage to the cars, save some minor scratches to the other car, who seemed to really want to ignore the whole episode.  We agreed.  We just wanted to move forward.  So I drove across the street.  When I arrived to said gas station however, I quickly noted the extremely expensive gas the station offered.  $2 was much too expensive to pay for gas in 1994, and I simply was not going to pay that much  (Right now it is midnight and I would gladly put on some jeans and a t-shirt and drive to pay for $2 gas).

So I told them I’d drive to the next station, and we’d eventually get to cheaper gas.  The only problem was we only had about 40 miles of gas left.  I was confident however, that there would be a station somewhere along the lonely Texas highway.

Misplaced confidence leads to feelings of insignificance, and I was headed low  fast.  It took me 20 miles of searching for a gas station to finally see a sign that said, “Next gas station – 48 miles”.  So I had no choice but to turn around and drive 20 miles away from our destination in order to buy expensive gas.  After I did this, I allowed someone else to drive…

And I fell asleep for the next 3 hours.

Driving the width of Texas is very similar to several things, not the least of which being waiting at the RMV (registry of Motor Vehicles) for someone to call your name, expecting that it will happen at any minute, but it never does, and hours later you find yourself trying to be entertained by some random circumstance like trying to guess the language of the people around  you or attempting to count the number of those whose name have been called before yours.   Thankfully the RMV now has the internet, but Scotty has not actually  invented a usable transporter quite yet.  So  you just wait but it never happens.

It was my turn to drive and the long night nestled over Texas for what seemed like forever.  Around 4 pm it started raining and then raining and then raining.  Soon the rain hit the car so hard that I thought someone had jumped on the car.  Other cars began to move to the side of the road, but not me.  I wouldn’t be stopping.  Texas was already a long enough state to drive through, plus my expert driving skills would help me out.  For over an hour the rain crashed down on us, and I just kept praying for it to stop.  Driving 10 mph had started to get on my nerves.  I sang and prayed and thought about the fact that I didn’t have a girlfriend yet,and I was already 18 years old (What was wrong with me anyway?)  By the time it stopped raining, I remember being a mess mentally, almost shedding a tear because I was so tired of the concentration it took to stay on the road through the storm.  Sweat poured down my forehead, a result of the fear I experienced in the last hour.  Finally it did stop, and all was quiet, and I thanked God for bringing us out safe.

Then one by one, my fellow passengers woke up, each asking me in their own way if I was doing all right driving.  They know how boring the drive through Texas can be. Then I turned on the radio where a news weather report was hitting the airwaves.  Apparently Texas had just come through its worst thunderstorm in 50 years (rainfall in an hour).  Kim and John and Allison all laughed and one quipped…

“Thank God it didn’t rain here in this part of Texas.”

part 1
part 2

When you take a road trip, you begin to develop a sort of bond that you could not have without the road trip sort of experience.  The type of bond that we get when confined to others in close quarter situations.  We either become attracted to those around us (not necessarily in a Freudian way) or repulsed.  I’m thankful for these adventures.

Driving through Houston after the last episode did nothing to make us want to scout, visit, or in any way pay attention to the huge Texan city of Houston.  We did however, desire to get out, so we drove through I-10, until we decided to get gas and scarf down some snacks at a gas station off the highway.  As we ejected from our cars and stumbled inside after a long 7 hours of driving, I noticed a patrol car slowly circling the building vulture style and paying particular attention to the single brown car in the gas station.  Ya know, the one from which the four college students were stumbling out.  I mentioned it to Kim, Jon, and Allison, who figured it was just a bored officer with nothing to do on a Friday night.  I kindly reminded them that this was Houston and their basketball team was playing game 3 of their conference semi-finals with Phoenix, so really, there was plenty to do.  They ignored me.  Non-sports fans do that sometimes.

We bought our Pringles and Surge, preparing for the long night ahead, and went on our way.  One thing I’ve neglected to mention throughout my story proved to be the eventual reason for the officer’s circling.  The owner of the vehicle was an amazing fellow from California who had no use of his legs whatsoever, and despite this apparent setback, never let it change his life in any way.  He did everything I did at this time in our lives, including play basketball and flirt with girls.  But he also drove, and this was his car, and plastered on both license plates was the universal sign of disabled persons.

Finally heading outside of the Houston city limits proved to be the end of the “making good time” portion of our evening as the patrol car finally decided to pull us over.  Probably because we were going to Arizona and the Suns were playing the Rockets in the playoffs and all that, but he said something about crossing lanes too fast and that he thought we stole the car.  To me he looked the traffic cop in part 2, but Allison assured me he was not.  I told her while he was checking our credentials out that there was no way she could know that while he continued to smoke a cigar in our presence because the cigar and the smoke partially hid his face like a character from the Twilight Zone. He walked clumsily back to our car and told us to have a good day. If I knew then what I know now, I would have told him to relax, and that everything is going to be all right.

I drove through the night listening to soft rock stations and buzzing from certain drinks I had ingested earlier, when eventually a newscaster came on and informed me that a huge thunderstorm was arriving into the area early this morning.  I didn’t believe him as the sky was absolutely beautiful and I was singing quietly to myself.  I have this theory that bad things don’t happen to me when I sing quietly to myself.  Although at this time my musical experience was limited to Al Denson and the beautiful music of the PCC ensembles.

And then it started raining.

Sophmore year of college with the boys

When you tell someone you’ll drive their car across the country, you generally assume that the car will be in good enough condition to make the trip.  You know, when the owner says, “I’ve taken care of the car and it will be fine”, a good assumption is that the owner has indeed taken care of the car and it will be fine.

We left Pensacola around 2 pm, in the heat of the afternoon and found that the car didn’t have AC.  Not a big deal, but the 90 degree heat threatened to melt our faces off.  Our drive started slow, as we talked about dating outings and birthdays and whether or not we would be returning to Pensacola Correctional Center for the next year.  We moved from Florida to Alabama to Mississippi before we ventured into our first mishap.  The car decided to overheat and we found ourselves parked in a rest area for the better part of an hour.  The afternoon was flying by, and crankiness was underway.

Louisiana passed us by and entering Texas brought on more trials than any humans should ever have to bear.  I had never been in Houston, Texas before, but on the east side of  the city, Kim told us that she needed to stop at a pay phone (remember, cell phones were not as plentiful in those days) at the next gas station.  Allison, as the driver, pulled into the first Exxon she could find.  The station was actually closed down for whatever reason, and consequently was very dark.  We pulled in, Kim walked to the pay phone, and we waited.

After sitting for a few minutes listening to the sounds of Houston and to Kim quip loudly about her new friends driving with her and that she was very safe with such good friends, two cars come screeching into the parking lot about 30 feet in front of us.  Kim keeps talking.  Two guys walk out of one car.  Three guys walk out of another.  They start screaming and yelling racial slurs at one another.  Marty (that’s me) yells at Kim to make the  conversation end quickly.  Her parents roll on about how the family pet is doing.  Then one of the guys form the car of three heads to the trunk of his car and pulls out what appears from 30 feet to be a firearm.  Kim needs to quit talking.  Marty yells louder to Kim, pleading for her to hurry.

Eventually Kim stops talking and Allison drives away.  About a quarter of a mile down the road, immediately prior to getting on the ramp toward  the highway, I see a cop directing traffic, roll down my window and tell him, “Excuse me sir, back at the Exxon there was some guys fighting and one of them had a firearm!”  The officer looked at me and calmly said…

“Sorry, I have traffic duty tonight.”