Todd R. Townsend

Sailor, Writer, Wanderer

Archive for February, 2008

Curse of the Swamp Creature

Feb 15

Posted by trt in Rambling | Comments off

This is Part 2 of the Swamp Series. You should read Part One first, if you haven’t.

When we last left our heroes, they had survived being stuck out on a road in the swamp, inside a federally designated high drug traffic zone, only to face the wrath of their justifiably worried wives. Just when you thought it was safe to take a drive in the swamp. . . Months later, we had worked very hard to build a 6′x9′ plastics thermoforming machine from scratch, started making sales and marketing calls, developed an automotive accessory to be manufactured from recycled plastic. Not grocery bags but we did try recycled diaper material once. Luckily, it was post-industrial scrap rather than post consumer. Ironically, it had too much sag. So much for Huggies.

We had gradually gotten the idea, with strong hints of independent verification, that our financial partner’s money was dirty. See the previous post. We began negotiations to buy him out. He wasn’t happy. Begrudgingly, he blessed a deal and told us to have our lawyer write it up. When presented with the paperwork, he got frustrated all over again and tore it up.  We went through this whole routine twice.  Perhaps he thought he could break us by making us pay our lawyer over and over again.

Over Memorial Day Weekend 1990, the financial partner changed the locks on the building where we were subleasing some space in the back of a boat plant. He held a secret, and illegal meeting, to change the Board of Directors of the company we founded together.  Apparently, thinking he had locked us out of that too.  In the meantime, he declared that we could now work for him or we could stuff it.

At the time, we had a kid working for us. It was a state sponsored program for displaced workers. Florida was paying half his wages. Dale was a good kid and a great help. Don and I knew right where he had lunch every day.  A plan was hatching, and we needed Dale’s help.

Lucky for us [do I have to say it again? I'd rather be lucky than good], the evil financial partner had, just that morning, refused to pay Dale for some overtime he had worked for us. There was no documentation. We were always there longer than Dale because the company was our baby. We knew what we had asked him to do and how long he had been there. Down off Cattleman Road, in a deli attached to a gas station, we found Dale still simmering. He was all too happy to help us out.

The building we were locked out of had long been a boat plant. In the boat business, small and medium sized companies come and go like the tides. In building boats, there is yard work and shop work. In this particular building there were two bathrooms. Each had two doors; one inside the shop and one from the yard. Dale helped lock up that night. As we discussed, he folded the hasp on one of the outside doors back on itself, and “dummy-locked” the padlock. That was all we needed.

Meanwhile, Don and I had assembled a crew. We had three pickup trucks and two tandem axle trailers. At dusk, they rolled to a grocery store parking lot nearby. Don and I, in his famous powder sugar encrusted truck, drove to an orange grove next to the shop and staked it out. We could just see the glow of a light in the office. Our financial partner’s senses must have tingled. He never stayed late, but there he was. Typically, he and his aging hunting dogs would hang around, “stupervising” his boat boys. Then, on some signal, he would load up the dogs and head south. This night, however, he just hung around.

We stood next to a chain link fence in an orange grove; swatting mosquitoes.  I had always seemed to be plagued by mosquitoes. We walked back and forth trying to keep warm and waiting. Swat. Smack. Wait. Swat. Smack. Wait.

Finally, the office window went dark. The middle stage of the plan went into action. We heard the truck rumble and pull away. Don scaled the fence, slunk across the yard to try the door to the john. It came open, Dale was our hero. The first thing he tripped over in the dark was a case of toilet paper. He grabbed a half dozen rolls and quietly opened the interior door.

We were fairly sure that Dale was on our side completely. We thought that he knew he shouldn’t talk about the plan. We also knew, however, that he was pissed about the money. He could have boasted back at the shop to the boat boys. Inside the shop, Don lurked in the darkness; listening. He started pitching toilet paper rolls around in the dark to flush out an ambush. Each roll slammed into something in the dark shop and was met with silence. After what seemed an eternity, Don came jogging back across the yard to where I was standing; donating blood to the mosquito population.

“Go get the guys,” he panted, “I’ll meet you out front.”

I ran back to the truck, roared out of the grove and found the crew milling around the lot at the grocery store. The shop was at the end of a dirt cul de sac on the outskirts of town.  I lead the convoy down the road, and flashed my lights near the end of the street. Don had moved some hull molds out of the way, and seeing my signal, he rolled up the overhead door by the office. All three trucks, the second and third with trailers, fit inside the building. Don closed the door behind us.

