Category Archives: DRIVEN

DRIVEN, It's in the vault, Me Myself and Ty, Uncategorized

Deer and loathing

A bit dark and gory after the jump, so proceed with caution.

Humanity has never gripped me like it did that night as I screamed into the lonesome night at a creature that had no more a mind to understand me than it did body able enough to escape me.

I had pointed my flashlight up and down the road at least half a dozen times, both praying no headlights would appear to guest star in my late night grapple with mortality and its intersection with morality while at the same time wishing some grown-up would show up — my dad preferably — to solve the situation I found myself in.

The road is a popular drag for speeders, especially since it runs right behind the high school. If you wanted to show off your car’s acceleration, this was the strip to do it. I vaguely remember riding along with one such crazy adolescent as we passed an assumed adversary on the road, topping 80 or 90 mph down the long, straight two-lane drive.

I, of course, wasn’t going nearly that fast on this night. Maybe five or 10 over, but mostly because this was the final two miles of a seven-hour trip and I badly needed to use the bathroom.

The first doe darted out confidently. I had no chance of ever hitting her, but I slammed on my brakes anyway to avoid what was sure to be the rest of her nocturnal grazing party.

And then there he was, taking a 45 degree angle to the road as if he was going to rush me off of the left side of the road.

I merged left to avoid him, but he refused to stop, choosing instead to barrel into the side of my car.

I shook the steering wheel steadily to keep myself straight, but hardly had to slow down at all.

I didn’t even stop. “No time for that now,” I thought, pining for my bed while looking over at my antenna, which now looked like a crumpled pipe cleaner tossed to the side from some craft project.

The radio hadn’t even skipped for a moment. That’s curious.

“Dammit my side view mirror is gone!” said the voice in my head, finally realizing there was something missing from my car like the final answer in some Sunday comics picture challenge.

I’ll have to go back for it.

But I knew there was one more thing I would need to go back to, as well.

This had happened before, of course. Continue reading →

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Don't Call it a Farewell, DRIVEN, Journalism, Uncategorized

It’s in the Vault: Tall tale

My long-term absence will be explained in a future post.

When I got started in journalism, it wasn’t because I wanted to be a journalist.

It was because I wasn’t good enough to play sports at school anymore, so I sought a way to stay connected to them any way I could. Daniel Ellis invited me to attend a sports section meeting with him, and from then, I was sold.

Which is surprising, since I started out in the undesirable beats – for instance, covering our volleyball team which was riding a conference losing streak of more than 30 games.

Of course, I love volleyball, so it wasn’t really a stretch to stay interested, but there was also the spandex and the tall females I got to talk to on a weekly basis…

Maybe it wasn’t surprising, but regardless, I wouldn’t allow myself to date any of them.

I say that now and pretend like I was being an objective journalist with integrity, but it’s only because I was too afraid of them rejecting me to even ask. Continue reading →

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DRIVEN, Me Myself and Ty

My Saint Patrick’s Day Anniversary

EDITOR’S NOTE: I originally reported that the Canes were playing the Penguins that night. I remembered there being a goalie controversy that night involving Tim Thomas and confused the appropriate teams of the Penguins’ Marc-Andre Fleury and Boston’s Thomas…the opponent that night was actually the Boston Bruins. The story has been updated to reflect this error.

I’m a crier and it’s time those who read this blog knew it.

My friends at the Citizen found this out in July when I busted in to their offices sobbing and asking if I could work for home, but the true proof of it came exactly a year ago today.

The Hurricanes were playing the Bruins that night. I remember because after Peggy photographed the game we were hitting the road to go join “our” friends at Oak Island for our Saint Patrick’s Day festivities.

I say “our” friends because although we now share joint custody of those friends, it’s important to note that the individuals down at Oak Island were my inner circle – the friends I wouldn’t be alive without and in whom I confided everything that needed to be confided.

So when Peggy came over before the game and it was clear she couldn’t be talked out of covering the game (Boston is her “second-favorite” team) I gave up on getting to the beach early and proceeded to start an argument.

I have no clue what the argument was about, or even if I started it, but this argument was the nth in nth days, so when I asked, sarcastically, if Peggy was going to break up with me over it…she nodded her head yes.

