“All me, no ghost, no 16-bit like Sega Genesis”

So last night I was looking at some of the pictures I took this past summer and thinking about how much I liked writing here when I had the time. Then I remembered that I was taking six hours during the second semester of my senior year at UNC and figured I might have enough time to stop in here and jot down some thoughts. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with this space, but I think it will be a lot of me reflecting on random things I come across in my life. There will definitely be talk about sports because I love sports and spend a lot of time thinking about them, but this will not be a sports blog. I like to think that I have other interests and more to offer the world than "PUT KENDALL MARSHALL IN!!!" If anything, sports will be used as a sort of prism of looking at things or as a sort of shorthand way for me to express abstract ideas when I don't have the writing chops to do better. While I will definitely write things like, "I felt like Gerry McNamara during the first half of the 2003 National Championship game," I will also try to make an effort to explain what a phrase like that means to the sort of person who has more important things to remember than G-Mac's six first-half 3-pointers against Kansas. I'd like to think that I will use this space to tell stories about myself or the people and things I see around me, but it might just devolve into, "Hey, did you see this cool link? Here's why I think it's cool." I don't really know, yet. Regardless, I appreciate your time and interest.

Anyway, the last time I wrote to you, I was writing as a blue-and-orange bleeding New York Mets fan from a Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle. Now, I am writing as an "objective and unbiased journalist" from my apartment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I guess before I do anything else, I should explain how I got from there to here, both physically and metaphysically. And so, here is the first installment of a brief outline of what I did the past six months of my life:

1. I drove across America (again)

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

From left: My friend Mike; me; my Seattle housemate Jake; Jake's girlfriend/Mike and my friend, Shawna

If I had to retrace my steps from There to Here, I guess I would have to start in the driver's seat of my black Toyota Avalon somewhere in Wyoming, my main man and college sportswriter extraordinaire Mike McCall riding shotgun. We were driving back to our respective east-coast hometowns after spending our summers as interns in the Emerald City. Mike had worked as an associate reporter for MLB.com, getting paid to be a Seattle Mariners beat reporter and write about baseball. I had spent my summer considerably less productively, fetching Subway and surfing the Internet in the radio studio of 710 ESPN Radio Seattle, the flagship station for Mariners baseball. I did not get paid or really do anything of meaning. It was mostly miserable and almost always drizzling.

Mike and I drove together some 20 hours between Seattle and Boulder, Co., where I eventually dropped him off so that he could make the trip back to Gainesville with a fellow U of Florida Gator, and I could take the northern route back to Long Island. We took turns driving, jammed out to bad music and brainstormed ideas for ridiculous t-shirts we'd like to own. But I guess after you're alone with someone long enough, you start running out of Lil Wayne lyrics to discuss and start talking about more important things. So we talked about our families and girls we'd crushed on and sports journalism and where it was going. It was then that I decided I was going to try to make this sportswriting thing happen for real.

I've always been interested in a career in sports journalism, but I don't think I had ever really planned out a course of action the way I did then. I guess I had done the things I thought I was supposed to be doing (joined the school newspaper, got internships doing sports journalismy things), but never really thought about how what I was doing was going to get me where I wanted to go. Maybe I was just never willing to work hard enough. Anyway, I decided then that I wanted to get an MLB.com internship like Mike had done in the worst way. To do this, we decided I needed to get better as a writer. I would take every assignment I could and show my work to Mike, my colleagues at the DTH, my housemates and anyone else who would read it and give me constructive feedback. I would then take this advice and make myself a better writer. As Mike pointed out, nobody sets out to be covering men's soccer their senior year, but if that's what I was assigned to do, I should make the most of things and treat soccer with as much seriousness and care as I would the football beat. If I worked my tail off and did the things we talked about, maybe I could start getting where I was trying to go.

There's a really wonderful passage in "All the King's Men" where the narrator writes that since human existence is defined by relations with other human beings, you in a way stop existing when you are driving alone at night in the rain. It's one of the truest insights anyone has ever written.