We turned on lights in the back half of the building and began collecting our stuff – stealing from ourselves. A drill press, a mill/drill, all kinds of tools, the molds we had built, plastic sheet stock, files and furniture. We worked all night. Everything we wanted was loaded except the machine we had built. We were going to try and wrestle it onto one of the trailers, but it was bigger than we planned.

Just then we heard a car pull into the cul de sac! Whispered screams got the lights doused and everyone quiet. We crept through the shop to the office. Peeking out the window, a nondescript sedan sat there idling. It was not a new car, but just new enough to worry us. Had someone called the cops?!? Was this the ambush we feared?!? Which would be worse? The car just sat there. Five of us huddled in the dark office. Ready for the worst. After almost an hour, the sedan suddenly started moving. It circled around and headed out to the main road. To this day, I think it was just a couple of teenagers necking. They weren’t the only ones getting hot and bothered that night.

There first boat guys came to work about 6:00 am; it was 4:30, we had to make some decisions. Most of the money in our machine was in the control panel. This was no garage built vacuum former with vise grip clamps. Thanks to Don’s previous life selling machines, we had built a thoroughly modern machine with solenoid controls for vacuum, air assist, and to control the movement of two platens. We unceremoniously chopped through the air lines and vacuum hoses with a Sawzall. The electrical lines were cut and the control panel unbolted.

We relocked Dale’s dummy locked door. The overhead door threw open, and our convoy headed out. There was a personnel door right next to the main overhead door out front. This would have been the last door our evil partner left and locked. Leaving, we left that door unlocked just to plant the seed of doubt that he had forgotten to lock it.

Our convoy careened across town. We had breakfast with the crew and our wives; whose heads were spinning. “If taking all that stuff is the right thing to do, why did you have to break-in in the middle of the night to take it?” That night, the line between right and wrong got paved over. My ex-wife never trusted the efficacy of the business or my intrepid business partner after that. Or me for all I know.

After breakfast, the convoy headed to a building we had already rented. Soon, we had rebuilt a new machine with our precious control panel. We were back in Business! Meanwhile, the evil partner sued us.

In Florida, in certain civil matters, you can sue for treble damages; three times. We had signed promissory notes for $70,000. Somehow, with shared building expenses, lost revenue and other fairy tales, he had worked our tab up to $200,000; and sued us for $600,000!!

Now imagine being married to me for just eight or nine months [i know i've lost some of you already], having already been through, among other things, the long night along the old swamp road and the night we stole all our stuff from ourselves. Then a sheriff, knocks on the door while I’m at work at serves her[!] with a lawsuit where I’m getting sued for over a half million dollars! Count ‘em; 600 – extra large.

Turns out a lowly sheet of notebook paper, we had all signed, saved our bacon. The partner hired the biggest bulldog lawyer in the county. Our first lawyer peed all over himself and suggested we figure out a way to settle. I spent two days in the county law library reading. We were right, dammit! We found a couple lawyers who were done in by a partner once. They took the case, just above pro bono, on principle.

We settled out of court for $40,000. A win; but a win that had to be paid. The evil partner hired the Big Gun, but only paid him enough to write letters and file motions. Not only did that piece of notebook paper show that all three of us were officers of the company, it also showed that he had lent us the money; in our names not the company. The judge rebuked him and the Big  Gun harshly. She stated that he loaned us the money. We were free to to with it as we pleased; as long as we paid it back. As their case began to crumble at their feet, they offered to settle.

I learned so much about business law that year, I should have just gone ahead and finished law school. I was to learn even more, and a little about life, in the rest of my time with our company. That is a story for another day.

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Creature from the Swamp.

Feb 14

Posted by trt in Rambling | 1 Comment

By the Fates, the two of us ended up working in the same little shop in St. Petersburg. Don was the enigmatic guy formerly in charge of a competitor’s shop. I was the greenhorn salesman recruited to Tampa from Detroit to sell plastic across the state of Florida. Both of us, because of the politics where we had been and, in part, because of who we were, had been put out on the street by our former employers. I don’t recall how Don found the company. I had an impending marriage and actually paid a fee based employment agency for the privilege of working for idiots.

The idiots were three. First, was the nasty lady with a huge stipend. Her family had money but apparently shipped her to Florida to get her out of their hair and out of their sight. She lied to her new husband that she would front the business and let him run it.

