Life Bites Me in the Butt

I've been on a road trip out west since Christmas Day and had managed to put 6000 miles on my car. I've not bothered y'all with a mass email because, thankfully, I had a very relaxing trip and didn't have anything that would have made good fodder (since I usually like to pass on stories where something difficult or unpleasant, but not fatal or maiming, happens). Unfortunately, I did have one of those experiences a few hours ago as I managed to get in a wreck on the interstate (just outside of Tucson) on my way back home.

The good news is that I'm fine, busted lip and a few cuts from the air bag aside, and that no one else was injured. I've still got to talk to the adjuster tomorrow to figure out exactly what I'm supposed to do ( e.g. hang out in Tucson for who-knows-how-long in order to wait on the car's repairs). At any rate, I don't have anything witty or amusing to say. Oh, well, maybe: Apparently, Audi specially designed the rearview mirror to detach and smack you in the face during an accident to wake you up in case you'd been knocked out by the airbag.

I'm now 101% MLK Day.

My First Time: Surprisingly Painless

I did protest a bit much, but only enough to satisfy my honor, before I, unhandcuffed, slid into the backseat of the police cruiser...

I've had the itch to go on a hike for a few weeks now, but the holidays and the various events surrounding Pop's retirement had conspired to keep me relatively Charleston bound. Finally freed from obligations I jumped into the car and headed up towards Holly Hill to pick up where I left off the last time I went hiking.

I had learned from my mistakes last time and made sure to carry much less gear this time around, especially since my goal was merely Columbia, not the Pacific; however, in a fit of last minute brilliance I crammed a few more things in the backpack as I was locking up the car in a pleasant speech-impaired Vietnam Vet's yard ("Oo cah pah da cah udda da tree...eh eh chickabay...on tay innawin"), thus filling the pack and effectively making it as cumbersome and heavy as I didn't want it to be. That being said, hiking in December is much more pleasant than in September, as the side benefit of lugging a fifty pound ruck is that it acts as a magnificent heater.

It was already late afternoon as I trudged down Highway 176 and I walked on the edge of the mostly empty oncoming lane, but for when there happened to be cars and I stepped off onto the grass. I wasn't concerned about getting hit by cars since I could see them coming, especially once it became dark, but I still was almost killed when a creme Dodge station wagon, going my direction down the two-lane road, decided to pass a car and nearly grazed me with the sideview mirror. After that, when I heard cars coming from behind I stepped off into the grass too.

That first night was rather uneventful. I walked into Holly Hill, ate at the Hardee's, sat and read in the warmth of the restaurant, and then walked for another hour. I was going to go into the woods to camp for the night but I didn't really want to be in the woods rustling around the next morning when hunters were out, so I found a small field shielded from the road by a copse of trees and set up the tent there. I messed around with a fire, but for no real purpose since I'd already eaten and I didn't need it for warmth and eventually I put it out, crawled in my zero degree sleeping bag and went to sleep. I had put in about fifteen miles for the day.

The next morning I felt horrible, as I suspected I would. The famous saying is "know thyself" and I am lucky that I know that I'm a complete [sissy] when it comes to dealing with being sore. I fought off the urge to get the hell back to the car and go home and set my sights on Cameron, the next "town" on the road.

Cameron was at least twenty- one miles away, which is by far the farthest I ever would have hiked in a day (particularly with a pack), but I walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. I got into a very nice rhythm of convincing myself to quit, cussing at myself for being a [sissy], realizing I'd walked for an hour and taking a five to ten minute break, and then repeating all of that. I did that for seven hours and finally got to where I could see the lights of Cameron (well, it was one flashing yellow light, really).

My shoulders burned, I was relatively sure that I'd destroyed the sole of my left foot, and my knees ached. Nonetheless, I was going to make it to that Cameron town marker come hell or high water. It turns out that being stopped by the police is more of a deterrent to me than hell or high water.

As it was already dark, it was quite obvious to me that I was being "pulled", as the cop drove up behind me in the other lane and turned the sun lamp on me. I'd been rather surprised that I hadn't seen a police car the entire day and so it wasn't completely unexpected. The officer, a nice older black man with a stutter, questioned me as to what I was doing and asked for my ID. I gave him my driver's license plus my reserve ID card, which did the trick.

After he had called in my information, to make sure that I wasn't a serial killer on the lam I suppose, he asked me, "So you're just gonna go sleep in the woods?"

