Since the highly successful “South by SouthWest” road trip with Kyle in August of 2009, I’ve been looking forward to the next one. Since sauntering through hot, sticky hair-spray air wasn’t too appealing, we skipped August and opted for a fall road trip from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Florida’s retirement capital, “The Villages.” Actually that doesn’t sound very scintillating, but we’ve got some stops in between:

Dumfries, VA – Home of Dave, the fabulous Georgia and young Joseph Klug, we’ll celebrate Kyle’s 19th birthday with one of my best friends and his family. Any reader of this space knows of Dave and our 15 year friendship from NEC to Tar Hut Records. I can’t wait to see that big, graying pomp, shit-eatin’ grin, and to hear the words, “Hey man.”

Savannah, GA – After a short visit with the Klug family, it’s a 9 hour backbreaker to lush Savannah for 2 nights, one day, and 2 sets of friends:

  • “Paulie” – In April of 2000 this spider monkey of a man approached my new cubelet at Kronos and introduced himself while casting a wary, hairy, “who does this jamoke think he is” eyeball my way. We’ve been friends and racquetball enemies ever since. He falls into the rarefied category of “some of my best friends are Yankee fans,” though sadly he’s had a twitch since October of 2004 and had to retire his racquet. Paulie was my “shrink and a beer” for many of those years and I miss him, although beating a spider monkey at racquetball is a bitch, and all the smashed racquets got kinda expensive. I’ve got some catching up to do with Paulie.
  • The Korn Family – Mr. Korn was a participant in the NEC wars of the mid to late 90’s with Dave and me and is a freakin’ smart dude. His wife Maddy is just as smart… um, well, she’s got the advantage of the female thing, so maybe she gets the smart nod. I’m looking forward to great conversation and catching up with them and to be amazed again by their young daughter Elizabeth who Kyle just adores.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Kyle is so fired up to see Harry, Ron, Hermione, and of course Lord Voldemort. With the money Universal is making magically disappear from my wallet, it better be enchanting.

Leo Sr. – Yep, he’s like the Howard Hughes of the Villages except without the money and the freakish long fingernails. His grandson and I will pry him out into the sunlight for a couple days and once again force feed him some life beyond the couch and clicker.