In the fall of 2015 I was in trouble. I was two years into an eleven year bender. I had fallen out of love with cycling, burning out from trying to be...I don't know 'something". I never figured out what that was. I bought a carbon dirt missile that cost more than my first two cars. I got all new gear. I rode alone after the Bike Chain Fracture of 2010. I had a stroke that year just to make sure a new shit, chapter was beginning. Nothing helped. It was over between bikes and I. After all there is nothing wrong with a cyclist, that carbon will not cure. I must have bought a Placebo SRT, with Sram ZZZ.
I started playing music again out of desperate need for some self worth. I played the best and biggest shows of my minor league career, with my friend and former client from the halcyon days of the early naught's. We opened for Blackberry Smoke, Chris Knight, American Aquarium, Lucero (2x) Drivin and Cryin, Theory of a Dead Man, and some others I can't pull off the hard drive. In 2015 I ended up the drummer on the Former Clients Reunion Tour. We did a three day run selling out Tallahassee in minutes and selling respectable tickets at Club L.A. in Destine. The boys live a little east of there. All the local trailer parks were empty both nights. We played Orlando because friend and former client has in laws there. It was a drunk train wreck from load in, and totally appropriate. The boys didn't have to obey the Dad, Coach, Manager any more. It's the silver lining to being washed up. They still get 30k listeners on Slaveify every month. Whatever the fuck that means in todays business. It was a dream, nightmare, drama encased, shit storm until we played. On the deck, for those three nights, the boys fucking brought it bro. Those kids I raised and sold to the music business, could still do their jobs. I was the drummer and not the coach, Dad, or Manager. I looked around a lot. It was my last big show. No tears. Then in 2018, after two bass players and three guitarist's (which was about how many people were coming to see us) we hung up our pistola's.
2018 started out weird. My old neck injuries were rearing up and I needed a second zipper sewn into the throat. While listening to an explanation about the screws they would be installing and removing, I stood up, left the office and had what I thought was a heart attack in my driveway. One great thing about having a stroke and heart surgery in your medical history is: You never wait in line at the emergency room. You just touch your chest while being genuinely terrified and the velvet rope drops like prepubescent panties for Elvis. I got wheeled in with a heart attack, got wheeled out with anxiety and a handful of "make WB play nice again" pills. It's hard to explain for doubters and non believers, but I am not afraid of the world. I live in mortal fear of powerlessness and embarrassment. When I am in a place I can't get out of easily, or I am stuck in an unorganized crowd or grocery stores dear god, grocery stores. I think to myself: "This would be a horrible place to start coughing and become incapacitated, don't ya think?" Or: "This would be a long stretcher ride through the gauntlet of Crawfordville lookie loo's eating Cosco samples." And we are off to the races. Best case I wait in the car and stabilize, worst case drop everything and find a hiding spot.
I'd been slamming some truly awful hard ciders, filling the recycle bin to the brim every week. All was well. After all I'd been working with hangovers since I moved here in 87. And somewhere around this blurry time I received a bottle of Crown, my gateway whiskey, as a gift. Then Jack and Jim and I drink alone. I retired from my 21 year day gig. My kids moved out. This was a perfect time to get serious about this drunk thing. My efforts were impressive. I kept it cool in public (as far as I know) and waited until I was parked crooked in my driveway before getting down to some serious drinking.
