The Blind Leading the Blind

I think there might be a colony of blind people living in my apartment building. Out on the street yesterday, I watched as a parade of 25 blind folks with their canes and guide dogs exited the building and entered taxi cabs. It may explain why we're allowed to have pets in our apartment.

I watched as one man in sunglasses walked briskly on the gym treadmill, his Golden Retriever trotting along with him.

This morning in the elevator, a blind woman named Cathy began telling me about how she had just finished reading the Bible.

"Which version?" I asked.

"Well, I listened to it on tape, but then when I got bored, I read it in braille," she said.

Another man bumped into me as I was getting off the elevator.

"Oh excuse me," he said. "How are you? I'm Ken."

Ken was nice enough, but he bumped into me three more times as we exited the building and then waited at the bus stop together. Each time he ran into me with his cane or his hands, he introduced himself again, thinking I was a different person.

Feeling awkward, I kept responding in a different voice, the last time mimicking a Soutern belle waiting for her bus.

I kept wanting to ask Ken if he knew any famous blind people. But then I realized that my asking him if he knew Stevie Wonder was like his asking me if I knew the prime minister of China . . . which I don't.

ROAD TRIP JOURNAL (Part 3)
Sleep on the Cheap

After two nights of camping, I decided to splurge on more comfortable accomodations in a motel and a hostel.

The motel in Lincoln, Nebraska offered sweeping views of an airport runway and a pink neon sign blinking, "Jim's Erotica."

Apparently, my motel --- the "Economy Lodge" --- used to be an Econo Lodge. The name-change wasn't hard to figure out. On everything from the ice buckets to the telephone, the resourceful new owners had scrawled an extra "my" onto the outdated logo, reflecting the new name.

I've never felt so broke as that night staying in a discounted knock-off of an Econo Lodge motel.

All around me were other knock-offs, from a Mariot Motel down the street to the Cheapotle Grille next door.

Across the tracks from me, a new Econo Lodge had opened up. I watched jealously as the noveau riche pulled up in their sparkling Camrys and Escorts.

I pictured the rich and powerful inside indulging in a chlorinated whirlpool, a "Continental" breakfest and free HBO.

My room was a dump, which is no good for me, a Certifiably Irrational and Paranoid Obsessive Compulsive Germaphob, known by the acronymn C.I.A.P.O.C.G.

The carpet was so filthy that I had to cover it with clean towels, creating a safe path for my bare feet from my bed over to my hand sanitizer.

As I was leaving the next morning, I spotted this old boarded-up motel that was now a "Swat Training Area."

My second night in a hostel way up in the Rocky Mountains was devine.

I did have one curious experience though.

I met a kid named Jeff, who seemed ordinary enough. The only thing was, though he had dark hair and seemed quite young, the dude had bushy, gray eyebrows, like an old man's.

As he talked, I watched as the two ferrets glued to his forehead bounced with each word.

I developed a hypothesis. Maybe Jeff had that aging disease in which you age three times faster than the ordinary person. One day you're a 12-year-old kid playing kickball, and the next, you have gray hair, wrinkles and a sudden passion for Canasta.

I had to know the truth. But I had to be sly about it. I had to act like the cunning reporter I hope to become.

"So how long have you had Andy Rooney's eyebrows?" I blurted.

"Excuse me?" Jeff responded.

"I mean, do the drapes match the carpet?"

By the way Jeff furrowed his bushy gray eyebrows at me, I knew I had blown it. Now I would never know the truth. Jeff stormed out of the room, saying it was his bedtime. It was 5:30 in the evening.

On Trail Ridge Road going over the Rockies

Freezing high up in the mountains

I felt like a National Geographic photographer
as I got out of my car and walked 10 feet into
this meadow to shoot this photo.

Goodbye, Chicago
(For my Grand Canyon post, see below)

I'm now in Washington D.C., where I'll be covering Congress through December.

But before I'm away from Chicago too long, I wanted to post some photos of some, but not all, of my favorite Medill instructors, who made the experience so terrific:

Steve's writing coaching was invaluable, but perhaps his best advice to me was to carry a box cutter when I'm reporting in certain neighborhoods.

Joe was the first instructor I met at Medill. He has to be the hardest working man in the newsroom.

Jon and Mindy made the last quarter in the newsroom a blast.The fact that Nancy is wearing Steve's bathrobe tells you everything you need to know about this party.

Some of my sources along the way:

Mayor Daley

Don King, his voice as loud as his bedazzled jacket

Senator Obama

ROAD TRIP JOURNAL (Part 2)

Grand Canyon? Eh.

How did I end up on the road?

Well, I figured gas prices were low, might as well take my Chevy Tahoe on a summertime jaunt 3,000 miles across the country.

I wanted the trip to be spontaneous and adventurous. In planning it, I spent barely a day studying maps and getting my malaria vaccines.

But I ran into trouble on the second day. Just as I was blazing across the Arizona desert, a warning light went on in my car. I pulled over and spent the next 30 minutes with the hood up.

I was actually happy to put on a show of manliness on the side of the road as I leaned over the engine.

Passing drivers must've assumed this stud in the grease-stained muscle shirt was fixing the tranny or lubing the gears, whatever the hell that means.

Little did they know that I was spending half an hour looking for the damn dip stick.

