Off Course On Purpose
Chapter 31: Cashing in Miles
One morning, Jonathan said he was going to meet up with one of his old high school buddies.
When he came back, he was carrying a shoebox, packed full of Marlboro Miles. These were the smoker’s version of Blue Chip Stamps, points that could be clipped from every pack and carton, then traded in for prizes. For some reason, Jonathan’s friend had hoarded them for years but never cashed any of them.
“Free stuff!” We weren’t about to say no.
We sat down together with the Official Marlboro catalog and flipped through page after page of branded gear. Hats, jackets, duffle bags, sunglasses, but everything had the Marlboro logo stamped on it. Neither of us smoked, so we weren’t too keen on repping the brand. But then Jonathan flipped another page and lit up.
“Wait a second, they’ve got a tent? That’s perfect,” he said. “I could use that in Scotland.”
He already had a tent, but this one looked tougher and better suited for the unpredictable weather we knew Edinburgh would throw at us. So the tent went on the list. Then we kept flipping, mostly joking about how much Marlboro swag we weren’t going to wear, until something else caught our attention: 35mm film cameras.
Neither of us owned a camera at the time.
“You know,” Jonathan said, “we could use that to get pictures on the trip. Maybe even take a few promo shots.”
I nodded. “That would be huge. Always good to have pictures.”
He did the math, counted up his stash of miles, and realized he had enough for the tent and the camera with plenty more to spare. So he decided to get two cameras. One for him. One for me.
He sent off the redemption form, and a few weeks later, a box arrived. Inside was the new tent, and the two red-and-beige 35mm film cameras, each with a bold “Marlboro” strap and the company’s logo stamped right on the body. They weren’t fancy by any stretch, but they worked. We popped in some batteries, loaded a roll of film, and snapped a few random pictures of each other juggling.
Our first photoshoot.
Chapter 32: Whatever It Takes
The juggling club, which I’d thrown high and with fast spin, came down with such force it popped the tip of my finger like a grape. The wound itself looked like a stab from a broad Phillips-head screwdriver, leaving a plus sign carved in my flesh.
​
Where the top of this plus met the fingernail, the split dove under and ran along the nail bed, separating the flesh from the nail itself.
​
Probably not enough to make it fall off, I decide, but enough to make my stomach flutter in pain.
​
Grabbing one of my rolls of cloth athletic tape, a good brand that can be torn by hand and actually stays put through bending and sweating, I tore off four strips, each about two inches long, and split each one down the middle, giving me eight flexible pieces. Then I started layering: putting them down like overlapping scales across the fingertip, a juggler’s version of medieval finger armor. The remaining pieces wrapped around the base just below the first knuckle, anchoring the whole structure. As I worked, I flexed and straightened the finger repeatedly, pressing the tape into the creases and grooves to ensure it stayed secure.
​
A year ago, I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea how to handle an injury like this, let alone tape it up and keep going. But now? It’s just another day of training.
​
We juggled until we bled, taped up, and kept juggling.
When I was a kid, my mom used to play guitar. And one time, she handed it to me to try some chords. I pressed down on the strings as she’d shown me, but quickly handed it back, “It hurts my fingers.”
“It does hurt,” she said, “but you build up to it.”
“How?” I asked.
​
“Practice. Some guitarists even play until their fingers bleed.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they have a passion for it. And they want to get good.”
“That’s crazy!” I’d exclaimed, not understanding.
​
But now, as I pressed the last piece of tape into place, I knew what she’d been trying to explain to me all those years ago.
Reaching for the notebook I’d been using to track progress, I flipped it open.
Hours of practice first year:
‣ ~20 hours/week × 52 weeks = 1,040 hours
Milestones:
‣ Learned 5 clubs (but inconsistent)
‣ 7-ball flash became consistent
‣ 7-ball: 99 catches, four different times (100 catches still out of reach)
‣ 8-ball flash (one in 10 tries)
It was hard to believe that not so long ago I’d cracked four-ball juggling at Little Caesars, and now I was doing eight.
The progress was real. And fast. But it wasn’t magic, it was hard-earned.
​
And now another milestone was on the horizon: In just a few weeks, we’d be going to our first big juggling conference.
We’d been talking about the IJA festival for months. Watching old VHS tapes of past competitions, rewinding the same clips over and over again. For us, the IJA was the source, the center of the juggling universe. So the idea of actually going was a dream. But the cost was intimidating. We’d have to pay the festival fee, cover gas, food, lodging, plus lose a weekend of gigs. But thankfully, the festival was being held in Primm, Nevada, which was within driving distance, about 300 miles from Escondido. Most years, the festival was off somewhere way across the country. So Primm was practically next door by comparison.
​
I didn’t know how I was going to afford it, but we had to go.
​
Even if we slept in the car the whole time, we’d do whatever it takes.
​
We’d taken to calling it reckless faith, an unwavering belief in the process. Trusting that if we chased it hard enough, long enough, and with enough heart, it would eventually pay off.
Chapter 33: IJA - Primm Nevada - July - 1998
Next thing I knew, it was the night before the festival.
Jonathan and I often stayed up late talking about juggling, comedy, life, finances, goals, and everything in between. So even though we were planning to wake early and leave at first light, we still had our usual chat, then around midnight, we flipped off the lights to try and sleep.
Try to sleep, being the operative phrase.
I lay there wide awake, imagining every possible scenario. What the conference might be like, what the competitions would feel like, and who we might meet. I could hear Jonathan tossing and turning, and I wondered if he was lying there thinking the same things.
Around 1:30 am, he whispered across the dark room:
“Pssst, hey, you asleep?”
“Nope. Wide awake.”
“How would you feel about leaving tonight?”
“You serious?”
“Maybe… Are you serious?”
I reached over and turned on my little nightstand light. A moment later, his light also clicked on.
“We might as well,” I said. “I’m not sleeping anyway.”
I got out of bed, walked into the kitchen, flipped on the light, poured a tall glass of Coke, then started a pot on the stove to make a box of mac-n-cheese.
“All right. I guess we’re doing this,” Jonathan said, jumping up and gathering his things.
We hit the road around 2:00 am in Jonathan’s recently acquired little brown Honda hatchback, a used-up $500 auction car that somehow still ran.
This is it! We’re headed for Primm, Nevada.
Despite it being an all-nighter, neither of us was tired. We talked the whole way, energized by anticipation. Because we’d left in the middle of the night, there was no traffic, and we made good time. Just as the sun was rising in the east, we crested the final big hill before dropping into the valley that led to the Nevada state line. As we did, we passed a white panel van fully engulfed in flames. I wondered if this was some poor juggler’s van, a juggler like us, just trying to make it to the festival but stopped short by the brutal hill climb and the oppressive desert heat. Even in the middle of the night, the temperature was over 100°.
We crossed the state line and arrived in Primm a little after 9:00 am.
Our plan had been to get to the hotel and catch a nap, but they wouldn’t let us check in until 3:00 pm. And with the temperature already rising to a punishing 106°, Jonathan’s car became a little oven on wheels. So there was no way we could sleep in there.
Jonathan decided to do a recon loop to see if there was a cooler place we could hide out, and in doing so discovered that the juggling conference itself was taking place across the parking lot in a separate building. Whoever he’d talked to said it was already in full swing, so we figured we’d drive over. As we started to do just that, we spotted a familiar face, Rick Rubenstein from the juggling duo Clockwork, someone we’d watched countless times on VHS. He was walking out of the hotel with a dark-haired woman, heading in the same direction as us, and likely going to the conference hall too. So we rolled down the window and offered them a ride.
At first, he looked like he was going to wave us off. But then he shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?”
They climbed into the back seat, wedging themselves between our backpacks.
As we drove, I hoped we’d get to talk to him, but they didn’t pay any attention to us; instead opting to continue their quiet conversation.
But that was fine. As much as I believed we’d eventually be players at this table, the “maybes” or “could be’s” of tomorrow don’t count for anything today. The world doesn’t care what you might be one day. It only cares what you are now. And right now, we were nobodies.
We dropped Rick and his friend off at the front doors, and they walked away without another word.
Then we parked and went inside.
Our eyes were immediately assaulted by the garish red-patterned carpet that stretched wall to wall, and I decided that the number one prerequisite for becoming a casino decorator was a fearlessness of color. We checked in at the festival desk to get our passes, then stepped into the main training hall.
What we saw blew our minds.
Balls, clubs, rings, batons, machetes, diabolos, devil sticks, all flying through the air in every direction. Kids who looked barely old enough to walk were riding unicycles. Adults were balancing ladders on their chins. Props clattered. Conversations echoed. It was chaos in the most beautiful way.
Chris LaReau, a juggler we recognized from tapes, was juggling four baseball bats with ease, which, even for our edgy tastes, seemed a bit crazy.
In the back, I spotted someone juggling a seemingly impossible number of glossy white beanbags. I walked over and saw Jason Garfield, another face I knew from VHS, casually running eight balls. I stood there watching in awe.
