Ride with me...

It was a 2 hour drive from Jersey to Woodstock, up the New York State Thruway. We took this ride just about every weekend my entire life, up until I was old enough to stay back in Jersey while my parents went away and destroy the back yard with a 2 day long keg party.

The drive was much more fun when the weather was nice, half way through the drive, you could literally smell the air get cleaner. In the fall the leaves would change colors making it look like you were driving in a rainbow, and along with the crisp clean air flattening my face as I hung my head out the window, it might as well have been heroin for kids. Everything was ok when my head hung out that window. I would raise my hand into the gusting wind, pretending it was superman racing to save the world.

Sometimes when my mother was feeling a little adventurous, she would let me ride in the back of Dad's pick up truck. I would have to lay down the entire time so the cops wouldn't see. It was the coolest thing ever! Dad would lay down a bunch of moving blankets and I would lay there bumping around, hoping the vortex wouldn't suck me up and pull me under the truck while I made out the shapes of the clouds..... The tops of the trees whizzed by, as Dad's cigarette ashes occasionally scattered into the wind, burning my eyes and salting my tongue. When we got to the toll booth I would have to hide under the blanket so the attendant wouldn't see me, then when it finally got dark I would be able to sit up against the back window. When I was very young, and even to this day, whenever I am in a car and a nice breeze is blowing all over me, I can't help but feel like being in the scene of a movie. It's never a pleasant movie and we are always being chased or pretending we are leaving the scene of some brutal murder, but there is something about the wind, the scenery flying by, the right song on the radio... Makes me feel like i'm in "To live and die in LA" or some shit.

That was the first thing I thought when I first got to Los Angeles.... The palm trees all rowed up nicely along the freeway, tiny little lit up mansions scattered all over the Hollywood hills in the far background, the smell of excitement and adventure mashed up with a little urine and smog. I can remember Wang Chung banging through my skull as sweat misted my face. I lit a cigarette, took a very dramatic drag, and blew it out my nose as I rested my elbow on the rolled down window, resting my thumb on the side of my head as I gazed out into the new chapter.... I felt like Willem Dafoe being chased by Grissom down the 101.