2/11/2022

Hello Blog Readers,

Believe it or not, this is it! Dallas. The last stop on this month-long road trip before heading back to Omaha. For those of you who have been following this blog and sticking with me through these travels, thank you. I have genuinely loved the experience of sharing my travels with you.

I’ve been spending my time here in Dallas with my old college roommate (and one of my best friends in life), Anton. I have known Anton since we were 18, and in many ways he has not changed a bit. Back then, he was spending most of his nights on the phone with his high school sweetheart, Hannah, and keeping his head buried in psychology textbooks. Today, he and Hannah are still together and Anton still keeps his head buried in books. The two are married, live in Dallas, and have three adorable kids. Hannah works as a nurse at a local hospital, and Anton (who recently got his PhD in child psychology) works at a local children’s hospital. And yet, when Anton is not helping children and otherwise being an awesome father and husband, well…he’s still…ummm, Anton.

It is really difficult to explain Anton’s personality to someone who does not know him. It’s kind of how Google in its early days attempted to create its own work-culture that had to be experienced to be understood. Anton has his own “Anton culture” that has to be experienced to be understood. Among other words, Anton culture could be described as being reckless, childish, adventurous, dangerous, wild, harmless, fun, exhilerating and terrifying. It is somehow all of those things and none of those things at the same time. For example, back in college, when people’s idea of a good time was to go out to a party, Anton’s idea of a good time might be to sneak onto the premises of an abandoned movie theater or construction site just to see if there was anything cool there worth photographing. Or it might be to take an impromptu road trip down to his family’s place to spend the weekend living on cheese quesadillas and punk rock shows. Or it might be to hike into the sort of location where you would need to be helicoptered out if you got hurt to have some beers and do some cliff jumping. Or a million other things.

Anton called these excursions his ‘adventures,’ and almost every time, he would drag me along for the ride. And though most of the time I was generally terrified and questioning the sanity of my good friend, I can honestly say that I’m a better person today because of it. Anton, you legitimately made me a better, more adventurous person to the point where I do not think this travel blog, or the way I live my life today, could have existed but for your influence! A life without Anton is a version of me that does nothing but work, read books, eat healthy, workout, wine and dine. It’s probably a more materially successful version of me, but it is also a hamster on a hamster wheel that never leaves his society-approved cage. It is sadly a life that is being lived by so many persons throughout society. But, as Anton taught me early on, the key to living a truly adventurous life is to buck the trend. If everyone is going left, you go right. If everyone is defining happiness as a weekend frat party in Isla Vista, you’re defining it as a spontaneous road trip to a place that maybe only a few people on this Earth have ever experienced alone and on their own. If everyone is trying to define you by a pre-made, cookie cutter career, you go out and make your own career and life for yourself, no matter how hard or how many years it takes.

Luckily, my time here in Dallas has shown me that my friend Anton has not changed a bit. It has also meant that I have had to come to terms with his latest adrenaline craze: the One Wheel.

In case you aren’t aware, the One Wheel is a one-wheeled, electric death trap of a skateboard. As soon as you get on it, sensors activate that provide you with a flat, standing platform, giving you a sensation sort of like you are hovering above the ground. From there, with careful balance, you can lean forward and the board will automatically start accelerating you forward up to speeds of 15-20 miles per hour. Lean backwards, and the board will slow down or, if you are stopped, begin accelerating in reverse. Getting off requires some careful footwork, or, if you are like me, a whole lot of jumping and praying that the thing doesn’t crash into your leg or worse.

So, yeah. I got to Dallas yesterday afternoon after visiting a former student of mine at Baylor. Anton, Hannah’s younger brother Sam (who was like a 10 year old kid the last time I saw him, but who is now a police officer in Fort Worth; awesome to see, but dang I’m getting old!), and I shared some beers and said our hello’s, and then it was straight to the parking garage in their apartment complex to test how I’d do on a One Wheel. I don’t think I even really knew what was going on at that moment. I got on the machine, somehow survived a single 30-second lap around the top floor of the parking garage without falling, and then Anton said, “Oh yeah, he’s ready for Pint Night! Let’s go!”