Next, the husband was a Hoosier doofus. A former Middle Management Pencil Pushing Useless Shred of Human Debris at General Motors, who had been sleeping on his nephew’s couch and bumming cigarettes. When he met the nasty woman at a Baptist Church Singles Night, they married and suddenly he was Donald Trump. He told his nephew that the wife was going to front the business and the nephew could manage it.

Lastly, the nephew was an Indiana hilljack living in a trailer in Florida. He told his Uncle that he knew the plastics business; piece of cake. He didn’t know much about vacuum forming, the machine his brand new aunt had bought, but he had done some work in acrylic fabrication. The real acrylic talent had turned out to be his wife who was home raising the brood.

This shop was one of two places I could have committed a grisly murder. I suppose, occasionally, suicide wasn’t that far off either. One morning, the news broke that Stevie Ray Vaughn had died in a Wisconsin Helicopter crash.  We were moping around the break room before work started, staring in our coffee. The nasty woman walked in, felt the somber mood, looked from face to face to face . . .

“What’s the matter with you guys?” she growled like Jackie Mason with a head cold . . . in drag.

“Well, a terrific, promising, young musician died last night. We can’t believe it,” I volunteered.

“Who,” she asked. Or perhaps she just belched, I wasn’t sure.

“Stevie Ray Vaughn, a blues guitar player,” I said.

Her morning ritual was a Diet Coke and a package of pink Hostess Snow Balls that she kept in the freezer. Turning to open the fridge, she grunted “Well, at least it wasn’t Neil Diamond.”

As she reached for the Snow Balls, I lunged. I knocked her into the shelves of the fridge; brown bag lunches and half drank sodas exploded around the room. I struggled to roll her over amongst the debris. Deep, deep fear welled up in her bulgy eyes. She tried to smack me with the Coke bottle. I knocked it away. Digging past the wattle and the folds of her generous neck, I gripped her throat closed and . . . in my head.

Don and I started escaping the shop at lunch. It was no fun to work there. Some of the other stories are just bizarre. Bitching over lunch at an All-You-Can-Eat-Chinese-Buffet turned into plotting and planning. We met after work and wrote a business plan and started shopping a prospectus around.

After several weeks, we got a bite. A friend of a friend from Don’s church wanted to talk. The alarms should have already gone off. The man owned a marina on an island on Florida’s coast. We arranged to drive down and see him. It was an evening meeting as we were still working and he was running his empire.

That day was to become one of my longest ever. The shop we worked in with the three idiots was more like the Craft Room at Bellevue than a real business. It was a good hike to the island. Don and I drove separately to a rendezvous point. From there, I rode with him in his pickup.

It’s always a nice drive when you’re near the coast in Florida. We ambled down the coast and then waited behind a couple cars in line for the last private bridge in the state. Three bucks gets you across but it lets the locals think they are keeping the riff raff out. There was a long causeway across the tarpon flats and then we were on the island proper. All the requisite components were there: Condo Resorts, Hotels, Golf Resorts, Fishing Resorts and plenty of Seafood Joints. We found the marina and the man’s house across the street.

Our meeting seemed to go well. We had a good rapport and seemed to have similar goals. Then it happened. We scratched an agreement out on a piece of three ring notebook paper and he wrote us our first check. That hand written agreement would later save Don and I $560,000 but that’s a story for another day.

The bridge toll is for both ways, so we were down the causeway and off the island in no time. Our meeting had gone long. Those were the days before cellphones, so we were looking for a convenience store pay phone to call our wives. It was a beautiful clear Florida night. We were cutting through some rural miles just North of the Everglades. As we came around a curve well between streetlights in the swampy darkness, the lights came on. The dark was replaced by the surreal red and blue and pink and purple of the sheriff’s lights bouncing into the swampy woods on either side of the lonely road. We pulled over. The sheriff sauntered up to Don’s window.

“You boys just sit tight a minute,” he barked. He put his hand on the window sill of the pick up and just stood there, looking down the road.

Another squad car pulled up.

They put Don in the first squad car, to divide and conquer.  The second sheriff walked me about 75 feet down the road.

And a third squad car showed up.

