Punches: Rolling With

Mission Control's last post did, in point of fact, blow my mind.

It's made more mind-blowing to me by my total absence from Duluth. I am not in Duluth.

I am in Knoxville, Tenn. (This is all discounting the possibility that I am creating my share of this blog from the safety and security of the Frances Howard Goldwyn Branch of the Los Angeles public library system -- a possibility raised, I should note, by Mission Control. Credit where credit is due. Although Mission Control suggested I was in Burbank.)

So I said I was zigging, and then I zagged. I didn't do it on purpose. I was dropped off at the Chicago Greyhound station shortly before midnight for the 12:30 bus that would take me back to Minneapolis, and from there to Duluth. It was a mob scene. Mayhem. The Minneapolis bus was sold out. I don't know why that many people wanted to go to Minneapolis at 12:30 a.m. on a Monday (Tuesday, really). I was told that I could get a ticket for the 7 a.m. bus. I thought about doing that, and taking a taxi back to my friend's place.

But nicotine cleared my head. What, I asked myself, was the point of having a thirty day bus pass if I was going to wait for a bus to take me where I planned to go?

So I took the 3 a.m. bus to Cincinnati. Mid-way through, I decided to proceed to Knoxville. Now I'm here.

It's a little scary, being east of Chicago. There are so many cities, and so many people. It all seems much more real. My taxi driver in Knoxville was from West Africa. He came to D.C. for a year, and then played Division 2 basketball at Knoxville College. He was a point guard. I did not ask him if he was a pure point guard. We discussed the future of the Lakers, and whether they would pick up Jermaine O'Neal or Kevin Garnett. We agreed that Jermaine O'Neal was potentially soft, and this concerned us.