Between Colorado and Port Jefferson, I had a lot of time to think about what I had been like when I had last existed in Boulder and what I would like to be like when I started existing again on Long Island, and later, in Chapel Hill. For three hours a day I had the company of Howie Rose and Wayne Hagin on the WFAN Mets radio network, but mostly I was alone. I thought a lot about the things I did well in life and why I did those things well and I thought about the things I didn't do well and why I did those things poorly. I made sweeping declarations of the things I would do once I made it back to civilization. When I got back, I would go to the gym every day and no girls would hurt my feelings and I would be focused and confident and industrious and I would become the best writer to come out of Long Island since Walt Whitman, or at least Chuck D.

And no, outside of the first month of school I did not spend much time at the gym, and yes, I did wind up letting a girl hurt my feelings for a short period of time. I have not written anything nearly as good as "Fight the Power," much less "Leaves of Grass." But I was mostly industrious and mostly confident and mostly focused, and two weeks ago the people from MLB.com called to tell me I would be spending my next summer as an associate reporter covering the New York Mets. I am not perfect, but I'm much, much better than I was when I last wrote to you six months ago.

A lot of times I think back on my summer in Seattle as a waste of my time and my parents' money, two months spent listening to my bosses trade fart jokes and trying to restrain myself from yelling back at nasty sports-talk radio callers. But then I remember that if I hadn't spent all of that time transcribing asinine interviews with middle relievers, I never would have had that conversation with Mike about becoming a real-life sportswriter and maybe I never would have made the time to draw a blueprint for a better me. And then I think that maybe if I had stayed home that summer or even gotten a more productive internship elsewhere, I might still be a borderline-mediocre sportswriter and an uninspired self-defeatist.

In a way, my internship at 710 ESPN Radio got me exactly where I hoped it would when I signed up. I advanced my career, made a professional contact I could use as a reference and grew exponentially as a person. I just took a 5,800-mile detour along the way.

A Hella Hyphy Road Trip

Team,

Sorry it's been forever since I've written anything. I had meant to update this at least once every week or so, but a unique confluence of events including a visit from my parents, an unusually resilient cold, a spat of laziness and an extended period without an original or particularly interesting thought has kept me from the keyboard. I'll do better next time. Anyway, I know those of you who are my mother have been eagerly anticipating an update, so I'll get to it.

For the most part, things have been pretty slow here in Seattle. I don't do a whole lot outside of going in to the station for my internship, but it's been really nice to have some time off to sit around in my underwear watching professional wrestling and screwing around on Facebook. I did, however, leave the relative comfort of my bedroom for a four-day pilgrimage to San Francisco to see my beloved Metropolitans take on the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park with my cousin Eric, who had recently moved to the city by the bay when Sears moved its Apparel & Home division, of which he is Chief of Staff.

A trip to San Francisco was something I had been thinking about ever since I'd decided I would be spending my summer in Seattle. Even before telling my friends and family, the first thing I did after being offered my internship was figure out where the nearest National League ballpark was and when the Mets would be playing there. San Francisco is about a 14-hour drive down from Seattle, so I decided to stop in Crescent City, California, conveniently located about halfway between my starting point and my destination, to see Redwood National Park.

My love of the outdoors is something that always surprises people when I tell them about it. In general, I'm a pretty extroverted guy, and I think people have trouble imagining me being alone and keeping quiet long enough to properly enjoy nature. Perhaps under different circumstances, I wouldn't be able to, but I think growing up an only child has taught me to enjoy and appreciate solitude in a way I otherwise wouldn't. I guess if I'm going to be alone for long stretches of time, it's better to be alone beneath hundreds of magnificent and gigantic Redwoods than sitting at my desk staring at a computer screen.

I was pretty excited about being in the Redwoods, so I woke up at like 7 a.m. to do the longest dayhike the Park offered, a 12-mile jaunt through the woods along the Pacific Coast.

The hike into the woods was pretty much perfect. It was really pleasant to just be out for a walk by myself for a few hours and get my head straight. I was able to start planning and mentally preparing myself for my senior year of college. In hindsight, I'm not really thrilled with the way I spent my first five semesters at school, so I feel like I have a lot to make up for in my last year at Carolina. While being as happy and successful as I want to be next year will take a lot of effort, I have a lot of things to accomplish and I'm really excited to get to work.

