A Fifth & A Flannel

If you've read these blog posts in chronological order of my story up until this point, you'll have read: My Childhood; and A Young Man.

If you're just tuning it... then at this point I've graduated college, sold everything I owned, and am now about to backpack across country playing music on the street in each city until we make enough to get to the next. Another wild ride.

A Fifth & A Flannel

...it led to some reflection where I realized I wasn't ready to become the police anyways.

I knew I wanted to be the police in a major city but that meant a few things. Although I grew up in a rough environment with a diverse group of friends who's family cultures were still strong in the home, studied abroad in London, Paris, spent a summer in Nicaragua and could understand many different ways of life...

I couldn't begin to understand how to relate or deal with homeless people.

So... to prepare myself to become the best police officer I could, I decided I was going to backpack across country solo and spend time talking to homeless people to better understand the ways they end up in that position and what keeps them there.

That was the plan at least.

But just before I left, my friend Brian had found himself in a rough patch, needing to seek some clarity and asked to go with me.

Being the amazing musician that he is, he offered to play music on the street along the way to make us some money.

I told him I wasn't gonna sit there and just watch him play. So knowing that I have rhythm and can sing well enough that I won't hurt your ears...

He handed me a washboard.

I then sold everything I owned down to a backpack of clothes, including my car and we hit the road.

This in itself is an incredibly wild story that involves lots of whiskey, hand rolled cigarettes, a straggler from Ireland, a asian drug runner from Tijuana, the entire Lamar University girls soccer team, and a prostitute robbery in New Orleans before ending the trip in Atlanta.

OH. And we all got "Let's Get Weird" tattooed on our ass.

You'll have to wait for me to finish my book for that one.

Read the next part of my story here!