The Beginning

A couple of years back now, I was standing there trying to lift my left arm from its resting position at my hip, upwards and away, so that it might become parallel with the ground and perpendicular with my torso. Two days before I had smashed the back of my left shoulder into a tree while sliding uncontrollably down the side of a mountain I had hoped would be entirely covered with snow. Before I hit the tree I had a rather distressful impact and landed directly on the same shoulder. This occurred about one second after ejecting out of my skis. Skis are supposed to stay on your feet while skiing, but it’s hard for them to do this while speeding over rock. Normally I try to avoid rock while skiing; instead snow is a much better friction limiting surface that you can dig your edges into. Evidently the place I chose to ski was too steep to hold all of the snow (that thin layer of snow dust sure looked convincing) and I realized this mistake as I hurdled down the mountain unable to stop myself. Although my field of vision was screened by the cloud of snow I created from clawing furiously but frivolously at the mountain side, I knew that the area was littered with boulders and spruces. They would surely be able to slow me down. Balling up, protecting your head and waiting for an impact is a hell of an experience. Just when you get to thinking about all the things you still want to do with your life...WHAM! And now I couldn't get my left hand more than a foot from my left hip without a grimace, a groan, and - like a jackhammer in your pillow at 3am - a shot of pain that prevents you from realizing any imaginable thing but it.

Years later the arm hasn't fully healed and I can't throw like I used to. I'm pretty sure I won't ever be able to. Throwing a baseball, one of the things I used to like to do more than anything, now saddens me. Oh I can throw it around and get it from one place to another, but the zip is gone. You see, I never realized that it wouldn’t be there. It’s not something to think about.

The thing is that I'm not a major leaguer, a minor leaguer, or any kind of leaguer and it still pisses me off (frustration comes before the sadness). What must it feel like for Mark Prior? He was a phenom from USC that was drafted by the Cubs and went 18-6 in 2003 leading them to a fantastic season, bringing them within five outs from the World Series (it would have been their first series in 58 years). Soon after he injured himself and now he no longer pitches in the major leagues. I bet he relives that eighth inning all the time. What if Alou caught that foul ball? Or what if Gonzalez hadn’t booted that grounder?

There was another player in the late 80’s named Dave Dravecky. I remember him being a very good pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. One day cancer was discovered in his left arm. Dave was a left-handed pitcher and it was surmised that his pitching days were done. The drive to not give up was so great in Dravecky that, after a surgery removing half his deltoid muscle, he fought his way back to the majors. In his first game back he defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-3. I have trouble imagining just how sweet winning that game must have felt after defying cancer, painfully battling back and rehabilitating from a circumstance that most everybody thought to be career-ending. Whatever feelings he had, they only lasted five days. In his second game back Dravecky’s arm snapped in half while delivering a pitch. He never threw another major league pitch and his left arm was eventually amputated.

If given a glimpse into the future would these men change anything? I don’t know. What I do know is that the future isn’t predictable and sometimes things don’t work out how you expect them to, especially if you leave them sitting around directly in chance’s line of fire.

This summer I had an opportunity to take trains across the country, see friends and family I miss, meet people I never knew, watch baseball, and write all about it. Goddamn, it was a chance for the adventure of a lifetime. I’d always wanted to do this and I was horrified by the thought of one day wondering what it would have been like. I thought and thought about how it could be done. I surely didn’t have the resources to be able to pull something like this off. Knowing full well that it wasn’t a very responsible way to spend my summer I pushed on, refusing to acknowledge there wasn’t a creative solution.

I came up with the idea that I might be able to get sponsored. But who would sponsor a guy going to baseball games? Well, I figured if I could make my trip worthwhile and was visible enough (facebook, twitter, newspaper stories, etc.) I might get a few takers, especially if the trip revolved around a meaningful issue. Why not alternative transportation and its many benefits? I could ride the trains around, take my bike with me to get places once off the train, and write down my experiences for people to read. I would take pictures of all the people I met, tell some stories and do my best to generate interest in something very important, while having fun. Bikes, trains and baseball games? No. Summer training? Maybe. But the spark was there.

I contacted kickstarter about my idea so folks could donate to my cause. I thought - perhaps naively -  that this was something people could really get behind: a young man’s journey around the country touting high-speed rail, bicycle riding, friendship, cooperation and baseball. All of it would be in the form of a blog full of written words and photographs. Because I was wary of people thinking it was just a long vacation I set a target date well into the future. Possible contributors could watch as the trip progressed and decide if it was worthy of their support.

Kickstarter said no to giving me a spot on their site to raise money. I was confused. What did they have to lose? Was my idea not as good as I thought it was? Friends I talked to about it praised me for my creativity and social consciousness. Strangers thought it was fantastic and urged me to go for it. Kickstarter, on the other hand, told me that the idea wasn’t based on creative output and that nobody would support the thing because it hadn’t begun yet. I wanted to ask them why they didn’t regard the written word as creative output. I also wanted to ask them to change their name to “safe bet”.

So I set out to see if I could generate support in a different way.

There was never a doubt that the majority of the trip would be done on Amtrak. To spend the summer riding the rails from city to city sounded exciting to me. As far as modes of transportation go, trains are my favorite and I don’t understand why our country hasn’t made more of an effort to imitate other countries and implement high-speed rail. Are we really so out of it that we don’t understand the effects of our oil addiction? Regardless of our national mindset, I thought Amtrak was a prime candidate to support a happy, well-spoken, enthusiastic advocate of their future.

I started researching the advantages of rail travel, the cost of our national oil dependence, where the oil Americans use comes from, figures on public support for high-speed rail, Amtrak’s sponsorships and marketable areas of interest, etc. I wrote papers, gave speeches and engaged in as many conversations as I could about the topic.

I had visions of throwing out the first pitch at Wrigley Field in an Amtrak t-shirt (rides trains on the front, sees games on the back). More reasonably I thought my idea to combine different spheres of interest (my friends and family, the hundreds of people I met along the way, train enthusiasts, fans of baseball, fans of the environment, fans of a healthy economy, fans of adventure, etc.) around one central theme was worthy of a conversation. With a little support I knew I could turn my trip into a topic of discussion amongst quite a few people. Essentially I was prepared to work for Amtrak for peanuts and it would have been my pleasure.


No dice. My great American adventure hadn’t even begun, I had no support and my efforts to get a little help had me exhausted. It became clear to me that if I was to have a successful trip, by successful I mean enjoyable, some things were going to have to change. Just looking at the twitter page increased my blood pressure, so I decided to forget about that. Then I read a story about a guy bicycling from stadium to stadium.  I was deflating. Right or wrong, this combined with my previous disappointments to discourage me from contacting any newspapers about my journey. To be a mobile, high-profile proponent of alternative transportation I was going to have to do it through my actions and my blog.