“Pint Night” is apparently a group ride of about forty to fifty One Wheelers through the suburbs of Richardson just north of Dallas. They ride as one big pack on an approximate 10 mile loop, with their One Wheels all glowing and blazing neon in the night, some of them dressed in glowing costumes or with Go Pros or flashlights attached to their heads, carving up streets and stopping periodically at area bars for beers. “Picture forty Antons all in one place,” is how Sam described it to me while we were driving there. It was an apt description.

By the time I got there, I think I was literally shaking from the adrenaline. I had just rode this motorized demon for thirty seconds in an empty parking lot, and now I was going to go on a several hour ride through traffic and city streets, with a pack of forty people, drinking and hollering throughout. The idea was insanity, but Anton kept pushing me forward in typical Anton fashion. “Just wear this helmet,” Anton said and handed me a silly Watermelon green helmet.

The adventure itself was peak Anton, and immediately brought me back to my college days. Somehow, just as Anton said I would, I survived; and I didn’t fall once (although I might have bashed my ankle once or twice getting off the dang thing). And the stages of the adventure were all there. They were the same stages I remember from college. At first I was terrified and a bit concerned at what we were getting into. That gave way to exhilaration and fun, which then gave away again to just…exhaustion and confusion over just where Anton gets all his energy. The best part was that his oldest son, Max, got to take part too, riding alongside us on his bike, and you know what, he did awesome biking the whole thing! That kid’s going to be quite the cross country runner one day.

Anyways, that was last night. Then today, while Anton and Hannah work, I’ve been hanging out with Sam. We first went to the Dallas Botanical Gardens because I thought maybe it would be cool like San Antonio’s Breckenridge Park, but no, it wasn’t. Technically Sam warned me it wasn’t going to be great up front and I should have listened to him.

After that underwhelming trip to the gardens, we decided to get back on the One Wheels, and I at least got to enjoy a more leisurely ride through town, on our way over to a really great Italian deli. Seriously…one of the best Italian delis I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to Italy. Good job, Dallas!

So that about does it for my time in Dallas. Anton and Hannah will be getting off work soon, and I think we’re going to enjoy one more night in the city before I leave. But, man! The One Wheel adventure was the right way to end this trip: something pushing me out of my comfort zone and into new horizons. And of course, it had to be my old roommate and good friend who offered up the experience. Thank you, Anton!

But before I close out this blog entry and say adieu, I thought I’d touch on one last thing. It actually made my heart ache a bit seeing Anton’s son there, riding with us through our adventure on the streets. The fact is that Anton is a great dad, and he gets to enjoy being a “young dad” – someone who is still young enough, energetic enough and relatively pain free enough to still be able to enjoy fun experiences like last night’s with his kids. It’s something that has been weighing on my mind a lot lately, because it’s an opportunity that I feel is slipping away in my life.

I don’t know that I will get to enjoy being a young dad, or a dad at all in this life. But I am learning to count my blessings. The fact of the matter is that the past few years have been some of the most important in my life in terms of forming my character, and the recent few months of travel probably some of the most enriching and eye-opening for me. My time on the road has marked something I never could have accomplished as a married man or father, and has opened my eyes to what this country, America, truly has to offer. From watching the sunset over Lake Superior to watching it rise again over Niagara Falls; from waiting out a storm in George Washington’s house in Valley Forge to enjoying a cold, sunny day at Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee; from standing in the same recording studio where Johnny Cash recorded his hits to riding a ship out to Fort Sumter in Charleston; from walking the colonial streets of Portsmouth to becoming a pirate on the sleek, modern streets of Tampa; from discovering my family’s ties to New Orleans voodoo to hearing the very voice of God in a quiet San Antonio mission, and so much more, this trip has made me realize that we as Americans really are heirs to one of the greatest countries on Earth. And it is all right there for us to experience, enjoy, love, and serve. This trip has inspired me and rededicated me to my work in a way that I never felt before. And, while I still plan to go up to Marquette to start work on a graduate degree and invest myself in that beautiful community, in my final hours here ‘on the road,’ I can’t stop shaking this other thought that has suddenly popped up in my head: that it might be time for me to not slow down but to start writing and traveling even more, on a path to becoming America’s newest politician. We will see.

Cheers,

-Rob