I am starting to get in a rut. I can feel it. I don't like routines. I think that is why I like taking off once in awhile and just checking out new places. Maybe just to break the routine and get away. I would say it is because I have a short attention span and I get bored easily but I think America as a whole likes to say anyone who is a little different has a short attention span and is all too quick to give them some sort of psychotropic and brand them with a "cured" label. So I won't do that. I just get bored.

Maybe that is why when I used to go on the road a lot, I needed to get away at the end. Well, maybe there were some other reasons for getting away but I think one of the main reasons was because I was bored. Maybe tired and bored. I will be the first to say that there is nothing like the feeling of seeing home after you have been away for a few months. I mean really, seeing that crest of your hometown after hours upon hours of just driving on unknown roads to get to godforsaken clubs takes a toll on you after awhile. I had a friend who used to say that the road was 23 hours of hell. I never thought of it as hell. It was more like 23 hours of blah. But what else can you do? You have to do those other hours in the day just for the one hour of heaven. Sounds cheesy. Really it does. Sit and waste away a day in a van playing gin rummy and seeing how many rest stops you can pass before someone needs to piss or you run out of beer. It gets old really fast. You can be on the road with your best friend but at the end, no matter who they are, you need to get away from them.

Well, I did.

Kind of like I am feeling right now. Not getting away from Michele but getting away from this routine for a few weeks with her and just going on vacation. Maybe Tahoe. In the old days, it was never any issue. I would get back home and toss my gear in a studio and I was off for a vacation. Stop at the liquor store to load up on driving beer, stop at my house and grab my dog and pay my rent. After that, I was off.

It was always the same place. I would always drive to one of my friends houses in Tahoe and just be alone. Well, not alone. I would have a dog. And my beer. But after that I was pretty much alone. Oh. I would have my golf clubs too. Usually. But I would never get around to playing. I had good intentions but playing golf would involve me talking to people and since I was barely above the level of making grunting noises to my dog, human interaction was a definite no no. Besides, this was off time. Golf is not an off time game. Watching "Cops" on TV is an off time game. Not golf.

One of my best memories of getting away was about 10 years ago. I had just driven across a lot of the country. Nothing incredible really happened on that trip but I was sick of everything. Sick of the bullshit that goes along with seeing the same people everyday. It is kind of strange. You see many different people everyday but after awhile, the only ones who register in your mind are the same ones you see everyday. Everyone else is just a blur or some detail that was either helping you or hindering you in whatever you were trying to get done. That is a really hard concept to explain. All I know is that when you get to that point, you need to get out and put yourself in some sort of isolation chamber just to slow down the fucking world and get everything right again. Be it a few cases of beer and an alcoholic coma for a few weeks or standing naked outside BBQing some fish, you just need to get away.

I was lucky when I ran away. Coming from where I did, going back to my real home was kind of out of the question. I was lucky enough to have a few friends with places hidden up in Tahoe so going there to escape was really a blessing. No one around for a mile or so my nudity and love of BBQ came out as I taught those fish a lesson on what it means to be cooked. Maybe it was the solitude or being surrounded by nothing but trees for miles around that did something to me. The trees weren't asking me for gas money or my last drink tickets so they were cool. The dog just wanted whatever kind of fish I was eating that night so she was cool and my beer just wanted to be in my tummy so they were cool. Everything was pretty mellow and the only time I had to talk was when the TV was talking shit to me or I ran out of cigarettes or beer. Everything else was just a detail. I know it was weird but it was what I did. After a few weeks of the house phone ringing and people trying to find me, I would get bored of the silence and come back home. Back to the routine of what I did before I made the great escape. The dog would go back to sleep on my bed and I would resume socializing again. Get my pool game back up to speed and settle back into another routine.

So in this rambling post I just want to get the point across that humans need a little break every once in awhile but too much of a break starts too suck cause there are only so many times you can watch your friends get arrested on "Cops" before it stops being funny.

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