Monday, July 17, 2006
Road Journal .3 (Almost Dead- Mid July)

Almost Dead

Start 'er Up

I had little idea where I was headed when I took off on the motorcycle, all my possessions strapped down behind me. I'd purchased a Rand McNally Road Atlas days before leaving what had been my home for five years in Austin and had studied the east Texas highways without planning a route, as the direction I would take was unknown. Let me be clear that though I did not know how to get there, I knew where I was going and had no doubts that I would reach my

With a sweaty palm wrapped around the rung of a steel ladder I reached up, unlatching a trapdoor to the slanted roof of Disch-Falk Field in Austin, Texas. As always I'd entered the stadium under the dark of midnight by hopping an outfield wall then walked over the Astroturf outfield, turned up the stairs into the grandstand and approached the press box where I climbed over a desk to reach the ladder to the roof.

The handle on the trapdoor wheezed a metal-on-metal grinding noise as I