a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. honesty, honestly

four years ago i received word that they were going to replace the college football stadium that was near my childhood home. while i wasn't a season ticket holder, i did have a respectable number of memories in the place, most notably sneaking in on weekend nights with my friends to play hide in seek in the sprawling facility under a moonlit sky, well, play hide and seek until we were chased out by security which was admittedly part of the sport and appeal. upon hearing the news, i made immediate plans to see one last game there in the last year the CSU Rams would play in the storied Hughes Stadium which butted right up against my Fort Collins foothills.

so i made a proper trip of it, and bookguy joined me, and we met up with boyhood pal snake and had some great laughs and panhandler's pizza and bookguy, and i biked a century up through estes park and into rocky mountain national park. in short, it was a lovely and memorable weekend.

then the next year i returned to fort collins to take in a game at the new stadium. no bookguy this time as he was out of the country but snake and i shared time, and i made the estes ride up the big thompson canyon solo. it was again a lovely and memorable weekend.

then this year snake reached out and asked if i would be coming out for another CSU game. i countered saying i thought those couldn't be very exciting for him since they were in his backyard and suggested he pick a game somewhere in the country he would like to see and we could meet there. he said he would get back to me. a few weeks later he sent a note outlining the following weekend. a few days of golf followed by a historic SEC matchup, Tennesee @ Auburn. then on sunday we would travel an hour north and take in some nascar at Talledegha. right away i could tell i should have put snake in charge of planning our weekends years ago.

part of the itinerary was influenced by snake's brother tommy and their long-time friend paul (who was the nascar guy). they have been golf buddies for lots of years. since i'm not a golfer, i said i would meet up with them on friday for the saturday game and sunday race. so i had a lovely drive down to alabama on friday. i imagine it has been said before, but i love driving. part of it is i love my car, a 91 bmw 318i (or an E30 for those in the know). i became its second owner in 1998, and it has brought me an unreasonable amount of joy since then. a slight problem i have is i have not driven to work for more than twelve years AND i live in a community where i can walk to nearly everything i need which means i can go long stretches without ever rolling it out of the garage. but another thing i love about driving, distance driving particularly, is the simple act of unplugging from the daily firehose (simple to do, hard to make happen). these cross-country treks are highly therapeutic and meditative for me. on these day-long drives, i cover lots of desolate mentalscape that rarely sees travelers pass through.

a quick aside to address the number one question people ask when they see my nearly 30-year-old car, how many miles does it have? i can't really tell you because the odometer broke about six years ago. when it stopped merrily rolling along, the dial read 130k miles. i reckon since i don't drive a whole lot locally, i could count up the trips i've taken and get you a respectable ball-park number, but those sorts of things don't really tickle me like some. it's like the price of gas. whatever it is isn't going to keep me from buying some, so i don't bother giving it any of my precious neurons.

back to our story. i put myself fully in their hands and was told just to show up as they would take care of all of the arrangements, right down to our lodging. marty will attest to my excellence on being able to follow that sort of plan and my travel day went off without a hitch, and i pulled into the hotel parking lot five minutes before the fellas returned from their double round of golf and the weekend was off and running.

tommy got us the football tickets and had us in the second row of the end zone facing their mega screen and just to the right of the visiting band. it there was a better seat in the house, i'm not sure where it might have been. tommy and i struck an immediate over/under bet on how many times the tennessee band would play Rocky-Top (not as many as he wagered by far more than i would have ever imagined). it was an excellent day with lots of blue skies and belly laughs. and i didn't learn/recall until after the day began that it was snake's 50th birthday. by my math, it would have been challenging to dial up a better celebration than what we were in the midst of.

paul was in charge of the nascar tickets as he had family in the south who were regular patrons. shortly after meeting paul i said i heard he was a nascar guy. he said nothing but held up a finger instructing me to hold that thought, went to his bag, rummaged a second and then turned, holding to his chest his very own ricky bobby wonder bread race suit. with my mouth still agape, he turned to his bag again, this time announcing that if you didn't want to be ricky bobby you could always wear his race team partner cal naughton's old spice suit which he held before him with equal flourish. yeah, i guess he'd fall into the nascar guy column.

