Buffalo Bill Downhill part 1

I hadn’t slept in weeks. Events just kept taking place that didn’t allow for it. First was a marine on leave before shipping out, and then the attempt of finishing all schoolwork before the drunken haze of what Winchester knows as Apple Blossom began. After that was finals week, culminating in an 8am sound reinforcement final and a 10am piano jury on that Friday, after which meant an immediate bail to the airport and off to Colorado. I remember those three or so weeks as being arduous but at the same time don’t remember much through the haze of the smoke and drink consumed so heavily during that time. That seems to be how the whole semester is in my memory although I don’t recall pumping chemicals in my body as rapidly as in those three weeks. Did I accomplish anything or progress my skills in the ways I was seeking or am at this school for?

This was my 5th skate related adventure of the year and the fourth of the semester. The routine is beginning to be all too familiar, although I guess that is why it’s called a routine. There is always some set point in time where everything else gets dropped and the adventure begins. It’s either a set time, which I feel I have to leave by to make it to my destination on time, or a relative time such as after a certain class it’s bail time. Living this way means you forget a lot of little things you wanted for each trip but had no time to think about. All you end up with is the skate gear you need to race (maybe some extra parts for riding later) and the clothes on your back, and potentially sleeping materials.

I woke up on my couch in my new house on Friday morning next to a nice redheaded beauty. There was potentially enough time to get food and study more but it didn’t happen. I normally hate to smoke cigarettes so early in the morning but this was a big exception with the amount of stress I was feeling. My brain had clocked out two weeks ago and I stopped caring about these last two finals because my important juries were out of the way and all that was on my mind was ripping down a legendary mountain road in Colorado with some of the fastest guys in the world. Both finals went well but were entirely more half assed than I ever like to be. I was done at 11 after waiting for a half hour beyond my scheduled 10 o’clock appointment for my piano jury. My flight left at six and I needed to eat, pack, shower, clean my car, say bye to my girlfriend and drive an hour back to the suburbs I am currently running from. I managed to do it all in enough time that I even cleaned my helmet off for the first time since buying it a year ago and still get back to the street of my up-bringing by two or two-thirty.

To no surprise at all there was a group of regulars out on the street. It’s strange to run into a group of people you told you probably weren’t going to see or communicate with for a long while. It was good feelings of reminiscence on the street of youth but still the same game. After parting ways I made my way to my house to eat and wait for my mom to drive me to the airport. I had forgotten to email my flight itinerary to both the people picking me up in Denver and my mom who was driving me to the airport and picking me up. I tried to send it before leaving but ended up messing it up and not pasting the link in the email to my mom. I ate a mass produced, over processed, frozen breakfast sandwich and shot the shit with my mom until almost four o’clock when we left for Dulles International.

I had thought my flight was through United Airlines and got in line for domestic flights. It was a long line and I was kind of worried that the security line would be just as long and that I could miss my flight. After a half hour or forty-five minutes of waiting in line I got to a machine to get my boarding pass only to be told my reservations were not in the system and that United didn’t even have a flight near the time mine was supposed to be. After a quick phone call to my girlfriend that seemed endless and painful at the time, I was informed that my flight was actually with US Airways. It was nearly five and I needed to get my boarding passes, get through security and get on my flight. Luckily there was a one-person wait for US Air’s check in desk and the line for security wasn’t bad. The only problem was that I was informed my second flight might have been over sold and seats might not be available but there was nothing I could do about that. I managed to get through it all and to my gate of departure by 5:30 only to find out my flight was being delayed. This gave me enough time to get a sandwich from subway for dinner but ate wearily worrying if I would make my connecting flight in Charlotte, North Carolina since I only had a forty-minute layover. We started boarding after six when departure was originally scheduled and didn’t take off until six-thirty.

Immediately after take off I leaned my head against the wall of the plane and passed out until I was awoken by the captain informing of the planes’ final descent. After we were allowed to turn on cell phones I checked the time to find that I had only fifteen minutes to find my other gate and board the plane if it was running on time. I’d been in the Charlotte airport before but it had been a couple years. My gates were on opposite sides of the terminal from each other and I booked it the entire way getting to my gate with only a few people in line to get on the plane and not knowing if I had a seat or not. When I got to the counter I was out of breath and sweaty, I held out my ticket with no seat assignment on it and inquired about whether or not I was getting on this plane. I was no where near prepared to be stuck in Charlotte trying to figure out how to either get to Denver or get back home. I wouldn’t even know where to begin in that situation. The guy taking tickets looked at my blank ticket and compared it to others on the desk and handed me my actual boarding pass with my name on it and a seat assignment.

