Road Tripping, Post III

I got into Chicago tonight, I'll talk about that in a little bit, but I need to, as promised, continue on with my Milwaukee trip. I don't know if anyone has picked up on this, but in this blog I am awful at continuing any topic I say I'll pick up in a later post. It never happens. I remember one of the first, the trend setter if you will, was this story I said I didn't have time to tell, but I'd tell it soon. Then, in a post about a month later, I said something along the lines of "I want to write more in this post, but I'm exhausted now. And I still haven't told my great story." TWICE! I've referenced this story twice, and still haven't told it. Well, six months later, I'm going to tell it now, although the thrill of the moment is gone. Nonetheless,
I
Beatboxed
With
CHARLES BARKLEY!
Who's afraid? Not me, that's for damn sure. My second or so week at Hands-On, Timerbland Clothing Company was hosting a large scale volunteer event with multiple organizations from all over the city helping to clean up a large section of a street in Central City. One of the supports of the event was TNT, who had their basketball analysts (CB being one of them) down there to broadcast the New Orleans Hornets game, but also to do a special on Katrina and the relief effort, on the CB hosted show Inside the NBA.

Lunch is being served in the ground level parking lot of a police station. It's technically underneath the police station, and it's dirty, there are too many echoes, and it's dark. Most people are sitting outside on the grass, eating their hot plates. We had heard that Charles Barkley was coming, but we weren't sure when. We had heard some time during lunch. Sure enough, as I'm getting up to throw out my plate, this hulking black man, followed by a camera, followed by a trail of eager eyed volunteers, walks across the grass and in to the parking lot. I quickly become one of those eager eyed volunteers. He walks with an elderly black woman, who I'm assuming was a homeowner, and interviewed her for a bit. Then, she left, he stood, made no introduction, just waited, knowing throngs of people would want to speak with him. People went up, said hi, said they were a fan, said it was nice to meet him. But no, Mathias Goldstein doesn't get down like that. Mathias Goldstein likes to make a bigger impression. I joked with a friend that I should beatbox for him. She said maybe you should, I said why not. But as I stood in the small line of people to speak with him, I was considering how we generally like to make good impressions with people we respect, how we like to make them like us, how we try to be "cool," and how I was doing everything to go against that. He finished speaking to the person in front of me, turned and looked at me, but also looked through me, like "next. your turn. say your peace so I can move to the next one." I was nervous, and he was large, so I could only refer to him by his full name. However, I said this:

"Charles Barkley? Can I beatbox while you freestyle?"
He paused. "Uh, well, I don't know bout that." This was not a dismissive comment, this was an unconfident comment. Was this DOUBT?! The fact that I suddenly had more ego than a Hall of Fame basket ball player gave me the smooth talking abilities of a used car salesman.
"Oh, no, my man, it's real easy. But if you can't do it, I'll teach you something. Let's do Ladi Dadi. You know Ladi Dadi."
"Ooooh man. I can't remember those words."
"What? You don't know Ladi Dadi? Everyone knows Ladi Dadi!"

And so I coaxed him the first line of the song. It took him a couple of minutes to get the words, especially to get the rhythm. When it was finally showtime, he stumbled and mumbled and sputtered the lyrics, but he got through them. At the end of it he laughed, although it's not unimaginable that he was thinking about how he'd like to whoop me, but we hugged. And that was it. My 5 minutes of fame with CB.


Anyway. I digress. Milwaukee. Great place. I left La Crosse in the morning, said my goodbye's with Shelby, and headed off. I drove past a few bars, a few chain stores. This was really the only bit of La Crosse I got to see, although the drive towards Milwaukee steers you along these beautiful bluffs that are, apparently, amazing for hiking, and made the drive as pleasant as driving on the interstate could ever be.

I was driving to meet Danielle Maltby. I met her at Hands-On, and she was from the same school group as Shelby, though they really couldn't be more different (except that they're both good people). Shelby graduated High School in 2000, waited six years before going to college, working in between, getting her own place. She's the self-proclaimed atheist at a Christian University. She has multiple piercings. She's bad ass. She's a brunette. Danielle is blond, she's 21, she just got her ears pierced (er, re-pierced, but that means she wore earrings so infrequently the wholes closed up. You get my point). She was the youngest one from her class to graduate. She was a nursing major and is now working for a Milwaukee hospital in the Neonatal unit. She's incredibly sweet and warm and extremely charming in a very Midwestern way.

But I learned all these things since my time staying with her. At Hands-On, I barely knew her. I gave my first orientation to her group. She was tall and very pretty and, therefore, noticeable, and she was one of the first people from her group I talked to, but she didn't seem to be particularly interested in any of the questions I had for her, and that was that. Hands-On is a busy place. But we kept in touch a bit after she left, first online, then on the phone, and as my road trip plans started to materialize, I asked if I could stay with her in Milwaukee en route to Chicago. She said of course.

Now here's where having a public journal gets tricky. My emotions are my emotions, faithful reader, and I'll leave it at that. But we care about each other, a lot, and it's fun to experience all that summer romance at such a quick pace. Hands-On is a terrible place for organic relationship development. It's very crowded and very public and very gossipy. This was the first time in about six months where I'd been able to have something like that. We reunited. I met the dog, the brother, got a tour of the house. We went to Madison, an awesome little northeastern college town dropped in the middle of Wisconsin. We had a fun lunch at a Sushi restaurant, we found a little park and lounged for a bit. But all of it, the introductions, the small talk, the first date, the being flirtatious and charming, the romantic spot, and the first kiss, these were all things, wonderful and positive things, that simply aren't possible at HONO.

But anyway, I can't talk this stuff on Blogger. Jeez. It's already inappropriate. But, well, I just gotta add this. Danielle, I'm sorry. But don't worry, my grandparents are my most consistent readers, and I don't think they'd care. I'm starting to laugh, by the way. I'm not chewing, or something.


Anyway, I left Milwaukee this morning. Wasn't particularly happy to be going, but hey, I said I'd be back home by the 26th. I'm getting home by the 26th. I had an uneventful drive into Chicago tonight, and that's where I am now. I had a terrific conversation with my family. This is my first and only stop where I'm not staying with fellow volunteers, but my cousin, Debby, her husband, David, and their two adorable children, Sophie and Jacob. I'll get on to that in a later post, but for now, I depart.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading.