A few weeks before the plotted departure date of April 19, I had started to feel stupid, having invited first one, then two, then half a dozen friends to accompany me on the road to Houston in Duke and still I had no co-pilot. Friend A couldn't afford the trip, Friend B couldn't take that much time off work, Friend C said I was nuts to think Duke would make it to Houston and back, and the person I would most like to join me on the road was three weeks from graduating college and couldn't miss that much school.

My computer had just died, only a few chapters shy of a finished novel, and all these friends with pc's they use about as often as their exercycles claimed to suddenly need their computers for something more than decorative furniture. So one day I'm over at this guy Bruce Endres' house, a guy who hardly knows me, listening as he performs last rites on my smoked laptop, and suddenly he unplugs his own pc and hands it to me, saying, "I never use it. Here, finish your novel." Wow.

So Bruce, I decide, is an angel among men, among charlatan friends and family who claim to love and care but when called upon to show their cards shrink away like witches under a leaky rain gutter. Fuckers. "Bruce," I said, "none of a dozen people who claim to be my friends could part with their pc's for me. My mother wouldn't risk stretching her credit to help me buy a new computer, something about her debt ratio being too high. But you did! YOU ARE A GOD!" And somewhere in that day's conversation, I mentioned offhandedly to Bruce that I was going on a journey soon that might interest him, a good bet for "Adventure of a Lifetime" status, a road trip to Houston with a bunch of wildly painted cars. It was just an offhand mention.

And dammit if Bruce wasn't off to the paint store the next morning, painting and preparing his VW van to make the trip to Houston with me and Harrod and the gang. I love Bruce. Due to the busy nature of the trip and my own scattershot foreshortened attention span, I can't say I knew Bruce much better at the end of the trip than before. But I loved him instantly, because he gave without hesitation and he had the courage to hit the road with nothing but a book of foodstamps and a few dollars. Bruce and his daughters Jessica and Amanda were to make the whole trip from our town near Palm Springs to Houston and back on a handful of Monopoly money and Jessy's violin talent. Wow.

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Last update April 1, 2004