Imagine the scrawny, red-headed kid from school who never said “boo” to anyone. Now imagine that he became a sheriff in Florida. This modern day Barney Fife was guarding me. I was getting eaten alive by hummingbird sized mosquitoes from the swamp. Barney had one of those microphone speakers on his walkie talkie, clipped, right by his ear, on the epaulet of his crisp, if somewhat baggy, uniform. The palm of his gun hand rested on the butt of his Glock 40, fingers splayed – ready for anything. “Anything” must be scary in his little head because every time the radio squawked, Barney jumped. It’s a big county; lots of squawks.

A fourth squad car, this one with a drug sniffing canine unit, showed up.

Standing on the shoulder of the dark lonely road in the swamp, I tried to swat mosquitoes quietly. No sense in making Barney even more jumpy. I was watching one of the deputies go page by page through my briefcase. The dome light in the cab shined on the inside of the windshield making it like the overhead mirror at a mall cooking demonstration. I could see everything going on in the cab.

I don’t have anything against the police, in general. Can you imagine a society without them? But these guys were goons. One was sucking on a drink from Burger King. When it went dry, he gave it one last giant suck.  Enough to make a Hoover jealous as his cheeks drew in around his molars. Afterward, he shook the cup to check the dry clink of the remaining cubes, and pitched the cup into the swamp.

You begin to have doubts about a guy you’ve only known for six months when he’s in the back of a squad car and you’re standing in the road in the swamp. One the only things I knew for sure was what he had for breakfast every day. Don’s wife bought him cheap powdered sugar donuts in the bag. Every morning, Don grabbed 3 or 4 donuts and a cup of coffee; normal ceramic mug, no travel mug. His shirts and the bench seat of his truck usually showed the effects of his struggle to eat, drink, and shift on the way to work. What was causing us trouble this evening was the powdery white residue the sheriff was looking at on the floor, in the cracks of the steering wheel and in the upholstery seams of Don’s truck.

The Goon Squad Sheriffs were scooping up the powdery white residue in little test vials. They would cap a vial, shake it, hold it up in the air like Dr. Stangelove and shine at it with their great big 6 cell Mag Lite. Then with a cuss, they threw vial after vial into the swamp. Apparently, they were expecting that cocaine would change the vial’s chemicals a certain color. After five or six vials, a frown, a grunt and a pitch into the swamp, they put the dog in the truck.

Up to that point in my life, I had had no previous experience with narcotics trained canine units. Really. But I had had lots of experience with dogs. I’m a proud card-carrying dog person. This cute Golden Retriever got shoved up into the pickup cab. She spun around a couple times, walked the length of the bench seat and back. Remember the cooking demo mirror. Finally, she just stood looking out the window at her handler, wagging her tail. I took a small slice of comfort.

The main deputy, a sergeant I think, walked down the road in his best John Wayne swagger. I was still swatting mosquitoes; Barney was still jumping out of his belt.

“The dog hit four times in that truck and your partner has already come clean, so you might as well too,” he stated with flat authority. In the wind whispering through the swampy air, I could almost hear the echo of “You pilgrim.”

I wasn’t about to confess to trafficking in powdered sugar. Unbeknown to me, they were telling Don that I sang and he might as well come clean. Neither of us did.

Later, the sergeant came back down the road and Don was let out of the squad car. I finally knew we were O.K.

“I can’t get you this time,” the sergeant threatened and thrust a finger at me, “but I will . . . next time.”

The dog crawled back in her carriage and the canine unit left. The sergeant barked a few orders and he left. Barney settled down a bit and he left.  As they disappeared, one by one, around the curve, the glow of a street light struggled to shine against the pines from around the curve.

“By the way,” the first sheriff chimed, “the original reason I pulled you over, you’ve got a headlight out.”

He smiled and walked back to his car which promptly . . . wouldn’t start. So after at least three hours on the side of the road for an unreasonable search and seizure, [ok, there was no seizure except perhaps our wives' reaction], we had to pull around in front of the goon’s car and give him a jump!

A little further around the curve and down the road, we found a pay phone and called our wives. In time, we were forgiven. Although, indirectly, the company we had just started later had a hand in a divorce for each of us.

In the ensuing six months or so, we began to realize our financial partner had earned most of his money in the low-flying-plane-import-business. This was the actual reason we got pulled over that night. It took us a while to connect the dots, but his house was being watched. We had spent several hours there one evening and got caught in the net on the way home.