"Yup."

"Aren't you scared?"

"Nope...wasn't last night."

"I'd be scared."

Despite his fear, he bid me farewell and went on his way. I went back over to the oncoming lane and set back out to reaching Cameron.

I'd made it another ten minutes or so when a cruiser came up from behind me and parked ahead of me. This time a younger white officer with a crew cut stepped out.

"Lemme give you a ride," he said.

"No, thanks. I don't need a ride. I'm hiking."

We went through a similar conversation as I'd had with the other policeman, but it was relatively obvious he wanted me to get in the car. The back of my mind played out my First Blood fantasy, but I calmly asked if there were a problem.

It turned out that all the nice people that had passed by me, whom I had waved to without fail to show that I was a friendly guy, had called the law on the "vagrant walking on the road," as the officer put it.

I quickly realized that he didn't have a problem with me so much as he just wanted to have an easy night and not get pestered anymore, which was pretty easy since Calhoun County has only 8000 inhabitants, 21 policemen, two townships and NO motels or hotels, as I was to discover later . I agreed to let him give me a ride to the other side of town, about three miles, though it really chapped me not to get to that sign.

After I got in the car he asked me about my route and I explained that I was probably going down Bluff road to get into Columbia. That was all he needed as he politely, yet firmly, insisted on giving me a ride out of Calhoun County down to the start of Bluff road. (I had done at least twenty miles that day as we had barely gotten rolling when we passed the Cameron sign).

I was more than a bit ticked that I was having a sizeable chunk taken out of my journey, though admittedly also pleased since I had a credible excuse. There was nothing to do for it but chat with the officer while we made our way and, as is my talent, I took the conversation to a relatively strange place, considering the circumstances.

There I was in the backseat of a Calhoun County Police Cruiser, behind the plexiglas, craned forward so that I could hear him, and somehow I got him to explain how to make Methamphetamine. What really got to me was that I couldn't understand hide nor tail of what he was saying since he lost me at the part where he said one had to mix sudafed or actifed with "anhydrous ammonia". Then he started talking gibberish involving "covalent bonds", "ions", "hydrites", "hydrates" and a host of other things I didn't understand the first time, back when I was getting a C- in HS Chemistry.

Suitably impressed, though clearly baffled, I shook my head and said, "Wow, that's a hell of a thing they teach you at police academy!"

He shook his head and replied, "Aw, hell naw, this here's an agricultural area. I grew up here. Gotta know that stuff." I'm not quite sure how that works since I remember a lot of the farmer kids back in HS in Beaufort doing a hell of a lot worse than my C- in chemistry, but I nodded nonetheless.

He dropped me off and I skidaddled to a field where I slept for the next 14 hours after popping the blister that was my left foot.

That was pretty much all the excitement (or non-excitement), I have to report as the next two days involved me lurching down the road in my quest to get to Columbia. The only way that I was able to get there was because the first night on Bluff road I stayed at a friend's house that was at about the halfway mark and real food (not the cold, canned corned-beef-hash, or snickers I'd been eating) and beer resurrected me. The next day, reinvigorated, I made it in to town, having managed over sixty miles in four days.

A Day in the Life of a Bum (Me)

I'd agreed to meet my brother Wyman's best friend Marc and a group of Marc's friends on Wednesday night. By appearances, Marc is a prim and proper Parisian businessman (which he says, though I'm fairly certain that he's "French KGB"), but in reality is the biggest social butterfly I've seen. Though having only been in Charleston off and on for four years (his spy work takes him to Iceland and other strange locales) he knows virtually everyone in town and is a member of nearly every club imaginable (particularly the ones where he's the youngest member by at least 40 years). The last time I'd gone out with Marc the night finished off at an impromptu house party where the spectrum of his acquaintances included strippers (off duty), a bouncer, a jeweler, a magazine co-editrix, a failed US Senate candidate and a raging egomaniac (me), among others. Thus when he said that he said we were all meeting up just to go to a bar to watch a bluegrass band, I should have known that there was a high likelihood of something memorable happening.

The bluegrass band was interesting enough, though the bar was relatively dead and the band finished far sooner than we'd anticipated. Because we didn't want to waste a downtown parking spot by leaving so soon, we went to see what else might be happening nearby in the Market. Our first stop was the Marked Street Saloon, a touristy bar where the bartendresses get up and knock out a choreographed dance on the bar from time to time.

