PopcornJackTerry

Before this past weekend, the “worst” road trip I took was a few decades ago, when I drove from Hartford, CT to Raleigh, NC for the weekend. I say “worst” not because of how it turned out, or the level of fun we had, but by ratio of travel time vs. fun time. And when I say weekend, I don’t mean a 3-day variety, either. I mean, we left Friday and drove back Sunday. It’s 627 miles each way, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours. I think we might have cheated and left in the afternoon on Friday, because I vaguely remember there still being a party going on when we got there Friday night, but like I said, it was a few decades ago. I definitely remember getting back on the road Sunday at 2pm, because I had to be at work Monday morning at 6:30am. If we take the benefit of the doubt and say we left at 3 on Friday, and round it to an even 10 hours each way, that meant we spent 20 hours driving in order to spend 30 hours partying. (I took out 7 hours because even though we were young and fearless [and foolish] I assume we had to sleep at some point.) At a 2:3 ratio, it was the worst I’ve done.

Until this past Sunday…

Michael McCloud is a singer/songwriter who, for the last 31 years, has been playing every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Schooner Wharf in Key West. For many of those years, he was doing twice that, working Tuesday-Sunday, six days a week, from noon until 5. Over the years, he started cutting those back for different reasons. (I know he quit one of those days because he got fed up with the tourons doing the cruise ship-based bar crawls. He could be particular about his audience paying attention and had no problem calling you out if you weren’t.)

Last fall, Michael suffered a pretty bad stroke, and there were questions if he would ever play again. Eventually, he recovered enough that he came back for the weekends, but it felt like borrowed time, and sure enough, about five weeks ago, the announcement was made that he would be retiring at the end of April. Two of my friends made plans on the spot to be there for the final weekend; I was interested but less committed and limited myself to checking the affordability of flights that could bounce me back and forth in a day, day and a half tops. (One of the joys of a three-day workweek is I only work 3 days. One of the downfalls is those are the only 3 days I work, and there is no guarantee that I can get one of them off, or that if I do I will pick up another to cover the lost income.)

The weeks came and went, and the tickets got no cheaper, so I resigned myself to the reality that his last shows would come and go without me in attendance. When the final weekend came, I assumed watching on the webcam would be almost as good as being there. I made it through 90 seconds on Friday before I saw how wrong I was. I either had to pretend it just wasn’t happening, or find a way to get there (and back) on Sunday.

So, on Sunday, I woke up at 3:45 and was on the road by 4:30. Six hours and forty-five minutes later, I was parking my car in the lot on Caroline Street, a block from Schooner. Six hours and forty-five minutes after that, I was starting up my car for a trip that would take another – you guessed it – six hours and forty-five minutes. That made my drive-to-fun ratio a 2:1, easily winning the title of worst road trip ever. Except, of course, it wasn’t even close.

The thing is, it wasn’t really just the experience that made it such an important trip. I’m certainly glad I saw him one last time and was able to share that time with many friends, some I knew would be there, some that were as much a surprise as I was. And I’m glad I got one more memory of him performing. Over the years, the number of years he played there seemed to be a flexible fact he shared with the audience, but with no more stories to tell, he admitted that it had been 31 years. My first trip to Key West was 30 years ago and the first bar we went to was Schooner, mostly because it was across the street from where we were staying. I don’t remember seeing him at that time (and for the record, he wasn’t part of the stories I would tell about my trip down years later with my girlfriend at the time, the trip that would introduce me to my magician friends and be the precursor to me moving there 18 years ago) but my buddy Britt has a much better recollection of that spring break, so I’ll have to check with him. The moral of the story is I have probably been listening to him the super-majority of his career at Schooner.

But if he had retired six weeks ago, I don’t know if I would have been able to do it. I haven’t talked much about what I’ve been focusing on the last several weeks, mostly because I don’t want to jinx it, but if I hadn’t made the changes that I have, it’s a different story. I might not have gone at all, convinced that I would not be able to go to my favorite bar for six hours and not have a drink, knowing I had to drive home. Worse would be going, having a few drinks while thinking I’d be “sober enough” to drive home; even if I was, even if I somehow for once in my life knew when enough was enough, it would still make for a challenging drive as I slowly reverted to sober. And if I did the drive and didn’t drink, the long-term benefits I’m already feeling of plentiful sleep, healthy eating, and weight loss wouldn’t exist, and those last few hours home would have been the interstate version of hell on earth.

That was the reality I felt on the drive home. I still haven’t invested in a phone charger for my car, and wanting to make sure the battery didn’t die in case of an emergency, I drove home in the relative silence of the passing roadway and the voices in my head. In all of that, I found some sense of inner peace, some confirmation that this new form of me slowly emerging from the chrysalis I’ve grown over the last few years is the me I want to be and is the path I want to be on. To me, these are the milestones that matter, and they are far more important than numbers on a scale or the readings on a sphygmomanometer. (Don’t worry, I had to look it up too. Best $.50 I spent this week.) With a better self-identity there comes hope, with hope there comes confidence, and with confidence, there might just come some more stories.

As usual, I’m including a song with this post. It isn’t one of his originals, but one he played almost every time he performed, and with the passing of Gordon Lightfoot this week, including this was a no-brainer. Click here when you have 8 minutes to listen to my old retired friend.