Cross-Country Blog

Out of all the Nick Adams Stories we read this semester, “Cross-Country Snow” was one of my favorites. In classic Hemingway style, it read as a one last outing for Nick and his buddy, George, before they each went their separate ways. I couldn’t help but feel nostalgia creep into my mind as I read this story. Just as George went off to school after the went skiing, I left my home and friends to come to TCU. Of course I was ready for the freedom and independence that comes with college life, but any step into the unknown comes with it an air of uncertainty. There is a certain comfort that I felt, and still feel, about my time in high school and before. Looking back, even the events like the English class I wrote about in another blog, which were horrible, it was still a part of that life. Going home now over breaks has just been weird, because it feels more like a vacation than anything else. It sounds drastic but I’ve realized I have gotten to a “point-of-no-return” in my life where, if I can’t make this work, I can’t really go back to anything. There is just something beautiful about coloring and nap time in kindergarten that I miss, but can never do again.

On a much scarier note, I found myself relating to Nick in some ways. George gives him a hard time about how much Nick must hate the idea of settling down with a family, to which Nick replies, “No. Not exactly.” In no way am I saying that I’m ready to settle down with a family, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it. Seeing my older sisters’ friends getting married and knowing my parents met in college, I have thought that this may end up being the place where I meet the person I spend the rest of my life with. That is terrifying. What makes it even more terrifying is that I may not even know if it’s happening to me.

I finish this last blog with a comment on how much I have enjoyed writing these. It has been cool to get some of my thoughts down on paper (metaphorically). Thanks for the great class this semester Dr. Williams and anyone else who reads this. Merry Christmas!

A Halloween to Remember...

October of 2010 was about the time I had finally settled into college life at TCU. I had established some of the best friends a guy could ask for, and, academically, I was in a fairly good place. As Fall began to settle in, well places that get that season, which apparently isn’t here, my friends and I began to brainstorm ideas for Halloween costumes. I am not one of those guys that usually goes “all-out” for Halloween, but I figured since this was my first Halloween in college, I would actually try. So, because I always try to plan ahead, I started to think of ideas that Friday, the thirtieth. As chance would have it, I wasn’t feeling to well, so I decided I would get plenty of rest that night, wake up on Saturday and go get a costume that morning.

Well, I woke up on Saturday not feeling well at all. I actually spent most of Saturday morning throwing up and watching football on my bean bag in Milton. Around three o’clock I began having these really random convulsions where I couldn’t control different limbs of my body. The health clinic was closed, so I asked Brandon take me to an immediate care clinic. We went to a clinic by the Super Target off of Overton Ridge Blvd. Apparently they don’t accept BlueCross BlueShield insurance past four o’clock, and they weren’t sure they could even see me before they closed at five, so we left to find another clinic. Brandon thought he found one off Bryant Irvin Rd. just south of Overton Ridge, but apparently they had moved or closed because we never found it. While he was looking for another place, I lost feeling in all of my extremities and could barely speak, so we decided that it would be best to just call an ambulance to our location, which, at that point, was some random parking lot. Brandon, however, couldn’t describe where we were so he had to put me on the phone. I somehow was able to spit out enough coherent thoughts to get the ambulance there, and they took me to a nearby hospital without being able to decipher what was wrong with me. After being admitted and giving me an IV with a morphine drip, they began to run various tests on me, one of which needed to be a urine sample. I hadn’t kept fluids down in nearly fifteen hours, so I really couldn’t give them one. The nurse told me that I had twenty minutes to make it happen or else they were going to have to put in a catheter. For the next fifteen minutes Brandon was Googling different ways to make someone have to urinate while I tried any tactic he could find. Finally, literally five minutes before the nurse returned with the catheter, we were finally successful in our task. I must say that having Brandon cheer me on as I urinated in a bottle took our friendship to another level. They discovered I had a rare stomach virus that threw my body into complete dehydration causing my body to quit functioning properly. I was allowed to return to my dorm room later that night, and spent the next two days in bed recovering. Guess it was a good thing I didn’t get a costume. Best. Halloween. Ever.