After a few moments, he noticed me watching and graced me with one of his trademark scowls, then went back to training.
I didn’t care, though. I kept right on watching.
Eventually, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I had to practice.
I found Jonathan and started unpacking my gear.
“So, what do you think?” I asked.
He looked around the room. “I can’t believe how good everyone is. On the way here, I thought I was getting pretty good. But now?” He gestured around us.
“Well,” I said, picking up some beanbags, “we just gotta keep practicing.”
* * *
The conference delivered everything we had hoped for, and more.
We saw world-class talent. Took workshops. Practiced maniacally. Bought every prop we could afford. Met new people. And slept, almost never.
One standout moment for me was the three-ball breakout session led by Tim Kelly. His virtuosity with just three balls was jaw-dropping. And it confirmed something I’d been thinking for a while, that three-ball juggling could be an artistic language all its own, with possibilities that felt endless. I also knew that three-ball juggling would be the ripest place to incorporate my hacky-sack and soccer skills. So I made it a goal to get much better at three-ball juggling.
* * *
A day or two later was Championships Night, and it was unforgettable.
Les Tourisks, a four-person team, took gold in the teams division with dazzling combination tricks and razor-sharp passing. Watching them stand onstage receiving their gold medals made me envious, and I thought, That’s what I want for us, the team’s gold, that’s the goal!
* * *
On the final day, we stayed until the last possible moment. And only after the halls were empty and the lights were being shut off did we finally head out.
As we left Primm, we passed a massive roadside thermometer that read 117°.
It reminded us of the running joke of the festival:
“But at least it’s a dry heat.”
A few hours into the drive home, Jonathan pulled off to get gas. As he was filling up, he called me over, “Dude, look at this.”
One of our front tires was completely bald, worn straight down to the steel belts. It was a blowout waiting to happen, and we had no spare.
Considering he’d bought the car off an auction lot and never looked back. It’s probably a miracle we haven’t already crashed and burned.
The rest of the drive, he kept it under sixty miles per hour, just hoping the tire would hold on until morning.
That bald tire was just one of the countless risks we were taking with our little venture, always riding the line between audacity and catastrophe.
But that’s how it is, you gotta walk on the edge if you wanna live the art’trepreneurial dream.
Chapter 34: Jugglers on the Roof
Before IJA, we liked juggling. After IJA, we were jugglers.
We came home with heads full of possibilities, notebooks crammed with ideas, and muscles sore from too many hours of practice. For days afterward, we reminisced about the performances we’d seen, the props we’d tried, and our wild dream of turning juggling into a career.
And one thing was clear: if we wanted to level up, we needed to think bigger, literally.
“What if we had a giant set of beanbags?” Jonathan mused, “Then we could each be like one of the ‘hands’ and juggle them back and forth between us?”
“I like it,” I said. “But where are we going to get giant beanbags?”
“What about that beanbag furniture place off the freeway?”
He was talking about a warehouse we’d passed a hundred times on the way to the beach, a beige pole barn in a commercial zone with a trio of sun-faded, oversized beanbag chairs bolted to the roof like lumpy mascots.
“I know the place,” I said. “If anyone could make ’em, it would be them.”
“Let’s check it out next time we drive past.”
I’ve never liked putting things off, so I made up a reason for us to go that way a few days later.
* * *
We pulled into the cracked asphalt parking lot and walked inside.
I’d imagined a tidy beanbag showroom, with neat rows of chairs in every size and fabric, something like a squishy La-Z-Boy outlet. Instead, we stepped into what looked like the aftermath of a fabric store explosion.
Everywhere were rolls of cloth, stacked on folding tables, draped off hooks, heaped on the floor, some halfway hanging from the walls. Tools were strewn about: scissors, rotary cutters, cardboard patterns curling at the corners. The concrete floor was mostly hidden beneath layers of multicolored trimmings. And two enormous ceiling hoppers hung overhead, sagging like bloated jellyfish, full of those little white styrofoam beads. A boom box somewhere in the back was struggling to play Pink Floyd at a volume its tiny speakers were never meant to handle. And absolutely everywhere were the beads. Millions of them. They created little white eddies that spiraled away from our feet as we walked.
We wandered deeper into the chaos, unsure if the place was even staffed. Then, from somewhere amid the colorful cyclone, a voice called out:
“Was there a UPS package at the door?”
I followed the sound and found a woman in a tie-dyed T-shirt. Though she was sitting in plain sight, her colorful top had perfectly camouflaged her into the surroundings.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “No, I didn’t see a package.”
“Figures, and I can’t get this job done until it gets here. And I can’t get that job done because I need the guy to make the deposit. I knew I shouldn’t have started it, I knew he was gonna flake, and sure enough, he’s flaking. It’s my own fault, I’ve told myself a million times, so I ought to know, trust my gut. When someone seems off, they’re gonna be off.”
She pointed beside me. “Bring me that roll of fabric.”
I looked around. “This one?”
“No, the other one, behind it.”
“Yep, got it.” I brought it over. She pointed to a table, so I laid it down.
She rummaged through a pile of thick paper patterns, muttering to herself. “No… no… no… Well, I used it for the Simpson order, so maybe—ah-ha.” She pulled out a large, rounded rectangle and laid it flat.
“So,” she said without looking at us, “what can I do for you boys?”
Jonathan answered, “Well, this is probably a strange request.”
She stopped moving and looked at him. “Yeah? Try me.”
“We want three giant beanbags so we can juggle them.”
She stared at him, completely expressionless. I think she expected him to say he was kidding, but when he didn’t, she conceded, “That’s a new one.”
“Yeah, we do shows, and we thought it’d be cool to juggle giant props, so we figured you were the one to talk to.”
She returned to the fabric in front of her, busy with her hands, maybe thinking about what he said, maybe not.
“Do they need to be round? I don’t make round. Or I’d have to have a pattern. You have one I could use?”
“Uh, yeah, let me grab one,” Jonathan said, heading for the car and our ever-present stash of props.
Now she looked at me.
“When do you need them by?”
“No rush. At your leisure, just whenever you can fit them in.”
“Wrong answer,” she said flatly. “When do you need them by?”
“No, really, whenever you can fit us in is fine,” I repeated.
“Listen, sweetie, not for nothin, but if there’s no deadline, there won’t be anything for you to pick up. This isn’t exactly the Hamptons.”
I blinked at the reference. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand and said, “What colors?”
Jonathan returned with a beanbag, and she examined its construction. After turning it over a few times, she nodded. “Okay.”
“What colors do we want?” I asked him.
Jonathan thought for a second. “I dunno—red, blue, and yellow?”
“I don’t have yellow,” she said flatly. “I have purple.”
“Okay. Red, blue, and purple?”
“Okay. Come back in one week.” Her tone made it clear the conversation was over.
“Wait, how big are they going to be? And how much is it going to be?”
“You want to juggle them, yes?”
We both nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I make them juggle size.”
“Alright.. and how much are they going to cost?”
“We’ll work it out.”
That answer made my wallet nervous. I was buying gas in five-dollar increments, often in change, so I insisted, “I really appreciate that, and I believe you’ll be fair with us. But you deserve to be paid for your work, and we need at least a ballpark idea of what it’s gonna cost?”
She looked at me with a frown, not an unhappy one, just her default expression.
Looking to one side, I spied a large-ish beanbag loveseat done up in burnt-red corduroy. “Like, how much would that one be?”
“Ughh, he was supposed to pick that up three weeks ago, but here it is, taking over my shop. $750 I charged him.”
“Ok, perfect. See, it’s a big piece, and it’s totally worth that. But if we come back in a week and you tell us our beanbags are going to be $750, we’re gonna be in here doing work trade for weeks trying to square things up. Or worse, up on the roof juggling these things as an advertisement for the passing traffic!”
Her eyes went wide with excitement. “Yes, that! That’s what I want.”
“You want what?” I asked.
“During rush hour, you give me a few hours of rooftop juggling, and we are square.”
Uh oh, I thought, I’d only offered that as a joke, I wasn’t seriously suggesting we’d juggle on the roof.
Jonathan jumped in, “A few hours of roof juggling, you got it.”
What? Is that even possible? Won’t the wind just blow them right over the side?
She nodded, “Come back in one week.”
I wasn’t sure about it, but for free beanbags, I was willing to try.
We thanked her, which she waved off dismissively, already back at work.
As we crossed the floor toward the exit, she hollered, “If my UPS package is there, bring it to me.”
I checked by the door. It wasn’t there. “It’s not here yet!” I called back.
No reply.
* * *
We returned a week later, and as promised, she produced a set of red, blue, and purple bags for us. They were each about the size of an exercise ball, thirty-six inches across, and stuffed for firmness.
“They’re heavy,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to juggle them.”
I picked one up; it was heavy, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
“Can we try in here?” Jonathan asked.