It was a fun ride that ended up with me passed out naked after swimming in the same state of dress. I woke up laughing, covered in dog food. I'm a good drunk, a happy drunk. In public. I have called friends to apologize for getting shitty, only for them to act confused and tell me I was fine. When I am alone I am the worst weepy, "poor me" Mick that has ever raised a phookin glass. I get fucking deep into it too, buddy: My dad, my shit siblings, all I didn't get, from the music business. Dead band members and friends and my mom! That kid got me in a head lock panicked and wouldn't let go. All the greatest hits in one collection, on three CD's! These hidden mental and health issues went off like bombs in my forties, bubbling all that trauma goo to the surface. I tried to kill it or me which ever came first. Being a good drunk means consequence's are for pussy's. I drank about 15 shots a night mixed with all kinds of horrifying concoctions. I lied to my therapist. I got my medical MJ and it was a revelation, for my brain. I kept drinking, and taking sleep aids, antidepressants and anything else that would stop the movies in my head. In short I was being a fucking idiot. After waking up in the imported salmon, non allogenic, hundred bucks a bag, dog food we need for our pure bred whatchamacallits, I was feeling the worst two tricks in my act. Powerless and embarrassed beyond description, depressed, crippling sadness unrelated to anything. It was around Christmas when I really do my best my best work, but I still have business back in 2018. Walk this way.
I'd been trying to write a book, with editing and producer credits going to our own Juancho Valdez. I was watching Bourdain, drinking like Hemmingway, and raking all my garbage into the light for "the fucking book". It turns out writing down all your shame will send a brother spiraling. I think it helped long run, but it wasn't fun. I was retired and just like every other white middle class fraud, I think I have a book in me. I would very much like it to be out of me.
I'm back in 18, I'm having anxiety attacks all over the place but I get into a groove riding alone to get my legs and head back, after the second zipper was installed. I blew out my meniscus in 19. Surgery again. Anxiety up the euphemism. I didn't take the surgery seriously and walked around without crutches because, if American Cinema has taught us anything it is that real men don't need no damn doctors or their quackery advice. Ya, so...that doesn't work out and I add a few weeks onto the recovery chart. Just to recap, whiskey 15, book 18, anxiety, neck surgery, 19 knee surgery.
Some cool ass shit happened too man. My oldest got a great job working from home and bought a house with no assistance from the ole folks at home. My youngest did a national tour with an RCA band called Flora Cash. My wife and I saw them play at Red Rocks and the old man watered the sandstone with his proud tears.
It was also that summer Anthony Bourdain took his life. Look, I have no tolerance for others who attach themselves to headlines and celebrities, but this was about me and my hero, so it's different. I jumped on a plane to my favorite episode in Montana and stayed in the same hotel. I couldn't get the Peckinpaw Suite. I had to haul my shit up to the Calamity Jane. The place is fucking so "The Shinning" I shit you not, I had to will myself into my room and slept with the lights on all three nights. I got super fucked up in the bar attached to the lobby, loving how no one in Montana wants to come tell you there life saga. Is that a Florida thing? I booked a cargo container cabin at Pine Creek Lodge to in Paradise Valley. Peckinpaw and Jim Harrison did some of their best mushrooms, acid, drinking, roof shooting and writing in the cabins. They burned down in the great fire of "I have no idea when".
I wanted to pay my respects to Mr. Harrison as well because as you know, any friend of Tony's is a friend of mine. Obviously. The sun stayed up till ten and the temperature would plummet just in time, as the cabin was not air conditioned. The sunsets over the Yellowstone River blew my socks off. I'd stay up watching it morph until the fox that hung around the dumpsters chased me back to my container. I spent my days stalking every step my buddy T took. I got drunk in the Old West Saloon and drove back the fifty minutes to Livingston. I sat on the same the stool my buddy T sat on at The Mint. I took picture of the neon cowboy behind the bar that dominated every shot of that sequence. I ordered and drank the forbidden "mistake drink". That's the drink you get when you are good and fucked up, that will make you the mayor of Staggersburg. The one that's causes you to go to the bathroom and pray for vomit. The one that spins the bed so bad you have to sit up till dawn because it is spinning too much to sleep. Some Attractive woman came to chat me up, with a big guy watching from down the bar. She said I looked like a local, I said "CHECK!" I'd give you a Mickie Spillane up and down on the meat hook, but truth be told I was too hopped up on the sauce to remember the palooka.
