Friday, February 17, 2006

Cork and Demon Western Wine Tour is nigh

Eleven days. That's like, tomorrow, man.

In eleven days, I'm going off in my car for three months.

D.K., the owner of Seoul Korea and as Austinites will know, the Sushi Pimp Host for Karaoke Mondays, gave me some suprisingly fatherly advice for my trip. Suprising, because this man puts on a leopard trimmed pimp suit and giant afro and makes Howard Stern look like Mother Theresa with his foul mouth. But for a moment, I was his kid, and he wanted to make sure I'd be safe. "Take mace with you, and don't travel at night, and if someone has you in a chokehold, shift your weight to the side and hit 'em in the balls."

But it's not the Boogey Man I'm scared of.

I've been slowly hyping this trip, which will take me all the way across the Western US and back again to taste good wine and meet people, for a few months now. What if I don't live up to my own hype? What if I haven't hyped it enough and no one reads about it? What if I run out of money? What if I get out there and it turns into a death march, trying to keep up with my self-imposed ambition of talking to all these winemakers? Or worse, what if I find myself in the middle of the Guadalupe Mountains and say, "Fuck it, I'm gonna stay here and commune with the Lord instead"?

Okay, that probably won't happen. Far as I know, there's no wireless coverage out there.

And why, pray, am I doing this krazier-than-shit thing again? Especially now, that I'm in the middle of the most heartbreakingly friendly divorce on the fucking planet? Shouldn't I be staying around, finding a new job, getting back to the grind and getting on with my life instead of traipsing off like a trust fund dilettante into the wild blue yonder? Who do I think I am? I'm no real journalist, why should these people talk to me?

Thing is, this is me, getting on with my life. It's me taking an opportunity to invest in what I love most: writing. There's probably a lot of winemakers out there who did the same damn thing, and left their unfulfilling jobs to pursue something their family might have thought was nuts.

That, by the way, is one of the reasons I think people should talk to me.

Ultimately, this trip is to test a belief that I hold very dear: if you make a bold step, the Universe rises to meet you. If this is true, I can't possibly fail.

Whew.

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