With the slightest lift in her voice, which might have been excitement, she said, “That’s what they’re for.”
Jonathan picked up two of the bags, and I picked up the third. Squaring off in an open-ish area, I said, “Cascade pattern?”
He was already mid-throw. “Yep!”
The thrown beanbag came in hot; I did a quick sidestep to get into position, then threw mine under the incoming throw. Thwapp, these things come in hard, I thought. My outgoing throw was errant, and Jonathan had to chase it, but after a few throws, we got into a groove, and the pattern smoothed out.
“Hup!” I called, gathering two. Jonathan sent the third my way, and I cradled it between the others.
“Ta da!” Jonathan exclaimed.
Despite herself, our maker was smiling.
“They’re amazing,” I said.
“Good. Let’s get you boys on the roof.”
She led us to a long extension ladder in one corner. Then Jonathan and I carried it outside. “I’ll show you where I usually put it,” she said, “and you decide if it’s how you want to do it.”
“Usually? Do you get on the roof often?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered.
That was it. No explanation. Just yeah.
We leaned the ladder against the building, extended it fully, and found that it barely reached the top. Whew, I thought, even with all my ladder experience, this is sketchy.
I climbed first, hauling one beanbag up, then tossed it onto the flat rooftop. Two more trips, and we were all set. Jonathan climbed up next, fearless as ever.
We were at least twenty-five feet up, and from the roof, we could see everything: the freeway traffic, all the cars and semi trucks, the innumerable people crawling by.
“You ready?” Jonathan asked in a tone more serious than was typical.
“Ready to watch them blow away in this wind? Sure am,” I joked.
He laughed. “Just don’t go chasing one off the edge.”
“Not a chance. I’d rather fall through one of these skylights.”
“You are an overachiever,” he shot back.
We laughed, then hefted the bags.
“Hup!” he shouted, letting the first bag fly.
We started to juggle, and thank goodness they were so heavy, because the wind played with every throw, threatening to take the bags to Never Never Land. Sweat formed quickly, and after only a few minutes, my right arm was cooked. Between throws, I started flipping my stance 180°, alternating which hand sent the bags, buying more time.
It worked, and we found the best way was to juggle for a minute, rest for a minute, then juggle again, giving ourselves breaks.
It wasn’t easy, and I wondered how long we’d be able to keep it up, but then our maker shouted from below, “Shut it down! We’re done.”
We looked over the edge and found her halfway up the ladder.
“What? What happened?” I asked.
“Office called. Can’t have roof jugglers.”
“Aww,” we exclaimed, pretending to be bummed.
Jonathan tossed his beanbags down to a patch of grass below. I followed suit, then we climbed down.
We found her inside, already sewing again, focused, steady, unstoppable.
“Sorry it didn’t work out better,” I said. “But since it didn’t, how much do we owe you?”
She didn’t look up. “Nothing. You did what I asked. Not your fault.”
“We have to pay you something.”
She stopped the machine. “Do you like them?”
“Yes. We love them.”
She nodded, “Then they’re paid for.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she waved a hand.
“Go. I have work. If you want to help me, send customers.”
I wanted to say more, to let her know how much this meant to us, but she stepped on the sewing machine’s pedal, waking the beast from its slumber.
Realizing she wasn’t going to accept any money, we gathered the bags and made our way to the door. Before exiting, I cast one more glance over my shoulder to where she was hunched over her machine, fully absorbed in her work.
That’s when it hit me: this shop is her dream, and she’s brought it to life stitch by stitch. By making these bags, she knew she was helping us bring our dream to life, too. And that, more than the bags, was her real gift to us.
The gift of understanding.
The realization that, in life, there are ways a person can be reimbursed that are even better than money.
As we walked to the car, I decided that if we ever managed to bring our dream to life, I would one day pay it forward and help others the way she helped us.
Chapter 35: The Three Dangers of London
To prepare for Edinburgh, we laid all our gear out on the floor, piece by piece, to see what it looked like.
By the time we finished, the entire living room had disappeared under piles of gear. The absurdity of it hit me: We were trying to cram our whole lives into bags and somehow drag them across an ocean.
We’d long decided to bring tents and essential camping gear, so if things got really bad, we could find a park or crawl under a railroad trestle to sleep.
Then add to that all our show props, costumes, and a pile of personal items. And because Edinburgh’s weather was unpredictable, we’d have to pack for hot, cold, and wet. It was a lot!
“You know,” Jonathan said, looking over the chaos, “we should bring balloons too.”
I looked at him. “Like… animal balloons?”
“Yeah. Worst-case scenario, we can make balloon animals for tips. At least we’d eat.”
It was a good idea, but I wasn’t so sure about it. There was no way my regular backpack could handle what we’d already laid out on the floor, and that was without balloons. We needed to go luggage shopping. But not regular luggage — we needed gear, like from a sporting goods store. So that’s where we went, and I found a massive black hockey goalie bag so big I climbed inside it right there in the aisle.
Jonathan reached down and zipped me up inside it and said, “You fits. Barely.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Maybe you can wheel me onstage and produce me from the bag as our opening act.”
I decided to make this bag the core of my storage. I’d bungee it to a folding luggage cart I already had, balance my regular duffel bag on top, and then carry my backpack on my back.
Jonathan took a different approach. He tried on and bought a sixty-liter backpacking bag to complement the sixty-liter expedition pack he already had at home. Then, for good measure, he bought another smaller backpack. His plan was simple: wear one on his back, one backward on his chest, and carry the third in his hands, like a human pack mule.
Once home, we tested and packed everything, and to our amazement, it all fit. There was even room for eighteen bags of Qualatex twisting balloons, 144 pieces per pack.
Our luggage logistics were officially resolved.
* * *
Next came the question of the apartment, or rather, the $450-a-month rent.
We didn’t want to give it up, but we couldn’t afford to pay for it while we were gone either. Even at its low price, it was too much. So we decided that the first day of our trip would also be move-out day. We’d stash everything we owned in our cars, leave them parked somewhere, and trust they’d still be there when we got back. It was reckless, but there wasn’t any other
option.
* * *
The last twenty-four hours in the apartment were a blur. We’d booked gigs right up to the wire, squeezing out every dollar. Once the gigs were over, we stumbled back to the apartment and started packing, filling our cars until the back seats and trunks bulged with boxes.
That final night, I slept on the floor with one pillow. And when morning came, we locked the front door, dropped the key with the manager, and agreed to meet at the airport later that day.
We were officially homeless; there was no turning back.
* * *
I drove my car to my mom’s house so it could hang out in her carport for the month. Then she drove me to the San Diego airport. My three bags and I met Jonathan in the check-in area, where we encountered our first dilemma. They wouldn’t let me send my massive hockey bag through the luggage mover with the little rolling cart bungee’ed to it. Luckily, the bag was so big I just shoved the cart inside it, and they let that pass.
We made it to the gate, already exhausted by the schedule we’d been running. I’d hoped to sleep on the flight, but at 6'5", I barely fit in airline seats, and I couldn’t sleep. By the end of the ten-plus hours in the air, I was shattered.
We landed at London Heathrow and found ourselves waiting in an incredibly long line to clear customs. When I reached the agent, he asked about my accommodations, but I didn’t know the name of the place we were staying at. He pushed me for the name, but I pointed to my pile of bags and said, “I dunno, it’s somewhere in there, I didn’t know you’d need to know.”
He looked at the bags, then at the line, and weighed my cluelessness against my potential as a threat. I must not have seemed too scary because he waved me through.
Jonathan and I then found our way to the metro and piled in with our mountain of gear. To board, you had to obtain a paper ticket. Then, wherever you got off the train, you’d pay a fare based on the distance you’d traveled. Large warning signs stated that anyone who lost their ticket would be fined £50. When we reached the stop nearest our hotel, we disembarked and went to the kiosk to pay. When we got there, Jonathan couldn’t find his ticket. He tore his backpack apart looking for it, but it wasn’t there, so he tore his other two bags apart, then checked his pockets a third and fourth time, but it was nowhere to be found. Jonathan rarely lost his cool, but we were so beat and so broke, he got a little mad. He went to the operator to try and explain the situation, but she was bored and unsympathetic: “Fifty pounds, sir.”
Jonathan slid his bank card across the counter, but she shook her head, “Cash only.”
We didn’t have any pounds, so the operator sent us to a currency exchange booth, where we had to wait in yet another line. The exchange rate was pure extortion, but it was the only place we could do it, and we were tired, so we both exchanged a few hundred dollars.
He paid his lost ticket fee, and we made our way up to the street level.
Jonathan pulled out a map he’d brought along, then opened a second complimentary one we’d grabbed in the currency exchange line. Because of our experience navigating to gigs in San Diego, we both had excellent map-reading skills. We pinpointed where we’d come up from the underground, identified real-world landmarks, and oriented ourselves. Confidently, I said, “It’s this way, let’s go.”