The scenery itself was gorgeous. The "Last Chance Trail" I walked was named as such because it presents hikers with their "last chance" to walk part of the California Coastal Trail before hitting the Oregon Coast Trail. The Redwoods were as impressive as I had always imagined them from hours spent playing "Cruisin' USA" on N64. The trees were dense enough to provide a really refreshing sort of sanctuary from the outside world, but allowed for enough space for the sun to break through and illuminate all of the flowers and shrubbery along the ground. At times the path would emerge from the woods to offer a view of the Pacific Ocean. I am not a good enough writer and do not know enough about different kinds of flowers and trees to really describe the things I saw, so here are some pictures I took with my iPhone:

Exhausted from the six mile trek in, I stopped for lunch (turkey sandwich, granola bar, Propel) on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It was a pretty choice lunch spot.

My hike back out was somewhat less enjoyable. Prior to leaving for Crescent City, my parents asked me if I wanted to purchase hiking shoes. Already spending Winn Dixie bags full of their money living in Seattle this summer, I declined, assuming that I wouldn't have much use for them and that I would be just fine in an old, beat-up pair of Adidas that were not only cost-effective, but complemented the scenery quite nicely.

Despite being aesthetically pleasing, my Adidas were a mistake. Almost immediately after getting back on the trail after lunch, I started feeling pain in my left heel and the balls of my right foot. As I continued through the reeds and tall grass of the marshy area closest to the water, this pain spread to every part of both of my feet. It was sort of like walking across a North Shore beach for six hours, without being able to stop and lie in the sun (those of you reading who have not spent extensive periods of time on the North Shore of Long Island: just imagine a beach as a place where people gather to lie on a bed of rocks and never go swimming because the water is too cold). Combine the constant pain in my feet with a growing rash of mosquito bites and a pair of legs that were not as strong as I had previously thought them to be, and you had the makings of a fairly excruciating walk back to my car.

Anyone who has ever been around me after I've had three drinks or more knows that I will, from time to time, declare that I have "the heart of a champion". This was not one of those times. I yelped in pain as I was forced to run down every hill I encountered, the strength in my quads eroded to the point that I would not otherwise be able to stop my momentum. I made grunting noises usually reserved for female tennis players and shouted expletives at unsuspecting trees. I stopped to lie down on several occasions, suddenly crumbling to the ground as if I were a member of the 2009 New York Mets. Unfortunately, resting only seemed to make the pain even worse when I ultimately regained my footing. It is safe to say that if there were an easier route back to my hotel, I would have taken it. Alas, the Last Chance Trail was similar to a Puff Daddy record in that there was No Way Out. I had no cell-phone service, no Internet and no way back to my car other than to finish the hike. And so, I sweated, grimaced and hobbled my way through perhaps the most unpleasant and uncomfortable experience I have ever known at a speed only slightly faster than "backwards". But in a testament to my extraordinary perseverance complete lack of any other option, I ultimately arrived at the end of the trail around sundown. Moral of the story: If your parents offer to buy you something of even marginal utility, let them.

After getting a good night sleep at the appropriately named America's Best Value Inn of Crescent City (it really was a great value), I once again climbed into my trustee black Avalon and hit Highway 101 en route to San Francisco. The view was scenic, the accompanying soundtrack (JUST the right mix of Jay-Z and Ira Glass) was delightful and before I knew it, the Golden Gate Bridge was in sight.

Eric was gracious enough both to take me out to dinner and let me crash on his couch. After dinner, Eric gave me a tour of his new neighborhood, which is pretty sweet and only a few blocks from the famous Lombard Street switchbacks. He's done pretty well for himself.

We also had ice cream at the original Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, which was really cool. You can see how they make the chocolate and everything, definitely something I would recommend seeing if you're ever in San Francisco. The next day Eric went to work, so I explored all of the touristy things San Francisco has to offer. I did a walk through the Japanese Tea Gardens and San Francisco Botanical Gardens at Golden Gate Park. GGP is sort of like San Francisco's Central Park, and it's a pretty nice place to take a walk while working up an appetite for clam chowder served in a sourdough bread bowl.

Once I decided I was sufficiently hungry, I boarded a bus (the surest way to avoid losing an argument in a Cable Car) bound north for Fisherman's Wharf, the tourist hub of San Francisco. The breadbowl was as delicious as I'd imagined it would be and there is perhaps no more exhilarating feeling of community than the one you get as a visiting fan in a foreign city, exchanging high fives with blue-and-orange-clad strangers and holding discussions about the Mets' need for another starter, thousands of miles from Flushing.

But the most poignant moment of the trip for me came while I was visiting a college sports paraphernalia store in Fisherman's Wharf that I had visited when I was last in San Francisco five years ago. At the time, I was on the lookout for Syracuse gear, a sixteen-year-old almost certainly bound for the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Now, I'm a sort of walking billboard for the University of North Carolina, a place that has become so much a part of me that I refer to it as home and have trouble even imagining spending the last three years anywhere else. It's hard for me to explain to people who didn't know me in high school how in love with Syracuse I was and how many random things had to happen for me to end up heading south instead of north. Until being in that store, I had almost forgotten there was a time when I was anything besides a Tar Heel.

After cooling my jets at Eric's apartment for a few hours and eating a pretty solid dinner in Chinatown, we headed to AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. Prior to coming to AT&T, I had read and heard lots about how it was the nicest place to watch a baseball game in the world. While there will always be a part of me that is partial to Shea Stadium, the first ballpark I ever visited and the place I learned to love baseball, I can confirm that, from an objective standpoint, anyway, AT&T Park is probably the best place to watch a baseball game anywhere. The park is clean, it is state of the art, it is comfortable, it usually provides good to great weather and it affords a magnificent view of the San Francisco Bay.

Unfortunately, on this warm July evening, the Mets' bats went absolutely frigid in a 1-0 loss that might as well have been 10-0 given the way the visitors were hitting. Giants' starter Barry Zito seemed to have hopped into a time machine destined for 2002 (23-5, 2.75 ERA, AL Cy Young), expertly mixing his fastball, changeup and curveball in such a manner as to make the depleted Mets lineup (M.I.A: Jose Reyes, Josh Thole, Angel Pagan) look very, very silly. New York managed just three hits and failed to score a run off either Zito or Brian Wilson, the detestable Giants closer on whose upper-90's fastball the Mets were simply unable to Get Around. I would be remiss not to mention that the Mets' starting pitcher, "Homegrown! Mets! Revolution!" member Jonathon Niese, was quite good himself, yielding just one run in seven innings of work. Alas, Alex Cora's throw home on perennial Met-killer Pat Burrell's grounder was late, and Aubrey Huff was able to score the only run the home team would need.

The lack of offensive fireworks during the game was somewhat made up for by the actual fireworks provided by AT&T Park afterward. While the Giants fans in our section loudly proclaimed how much better the fireworks were after a victory and stated that they would not want to sit for fireworks after a loss, I would contend otherwise. Even when the Mets lose, being at a Mets game is pretty much the best thing that can happen to me on a given day. Throw in a scenic view, the company of family and post-game fireworks and it was as close to a perfect an evening as you're going to get when you've got out-machines like Jeff Francoeur, Jason Bay and Rod Barajas in your lineup. Also, we won the 2000 NLDS, Barry Bonds was a cheater and all of the best moments in San Francisco Giants history happened in Uptown Manhattan. So there.

Even after watching the Mets accumulate one hit for every ten hours I spent driving to see them, I still felt compelled to listen to the entirety of their 8-4 loss to the Giants on the radio the next night as I drove home, confirming something I had always suspected, but never been entirely sure of: There is nothing the Mets can do that will make me not love them.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Sorry it's been so long. Please direct any comments, questions or concerns to my e-mail at ataube@email.unc.edu, or holler at me on Twitter @aptaube. Stay fresh.