Next time: our heroes steal the equipment and molds from themselves and start over across town. The evil empire sues and the magic of a piece of notebook paper is revealed. Tune in next time to catch all the action!

Hey, Spork, I’m happiest when I’m spinning yarns!

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I never wanted to be a treehugger!

Feb 12

Posted by trt in Nonsense | 2 Comments


You see the weirdest stuff out here on the road. I see a lot of shoes; just one at a time. Once, I remember seeing a woman’s belt in the middle of the highway. How did that happen?!

If your moving in the near future, please take some extra care tying stuff down. I see single couch cushions and box springs almost every day. Just the other day, I saw a whole series down the same highway; had to be the same guy. First, an oscillating fan; like you’d buy at Walmart or somewhere – in a couple chunks on the shoulder. Then one of those 3 drawer Sterilite storage units – blown to bits. And finally, three resin patio chairs – all with only three legs left.

I won’t gross you out with road kill stories, but two beavers in 36 hours is not just sad; that’s weird. I also shouldn’t tell you that I think I saw a bear cub once. That is really sad. My sister will get a weird satisfaction in amongst the sorrow. When she was a single digit age, about when you want to “have” things that are your own, she claims she saw a bear; presumably a live one. The family was traveling through the north woods of Michigan, on the way to Grandma and Grandpa Townsend’s in Cadillac. We were on US131, I think, a backwoods highway with steep banks on either side. The forest only trimmed back to the edge of the banks. By the time the ridge crested away from the highway, the forest was already thick. Amy exclaimed that she saw a bear. No one else did, but we were running up this highway in the woods. She probably saw a bear, but that hasn’t stopped my brother and I from saying “A bear!?! . . . yeah, right” for the last 25 years.

Another thing that I see way too much of out here on the road – plastic grocery bags! Wow, I’ve never been a treehugger and I used to be a plastics guy, but those bags are everywhere.

When I was in the plastics business, and involved in recycling, we successfully lobbied against a mandate to put corn starch in plastic grocery bags. The corn starch was added to make the bags somewhat degradable. It wasn’t perfect but it supposedly would have sped up the breakdown of the bag. It also polluted the plastic and made it un-recyclable. We argued that the bags would be collected, recycled and used in other products. It is time to revisit this issue. Bags are blowing everywhere.

Now the trouble with corn starch is the corn part. Food prices are rising, in large part, because of the increased demand for corn to make ethanol. Don’t get me started on corn! Corn is used, directly and indirectly, in almost everything the average American eats, but that’s a story for another day. I listened to a radio program about an incredible sounding documentary called King Corn.

There is actually a lot of trash around. I don’t understand it. Growing up in the 70′s with “Give a Hoot; Don’t Pollute” and the Litterbug, I wouldn’t dream of throwing something out the window. There is a certain percentage of truckers who live like Neanderthals but they are not responsible for it all. Two summers ago, I was walking a Lake Michigan beach that I knew very well as a kid. I was deeply saddened by all the trash I saw in the sand. I’ve never thought this way, but I was disgusted. We need to be better stewards of this world. That is not a political statement; that is a fact.

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And while I’m at it . . .

Feb 9

Posted by trt in Nonsense | Comments off

Click for Background on the horrendous situation in Burma. The Junta has announced they will hold a referendum, in May, on the constitution that they wrote and plan to hold elections in 2010. This in a country without even the right to assemble or the right to criticize the Junta or their “path to democracy.” The constitution purportedly disqualifies opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, perhaps because she already won one election they refuse to recognize.

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Think about it . . .

Feb 9

Posted by trt in Nonsense | 3 Comments

This may give away the punchline, but I was listening to Mountain Stage, a very cool PRI show, and the Guthrie Family Legacy Tour made a stop. Arlo was talking about his dad’s early life and I had an epiphany.

California was invaded once before by migrant workers. They showed up with little more than the clothes on their backs, driving vehicles that barely ran. They had large families and camped along the sides of farm roads. These migrants were so desperate, they would do any work for very little money. They weren’t exactly legal and they were definitely not invited, but California came to rely on them.

. . . they were from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl!!!

We are tossing around the Immigration Issue during this political season without considering that we are discussing human lives. They are us; We are them. The question of legality is really a symptom of a system that is broken.

The Okies helped to tranform the San Joachin Valley into the Agricultural juggernaut that it is today. Today, Mexicans are working those same fields. If you would really like to pay $10 for a head of lettuce, go ahead build the wall. Walls have done so well for Germans and Israelis.