I looked left to make sure no cars were coming, and seeing it was clear, started to cross the street.
“BILL!!!,” Jonathan screamed, simultaneously grabbing my backpack and ripping me backward. A London black cab blasted straight through the space I was milliseconds away from occupying. Had I continued forward, I’d of surely been killed.
Looking at Jonathan, I said, “They drive on the wrong side of the road over here, don’t they?”
With a wry smile, he answered, “Yeah, I feel like I read something about that somewhere.”
“Apparently, it’s true,” I confirmed, and we both laughed.
After that, we were careful to look both ways before crossing any streets.
We eventually made it to a dodgy street that led to our even dodgier hotel. The whole neighborhood felt tired, as though it had given up trying decades ago. The sidewalks were a patchwork of broken slabs, with cracks wide enough to eat a luggage wheel whole. We dodged bin bags slumped on the curb and piles of rubbish that seemed permanent, as if no one ever actually cleared them away.
The hotel itself was a decrepit-looking, block-long, four-story stone building. It was gray and bleak.
I thought to myself that it had probably survived the Great Fire of London, much to everyone’s chagrin. A massive array of scaffolds surrounded it, so many that I wondered whether they were there for repairs or simply to keep the building from collapsing in on itself. I couldn’t say for sure, but there weren’t any workers present, so…
Inside, things weren’t much better. Our room’s floor had a large horizontal crease across its middle, after which, everything tilted downward at an angle that was walkable but made you feel off balance. We decided the building must have been added onto at some point, and that whoever’d got the contract was the lowest bidder. The whole add-on felt like it could shear off and tumble into the street at any moment.
By the entry door was a slot you had to slide a credit card into to activate the room’s electricity. At first, I thought this was a clever, energy-saving system, but then I noticed scorch marks above an electrical outlet and realized it was more likely a fire-prevention measure.
It was quite late, so we decided to sleep. But I wasn’t sleepy-tired because of the jet lag, so I lay in the dark with my thoughts until I heard some shouting outside. I tried to ignore it, but it got louder, and seemed distressed, so I hopped up and threw open our third-story window. Looking out, I saw a man chasing another man around a car.
The man being chased started shouting in a thick Londoner accent, “Oy’ve gawt a noife.” He had to repeat that phrase three more times before my ears cut through the inebriation enough to realize he was saying “I’ve got a knife.”
He must have done something pretty bad, because even with the knife, the other guy kept after him.
An attractive blonde woman ran into the scene and grabbed the man without the knife. I couldn’t hear what she said, but she seemed to be telling him it wasn’t worth it.
The knife wielder took advantage of this interruption and stumbled hurriedly down the street. He got about fifty yards before bending over to vomit his guts out. His loud retching was clearly audible. Then he continued on, turned down a side street, and disappeared.
Now wide awake, I decided to get a jump on tomorrow by grabbing a shower.
Our room had no bathroom or shower. Instead, we had to walk down the hallway a few doors to a communal one. I grabbed my toiletries kit, went in, and locked the door. The “bathroom” was a cramped little box that looked more like a repurposed closet than a proper washroom. The tiles that remained were chipped, and the mirror over the sink had a permanent fog to it. Yet, plopped right in the middle of this remodeler’s nightmare was a gleaming white claw-foot tub with fresh nickel fixtures.
At least they splurged on the bathing options, I thought.
I might not want to step barefoot anywhere else in the place, but the nice tub made up for it a little.
I turned the knobs, and the pipes rattled and groaned deep inside the wall like some old Victorian ghost clearing its throat.
But no water came out.
I played with the knobs, assuming I’d set one of them wrong, and managed to get a tiny trickle.
I’m on the right track, I thought, so I fiddled with the knobs some more, but that was it.
I could make it trickle, or I could make it stop entirely; those were the settings.
Climbing into the tub, I squatted down and cupped my hands under the flow. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi. After a six-count, my hands were half full, so I splashed this onto myself. Then I repeated the count until I had enough for another little splash, then again, and again, until I was damp.
I soaped up and thought that next time I should bring something to catch the water, like an empty tumbler, or something.
Thoroughly soaped, I repeated the cupping process. Rinsing took ages, and in the end, I decided I’d live even if a bit of soap were left on me.
Picking up the towel I’d been provided, I laughed a little. When the check-in person handed it to me when we’d arrived, I marveled at its thinness. The antithesis of luxury, it was comically threadbare. But now, as I used it to dry myself, it all made sense.
You don’t need much towel to dry yourself after a not much wet shower.
When I returned to the room, Jonathan asked, “How was the shower?”
“Luxurious,” I said with a totally straight face.
“Yeah? You were gone a while, you think I should go now?”
“You should definitely go now,” I said, “I’m sure there’ll be a line of people in the morning.”
Jonathan nodded, then gathered his shower supplies. He disappeared down the hall and was gone for the better part of forty-five minutes, then he returned.
“How was your shower?” I asked cheerily.
“It WAS luxurious, even better than you’d described,” we both laughed.
* * *
We were excited to get out and see what London was all about. As soon as the sun cracked the horizon, we jumped to it. Our main objective was to get to Covent Garden, a place we’d heard was good for street performing. But we also wanted to see some of the famous sights like Big Ben and the Tower of London. We obtained passes for the Tube, London’s underground subway, and headed to the city center. As soon as we reached street level, I spotted one of the famous red phone booths and asked Jonathan to take a picture of me. I opened the door and stepped inside, then put my face close to the glass so I’d hopefully show up in the photo. I was surprised at how dirty the inside of the phone booth was; there was graffiti and trash all over, and I felt something squishy under my foot. Jonathan lined up to take the phone, and right as he clicked, the putrid, rank smell of shit assaulted my nostrils. Looking down, I saw that someone had defecated in the phone booth, and I’d stepped right in it. “Oh, my, GOD!” I shouted, immediately throwing open the door and stepping out. I ran around doing the poop shoe scoot until the worst of it was off, then walked through some grass to wear off as much of the rest as I could.
I howled, “Why the fuck would someone shit in the phone booth?”
Jonathan’s eyes were wide, then he shrugged, “When you gotta go…”
“Not helping!” I scolded.
A few blocks later, we encountered a series of fences built alongside the sidewalk to separate people’s properties from the passing foot traffic. Most were made of wrought iron or barbed wire, but a few industrious individuals had broken bottles and cemented the jagged bases to the tops of their block walls as a deterrent. Then we passed a freshly painted and nicely plastered wall that had a sign boldly declaring, “Unclimbable wall.”
Jonathan and I looked at each other with an unspoken yet shared thought. Challenge accepted!
Jonathan stepped up onto a short curb at the base of the wall, then reached up to curl his fingers over the top edge. I expected him to hoist himself up effortlessly since we were both good rock climbers, but instead, he said, “Gah, what the? What is that?!”
Looking at his hands, they were now smeared over in a sticky, black, tar-like substance.
Neither of us was carrying tissues, so he reached out to wipe it off on the wall, and that’s when we saw it. All across the wall, obvious as day — now that we’d learned more about unclimbable walls — were long black finger-width smears, undoubtedly made by other punters who’d made the same discovery after accepting the sign’s challenge.
As Jonathan wiped his hands off, I said in my best impression of the scene from The Princess Bride where Wesley and Buttercup are in the fire swamp, “What are the three terrors of the city of London? First, the knife fights, which luckily can be avoided by not going to pubs late at night. Second, the phone booths, which are often filled with human feces, will undoubtedly keep you on your toes. Third, the unclimbable walls, which you were just kind enough to discover. With this knowledge, we could live here quite happily for some time.”
* * *
Having made the acquaintance of the various pitfalls of London, we explored Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Big Ben, and Covent Garden, all uneventfully.
There was even a street performer at Covent Garden, a juggler no less. When we arrived, he was doing a bit with a raw egg, but he broke it. Then he tried the bit again and broke a second egg. So he tried it a third time and broke the egg again.
And that was it, he was out of eggs and couldn’t do his finale.
The already sparse audience grumbled, then dispersed without giving him any money.
Jonathan whispered under his breath, “Tough gig.”
“Should we talk to him and ask what the rules are for doing a show?” I whispered back.
Jonathan shook his head, “Naw, he’s having a bad day.”
So we let him be.
Satisfied with our first day of exploration, we made our way back to the hotel.
(I’ve roughly calculated the number of steps we walked that day and came up with 22-27k steps.)
Chapter 36: All In
For the next few days, we walked, explored, and fought through jet lag. But we never found a place we felt confident enough to set up for a show.
My fear of performing was as present as ever, so I was secretly happy to put it off a little longer. But London is expensive, and I’m hemorrhaging money. I need to start making money soon, or my nightmare scenario of being broke and homeless in a foreign country will become a reality.