Hello, Seattle

Greetings from the University District of Seattle, Washington!

I got in to my home around 4 PM Pacific Standard Time (7 PM real time) yesterday and have since been getting settled in and enjoying the company of my new housemates. I live with (I think) seven other guys, six of whom are University of Washington students. Everyone seems really cool.

The house is probably not the cleanest place I've ever been, but I think that's to be expected of a place housing eight college-aged guys. What it lacks in cleanliness, I think it more than makes up in charm (it is sort of like Wrigley Field in this respect). Below is a picture of the common room's large and beautiful television from behind a pair of super-comfy couch recliners. On the right is my housemate Jake returning from a day at the chemical engineering building. Almost everyone in the house is a science major of some sort. Hopefully they will like me enough to let me mooch off them when they are successful and I am a starving journalist working the Division II baseball beat for the St. Cloud Times.

The living room is also equipped with two beer pong tables, one of which can be seen here a day after several intense games of battle pong. For the uninitiated, battle pong is a really fun way to get really drunk, really fast.

There are beer cans pretty much all over the house, which is awesome. Here are some of the special issue U of Washington-themed Bud Lights used for decorative purposes above the entrance to the kitchen.

This example of decorative creativity, however, pales in comparison to my housemates' pièce de résistance. This painting was originally of Jesus guiding some guy as he steered a boat. However, the guy's face has instead been replaced by a picture of University of Washington quarterback Jake Locker. Perhaps if I hang a similar picture of TJ Yates in my apartment, UNC might beat NC State this season.

The drive to Washington was somewhat exhausting, but a ton of fun. After hitting Chicago, I drove through Wisconsin which was surprisingly really cool. The weather was pretty gross as I drove through, but there was a lot of nice scenery with a lot of little lakes and rivers to look at. I stopped at a place called Coffee Grounds in Eau Claire to get some caffeine in me. Little did I know the Coffee Grounds is not only an internet café, but a local beer emporium, as well. Jackpot. I picked up a trio of six-packs for my future housemates, two of which I found to be pretty good. If you ever get a chance to try Oso beer, you should definitely do that. I unfortunately did not pick up a six-pack of "He'Brew".

After Eau Claire, I crossed the Mississippi and lit out for the territories. There's not a whole lot in the state of Minnesota after you get past the Twin Cities. I ended up spending the night in Bismarck, North Dakota, which was similarly not much to see. However, western North Dakota is all sorts of awesome. On a whim, I decided to make a detour to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the ND badlands. Despite the lack of vegetation, the Badlands are really pretty to look at. I went for a mile hike, but it was really hard for me to leave. I'm definitely planning to budget some more time there on my way back and look forward to future photo opportunities like the one seen below. Note my road trip scruff and spring break t-shirt.

The eastern half of Montana, however is probably the most boring place I've ever been in my life. When you drive through, you have four choices on your radio dial: Christian talk, contemporary Christian, classic country and contemporary country. Choosing a station is like picking a favorite son if you hate all of your children. You can imagine my elation then when I stumbled upon a station playing "Should I Stay or Should I Go," the greatest driving song of all time. Rolling through the high plains blasting the Clash at 90 mph was easily the single most perfect moment of my road trip. The second most perfect moment was my visit to the unfortunately named "Kum & Go" of eastern Montana. They serve a frozen drink a called a "Koolie". I don't think I really need to write a joke here.

Western Montana is pretty cool because of all the mountains and stuff. Unfortunately I wasn't able to snap any really good pictures of the landscape, but take my word for it—it's a gorgeous mix of open green spaces and imposing snow-capped mountains. I'm dying to make a trip across the Wyoming border to Yellowstone on my way home. Washington is a pretty sweet state to drive through as well. I didn't get to snap any pictures of my trip across the bridge to Seattle which offers a nice view of the city, but here's a cool picture I took above the Columbia River in the eastern part of the state.