Marc and I were dressed in traditional Charleston casual wear (khaki slacks and button down shirts) and his friend the jeweler was wearing argyle pants [when asked by the co-editrix, who was Marc's date, why, the jeweler responded, "I don't like to look like everyone else." Under my breath I said, "Hmm…defining yourself externally…I prefer to dress like everyone else and let my personality differentiate me." (which admittedly is a bit of a BS statement because the week before I'd gone in a swank bar in one of my Peruvian ponchos)]. Point being, we stuck out like sore thumbs, in a bar where most of the guys were wearing cowboy hats and jeans.

Feeling a bit self conscious and bored, and not paying much attention, I ended up drinking a bit more than I'd realized and soon was doing my spastic boogie. As the saloon was rather sparsely peopled that night, one of the bartendresses took notice of my shameless showboating and, when I started belting out a Guns N' Roses song that had just come on the speakers to Marc and the others, she jammed a microphone in my face and I gave the entire bar an impromptu lesson on why it's probably best that someone else keep track of my imbibition. Though apparently the bartendress had rather enjoyed my impression of a rhesus monkey being brained and wanted us to stay, I suddenly felt embarrassed and we quickly skidaddled off to another bar.

Eventually, Marc, the jeweler, and I headed over to cousin Elizabeth's, where we settled down to sober up and watched the greatest terrible movie in the history of blaxploitation, Dolemite (or as the cover to the DVD declared, "RUDY RAY MOORE is…Dolemite!"). At the finish, I was still not quite right, but it didn't matter since Mark decided he and I were going on a road trip (the jeweler, having not been able to withstand Rudy Ray Moore's genius, had left some time before). So, at one in the morning, we jumped in his car (I grabbed the sleeping bag, tent, two Peruvian ponchos, and Desert Eagle pistol from my car and put them in his trunk) and headed off.

Marc really wanted to go to Oxford, Mississippi, but since I'd just driven from Louisiana two weeks earlier, I was in no mood to do another overnight nine hour drive. We bargained back and forth on ever closer destinations until I convinced him that Asheville was the way to go, especially since I know people there and it's loaded with hippies.

We'd left Charleston, where it had been in the seventies, and by the time we stopped for the night, at 4:30, just short of Asheville it was nearly freezing. The clerk at the Red Roof Inn looked at us rather suspiciously as we came in wearing the ponchos, which was all I had for warmth, and thought it necessary to ask if we wanted a king size or two doubles. I almost sprained my tongue trying to say "Doubles!" so quickly.

We rolled into Asheville yesterday at noon on what was a cold blustery day (we had stopped at a Walmart so that I could buy toiletries). I convinced Marc that to fit in with the hippies it was necessary for us to wear the ponchos. We then set out on foot to get a sense of the place.

Now, when I say Asheville is loaded with hippies, I mean it. For some reason, that particular hamlet is where the freaky people from the Southeast congregate. In no time whatsoever we were immersed in white people sporting dreadlocks and tie-dyed bandannas, wearing army surplus store jackets, and smelling like whatever it is that dogs always roll around in after you've let them go outside after a bath. It was perfect. We queried all of them as to what we needed to see and we got different answers from all of them. Apparently, other than the ultra-liberal bookstore/ coffeehouse and Himalayan boutique (where we were unfortunate enough to stumble on a plump woman breastfeeding her talking child) we went to, the hippies didn't concentrate in any particular establishment.

As we were at a bit of a loss, plus it's always fun to talk to him, we called my cousin William, who lives just out of town with his wife, Sarah, and his baby daughter Bridgette (whom he sorta jokingly refers to as "Regan", the possessed girl from The Exorcist, since the baby is a rather fierce 2yo). William is one of those few ultra-brilliant people you can spot from a mile away. He's jovial but at the same time has a very intense look about him, that's aided in no small part by his untamed John C Calhoun/ Ludwig von Beethoven hairstyle. If there's one thing I can say for sure about William, it's that he loves to hippie watch/ mock. We asked him to come into town and help us on our safari.

In the course of our wanderings from bar to hippie "bodega" to crepe restaurant to swanky Beaujolais tasting event (which cost $40 a head, though we simply walked right in past the bouncer and no one charged us) to Indian restaurant (where I burned 75% of my tastebuds) to hookah bar (which, surprisingly, was so empty we didn't stay) to basement divebar (where I clobbered William in darts as Marc hit on the bartendress), we saw the sweep of the town and Marc and I came to the conclusion that we'd never seen a place quite like it. Asheville is so strange that we actually had a bum accost us, not for money, but simply to say, "That's the @#!! I'm talkin' about! Those is real mutha!#%!in' ponchos!"