Our train was scheduled to leave for Edinburgh first thing the next morning, and we still had nowhere to go once we got there. Luckily, someone told us about a place that was arranging accommodations, so we went there and found a line stretching out the door. The countless others, many in the same situation as we were, were all hoping to find a place. We waited for over an hour just to get inside the front door. And once in, found that the line wove back and forth through a maze of stanchions with fabric queue barriers stretched between them. And waaaay off across the room, was a lone woman behind a glass panel. She had two corded phones, one held to each ear, as she slowly but surely made calls, trying to get each person or group placed.
Every so often, she’d succeed, or people in line in front of us would give up and leave, then we’d crawl forward a few steps. Next up at the window was a young couple, but the guy was angry about something and kept shaking his head no.
Getting agitated herself, the woman behind the glass said, “It’s all I’ve got, luv; you’re lucky to find anything at all.”
The man said something to his girlfriend, and she rolled her eyes.
The booker nodded to the phone she was holding and asked, “Do ya want it er’ not?”
Looking defeated, the guy’s girlfriend shook her head and started gathering her things.
We knew absolutely nothing about what was being offered, or the price, or where it was even located, but Jonathan took the initiative and shouted over the crowd, “If they don’t want it, we'll take it!”
The woman looked up and said, “Yeah?”
Jonathan hesitated for a moment, then asked, “It’s in Edinburgh?”
The lady nodded, “It is.”
“Ok, we’ll take it!”
“Ok,” she said, “Come on up,” then she motioned for people who’d been ahead of us to make way.
We slid past the other guests and jumped over one of the felt barriers.
Arriving at the window, the lady said, “Alright, loves, the room is 800 pounds per night with a two-night minimum.” (£800 at the time was roughly $1,320 in dollars at the time, or about $2,500 in 2024/2025 due to inflation)
We tried to hide our shock, then Jonathan asked, “And that’s pretty much all that's available?”
She motioned to the phone and said, “If I hang up, it’s gone.”
I stood dazed; my strategy had been to save enough money in reserve so that I could change my flight and go home early if everything went sideways. But if we booked this room, my reserve would be spent, and because London had been so expensive, my remaining capital would be almost exhausted as well. A quick calculation told me that if we proceeded, I’d have enough to get through two more days; then I’d be flat broke. I guess this is why we packed camping gear. If worst comes to worst, we’ll pitch tents and go homeless. I never thought it would happen eight days into the trip, though.
Jonathan said, “Ok, we’ll take it.”
The lady spoke into the phone, “Yes, we’ll take it, two nights.” Then, looking at us, she said, “I need your full name and sixteen hundred pounds, please.”
Jonathan and I rummaged through our backpacks for our reserves, then set the money on the counter. She busily filled out a sheet of paper while she spoke with whoever was on the other end of the phone. Then she took our money and handed over our itinerary. “Alright, loves, this is the address; you’ll collect the keys from the neighbor, and they’ll take you up to show you the flat. All the information you need is here, and you can use the tele if you have any questions.”
We took the paper and thanked her.
At least we’d have somewhere to go once we got to Edinburgh.
* * *
The next morning, we woke early to catch the train. We didn’t have the money for a cab, so walking was our only option. The night before, we’d spread a fold-out map across the bed, traced the route, and guessed it would take about ninety minutes if we kept a steady pace. It felt ambitious but still within reach
We packed our last items, then it was go time. Jonathan put on two of his three backpacks, then wrestled with the third. His strategy had been to wear one forward and one backward, but once he’d run out of fronts and backs, nothing really made that third backpack manageable.
Seeing him wrestle with his kit made me extra glad I’d gone with my rolling cart combo. But once we hit the street, the half-cobbled, half-paved walkways revealed my system’s weak spots. I’d planned to balance my second duffel on top of the one strapped to the luggage cart, but whenever I’d go over curbs or slanted terrain, the whole thing flipped over. Next, I tried looping the duffel’s handles over the rolling cart’s handle, but that just made it swing into my legs when it toppled. Each time this happened, I’d try a different technique for strapping it all together, but nothing made it better; I just had too much stuff.
Each of these gear failures ate up time, and a glance at my watch confirmed my growing fear. If we didn’t pick up the pace, we’d miss the train.
Continuing on, an idea began to form in my mind, and I made a silent deal with myself.
Less than a block later, it all flipped again, so I unzipped one of my duffels and took out three t-shirts and an extra sweatshirt I'd brought.
Jonathan watched this intently, “What are you doing?”
I explained the deal I’d made with myself, “Every time my bags flip over, I have to get rid of one item.”
“Okay… but what are you gonna do with the stuff, donate it?”
Looking up from my task, I said, “Kinda.” Then I draped the four articles of clothing over a wrought-iron fence next to the sidewalk, clearly intending to leave them there.
Jonathan looked shocked. The thought of just bailing gear on the spot felt weird, but when you’re trying to do radical things, like everything we were doing, you have to make radical choices.
We started again, and almost immediately, my bag flipped again, so out came another shirt and a pair of shorts.
Clearly convinced, Jonathan adopted the protocol too and pulled out a huge wad of clothes from his third backpack. With no fence handy, he laid everything out nicely on a concrete curb. Then we continued on, growing lighter with each flip-over.
By the time we reached the train station, on time, I might add, we’d both shed about half the clothing we’d brought.
The walk had taught us a new lesson: anything that doesn’t help you achieve your goals is a hindrance. Achieving the goal is all that matters; the rest is noise.
* * *
Finding our train, we loaded up and settled in, finally bound for Edinburgh.
This had been the dream for a year, and it was about to become a reality.
But what would it be like?
The anticipation, the unknown, it hummed in the background of our minds.
The travel agent had booked us direct, so there were no transfers to worry about. Just six hours to sit and watch the emerald green countryside roll by.
Chapter 37: 64 Pence
We exited the Edinburgh train station with no idea where we were, so we pulled out a cheap tourist map, hoping to orient ourselves and find the place we’d booked. Moments later, a man with a shaved head, garish facial tattoos, and a spiked leather jacket walked up and handed us a stack of show flyers.
“Ye gut tu cee sum ov deze shews.” The three silver spikes pierced through his lower lip bobbed up and down as he spoke.
Though it was technically English, I couldn’t understand a word. “Hi,” I respond neutrally, “We’re trying to find Southside?”
“Lumee cee yer mop,” he demanded, pulling the map from our hands.
“Arrrggh, yu gaut a sheety map, yer goin tu hav tu goze dern hare, tern rite, dern mayke yer nex rite, dat wil getz yuz whure yez neds tu bee.”
We thanked him and accepted the stack of show flyers he’d been hired to distribute.
“Gud luk,” he says, “Nermally ey’d uh cyarged ya fer derectyons, but ya gaut a sheety mop.”
Heading off, we went where he’d advised and soon encountered the longest, steepest, cobblestoned road I’d ever seen. Leaning into it, we started up. Jonathan and I were both in fantastic shape, but we were still carrying eighty-plus pounds — despite having shed a lot of gear in London. Hauling it to the top left me so winded I dropped my pack on the ground and sat down to rest. Jonathan stood with both hands on his knees while he caught his breath, then he consulted the map. From our new vantage point, we could see several landmarks and realized we’d gone the wrong way. We’d climbed this hellish hill for nothing. Gah, it was frustrating, but standing there frustrated wasn’t going to fix anything. We turned around and slogged back down the evil hill.
When we got to the bottom, we stopped in a neighborhood park to rest and have a snack. As we ate, Jonathan said, “I’ve got an idea, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“Hit me,” I said.
“See that thicket?”
Looking where he indicated, I saw a large hedge ringed by a short metal fence. The hedge itself was densely foliated, and I couldn’t see into its interior. “Yeah, what about it?”
“What if we take all of our camping gear and stash it under that hedge? If we decide we need it later, we can come back and get it. But at least we won’t have to carry it in the meantime.”
“What if someone comes by and takes it?” I asked.
“Then we’ve gifted them some nice camping gear, and it’s a good day for them.”
I stared at the hedge for a bit, weighing the pros and cons. How often did the landscapers come to maintain, trim, and clean up the park? What’s the probability of the gear being taken, versus the probability of us needing it, versus the misery of carrying it, versus the misery of not having it if we DID need it?
Jonathan interrupted my analysis, “Like I said, I don’t know that it’s a good idea.”
“No, it’s a great idea,” I confirmed, “let’s do it.” I opened my bag and started pulling out camping gear.
Jonathan did the same, and by the time we’d finished our snack, we had all of the camping gear wrapped up in a fifty-five-gallon heavy-duty trash bag. We figured the black bag would help to camouflage it in the shadows and keep it watertight.
“Go stand next to the fence by the hedge.” I said, “I’ll keep an eye out; as soon as no one is around to see, I’ll give you a signal so you can hop over and stash it.”
Jonathan picked up the bag and made his way over to the hedge.