The crying started here. I remember everything about that moment: Where she was, how her face looked, how slowly her head bobbed up and down…but this post isn’t about that moment. It’s about everything that happened following it.

She went to her game and I lost it. How could she do this…and with my closest friends 2.5 hours away!?

So I got into my car and drove…talking to Farrell and Jessica and Richard in shifts on the phone the entire way. Between sobs I would listen to music. I remember this song played.

Anyway, they promised that as soon as I got to Farrell Manor, everything would be fine.

They were right. When I arrived, Farrell poured me a half a Solo cup of rum. I remember pulling him aside and telling him that I wanted to hurt in the morning.

I was wrong. I showed up at about 9:30 p.m. and was passed out in my bed by midnight. I woke up at 7:30 a.m., right as rain, and went to the grocery store for green food coloring, beer, pesto, eggs and ham. I also stopped by a tourist store to get a green T-shirt (I had left my house at the same time Peggy did, bringing nothing but the clothes on my back).

So we had green eggs and ham for breakfast, with green pancakes. And Peggy came down later for Black and Tans, which quickly became Black and Greens.

And somewhere Saint Patrick was smiling because there really is no modern equivalent of driving out snakes from a village, but a day when friends give support when it’s needed and alcohol brings people together is a day worth celebrating.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everyone!

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DRIVEN, Me Myself and Ty

DRIVEN: Home is where your car is

I’ve mentioned before that I have lived my entire life within the same, one-hour stretch of highway.

I lived in downtown Goldsboro for my first 3.5 years and then we moved out to Rosewood. When I graduated, I moved to Raleigh and have bounced around from dorm and apartment until I arrived where I am now on Brent Road.

When I first got to N.C. State, I felt like Raleigh was the perfect location: an hour’s drive was enough to be on my own, but if I needed money/food/medicine (Read: Mommy) it was always less than 60 minutes away.

But now, it’s an annoying distance. With my job in Garner splitting the distance and the new bypass that makes the trip a 45-minute dash (30 with my radar detector) it feels like Rosewood is right down the road.

Combine that with me having no reason to be in Raleigh anymore with no classes and my parents’ constant pressure for me to spend time with them and I’m going absolutely crazy.

I’ve been back and forth between Raleigh and Goldsboro constantly since classes ended Dec. 2 and the longest I’ve been either place has been a week. Most of my clothes are in Goldsboro, too because I did laundry there, so I’m even more fragmented.

I feel like my home has been Highway 70 for the past month.
View Larger Map

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DRIVEN

Driving power-drunk

DRIVEN: PART II
Cadence

Go here for an introduction to this series, here to read Part I or check out Part III here.

How I feel about driving could best be summed up by Jack Sparrow:

“That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that’s what a ship needs but what a ship is… what the Black Pearl really is… is freedom.”

Yeah, he’s not talking about a car, but he may as well be, because that freedom, that’s what I used to lay in bed late at night thinking about when I was in high school…just getting in my car and driving as far south as I-95 would take me just because I could.

And it happens still, though it’s not always as gallant and romantic as I always imagined it, especially if you ask my ex-girlfriend Sonja. When she was living in southeast Georgia during summer 2008, I visited her three times, always enjoying every second of the six-hour road trip between Goldsboro, N.C. and Hinesville, Ga. That’s when I first discovered that lovely scenic bridge mentioned in my “What’s news to you” post, but I digress.

Is there a sweeter sight?

Anyway, we frequently made the 1.5-hour trip to Brunswick, Sea Island and Jekyll Island, simply because there was little to do in Hinesville. I always drovebecause she loved to ride, and I drove all across that region, always trying new ways to shave minutes off of our trip, finding new roads to try out and generally just driving aimlessly. With El Cheapo gas making me feel like I was a king, I poured gasoline like cheap beer, especially since I was living at home and had lots of disposable income while my girlfriend bankrolled our excursions halfway with her Rayonier-funded salary.

But she got sick of me taking the scenic route everywhere and started limiting my gas. She would never pay to fill my tank because she said having a full tank of gas made me “drunk with power.” If I wanted a full tank, I had to pay for it myself. Otherwise she bought it one half-tank at a time.

