Travels With Rick

We’ve all been lost once in awhile. Sometimes we remain that way the rest of our lives. And sometimes we need to ask directions. Sometimes we just have to admit that we don’t know where the hell we are and how to get to where we want to be. Most people understand this. My friend Rick never did. Throughout the seventies we’d go tooling along in his car, and almost invariably end up going the wrong direction. Now Rick was a professional partygoer. In fact, he was Mr. Party. He always knew when and where one was happening, and if not, he could find one almost effortlessly just by driving about. But there was always a cost to be paid on these sojourns. He could never get there in a straight line, and was always making twenty wrong turns while heading to the next get together. I’ve never met anyone with a worse sense of direction, particularly in his own god-damned home town. It didn’t help that riding with him was like entering some sort of low-rent Hunter Thompson nightmare. He’d drive by my folks’ house and I’d go out to get in the car, hoping the parents weren’t going to notice the clouds of smoke billowing from the cab. Once inside, I’d almost immediately go into system shock, if not from the acrid haze, then from the sheer oxygen deprivation within, (it should surprise no one to learn that at least one of Rick’s lungs collapsed around this time). Ash was everywhere, the ashtray itself having given up any hopes of competing with the derrick loads it was expected to handle. The upholstery might have been shot, but you’d never know it, given the comforting dunes that lay upon it. An army of stoners would have been content for weeks of sucking on my jacket after I’d sat in that car for a few minutes.
The routine for an outing was pretty simple. After having lit up for the tenth time that evening, Rick would announce that night’s social gala, and we’d start off, usually with a quick stop at 7/11 for cheap wine, (ah, Tyrolia, sweet nectar o’ the parking lot). Now, within minutes, I could always count on Rick to make a wrong turn. Soon, we’d be going east instead of west, up instead of down, etc. I’d point this out, and he would deny it, claiming he knew a “better/quicker/secret way”. All bullshit, of course; by now the smoke would be so thick that he could barely see to the windshield, much less turn Sacagawea on me and forge a virgin path through the Alexandria wilderness. Each time I would manage to grab enough oxygen to choke out another protest, he’d glibly reply with more of the type of assurances that one can only get from the hopelessly potted.
And predictably, the further we’d get from our intended destination, the more our maneuvers would resemble a pinball as Rick turned, bounced and swerved the car from landmark to landmark in a beleaguered attempt to get us back on track – a tactic I now call pachinko navigation.
They say that smoking dope can make you paranoid. Wrong. It’s hanging around with sloppy dopers like Rick that makes one paranoid. Careening and zig zagging crazily around town in a car full of smoke while sitting in several feet of ash; I’m surprised he didn’t just install a blazing neon light in the rear window announcing “Hey Pigs - Bust Me & Win Valuable Prizes”. Still, I suppose these little adventures had their moments. For one thing, the music. The car had an 8-track, (of course), and although Rick only owned about five of the little contraptions, he did have Rory Gallagher’s live album – a fantastic chronicle of drunken electric blues and boogie which he’d play at top volume, (probably so he wouldn’t be able to hear me complain about his suck-ass sense of direction). There’s something about the memory of making a U turn on Van Dorn Street in the middle of the night trying to get back on track while Bullfrog Blues is playing at 5 million decibels that is still quite moving to me. And eventually we’d usually get to whatever party it was we’d set out for, or find another along the way
His sense of direction was also projected. During his birthday party (or some other pagan orgy), we had to interrupt the festivities and move to a different site, (I believe the penthouse he’d rented for the party was closing). Five different carloads of people received directions to the new locale, and five carloads of us arrived at the same place – the WRONG place. Rick had apparently found his way – but he’d sent the rest of us into the bowels of Shirlington. Amidst great anger, derision, and gnashing of teeth, we decided to travel several miles away to Ron’s place to continue the debauchery, all the while cursing Rick and his geography-challenged mind. The caravan got to Ron’s with no problem (Of course! We KNEW where we were going!). But Rick’s party instincts were not to be trifled with. He arrived about an hour later (having no idea where we’d traveled to and having never been to Ron’s). He’d just traveled around until he’d found us – the man was an idiot savant when it came to tracking hedonism. I am not making this up.
It was not all bad with Rick, like the pilots say: any landing you can walk away from is a good one – and we walked away. And it is interesting to note that I now remember our attempts to get to these soirees much better than most of the events themselves. And I am reminded of a quote from the great sportsman, Arthur Ashe, "Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome”, (but then Art never had to ride with Rick…). I’m not quite sure why I wrote this little tale down. It’s been over a year since I’ve seen Rick and god knows how long since I’ve ridden with him. I might listen to Bullfrog Blues once in a blue moon, whenever I feel lost, but once it’s on, I know I’m headed home…