There was a steady stream of foot traffic through and around the park, so it took a little while to find a break. I waited for an elderly couple to turn off the walkway near the hedge, then gave the signal. Jonathan stepped over the fence and tucked the gear as deeply under the hedge as he could. Then he turned and hurried back. Despite our carefully planned infiltration, I’m sure a few people saw him, but no one seemed to care.
From where we sat, the bag was plainly visible, but to a casual passerby, it would look like any other piece of trash blown into the bushes.
Loading up to go, I took one last glance at the gear, wondering silently if maybe this wasn’t the wisest move we’d ever made. However, as we walked, those worries began to fade. The camping gear purge had made my pack feel manageable for the first time. And just in time, too, because we still had a long way to go.
Miles later, we found a large open park area surrounded by three and four-story residences. The city streets weren’t laid out in a grid, so even with the address, we couldn’t figure out where we were supposed to go. We tried calling the number we had on a public pay phone, but no one answered. So again, we pored over the map, hoping to get a clue. That’s when a little old lady with a cane in one hand and a rolling grocery cart in the other walked up, “Can Iz help ya?”
Her accent wasn’t so thick, so I could understand her. “Yeah, we’re trying to find this address.”
She took a look at our paper, then started to explain where we needed to go, but after a moment, she waved her hand dismissively and said, “I’ll just shew ya,” then she led off in a direction.
We followed and spoke pleasantly until a few blocks later, we arrived in front of a four-story stone building, “Here ya’r,” she said.
I asked her, “How much farther do you have to go?”
She pointed back the way we'd come and said, “Oh, I wuz at me home when I met yeez. Have a grate trip now.” Then she turned and slowly walked back towards her place. She had gone out of her way, with a cane and a load of groceries, just to help us find our way. It was, and forever will be, one of the greatest kindnesses a stranger has ever shown me.
We knocked on the neighbor’s door as we’d been instructed, and a nice woman took us up to see the flat. She was intent on showing us the kitchen and the two big bedrooms, but Jonathan and I went straight to the bathroom and threw on the shower. A strong blast of water came out, and Jonathan and I both cheered excitedly. The lady, who’d followed us to the bathroom, peered in with one eyebrow raised, clearly surprised at our surprise. But we waved it off, “Everything is great; we’ll take it.”
“Alright, I’ll leave you to it then.” She said, letting herself out.
We hadn’t had a proper shower since we’d left the U.S. eight days before, so it was priority number one. I motioned toward the shower with both hands and said in an overly prim and proper tone, “Would you care to freshen up, sir?”
Jonathan laughed, “Why yes, indeed I would.”
“Excellent; in that case, I give thee first dibs.”
We laughed again, and Jonathan walked to the first bedroom to drop his gear. I took the second and dove straight onto the bed for a nap. Never before had I so fully appreciated the luxury of a nice bed.
Once we’d both showered and power-napped, it was time to get the lay of the land. Our first stop was the Royal Mile, the main boulevard that dead-ends into Edinburgh Castle.
* * *
Considering we’d traveled halfway around the world to be here, we didn’t really know very much about the festival. We knew it was big and open to just about anyone, but now that we were here, I couldn’t believe how many people were packed into the streets of the Royal Mile; it was like three Disneylands at rush hour. Weaving through the crowd, we came upon a man who’d roped off a section of sidewalk. He was holding a bicycle but didn’t seem to be doing anything. He just stood there, looking out at the large crowd of people, who all stood staring back. Then, at the cajoling of his friends, a man from the crowd stepped forward and handed the bicycle holder a one-pound coin. The assembly hooted in excitement, and the recipient of the coin belted out his pitch, “Ladies and gentlemen, the rules are simple: if he can ride the bicycle from here to here,” as he said this, he pointed at two different chalk lines drawn on the ground, “I will give him twenty pounds.”
​
The attempter mounted the bicycle dramatically, making a show of it, acting as if he were going to go very fast.
The operator said, “Both wheels have to cross the finish line, and his feet cannot touch at any point. Also, he cannot crash.”
The crowd howled at this, and the man began his ride. He moved forward a few feet, and everything seemed in order. Of course, he’s going to win the twenty pounds, I thought. As I thought this, the rider began to tilt over to one side. He turned the handlebars to correct, but instead of the bike turning under him and correcting his lean, the front wheel turned in the opposite direction. This exacerbated the lean, and like lightning, the man tumbled to the ground. The crowd cheered and applauded his effort, while the operator helped him to his feet. “Would anyone else like to try? Just ride the bicycle five meters, and you’ll win twenty pounds. Here, let me show you how easy it is.” The operator climbed onto the bike, then, as casually as could be, rode it from end to end.
I was bursting to try. I didn’t even care about the money; I just wanted to understand what this was all about. Grabbing a one-pound coin from my pocket, I stepped forward.
“Another victim, I mean VOLUNTEER.” The man announced loudly.
I handed him the coin, and he handed me the bicycle. He continued his patter, but I was too intent on the bike to listen. I tested the handlebars and saw that where there was normally one tube for the handlebar stem to go into, a second tube had been welded in front of it. The handlebars were then inserted into this second stem, and at its base, a solid yet primitive looking gear had been welded. Then the bicycle’s forks, which were emerging from the typical stem tube, also had a rough-looking gear welded to them. The result was that whenever the bars were turned to one side or the other, the action would pass through both gears, causing the wheel to turn in the opposite direction. It was a brilliantly simple concept, and I started a silent mantra to quickly retrain my brain, “Just turn the wrong way, easy.”
Mounting the bicycle, I placed one foot on the pedal and pushed off. At first, it went great. I tried not to turn the handlebars at all, but inevitably, after a few feet, I began to lean. In my head, I thought, turn the wrong way, but my many years of bicycling betrayed me, and I turned the way I usually would to correct the lean. This exacerbated things, and I had to slam a foot down to keep from crashing. The crowd hooted excitedly, and the announcer made a few jokes, already working to entice the next person to try. I gave the bicycle back and walked to where Jonathan was waiting.
I could see in his eyes that he wanted to try, and he asked, “Is it doable?”
“Not a chance,” I replied confidently.
“Like no way?!”
“If you wanna try, you should; it’s totally worth the pound, but if you’re thinking you’ll win the twenty, you’re not.”
Then we both laughed, as was our way, and decided to continue on without trying again.
All along the road, there were street performers, and they all had huge crowds. We saw two performers on eight-foot unicycles, and another had a ten-footer. Another guy strung a rope between two streetlights to create a slackline, then balanced on it and juggled. We even saw a man use sixteen volunteers, all holding long ropes, to balance a platform he climbed onto to juggle as a finale. Show after show, we watched guys pass the hat and earn hundreds of pounds per show. That’s what we needed to do, and we needed to do it fast. But we also knew we were out of our league. These performers were all seasoned, with big props that got them up high, and we didn’t have anything like that. The biggest thing we’d brought was a rolla-bola, but even with that, we’d only be a few inches higher off the ground than normal.
After walking the Royal Mile end to end, we decided to go check out a different pitch (or area friendly to street entertainment), and the next one on our list was The Mound. When we got there, we found a show already in progress. The two men, one on a tall unicycle and the other on a tall, unsupported ladder, were making jokes and talking about how they were about to juggle fire between them. During this exchange, the guy on the ladder reached into one of the ladder’s rungs and pulled out a pair of women’s pantyhose.
Holding them up for the crowd, he said, “I’ve got a stocking in me ladder!”
The crowd roared with laughter, and we did too, though Jonathan and I exchanged glances that betrayed the fact that neither of us had a clue as to why it was funny. (After the show, we asked another performer about the joke, and they said, “When a woman gets a run in her stocking over here, they call it a ladder.” So we laughed again now that we got it) Then they passed the flaming torches between themselves, one from the ladder and the other from the unicycle. The crowd showed their appreciation, and we assumed that would be the show’s end, as it was a huge finale. But then one of the guys asked the crowd if they wanted to see one more, and of course, everyone cheered. He then took three lit torches, walked over to the huge concrete columns in front of the building next to the pitch, and wedged one foot against the scalloped pillars on the left and the other on the right. Then he slowly worked his way upwards between the columns, little by little, going ever more into the splits as he went because the columns were farther apart near the top. Once he’d gone up an impossible-seeming height, where he would have a horrible slam on the concrete below if he fell, he shouted to the crowd, “You want me to go higher?”
They roared in approval!
He looked up apprehensively and whispered under his breath, “bollocks,” which got another laugh. Continuing upwards, he finally reached a height beyond ridiculous; his legs in full center splits.
As he was about to juggle, I noticed a large black soot mark at the top of those two pillars, right where he held the burning torches to catch his balance. The stain on the pillar was dark and looked like it had built up over many years.
Ah, I thought, scary as this feels, he’s building the drama. He’s been doing this bit for a long time.
Finally, he juggled, and the crowd thundered its appreciation. Then he gathered the torches and told the crowd not to go anywhere, while his partner distributed three large hats for the audience to fill with money. And fill them they did; I’ve never seen anyone make so much money at a street show. I’m guessing they cleared eight hundred pounds in that single show.