I’ve always loved the way she put it, drunk with power, because it’s so true. When the needle is on F, I feel invincible. I peel out. I make my tires bark. I take the long way home. I take other cars off the line.

It’s a powerfully intoxicating notion, having a full tank of gas and knowing the routes are endless and they can take you anywhere.

It’s the knowledge that I-40 ends in California, I-85 takes you to Atlanta and I-95 south leads to I-4, which runs right into Disneyworld. It’s knowing 95 north puts you through D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and right up into Massachusetts and U.S. 17 winds from Virginia through Wilmington, N.C., past Myrtle Beach to within half an hour of Hinevsille and back to coastal Georgia before ending in Florida. (I like road maps…and Highway 17).

It’s freedom. And it’s a pleasure.

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DRIVEN

A boy and his car

DRIVEN: PART I
Cadence

Miss the introduction to this series? Check it out here, Part II here and Part III here.

Cadence and I have been together since 2006. I’ve made the same sardonic joke to every girlfriend I’ve had since then that she’s my baby – the one that would be there for me no matter what and each time a relationship ends, I wince when I realize I was right.

To clear things up, Cadence is a 1995 Mustang convertible. She has a white top that I paid for myself ($800) to replace the ragtop I inherited. She has white leather interior, though the driver-side seat has seen better days. The leather came in handy when I turned too sharply and spilled a cooler of ice in the back seat my senior year of high school. The leather also comes in handy pretty much monthly  when I leave the top down and go into a restaurant/store/any building. This is because me leaving my top down is a rain dance that brings torrential downpours with efficiency indigenous peoples across the world would marvel at.

She’s missing the rocker panel on her passenger side, likely from when I was leaving a party at the Tree House a year ago, though I’m not truly certain when it actually fell off. Her spoiler is showing some wear through paint chips, and there’s the remains of a balloon ribbon tied permanently around her rearview mirror: a relic from a memorable drive through Downtown Raleigh with Richard.

So that’s her. She inspires other Mustang owners to nod, she inspires Corvettes to roar past us in all of their fiberglass-framed pomposity and she’s inspired a few 8-year-olds to give me a thumbs up.

I’m no geared by any measure, but I do love Mustangs. My dad bought a black 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible in 1989. It had a high performance 289 engine and he had a buddy of his put in the GT Pony package which wasn’t available until 1965, complete with pistol grip handles.

None of this impressed 2-year-old me, though, as my dad recalls my reaction to the test drive of the car he took me on verbatim: “Daddy, I don’t like that car with no top.” (My how the times have changed.)

Regardless, my dad’s Mustang fever passed directly to me. My first car was a 1966 Mustang coupe that I flipped into a ditch, (Always wear your seatbelt) and a year-and-a-half later, I met Cadence, and she hasn’t let me down since.

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DRIVEN

How driving drives me

DRIVEN: AN INTRODUCTION
Cadence

Want more? Read PART I, PART II, and PART III.

I love to drive.

I remember running errands for my mom and dad, and all of my older friends saying it would get old, that I would tire of driving everywhere, but I’m not bored yet.

I also remember my dad telling me I would get sick of shaving, but I still enjoy that, too. I just remember watching my dad shave: the smell, the hot water, the way my dad’s face was immediately transformed after he finished. I channel that into my shaving repertoire and take a child-like view of my hygiene, and that’s exactly how I drive…I just remember how much power that motorized vehicle gives me. I count up how many miles a full tank of gas can take me and live vicariously through my exploitation of open roads. I race, I pass, I play music way too loud. I don’t just drive, I enjoy it.

And that’s something Peggy pointed out to me: driving, for me, was a hobby. Yes I had to do it just to get to class/work, but taking pride in my car or enjoying the ride gave my life those memorable moments we always seek on a daily basis.

Every time I turn the ignition, I’m happy because I’m always in pursuit of the open road.

I want to be ahead of all the other cars. I want to be setting the flow of traffic. I want to find my own speed limit

Stay tuned to Me, Myself and Ty in the coming days as I present my special blog series* about what drives me: my love for the open road.

*It’s really just one long blog post that I decided none of you would read, so I divided it up a bit and we’ll see what happens.

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