\ Every epic must begin by invoking a muse; I am invoking Kerouac:
Asphalt Beat;
Heed my call!
Yearn to go,
To feel at all.
I begin this odyssey from the float-away, rat hole town (named after what must ultimately be boiled down to a "boy-band"), Lincoln Park, New Jersey. After bar tending in an Irish bar for 7 years to pay for my insatiable quest for knowledge; I decided that my mick ass could no longer deal with facilitating addiction. So, I quit my lucrative job during the worst economic crisis that has ever occurred in my 27 years and packed 2004 Nissan Altima with (far too many) of my earthly possessions and drove. With no real destination that particularly intrigued me until my first National Park (Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico), I decided to heed the siren song of the open road and let the asphalt be my muse.
So I drove, and I drove through lands all too familiar to me. A quick jaunt through Jersey onto endless Pennsylvania (well, I thought Pennsy was long and boring until I hit Texas), led me to Morgantown, West Virginia (home of WVU). It just so happens that this is the same day that WVU was playing Syracuse in a tourney final, so I began to look for lodging to clean up and hit the town. It just so happens that Morgantown has a hotel that must be modeled directly from “The Shining” (which just happens to be a book I brought with me). With my affinity towards the macabre and eer ie, I knew I had found my comfort zone. So I cleaned up after my first full day of driving, and decided to hit the bar.
Now somewhere along searching my hotel for twins riding big wheels and getting ready, I came up with (what I thought was) an ingenious plan. I grabbed a steno pad, put a pen in my pocket and a pencil behind my ear and went to the bar. The atmosphere was great and it was refreshing to see people proud of where they were blowing all their parents hard work away. I got a beer, the worst mozzarella stix on the planet, and started taking pretend notes of the game. It didn’t take long for someone to ask what the hell I was doing, watching the game so intensely while simultaneously scribbling down words and surveying the room. Multi-tasking. I explained that I was a reporter from the NY Post sent to West Virginia to cover not only the game, but to explain the different atmospheres between WVU and Syracuse during big games (I said Cuse’ was my alma mater) because my editor was convinced WVU was going to win. Well let’s just say that no one gave a shit but nobody seemed very interesting either. So I had another beer and went to bed to keep on truckin’ in the morning. I still say it was a good idea…………