I climbed a Pine Creek Falls trail solo, singing Police songs so I didn't get et by a bear. A couple at the first set of falls raised there brows, looked at my Nike Dunks, and my commuter bike pack. "How far ya going up?" I caught the drift and said: "Headed down".
Next day I packed and left. I contracted some allergy or plague. Wore a mask to Minneapolis, where bad weather in the Midwest quadrant, had locked up travel for 15 hours. I had wide awake fever dreams but I still managed a few shots of Knob Creek so to de-mucus my throat. I made it home, proud to have climbed anxiety mountain. Then 19 happened.
In 19 I developed bad arthritic issues in my left thumb. I had a gig but, it was to painful to play drums. I delayed for a year before having arthroplasty on my left thumb in 21. It's like a hip replacement for your thumb. They cut off the joint bone and wrap the bone with a tendon from your forearm. They send you to therapy to be tortured by polite young women. You get to the end of your PT insurance and go home to cry in the fetal position. One year to recover but by that time I'd been over using my right, so now I wanted to chop off that thumb with a cleaver. We are up to 24 or something now. You figure it out, I'm always lost these days, riding the gummy train to happy town. This year I had a plan to get the right thumb done in spring so I had a solid excuse to sit around in AC and beg for sandwiches. When I went to the nerve test, I had ulnar entrapment, carpel tunnel and needed another arthroplasty, just in case I forgot how bad that fun ride was. My hand is taped in an ice pack as we read together.
But some cool shit happened too man. My son's career ended with Flora Cash after they went and had a baby on lock down. Cory moved to Nashville and started writing songs for two years before deciding to be a singer/front man. He's been doing good and holding up under the soul crushing. I don't know where we are in the time line either. It's not you it's me. I am not ready for a structured piece right now.
Screeeeeech! The book. Its 2015, 16, 17, 18, 19, (finish first draft). 20, second and third drafts. All this time Mr. Valdez is throwing me beat downs in remedial grammar camp. We cut the pile from over 750,000 words (I'm chatty on paper too) down to 72,000 and change. Down from 68 chapters to 29. Carrying the log up the Russian hill, snowy day by slow ass snowy day. My writing becomes less repulsive but Juancho doesn't judge. Juancho abides. Too 90's? Hey man I'm just living the dream bro.
21. After the weirdest Christmas of my life, and a few months after the naked kibble incident, my son bought me a bottle of whiskey for Christmas. Because that's who I am in 21. What is the perfect gift for dad? Whiskey of course, cause he's a drunk, Irish fuck. It was the huge wake up call my son intended it to be. I drank that's last bottle in two days and hung up my square crystal whiskey glass. I've been California sober four years and counting. Thanks lil' WB. Sometimes the good shit hurts. I quit sugar, snacks and processed food and meat. I learned to cook and dropped from one seventy five to one fifty. I hope to be on the bike and in the pool by October. I'd like to surf one more time if I can.
Somewhere in here I sued someone in the medical profession. A person I begged for help. It's great story but I signed and NDA, and took a bullshit check because I couldn't watch my lawyer fuck the dog after fives years of DEFCON 1 stress. I'm not bitter at all. I just get pissed when I talk about it.
I'm pretty reclusive these days man. I keep my eyes on the UAP situation and the ancient civilization archeological finds, that are being suppressed by the military branch of the Smithsonian. I watch those objects cruise trough our solar system on impossible trajectories, driving by close enough to see in our windows. Did you miss that one? Don't worry one a bigger and faster object will reach us in 29. It will either vaporize us or do fly by between Earth and the Moon. I still cry when Winnie breaks up with Kevin. It's the Bob Seager song. Jesus.
Juancho says the writing is getting there. I'm way better. Good? Fuck no. But I chop wood, I got nothing but time. Juancho says we are going to need it. If there are typos I'll get em later dog. I'm tired and have to go visit the pill box.
Ya know what? I haven't been here in a long time. The spell check in here sucks AI ding ding. Robot Emoji. TTFN.
W.B.Z.N.
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