but, it turns out snake had some nascar connections of his own and was able to get us passes into pit row. this is the racing equivalent of scoring backstage passes to your favorite band. while the race was going on and paul was texting with friends telling them where he was right now, his phone almost caught fire from all the envy and hate being sent in reply.

the only downside to this mega-weekend is what in the heck could we ever do to follow it up. and/because it will be followed up as i'm hoping to make this trek to some college rivalry/experience a new annual tradition. too many interesting places and cultures in this country to not stick your head in the room at least once and soak it up.


hughes staudium (2016)



new stadium (2017)



auburn game (2018)



talledegha 500 (2018)

there have been multi-day stretches where anthony hasn't worn more than a pair of underwear and a robe, and sometimes just one of those. so when he was told that he had to dress up for his elementary concert we expected some grousing and an insistence to wear shorts and a t-shirt. we did not expect to hear him ask how bow-ties work. nor did we expect to hear him ask what suspenders were all about. ...

many people are FIT through many approaches and means. some must work harder than others to achieve those goals but still find a way. some are dealt a worse hand than others but still find a way.

and many people are SUCCESSFUL through many approaches and means. some must work harder than others to achieve those goals but still find a way. some are dealt a worse hand than others but still find a way.

it's taken me a long time to learn, realize and accept that there are many ways to run a winning game. there was a time i thought, well this worked for me so it is what will work for you. it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that the real (and only) key is to run YOUR game and not someone else's game. as the kids say today, "you gotta do you". this is something i wished i learned thirty years sooner than i did. if i had, not only would i have been a lot more successful sooner, i would also have been a lot more happy sooner.

there is a young man i visit with once a month. i met him through my former employer where he is a rising star. this ascension, by my estimation, is largely connected to a number of things: he is capable at his craft, his has a very likable nature, a unique upbringing, an obsession for improvement, and possibly most of all, he has a wildly energetic and engaging way of communicating. if you picked...

the school day was over. alex was sitting in marty's classroom waiting for her to be done so they could go home. there were a few other students in the room hanging out (yes, marty's room is a bit of a hangout room as you might guess it would be). a girl commented to another student about a creative writing group she was starting up. after a beat or two alex spoke up from his side of the room, asking about the club. marty's eyes raised looking at her son, surprised. the girl turned and brightly shared the details of the club--what they do, when they meet and the like. she said if he'd be interested he was more than welcome. he said he might be.

as we went to bed marty shared the story with me. we looked at one another a bit perplexed. i asked about the girl, wondering if that was why alex was interested. or perhaps it was the boy the girl was talking to. we didn't know. but we thought it must be one of those two things because we also didn't know our 15-year old alex had an interest in creative writing to the point of joining an after-school club to do it.

a few weeks later alex asked if he could read something to me. it was his first piece for the creative writing club. he read: so maybe marty and i mis-read this situation and it wasn't the boy or the girl and our aleo would like to take a cut at some story telling. we were bound to be wrong about something one of these days ;-). i'm happy to chalk it up as yet one more happy surprise in our turn at this parenting thing. and this being his first go at this, i'm also eager to see what else might be swimming around the gelatinous folds of aleo's brain.

growing up i remember goofing on my mom at how quickly she could get emotional at something. i have a crazy, vivid memory of a coke commercial that ran for awhile in the eighties that made her cry not just once but upon every viewing. it depicted a family adopting a little girl and then raising her, showing pivotal snippets of maturation (riding a bike, blowing out birthday candles, graduating hig...

Bella DeArmitt
Ms. Gray
African American Literature ACC
August 20 2018

The Impact of a Tradition

My family holds great value for traditions: Sunday mornings are reserved for cuddling in my parents' bed, winter breaks are spent holed up with our favorite action heroes--my family will take Jason Bourne and Lieutenant Ripley over the Grinch and Frosty the Snowman any yea ...