Sufficiently sober, at midnight Marc and I bid William adieu and got back on the road to Charleston. Other than our stop for gas, where I scared woman clerk who was closing up shop for the night, but let us come in and use the bathroom…

Me: "Sorry to hold you up."

Her: (gasp; look of fear)

Me:"…I mean, delay you."

Her: "Oh, I think I know what you mean…I guess…(Eyeing my poncho to see if I had a shotgun hidden in it)."

Me: "I'm not going to rob you in khakis."

…we had no more adventures and safely completed our adventure.

On the Road Again

After leaving Jacksonville, where I'd spent a few days being emmasculated (I'd taken the girl to shoot a pistol for the first time and she out-shot me; according to my army service record I'm an "expert" with a pistol), on my way to visit friends in Louisiana, I decided that I needed to reassert my machismo. For those that don't know, "machismo," in my warped mind means "glaringly, stupidly, dangerous activity." As the interstate doesn't offer much by way of opportunities for machismo (other than flicking off a fleet of Hell's Angels), I jumped at the first that presented itself. So, yes, I picked up a hitcher.

I figured that I'd hedged my bets since he looked relatively old and he had a suitcase and a folding bag. Nonetheless, as he huffed to lug his gear the hundred yards to the car, I took the Desert Eagle out of the glovebox, locked and loaded it (though kept it on safe), set it down between my seat and the door, and covered it. It turned out he was a rather affable, if aromatic, Vietnam Veteran whose job in Orlando hadn't panned out. He'd had to go there because he was struggling to find work after the factory he'd worked at had been destroyed by Katrina. At any rate, that was what he said, though I'm not sure how much I believed him.

I am proud to say though that my mission to reassert my machismo was successful beyond my wildest dreams. Apparently, I'd scared the guy so much (I did my fair share of ranting during the four hours I had him in the car), that getting a ride wasn't worth it. Though he needed to get to Louisiana, and I told him I'd take him that far, he had me drop him off at a truck stop just past the AL/FL border because he said he had to use the bathroom and didn't want to hold me up.

Caveat Emptor (Written for the Charleston Mercury)

Ladies and Gentlemen, readers of The Mercury, a word, if I may. Being Charlestonians, and thus on the vanguard of all trends for the state, it is our responsibility to lead the way for our fellow South Carolinians, and yet it appears that many of us are negligent in our duty, indeed, in a most embarrassing fashion.

In my travels around the United States and the world, courtesy of the Army, I can say with confidence that the only other Americans to show nearly as much pride in their land as we do are Texans. We both seem to carry our flags everywhere we go. While it’s a bit troubling to admit that we share some similarities with our wayward western citizens, what’s mortifying is that we oftentimes make inadvertent fools of ourselves in the process. You see, I’ve come to discover that many of us hide a shameful secret. Much as Desperate Housewives watchers can get by and even thrive in day to day life but harbor their closeted dysfunction, so too do many of us go around putting on a game, proud face, but privately have no idea what a palmetto really is.

There. I’ve said it. Many South Carolinians haven’t a clue what a palmetto is. Well, actually, they have a clue, but they haven’t the foggiest of what separates a palmetto from a palm tree. I know this because every day I see plenty of South Carolina merchandise, proudly displayed on clothing, stickers, and flags, that features a palm instead of a palmetto.

Surely, one might think, we can’t be so unobservant as not to notice our state tree (we are the Palmetto State, after all) missing from much of this merchandise. One would be wrong. Perhaps one simply thinks that it’s not an issue what tree is on the flag if they’re so similar. Yet again, one is wrong, and that’s the embarrassing part.

Texans don’t screw up the Lone Star flag. One never sees a Texan sporting that flag with an octagonal star on it. Surely, if one can allow a palm instead of a palmetto, one can allow 60% more star (the extra three points) for the Texans. Suggest that to a Texan and see what he thinks.

