may 4th, 2008

baltimore to nyc

it's about ten minutes to eleven and we don't have to leave till noon but i'm wide awake although we were up to close to five am watching "when we were kings" on jon's loyd's computer in brett bass and phil cimino's room. to save a little money, jon, joe coot's and i tripled up in our room at the sheraton city center hotel. the morning sun sneaks around the gaps in the thick curtains and really i'm pretty anxious to be on my way. part of me would love for the tour to continue another month but as it's over, i'd pretty much like to get on the road and get home.

last night we played at the 8x10 in baltimore. i've played that club many times. several times with the spin doctors and once or twice as a solo act. rob clores of the give daddy five and i went there and did a duo in, i think, '97 on one of the nights the yankees one the world series. we were watching the game at a sports bar across the street. we came into the club did the gig and then went back to the sports bar and caught the last inning or two as luis soho got a base hit or something crucial and won the game and series.

later

on the jersey turnpike. the home stretch. everybody's calling making arrangements for getting home. the guys need kris hydell, the man with a van, to help and he's illusive as usual. we come over the little rise just before exit 13 and the oil refineries smoke and the great tanks with their partial spiral stairs and the wires that criss cross and the great masses of pipes and smoke stacks lay in wait by the crouching pulaski skyway. newark, new jersey stands by as we pass on the twisting turnpike, the elizabeth seaport and the billboards. we come around on an overpass and those crane things that look like massive animals loom over the stacks of ship containers all beneath the silent and still cumulus clouds. newark airport and now we're on exit 14c behind a sunday driver. up the ramp and around him and we see manhattan shining in welcome to the time bandits triumphant home from the return of the son of southern fried tour. manhattan. we cross one of the hudson's harbor tributaries and the ramp takes us over bayonne, new jersey. the tour is done. there's banter in the white flash, our erstwhile van. we pass behind the statue of liberty who's back is to us. her eye is on the atlantic. she's watching for sailors. we're mariners but of the asphalt. asphalt mariners, come home to gotham, new amsterdam, and the sweet island of manhattan. we pay the toll by the liberty science center, limbs stiff and longing for the sidewalk that's beyond the river, beyond jersey city. helicopters zig and zag. the sun looks on and we're crawling across the spine of america's east coast in holland tunnel traffic. so close and yet so far.

do tours ever end? you come home but you're still searching. the world sits there for the taking but the taking never stops and who's taking whom? do you ever arrive? is there really any destination or just stops on a trip that never ends?


we stop and go. it's been three thousand six hundred and sixty four miles. rounding the overpass over the tunnel that goes under the hudson all with the southern fried world behind us.