The plane was almost entirely full when I got on and almost everyone was settled already. I had an aisle seat next to a young, tan woman in her late twenties with long brown hair and a flowing purple hippy dress of sorts and her half black son of maybe three years. At first I got bad vibes from the lady because of the angry, bitchy way she was trying to calm down her son. They both went to sleep for a while and I tried as well but was too awake after the nap on the first flight and running across the airport. As the stewardess’ came around with drinks, the girl ordered two shots of vodka and juice while I ordered a coke. She turned to me and said that she’d been sick and that her remedy of the day was some Dayquil, Theraflu, and two shots of vodka and that so far it had been working or at least not making anything worse. For some reason she slipped in that she had been smoking a lot of weed, about an eighth to herself. Her name was Cayenne, “like the pepper,” she told me, and she “used to be a dancer, well a stripper really.” The conversation only kept getting weirder as we traded stories of our travels, me for skateboarding and her for apparently no reason other than to travel and see the world. I suspect that she had some sort of sugar daddy who was either a pimp or very well off drug dealer.

The discussion somehow turned to psychedelics and we continued on talking in normal voices about crazy drugs that only a small percentage of the population has tried and that the majority thinks are the scourge of the earth. Planes are usually very quiet with little to no conversation and only the noise is the engines and the wind rushing by at six hundred miles an hour. It was odd talking so openly in front of all these businessmen and everyday, suburban, middle-class travelers. She told me a horror story of her worst shroom trip. Her and her boyfriend of the time had eaten mushrooms and after her little boy was asleep, she thought she could tell the babysitter to leave. “He usually just slept quietly all night and was never much of a problem, but for some reason that night he woke up screaming and crying. I went in to check on him and couldn’t even look at him because he was an alien baby and I couldn’t handle it,” is what she told me. Before she even said the words “I felt like the worst parent in the world,” I was horrified at hearing such a thing. Her little boy was in the seat next to her asleep during this whole conversation. As he woke up our conversation dwindled and her little boy started confusing me for a friend of hers. We stopped talking after a while and I went to sleep for the last leg of the three-hour flight.

My plane landed on time and I was feeling good that I had made it this far. After exiting the plane and making my way to the train system in Denver’s airport, Cayenne’s little boy kept thinking I was her friend and she had to keep telling him I was not who he thought I was. After boarding the train to the main terminal I lost track of them and probably will never see them again. It’s strange to think that after such an intense encounter of a few hours that this person will never be in my life again. The information shared between us was no different than that of a new acquaintance at a party or gathering of like-minded people but because it happened on this journey and was not asked for, was what sets this moment apart. I’ve met and befriended many similar people but this simple and quick friendship and departure doesn’t happen often. I always get the feeling that I need to talk to certain people that I see on these types of journeys because of their appearance, demeanor or presence, but hardly follow through because of my own shyness and lack of confidence due to the situation that society sets forth at this point in time. There was a man that I kept seeing and being near in the airport before my first flight who ended up with the seat next to mine on the plane and although I felt a large urge to gain information from him, the only words passed between us where about the time right after I woke up and before we landed in Charlotte. I don’t know if any new knowledge or world insights were gained from my dealings with Cayenne but I’m glad it happened and lack any reason other than it’s a good story.

After searching upon a constantly changing screen of arrival flights I found my baggage claim carrousel on the east side of Denver International. This was the side I was told my ride was going to be on when I arrived. It was ten at night in Denver and midnight on the east coast and I was running on fumes. When I approached the carrousel my ride found me with his daughter in tow. My chauffer was named Mark and I had met him and his son the summer before at an event in upstate New York. They were generous enough to pick me up after a single meeting. As we waited for the bags to start appearing out of the black hole of the airport, we rambled about what had been going on in Colorado leading up to the event I was arriving for. It was supposedly an experience to be directing traffic while they lined the road with straw bails compared to their normal “barge the hill for a run or two and get out before the cops show up” everyday session. After waiting and talking for a long while and as the bags poured onto the conveyer belt my camouflage duffle over stuffed with my race board, leathers and camping equipment was no where to be seen. Mark told me his gear usually showed up on the oversized luggage carrousel. After watching that turn with only a few bags, none of which were mine, we decided it had definitely been lost between my connecting flights.

I was too tired and content that I myself had made it to Colorado to put up any sort of fight with the airline and there was nothing I could do to get my bag there any faster anyway. I filled out the necessary papers and left Mark’s address as the location to deliver my bags. It was supposedly going to be delivered sometime the following afternoon. Now I needed to find a board and leathers to be able to ride for the first day. I tried calling my friend Jason, to see if he brought extra boards to the race but his phone was dead. Luckily Calvin, Mark’s son, had just bought new leathers and had an old board. His suit was too big and the board was so far from what I am used to but at least I had something. When I got to their house, where I would spend the night, all the local skaters who had been hanging out had headed home to sleep and it was just the residing family. Calvin gave me his board and leathers and I started to set up the board before bed but didn’t have the right size bearings so I gave up and went to sleep. I knew it could be dealt with in the morning and that my mental acuity was more important.