We need to fix the system and to treat each other, all of us, as equals in this world. Sorry, this blog is usually not political; I couldn’t stop this one.

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Heartworn.

Feb 7

Posted by trt in Rambling | 1 Comment

Do you remember the old asphalt siding that was printed to look like brick? You can still see it on old farmhouses out in the holler.

There are times that my heart aches like an old farmhouse. The wooden screen door slams randomly in the wind. The porch leans a little downhill. At the corners, the old faux brick siding is peeling; gently waving in the wind. Last night, I just wanted to move back to Indiana. I miss my friends; I miss the bands and the music I was chasing. The road is a selfish and lazy lover.

Then this morning, I crossed the Monongahela River. There was a marina down below the bridge. Boats were scattered around; pulled in and stood up for the winter. There is something about a hull; even when it is not splaying the water. There is just something about a boat. I long to be on the water.

I miss my friends and family tremendously, but I am doing the right thing. I need to be on the water to be whole. I continue to work on my life and my plan. That tear in the asphalt siding still blows in the wind, but below that faux brick is real brick and mortar just waiting to be in the sun.

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Question Everything.

Feb 6

Posted by trt in Rambling | Comments off

Question = Reflect.

Question Authority. Question your beliefs. Question your lifestyle. Question your habits. Question everything you’ve got. Especially, question your prejudices, your anger, your frustrations.

I have been away from the blog for a while. After switching companies, I teamed up with a guy. We hit the road; I drove, he slept, he drove, I slept. It is hard to find WiFi when the truck usually doesn’t stop. Actually we did once in Missouri but that is another story.

Sitting in orientation for the new company, there were about 11 of us there. One guy stood out. He bristled with old school trucker attitude. He was negative and inappropriate. His jokes, comments and “F” bombs always seemed to creep in just at the wrong moment. He was asking these tedious detailed questions. You could tell he was angling to work the system. I even had the thought “I wouldn’t want to team with THAT guy.”

The new company was looking for teams. They have some business coming up in March that requires several. A team is two people in a truck; running 24/7. One sleeps, the other drives. It is good money they say.

So, after doing lots of paperwork and getting another drug test and physical, we were waiting around for truck assignments. They were short of trucks in Grand Rapids. Some guys were getting sent out in rental cars to Kansas City or Dallas to get trucks. Another way to get a truck and hit the road was to team up with someone.

The recruiter called for me and I found his office. Sitting there with the recruiter was THAT guy. They wanted to know if I would consider teaming. I really wanted to get back on the road again. The only way I make any money is if the wheels are turning. It was the fast lane out of town. I decided to do it. The worst case scenario was three weeks out and then jump ship when we came round to home again. I teamed up.

I was pretty much spot on about the guy. He was a curmudgeonly old school trucker; working the system, and complaining all the way. He was prejudiced has hell. But he was more than all that too. He talked and flirted with all varieties of fuel desk ladies. He had a solid trucker etiquette and a big heart. When we were sitting still, the DVD choice, his DVDs and his DVD player, was always mine. We even called on his brother when we were stuck in Minneapolis. Tequila, pizza, football, Pirates of the Carribean, and a guitar fix. And as a rookie, he showed me huge patience, above and beyond the call of co-driver.

I drove a semi with a clutch for a week and a half; and then spent six months driving an automatic. He had 20 years of driving under his you-know-where. There should have been trainer pay on his ticket for all the help he gave me. I would never be floating gears if it wasn’t for him [“floating” is shifting with the engines rpm's rather than using the clutch]. There were times when he heard me struggling from the sleeper and got out of bed to help me. So many things about driving a manual transmission, life on the road and even trucker folklore, I wouldn’t even know if not for him. I came to appreciate him immensely.

A former employer called and my co-driver decided to go back to them. He can run the way he likes to run there; and no satellite [cue "Satellite of Love" by Lou Reed]. I was trying to decide if I really liked team driving anyway. His departure just saved me from having that conversation. Team driving was more like a job. I wasn’t writing; I didn’t have my guitar with me.  And because I didn’t sleep as well while the truck was rumbling down the road. my caffeine intake probably quadrupled during that time.

All in all, I am happy to be back driving solo. I will, however, always use, and never forget, all the help I got driving around the country [literally] with an old school curmudgeon. NH, if you read this, thanks again.

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