When in Rome...Illuminati!

            While in Rome, Italy, two men choose to accept a quest to discover whether Dan Brown actually uses real landmarks in Angels and Demons. One, a cunning Kansan, hell-bent on discovering the truth, Tyler Vincent; the other, the Lebanese Wonder, himself, Brandon Somerhalder. We left the group of fifty that we traveled with for the afternoon for the voyage could only be completed by two. Our tour guide had given us a map of the city of Rome that morning, and this would be our resource to find the four different locations that make up the “path of the Illuminati.” Base camp was set up at the Pantheon, so, due to convenience, we began our journey with a trip to the Piazza Navona. Although only a ten minute walk, the crowds of people proved to be a formidable opponent. We arrived at the Piazza, found the Fontana delle Quattro Fiumi, took a picture and headed towards Vatican City and St. Peter’s Square. We had actually made this walk earlier in the day, a peaceful walk across and along the Tiber River. I remember St. Peter’s Square was busy, as usual, and how peculiar I felt to be the only person to be taking a picture of the ground while everyone else was focused on the architecture. (We needed a picture of the West Wind stone at the base of the Vatican obelisk) The next stop on our epic adventure took us to the statue of Habakkuk & the Angel in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. This was by far our longest trek of the afternoon, and the most difficult location to find. The Piazza Del Popolo is a fairly large oval shape with an obelisk in the middle. There is also two churches there, both of which were undergoing construction on the faces of each building so we didn’t think either were open, but we would not be denied. We located the correct church and snuck in the side door, attaining the picture we so desired. Our final stop took us to the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria to see the statue of The Ecstasy of St. Teresea. It was powerful to visit these different places and reliving the scenes from the book at each site. There were many moments of “reality-checks” where we could barely believe we were in Rome, Italy visiting these places that were in Angels and Demons.

On the way back to the Pantheon, we were in no hurry so we had no real planned path. As chance would have it, we walked by the house of the President of the Republic of Italy, which is on a hill in west Rome. The view from the steps in front of his estate captured the entire city of Rome, including St. Peter’s Basilica. It was late in the evening and there was an orange-creme colored sky as the backdrop to one of the best views I will never forget. We got back to the Pantheon a little before dark to the shock of the rest of the group. It was an experience I will never forget with one of my best friends of all time.

Life is a Series of Choices, Refuse to Be Stupid

Even though it might be a little cheap to write about the story I presented on, I am going to anyway. When I first started to read “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” I started to write it off as just another coming-of-age story, but it turned out to be more than that. The more I thought about Dave’s decision to leave, the more I was unsure of what I thought about that decision. My first reaction was to think of him as a coward. His parents gave him the opportunity to show some responsibility by owning a gun, and he quickly showed him that he wasn’t mature enough for that responsibility. My parents always taught me that it is far better to accept the consequences of my actions and channel my embarrassments and frustrations into something constructive. Never let a mistake hurt you twice.

On the other hand, I could see where Dave’s choice to leave might actually be better for him than staying. In class we talked in depth about how a man’s choices define what kind of man he is. I got the sense that there were some really oppressive qualities about the community around him. At some point, if a man thinks that the people he has around him aren’t the kind of people that share similar values or challenge him to be a better person, then he should remove himself from that situation. I can guarantee that Dave will grow up quickly once he is on his own. Now the real question is whether he can make the correct decisions when he is away from his family. Just as a high-school student going off to college, that new freedom can lead down a better or worse path. I know I have loved the opportunities and experiences I have had so far at TCU, but I can also tell you that I have not always made the right decision, but I learned from it. This story reminded me that, yes, taking responsibility for my actions is an important part of being an adult, but, if I think I can do better under different circumstances, I shouldn’t be afraid to leave the disfunction of my current situation.