My mind was blown, partly because of their talent and success, and partly because I knew how short of that mark our own show would fall.
After their gear was cleared, a young woman began setting up in the same location. We could tell by her props that she was also going to do a juggling show. We planted ourselves in the front row and waited for her to begin, like students hungry for the education these veteran performers were giving.
Then she set out a five-foot unicycle, and I called out, “Are you gonna ride that?”
She called back, “Of course!”
“In those?” I asked, pointing to her red high heels.
Coyly, she said, “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Her show began with simple things meant to draw a bigger crowd. Nothing too fancy, though; everything she did was building towards a big trick at the end. Which, I was learning, is one of the secrets of street performing. Engage the crowd long enough for the numbers to build; keep the funny lines flowing, then do a huge trick at the end, and pass your hat before anyone runs away.
When the crowd had grown to five rows deep, she picked up the unicycle and shouted, “I need a volunteer.”
I waited expectantly, wondering who she’d choose. Then she walked our way, grabbed my arm firmly, and pulled me out of the crowd with a loud, “This one will do.”
Bringing me to the center ring, she explained that I would help her get up onto the five-foot unicycle. Then she said, “There’s just one more thing: we’re in Scotland, and if you’re going to be in my show, you have to wear a kilt.”
Walking over to her case, she pulled out a ridiculously small kilt, which looked more like a woman’s mini skirt. Then she put it around my waist and began unzipping my pants.
With a serious look, I told her, “I’m not wearing any underwear.”
We hadn’t been able to do proper laundry the whole time we were in London because of the woefully inadequate water pressure. So, as soon as we’d gotten to our flat here in Scotland, I’d hand-washed all my underwear. And since they were still very wet, I’d gone without.
She looked at me and asked if I was being serious, and I told her I was.
So she turned to the crowd and said, “Apparently, Bill from San Diego is not wearing any underwear; what should we do?”
The crowd started chanting, “Kilt, kilt, kilt, kilt.”
I could tell she was uncertain whether to proceed; I was equally unsure whether we should proceed.
Then a man from the crowd yelled out in a thick Scottish accent, “What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?”
She turned to him and shouted back, “What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?”
The man shouted, “Just the cool breeze and his wife’s lipstick!”
The crowd roared with laughter.
She turned to me and said, “I’ve got an idea.”
She walked over to her case and pulled out a very large safety pin.
“It’s got Velcro, but I will pin it just to make sure it doesn’t come off.” And with that, she took my pants off in front of the 700 people who’d gathered to watch the juggling show.
Once I was in uniform, she had me hold the unicycle while she climbed it. She did the classic bit where you play up how hard it is to mount the unicycle, even draping herself over my shoulders so people could see up the back of her skirt, which got a good laugh. Then, to even the score, she reached down and pulled up the back of my kilt, showing my bare ass to everyone on that side of the pitch. It was all in good fun, and once she’d milked that for all it was worth, she got up on the unicycle. As she raised her arms wide to get a round of applause, I saw she was still wearing her red high heels. I tried not to think of how it would feel to fall off a tall unicycle in high heels.
“Bill, go to my prop case and grab the torches.”
I did.
“Bill, light them on fire.”
I did.
“Bill, now juggle them!”
Jonathan shouted from the sideline, “Do it! DO IT!”
And I did, juggling them as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
At first, her eyes widened with worry, because no normal audience member would ever actually try and juggle them, but once she realized I knew what I was doing, she smiled and said, “Oh my god, BILL!!!”
The cobblestones beneath our feet shook with the applause.
She pulled her microphone aside and whispered, “Do you pass?”
I nodded, so she put the microphone back in place and yelled, “All right, throw it to me.”
I made a beautiful toss that landed perfectly in her hand. She gave me a look of ecstasy. Then she had me throw the other two.
She performed her final trick, riding a unicycle and juggling three torches, then threw the torches to me to extinguish.
“Nobody move!” she screamed, cupping one hand over her eye, “I lost a contact!” This got a laugh and kept people from leaving. Then she made a few jokes about money, classic hat lines, and enlisted me to pass one hat while she ran around with the other.
The crowd surged forward, dropping piles of money into her hat; a few even tipped me and asked, “Were you really an audience member or do you do that every show?”
But I assured them I was not a plant.
Once the crowd dispersed, she came over and said, “Thank you, that’s one of the biggest hats I’ve ever gotten.”
We congratulated her, and she joked, “Want to come to every show?”
We laughed again and said we hoped to perform as well, so she gave us some pointers, like how the queuing system worked across the various pitches.
“Each pitch has a list,” she said, “and you can sign up for as many as two slots at each, as long as slots are available. So, performers race around the city looking for open slots to fill out their schedules.”
It was valuable information, and we made it our new goal to find one of these lists. We returned to the Royal Mile, and spying a smaller, less popular pitch, we added our name. Then, we hurried back to our accommodation to gather our equipment.
Ready or not, it’s showtime.
* * *
We showed up at the pitch thirty minutes early, giving us a chance to watch the acrobat who was on before us. His show was decent, and like us, he didn’t have anything that allowed him to get high up in the air. But the weirdest part was that he was pissed off at the audience. I couldn’t tell if he was angry because there wasn’t a huge crowd, or if he was playing a character, but either way, he was verbally abusive to his audience. I didn’t like it. At the end of his show, he had seven people lying on the ground. Then, he ran halfway down the block, got everyone to clap in unison, sprinted down the street, and did a front flip over the people. It was a cool maneuver, and despite being a jerk, he probably did okay passing the hat.
Once he had cleaned up, he walked past us and gave a curt “Good luck,” then strolled away.
We set up our gear and tried to draw in some people, but we really didn’t know what we were doing. We got a couple of nice people to stay and settle in, but despite the number of passersby, we only managed to hold ten or twelve. Then it started to rain, so half of the people we’d gathered walked away. Jonathan made the executive decision to call it, and we passed the hat.
Two people dropped in change, but no bills.
Once they’d dispersed, I sat on the public fountain right behind the pitch to count up what we’d made.
Sixty-four pence, essentially sixty-four cents.
Jonathan looked at me and said, “At least it’s an even number; it’ll be easier to split.”
I smiled wryly, too dejected to say anything.
A homeless guy who’d been quietly watching our show from the sidelines walked up.
“Grate wether if n yer a duk,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
He pointed to the sky and the ominous clouds.
“Graaaate wether if-n’ yer a duk!” he repeated.
“Oh,” I answered, “Great weather if you’re a duck.”
At this, he smiled a gap-toothed grin, clearly pleased that I’d understood his joke.
“Did you like the show?” I asked.
“Ei” he replied. Then he dug in his pocket and said, “Ere.”
Reaching out my hand, he dropped a one-pound coin in my hand and said with no hint of malice, “Yu neyd et mor’ an I du.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely.
“Ei,” he replied, already wandering off.
Once he was gone, Jonathan asked, “What did he want?”
“He gave us a tip,” I said, holding my hand out, “said we, needed et’ mor n’ e did.”
Jonathan smiled, “We just doubled our money!”
We both laughed; our act was so bad that homeless people were giving us money.
Seconds later, the drizzle of rain turned into a full-blown Scottish downpour; we looked for cover, but thousands of people were trying to do the same. None of our luggage was waterproof, so we had to think fast or risk ruining all our gear. Not seeing a better option, we threw everything into the metal phone booth that housed the pitch signup sheet.
With ninety minutes left before our next show, we searched for a place to wait out the storm. We found a coffee shop packed tighter than a Tokyo subway at rush hour and squeezed in. Grateful to escape the freezing rain. It rarely rains in San Diego, so I didn’t own a real rain jacket, and water had seeped right through my layers. One more oversight in my planning, which I promised myself I’d fix as soon as possible.
As we waited, I noticed the person next to me had the hairiest legs I’d ever seen; scanning upward, I discovered the winner of the hairiest legs I'd ever seen award was a woman.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s an aesthetic choice or a practical one to keep warm? My own teeth were chattering, so either seemed plausible.
An hour later, the rain let up, and the people flowed back onto the streets. We went back to the pitch and set up for our second show. It went very similarly to the first one. Except this time, the homeless guy who’d given us the tip after the first show was passed out on the edge of the concrete fountain. I saw a one-liter plastic bottle of hard cider resting a few inches from his limp, outstretched hand.
Seemed he’d managed to make enough money to take care of his needs, which was more than we’d been able to do.
We wrapped up the second show, and it began to drizzle again.
Despite the rain, the homeless man remained still.
I could see he was breathing, and I’d of liked to help him, but I couldn’t even help myself right now.
As we rolled back to our £800-a-night safe space, I wondered where the homeless man would go when he woke up.
Are there shelters for the homeless in Scotland? I wondered.
And if there are, would they have room for two more?