I'm currently living in the U-District of Seattle which is a neat blend of city life with a neighborhood feel because of all the college students. It's right next to the University of Washington, which has a really nice campus despite being located in a major city. There's a trail to Mt. Rainier that I really need to see. I also live about a block and a half from the fifth Starbucks ever built. As you might imagine, Starbucks is a pretty huge deal here in the Emerald City, as evidenced by the fact that three of my housemates rolled in with frappuccinos about a half hour after I moved in. The Starbucks on University Way (or "The Av," as everyone seems to call it) was pretty cool to see, since the original five Starbucks all have this creepy old logo in them that the newer ones do not.

I'm starting my internship at 710 ESPN Radio Seattle tomorrow, which is equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking. I just hope I'm able to do a good job and that my employers like me. I think I'm going to go hang out with some of my housemates a bit now that they're all done studying for the night (UW is still in session). Before I do that, though, I leave you with the most Seattle picture ever. It is of me wearing a Mariners cap and updating my blog while drinking a mocha from the fifth-ever Starbucks. The picture is taken by my housemate Sean, who has a sick beard and likes photography and indie rock.

Thanks for reading. I love you all.

99 Problems but a Ticket Ain’t One

Greetings from the Second City!

For those that don't know, this is a nickname for the city of Chicago, Ill., intended to prevent anyone from accidentally comparing Chicago to New York (implicitly the "First City", or just "the City"). I'm currently staying with my Aunt and Uncle, whom I do not see nearly enough, after two long days of driving across the eastern half of the United States.

A random sampling of thoughts from my trip thus far:

• My trip across the country has been especially exciting because I am really, really bad at driving. I started out the trip on a high note at the drive-thru at the McDonald's of Port Jefferson Station. I mention this now, but seemed to have forgotten it at the time when I drove past the giant menu board where one customarily orders and instead went straight to the pay window. It was only when I got to this window that I realized I had nothing to pay for and likely became the first customer in the history of the MOPJS (and maybe McDonald's, anywhere) to pull up to the drive-thru in reverse. I've ordered a lot of large cokes in my life, but this was easily the order with the most style.
  

  
  

• Not only did I commit a social faux pas in reverse, I have already broken the law on two separate occasions (Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Taube!).
  

  I was driving 80 in a 65 mile-per-hour speed trap near Youngstown, Ohio when I accidentally passed a police car posted up in the median. Or rather, the policeman had been posted in the median until he started following me. It was at this point that it occurred to me that, in the future, I should probably refrain from speeding while driving with an expired license. It also occurred to me, once the police car's siren went off, that in the present I was completely and totally fucked. On the bright side, I thought as I pulled over to the side of the road, I would at least get to pretend I was Jay-Z in 99 Problems. I was about a quarter of the way through my fantasized interaction with the police officer ("'Cause I'm young, and I'm Jewish, and my hat's real low?"), when I caught a glimpse of the car in question whizzing by my passenger-side window in pursuit of an 18-wheeler. I'm sure there is a valuable lesson in here somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it just yet.
  

  This near disaster came less than 24-hours after a similar near-dustup with the law in New Jersey. For those that have been fortunate enough not to have spent any time in the Jerz, it is actually a violation of state law for a driver to pump gasoline into his or her own car. The picture below is of a gas station attendant at a disarmingly redneck truckstop in northwestern NJ near the Pennsylvania border. You will notice, though, that our friend has his back turned to me while he pumps gas into min-van with New Jersey plates. I, however, am a New Yorker perfectly capable of pumping his own damn gas. It was then that I turned off my car and sprung to action, filling my car with a tank's worth of revenge for all of unnecessary tip money the rest of us have been fleeced out of in America's Largest Landfill.
  

• Gary, Indiana is actually nothing like it's portrayed in the eponymous song from the musical "The Music Man". I won't go into further detail, but if there's any way you can avoid a trip to Gary or nearby East Chicago, you should probably do that.
  

  
  

• Just out of principle, I'm not shaving until I reach Seattle.
  

  
  

That's about all I've got for you guys right now. Everything's been great, and I'm really excited to get back out on the road. I should be crossing the Mississippi today, so I'll let everyone know how that goes.