My Room

        I used to be embarrassed to tell people about my room at home because it looks like it consistently is having an identity crisis. Over time, I finally realized that it is actually the perfect representation of who I am. My room actually sits over the garage, which is annoying because my bed shakes anytime the garage goes up or down. It also means my the temperature of my room is heavily dependent on the weather outside. Because I am on the top floor and the side with no attic, the triangle-shaped roof forms the outline of my ceiling. This means that my actual walls rise only about three feet before the white ceiling begins to slope towards the center of the room about seven feet off the ground. It is accurate to assume I have hit my head numerous times in the morning when I first wake up. The wall paper has been the same since I picked it out in 1994. It is an athletic print that is striped with blue, red, yellow and white with a border at the top that is made up of squares that say things like “Your #1” and “Go Team!”.

As you walk in the door, you would most likely be greeted with clothes scattered all over the brown-carpeted floor. I have a thirty-two gallon fish tank that hasn’t been used in years sitting against the wall on the right, and a big blue denim love-seat is against the wall on the left with a reading lamp behind it. Beside the fish tank is my closet which takes up the remainder of that wall. In a little alcove there is a desk with a trendy, light-blue chair. Above my desk is one standard window that overlooks the driveway. As you continue to the back of my room, my dresser and bed are the next pieces of furniture. A few years ago, my sophomore year of high school, my parents bought me new furniture, which I assembled myself, that looks like lockers. The frames are a dark steel with colored, metal drawers that are changeable. These, plus the love-seat, are really the only semi-adult objects in this room. Once you snake around my bed into the back portion of my room, another dresser holds more of my clothes and has a stereo sitting on top. Behind my stereo sits a two large windows overlooking the trees in my front yard that shade the driveway. There is also another collection of white shelves that hold my various gadgets, as well as a white cabinet that has all of my golf and basketball trophies/metals on top, but which (I’m pretty sure) is empty on the inside. There is also a night stand next to my bed that supports a lamp and dozens of water-rings from all of the drinks that I have left on there over the years. That sums up my room pretty well, don’t judge.

What a View

       It’s a drive I have made every summer of my life, through the intersection of Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and down into northern Arkansas. Four out of the five hours is nothing more than flat plains and the occasional hill, but the last hour is beautiful. Just before the Missouri-Arkansas border, highway 71 enters the Ozark Mountains. The highway is framed on either side by large walls of stone swirled with creme and rose, peppered with remnant holes of the dynamite used to create the pass. It winds through the little town of Bella Vista before entering Rogers, Arkansas.

After exiting onto Highway 62, Tyson headquarters and the regional airport are comforting signs that thirty minutes separate me from Beaver Lake. A fighter-jet and combat-helicopter are mounted at the entrance of the airport, posed mid-battle as if they were reliving their finest moments. A couple miles later, one stoplight sits between my car and twenty miles of my favorite stretch of road anywhere. The undulated road is hugged on each side by huge trees, green and powerful, so dense that fifteen feet deep is all that a passerby is allowed to see. Each rise in the road offers a glimpse of the vast forest with no inclination of what lies ahead.

After passing the Buss Stop in Garfield, I turn the music up (Country, obviously) and roll the windows down to get the first whiff of crisp, clean air. A couple miles later, a sharp right turn, quick incline and break in the trees gives the first glimpse of the lake I have so longed to return to. Perched high above the water, the road clings to the side of the mountain with precarious turns that I take too fast, a familiar habit I picked up from riding with my Dad along that road so many times. The final turn down to the house greets me with the steepest, tightest s-shaped turn, lined with a stone wall about three feet high. This is the only stretch of road I slow considerably because, on the other side of the wall, is the view I have waited five hours to see. The trees frame my view as if taking a picture that only few will ever see. The horizon rises from the water, past the rocky shoreline, up the dark green trees and meets the light blue sky. The water lies a few hundred feet below, crystal clear and sparkling from the sun. Boats and Jet-Skis glide smoothly, effortlessly across the water probably on their way to no where in particular, the perfect destination. What a view...