Plan B

I’m trying to limit what I write about on this blog to topics that are directly related in some way to our cross country bike trip, and this note is ostensibly about the PLAN B that my friend Mike (not the mechanic, but my friend in Houston) proposed this week. I wish I could link an audio clip to this page, and everyone could hear it for themselves---he left it as a message on my recorder, and it involves three months in Mexico, a disco, a bartender with a sideline occupation, and an all you can eat mealplan. Doesn’t sound too bad, actually! I met Mike in January of 1980---it was the first day of Spanish 102 at Texas Tech, and I was on the back row of a small classroom when he bopped in wearing a football letter jacket and wedged his way into the desk next to mine. The professor, a blond haired blue-eyed woman from South America began calling the roll, and I looked around to see the faces that went with the names. She stopped midway down the list and exclaimed, “WHOA!!! HO!!! ……” then she announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, MICHAEL JACKSON!” and she began singing THRILLER and moonwalking down the side aisle. I was cringing with embarrassment for the poor student, until I realized it was the guy next to me who was singing and jiving in his seat, grinning with the good nature that is his trademark. I laughed and asked, “Michael Jackson?”, and he replied, “Call me Mike..” and started sniffing my hair and licking my face while the professor continued her routine. That pretty much did it for me. I went to all the TECH football games, and yelled for him all the way. My parents were football fans, and the next fall when TECH was in town for Thanksgiving my mom was concerned about what Mike would do for the holiday. She insisted that I invite him, and any of his teammates to join our family for the meal. And so it was that he roared onto our quiet street in his gold TransAm with the monstrous bird decal and glass packs, with AC/DC rattling the neighborhood windows and then zoomed into our house with his teammate Hans. Mike was a wide receiver---lean, fast, with great hands and he’s smart, too. Hans may have been the center, I don’t recall that part, but suffice it to say that he wasn’t exactly lean, fast or smart. They demolished the food, and Mike charmed my mother with his goofy musings about her cooking----including a lengthy monologue about the relative squeakiness of her green beans. She remembered that Thanksgiving at every subsequent Thanksgiving until her last one. Always with a smile, and an inquiry about Mike. For the remainder of our careers at TECH, Mike and I synched our schedules to take our classes together----memorably a lot of radio and television classes where we developed programming that would never make it on air even in this age of limitless satellite stations. The only time I remember us disagreeing about our class choices was when we each needed a P.E. credit. Why an elite college athlete like Mike needed an additional P.E. credit, I don’t know---but he wanted to learn how to scuba dive, and I wanted to take bowling, and neither of us would budge. Gee, I wish I had learned how to dive, ---I already knew how to bowl!

I introduced Mike to my friend Jane at a party at my house, it was a costume party where he came as a frighteningly good Diana Ross and I think she was a Boy Scout---they married a few years later and now they have an almost 18 year old football player of their own, headed off to U of H to play ball. I wonder if he will be taking Spanish and talking about squeaky green beans?

So, thanks to Mike for PLAN B---what to do if we get tired of riding our bikes and need an alternate plan. If we go missing this summer, check out Playa del Carmen first.