To The Up, To The Up.

We drive North. Long open roads. Mountain ranges. Pine trees line the highways and bring smells of purity and earth. The long hours create time to reflect on the previous weeks and the previous years. Hours of quiet. The music playing through my two remaining speakers are white noise to my thoughts. The Album Leaf, Rosie Thomas, The Cobalt Season, Glen Hansard, Damien Rice, Joni Mitchell, Feist, The Arcade Fire. All of them have come along to bring companionship and to speak into the ideas that run through my mind.

I think about a lot of things. A life of simplicity. What it has been like to live out of a car for weeks at a time. Meeting new people every day. Hiking the Grand Canyon. Singleness. The possibility of marriage. The fear of marriage. Graduate school. Money. God. Whether or not Fezzik is going to make it all the way to Seattle. Where should we eat tonight? Should we eat tonight? New friends that will be made. What kind of job should I get? Can I actually pay for school? I totally can’t pay for school. My family. My friends back in Indiana. I wonder how many of my old girlfriends are already married? I don’t want to know. Quit thinking about that. Stop it. Stop. Ok. We should go to Wendy’s. Yes.

San Francisco to Medford, Oregon is about a 6 or 7 hour drive, depending on how well one’s car can make it up the mountains. It was a lovely drive though. Northern California has these massive fields of golden grain. We pass Mount Shasta with its breathtaking height. We finally break the Oregon border and wave goodbye to California and to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who really need to find another muse besides their home state. Seriously.

I got an email from Will and Kendra up in Medford, who are really great people and incredibly generous, saying that they’d be willing to put us up for a night. They didn’t have room for us, but their friend Joey said he’d let us sleep on his floor for the evening. Fine with us. We met Will in Kendra in a Fred Meyer parking lot, said our hellos, and then started driving toward Joey’s house since it was already 9:30 p.m.

Staying with random people is always an interesting experience. You have no idea what it’s going to be like until you’re in the middle of it. Sometimes it’s absolutely wonderful and other times you get in really bad situations. Most of the time it’s right in the middle. One time I was in Florence, Italy looking for a place to stay. Some guy I’d never seen stopped me and asked if I was looking for a hostel. I told him I was and he said that he owned one and that I could stay there for 10 Euros, which is a very good price. I told him I’d take it and he led the way.

Apparently “hostel” was code for “my dirty apartment with a random Japanese man who doesn’t speak any English but loves to play old Eagles songs from his computer all through the night and talk to you as if you are fluent in Japanese.”

It was a very awkward night.

Like I said, you never know what you’re going to get.

So we walked into Joey’s house, and the very first thing I come to understand is that we have somehow stepped into the Death Star. Joey had quite a bit of Star Wars schwag around his house. A poster. Desktop background and screensaver. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head with Star Wars outfits. That sort of thing.

There was also heavy metal music playing on the stereo.

I instantly loved Joey.

I can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone like Joey Perez III. First of all, he loves metal music. I mean really really loves it. Manowar was pumping all things metal through the air in his house.

Joey is incredibly animated. Will says that Joey has two volumes: Loud and very loud. It’s obvious that he really loves life, and I appreciated that about him quite a lot. Whenever Joey loved something he would say, “That is so metal.” Whenever Joey didn’t like something he’d exclaim “That is so Yanni.” He also rated things on how terrible they were by awarding Yanni Points. For instance, anything that was an enemy of metal, as Joey put it. was very Yanni. Classical music got 6 Yanni Points. I believe he said that the state of Ohio got a few Yanni Points as well. I can’t remember exactly.

As our conversation went along I randomly wrote down some things that Joey said in my Moleskine. Here are a few quotes out of context:

“He’s got an authority mustache.”

“I never wanted to be your weekend lover.”

“I should drink my coffee in the shower. That’d be pretty metal.”

“How cool would it be to grind someone’s bones into the dust of the past?”

“E-vites on the internet are not metal. They get 8 Yanni Points.”

“Heavy Metal players carry guitar picks in their hearts.”

——————————————

It was an amazing night. I laughed harder there than anywhere else on my trip.

You should know that in the morning, when we woke up, Joey was in a suit and tie. He’s a real estate agent in Medford.

Of course he is.

Will and Kendra took the three of us out for coffee and breakfast that next morning, but before we left I asked Joey to give me his best metal pose.

Medford was an amazing experience. Easily one of the best of the trip. I have never met anyone like Joey in my life, and Will and Kendra were wonderful to spend time with. I honestly felt like God was gifting us with that bit of time.

Joey, we all would like to say that you, my friend, are so metal.

Tags: to the left, travel

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