No, I, for one, am sure that this is not a matter of not caring about the difference between the palmetto and the palm; it must be due to ignorance. Fret not though, this isn’t an indictment of the guilty reader. Extraordinarily intelligent people commit this error all the time and in the most egregious ways. My examples: we even have the palm tree on the logo of our state university. Feel free to go to www.sc.edu. There, in the top left-hand corner, one will see plain as day, a representation of a palm tree between the fabled gates of the Horseshoe. Shoot, even our license plates feature what looks suspiciously like a palm tree (This wouldn’t be the first time that the state got a bit confused. Some argued that the old license plates in use from 1991-1998 featured a Bananaquit, a smaller, similar bird, as opposed to the state bird, the Carolina Wren.).

If our state government and educators have made this mistake it is most definitely time for a quick lesson to put us back on the right track. When I began my research into the differences between palms and palmettos, I quickly discovered, as many of the more intelligent and informed readers are no doubt aware, that the palmetto is a palm; however, a bit like a square is a rectangle, but not vice versa, a palm is not necessarily a palmetto.

Suffice it to say that my meager intellect was hardly up to the challenge of figuring out all this botany, especially when I discovered that the state tree, the Sabal palmetto, is also referred to as the cabbage palm, so I high-tailed it for help.

As one could hardly expect a Carpenter to write something in The Mercury without referencing other Carpenters, I contacted my uncle, Dr. David H. Carpenter Jr, a recently retired professor from the University of South Carolina and a botanist of no small renown, to see if I could get an expert to weigh in on this (minor) controversy. Fortunately, he was able to shed some light.

“Our Palmetto tree is a palm. The Palm family (Arecaceae) has hundreds of kinds of palms world- wide in the tropics; however there are only three (native) kinds in the southeastern US. Two species of palmettos in the Genus Sabal -- Sabal palmetto (our state tree) and Sabal minor (a small shrub like palm in the pine land swamps in coastal regions of SC south). The other is ‘saw palmetto’ Serenoa repens which grows in the same basic habitat as Sabal minor. Commonly, the palms are divided into the feather palms and the fan palms. All of ours are fan palms.”

The last two sentences helped me greatly because, shy of minutiae regarding growth rates and trunk length, the main thing that separates the imposter palms of our state merchandise from the real deal palmettos are the fronds. So, for you, the readers of The Mercury, whom I know shall lead the charge to rectify our collective mistake, I offer to you the following easy-to-use guide:

Please. Use it. Tell a friend. Spend wisely on the proper merchandise. After all, our state pride is at stake; we’ve got to fix this before the Texans find out.

Ajax Carpenter, a Charleston native and graduate of the University of South Carolina, is an unabashed nitpicker with too much time on his hands.

On Second Thought

Yesterday evening, as I was nearing my fourteenth mile of the day (the 94 degree heat is no joke), I had an epiphany. I stopped at the next pay phone and had cousin Elizabeth pick me up. At five days and fifty miles (just short of Holly Hill on hwy 176) I'd gotten what I wanted to out of the hike.

Suffice it to say that I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I've stopped after so short a time, but, simply put, it would have been stupid for me to continue on. I've been so concentrated on getting this trip going that it didn't dawn on me that what I wanted to get out of it (learning how to push myself), I'd already accomplished in the past four years (and particularly last year). Instead of taking another year in exile and missing out on the various important events that occurred with friends and family, I'm ready to settle in to my life again. I don't need a year on the road to be sure of that.

P.S. To those who inquired as to the availability of the pistol should some misfortune befall me: As that isn't the only time that I'm going to go on a hike or have an adventure, I'm sure that there's still a reasonable shot that I can get eaten by a bear sometime in the future.

P.P.S. Plus I really, really, really wanted to booze it up at the USC vs Troy football game this weekend.

Good Night and Good luck

Tomorrow I begin my walk. The plan is to put one foot in the Atlantic and walk until I put one in the Pacific. Of course, plans change and I could get sick and tired of lugging around a backpack and sleeping in a tent after three days. Who knows? At any rate, I send this out with the assumption that I will be gone for the 4-10 months it may take me to ramble along the entire distance.

Please continue to email me if and when you think of me. I'll be stopping at public libraries and other establishments to check email when I have the opportunity so please be patient if it takes me a few days to reply.

To end on a dour, morbid note, of course there's always the possibility that this endeavor of mine could prove fatal (though I certainly don't believe it will, especially not with my taking along my trusty .50 Cal Desert Eagle, seven foot Macedonian spear/walking stick, and hunting knife), so, on the off-chance I get mauled by a bear or starve to death in the woods, thanks for your parts y'all've played in my life and be well.

P.S. but then, like I said, I could quit after a few days