I pulled back onto the road.

I watched as gas prices ticked up as I headed east: "$3.00" . . . "$3.25" . . . "Your 401k."

Apparently, there was some hurricane, and now there's a gas shortage. Girls in New Orleans have resorted to flashing guys not for beads, but gas cards.

All I know is that the cable news channels are devoting way too much time to this hurricane, when surely there's an attractive white girl missing somewhere.

I pulled into the campgrounds at the Grand Canyon as the sun sunk in the west. It was a relief being around other campers after my previous night by myself weeping quietly inside my tent.

I still wasn't sure of the etiquette involving nearby campers.

For instance, if I hear other campers making love at night, do I ignore it, or unzip their tent and climb in?

What's the protocol on building a bonfire in the buff?

I walked over to the canyon itself, which, if you haven't seen it, resembles a big hole in the ground. I was unimpressed.

I sat down on a bench and settled in for the far better attraction: the hundreds of tourists waddling off their buses and toward the canyon.

Apparently these folks hadn't seen a large hole before, let alone a grand one. They had to document this for the ages, snapping photos proclaiming to the world, "The McCalisters were here!"

The hundreds of snapshots would eventually be whittled down to a 1,200-image slide show to captivate their friends back home in Munster.

Of course, most of the photos had little to do with the canyon. It seems that the very first thing that people want to do when approaching an attraction like the Grand Canyon or the Eiffel Tower is to take pictures of themselves in front of it.

I'm sure that in many of the pictures you couldn't even see the canyon itself. The tourists surely filled the frame with their American flag t-shirts, jean shorts and matching hats reading, I HAD A HOLE LOT OF FUN AT THE GRAND CANYON.

Of course, I shouldn't be talking. I'm so narcissistic that on vacation I now like to pose for photos in front of photos of myself.







P.S. I've come to realize that many readers may take me too seriously. I exaggerate and make up many things, especially my impressions of the Grand Canyon.

Because really, when it comes to big holes in the ground, this one tops any list.



Next time, Part III: "Sleeping on the Cheap."

ROAD TRIP JOURNAL (Part 1)

Who's Afraid of the Dark?

When you’re 25, you’re expected to have outgrown certain things, such as a fear of the dark.

You may have gotten away with having a night light or wetting the bed when you were 23 or 24. But when you’ve reached the quarter-century mark, you’re supposed to turn in the Velcro wallet and start carrying yourself like an adult.

So I felt like less of a man Tuesday night when I got a tad frightened while alone in the dark.

It was the first night of my cross-country road trip, and I had decided to camp three miles up a mountain in Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest.

I learned a couple lessons that night: if you’re planning to go camping with your flashlight as your only source of light, be sure to bring some batteries. The sun apparently goes down at the end of the day in Arizona.

The flashlight gave out almost immediately after I finished pitching my tent. (Twenty-four-year-old Raam would’ve made a joke here…)

I was all alone in the pitch-black, my car a treacherous three-mile hike back down the mountain.

Unable to see even my hand in front of me, I groped around my camp site trying to find my bug spray and sandwich. I joked to myself that I was like Ray Charles shopping for sunglasses. But then I remembered he was dead and felt even worse.

I pictured what might be lurking in the thickets of trees around me: A bear ready to maul me to death for my veggie burgers or a psycho killer about to suffocate me with my Tempur-Pedic pillow.

Inside my pocket, my Swiss Army knife was at the ready in case some beast like a mountain lion or bunny rabbit needed its throat slit.

I worried, though, if I’d be able to pull out the blade in time from among the corkscrew and other tools. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to wave the knife at the bear, but damn if I wasn’t going to file his claws or open his canned soup.

I made a makeshift campfire by piling my cell phone, Palm Pilot and digital camera inside a fire ring and turning them on. Whenever I needed to pee, I made a headlamp by strapping my illuminated iPod around my head. Then, iPeed.

When it was time for bed, I climbed into my tent, zipping it shut tight. I had a fitful sleep. I had my reoccurring dream where I’m sleeping with the grandmothers from various sitcoms.

“No, not Mona!” I woke up screaming. I was relieved to find I was still in my tent about to be mauled by a lion and not in bed with the G.M.I.L.F. from “Who’s the Boss?”

I stared up at the roof of my tent and reflected on the position I was in. I was 25-years-old, and I was still scared of the dark. Maybe it’s because I still think of myself sometimes as an 11-year-old, not the adult staring back at me in the mirror.

Just then, I heard what sounded like a man’s voice from outside the tent. “Enough with that mushy shit,” the man seemed to be saying. "This is the outdoors, man, not Oprah."

I poked my head out but didn’t see anything. I must've imagined it. I peered out into the darkness and listened to the crickets and squirrels.

I then looked up toward the sky for the first time. It was shimmering and brilliant.

I zipped up the tent around me from the neck down, leaving my head exposed to the cold mountain air. I gazed up at the Milky Way sprinkled with billions of bright stars and the sliver of a moon. I couldn’t help thinking, maybe the night isn’t so dark after all.

(Editors Note: Twenty-four-year-old Raam would have preferred to end with a Uranus joke.)




(Tomorrow is Part II entitled, "A Hole lot of Fun at the Grand Canyon.")