* * *
Once we returned to the flat, I counted up my remaining money, eighty-seven pounds, and maybe another ten in mixed change. Enough to eat for another day or two, then I’d be done.
Jonathan and I sat down for a long chat.
We agreed that we couldn’t compete with the other entertainers; we were too green. But we had to do something, and we had to do it now.
Jonathan suggested we activate Plan B and pulled out all the bags of balloons.
First thing in the morning, we decided to go to the biggest park we could find and twist balloons for tips. If we can make enough to feed ourselves, maybe we can figure the rest out, too.
Chapter 38: Eh Rad Poopy Dawg
The next morning, we had to check out, so we woke early and packed our things.
We walked out the front door with all our gear, and as the door closed behind us, I heard its automatic lock click into place.
That’s it, I thought, we have no place to go tonight, and no home to go back to when we get back to the U.S. either.
I glanced down at the bags strapped to my little luggage cart, my every worldly possession. So, this is what it feels like to be homeless.
I’d have stewed on it more, but Jonathan was already ten steps ahead, so I hurried to catch up.
As we walked towards the park we’d picked, we cut through a street market where numerous vendors were set up selling their wares. Jonathan needed a pair of sunglasses, so he set out to find some. Which left me to wander the rows alone, and the most unlikely of things caught my eye. Three grandmotherly-type ladies huddled under a pop-up tent, working. One of the women held two long steel needles, which whipped up and down with machine-like accuracy. Loops of green thread appeared around the needles, only to slide deftly off the ends at precise moments, then they were replaced by new loops that appeared as if by magic. These new loops followed suit, disappearing into the malestrom, over and over, all at lightning speed. But then, she stops. The weathered hands gather the whole bunch, holding it tight; then the free hand reaches into a basket filled with every color of yarn imaginable, plus a half dozen I’d never imagined. Selecting a bright yellow, she pulls it tanglelessly from a hand-wound bundle. This new end, she loops several times around one of the needles, then the hands resume their effortless mechanization. The coils of green intermingle with the yellow ones, gradually alternating in color as they snake their way into the main panel. The old woman does all this while carrying on an effortless conversation with the other two women in the tent. Once several rows of the green and yellow are established, a small pair of scissors appears from a pocket on her apron. The green thread is cut, and the now-loose end falls obediently into the basket. The rhythmic action returns, quickly swallowing up the five-inch green tail left after trimming. Now, all the loops on the knitting needles turn yellow, and the transition from one color to the next is complete. The field of green now has a crisp row of yellow growing along its edge. Breaking from the hypnotic display, I look at the dozens of hand-knit items hanging around the tent’s perimeter and conclude that this green-and-yellow panel will likely become a sweater. A sweater that will be finished at a rate I’d have only imagined possible from a machine.
She’s a master, a master knitter. And suddenly I realize that I could watch anyone, doing anything, if they’re one of the best at it. It’s for this that we came here: to see the best in the world. I just never imagined finding it in gnarled old fingers under a cheap folding tent.
Jonathan’s return broke my reverie: “Got ‘em,” he said, holding up his new sunglasses. “Let’s roll!”
We continued on toward the park, and along the way, I looked for stealthy spots we might pitch our tents. Being a dense city, the pickings were slim. The best option I saw was a thicket of trees near an overpass that looked sheltered enough for us to go unnoticed. I made a mental note of it so I could find it again later if needed.
When we got to the park, we decided to split up to increase our coverage, agreeing to meet up again in a few hours. I started by making a big, colorful balloon hat for myself, then I put it on.
A big balloon hat is the universal sign that you’re open for business. But even with the crowds of people, no one was coming up to me. It was early, and people typically get balloons later in the day. I don’t know why that is; it’s just a nighttime thing, I guess.
To pass the time, I set out my hat and practiced juggling, preferring to be productive rather than stand idle. A few people watched from afar, but no one interacted with me.
Then a bright-eyed little girl burst from the passing throng. Running straight for me, she asked, “Cud ya mak may uh buhluun?”
I’d heard a lot of Scottish accents over the last two days, but hearing that distinct drawl transmitted in an angelic little child’s voice was absolutely magical. I smiled at her, “Of course I can, what would you like?”
Thinking for a moment, she said, “Eh rad poopy dawg!”
I couldn’t hold back a laugh, “One red poopy dawg coming wright upp lassie.”
She laughed at my attempt at a Scottish accent and watched gleefully while I made the dog for her. When it was done, I said, “There ya go, now make sure ya feed ‘em ever day?”
She nodded and promised that she would, then turned and ran away.
I already knew when she’d walked up that I wouldn’t get a tip; there was no parent in sight, and children usually don’t understand the concept of exchange, but despite being dead broke, I wasn’t worried about it.
Back when I’d started, I’d asked Jonathan what I should do if someone didn’t tip me.
He said, “Go to the next table and make some more.”
“What if that table doesn’t tip either?” I challenged.
“Think of it this way,” he said, “Even if you use five or six balloons, that will only cost you a few cents. Most people will give you at least a couple of bucks, but often you’ll get a five or even a ten. So, make balloons for anyone who wants them; you’re spreading joy, and most people will reimburse you. If they don’t, maybe it’s because they really can’t afford to, or just don't have any cash on them, whatever the reason, just keep going. It’ll all work out.”
In the months I’d worked out at Ruby’s on the pier, I’d seen time and time again that Jonathan was right; things always did seem to work out.
Moments after the girl had run away with the “rad poopy dawg”, a family with two kids stopped and asked for balloons. They’d seen me make the first balloon, and now they wanted one too. After I’d made their balloons, the dad handed me a five-pound note, more than we’d made in both of our street shows the day before. I thanked him, and as they walked away, another group approached for a balloon. Action leads to action, and soon I had a line of ten people. For the next hour, I made balloons as quickly as I could, until the line started to thin.
I wanted to duck out to see how much I’d made and touch base with Jonathan to see how he’d done, so I started packing up. As I did, a woman approached with her daughter in tow. I figured they wanted a balloon and was about to start into my spiel when I saw that the little girl already had a red balloon dog.
The mom asked, “Did ya’ mak et fer her?” pointing to the dog. I nodded that I had. She then reached into her purse and pulled out a ten-pound note. Handing it to me, she said, “Sew serry, ere ya are.”
I thanked her graciously, and they walked away.
Jonathan was right, you just have to trust in humanity.
As I slung my backpack, I wondered how I’d ever explain all this when I got home. How do I explain to someone who’s never needed the kindness of strangers what it feels like to put your trust in the world and have the world answer?
* * *
As I searched for Jonathan, an Indian man in a traditional-looking tunic walked up, balancing a big woven basket on his shoulder. Nodding towards the basket, he asked, “Samosa?”
“Say-what?” I asked.
“Sa-mo-sa,” he repeated, pulling back the red and white cloth covering the basket. Looking inside, I saw a mound of triangular-shaped pastries.
“What’s inside them?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, trying to find the words, then said, “Poe-tae-toe and pee-z.”
To me, they looked like deep-fried deliciousness, and I like potatoes, and I’m starving.
“How much?” I asked.
“Twenty-five p,” he said.
I tried to hide my excitement, for real? Twenty-five p! Fearful he’d vanish like a genie, I played it cool, “Oh, sure, can I have twelve of them?"
“Yes, yes,” he said, brandishing a small pair of silver tongs.
I gave him the money, but he didn’t have any plates, and I didn't have a bag, so I had him pile them up right in my hands. They were still warm and smelled fantastic.
“Thank you,” I said sincerely, “Will you be here again tomorrow?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, “I come find you.”
The way he said it made me think he wasn’t just saying empty words; he meant it. In a crowd of countless thousands, he would find me. I watched as he continued on, offering Samosas to anyone who paid him mind.
I needed to free up my hands to eat, so I plopped on a nearby bench.
Taking one of the flaky pastries, I took a big bite.
The taste of peas and potatoes was fantastic. They were spiced beautifully, and, and, uh oh, oh no, NO, OH MY GOD!
The pleasantly spicy flavor turned to an inferno in my mouth, like I’d bitten into a blistering hot chili pepper.
Too hungry to spit it out, I swallowed the bite whole. But the fire in my mouth only grew. Seeing a drinking fountain, I ran and filled my water bottle, then chugged it down. That helped a little, but it still burned, and I wondered whether I dared to fight my way through another bite. I decided to take tiny little bites, then chew and swallow quickly. I also chased each bite with water to wash the spice away. Nibble by nibble, I filled my belly.
Then I went to find Jonathan, and when I did, I offered him the extra samosas, with no warning, of course. He took a bite but didn’t seem phased; he tolerated spicy food better than I did.
After he’d finished the samosa, he said he’d had a good experience twisting as well, and even met a performer who knew about a guy who was renting crash space on the floor of a flat that overlooked the Royal Mile.
“Yeah, how much?” I asked.
“He said it was eighty pounds per night.”
Without hesitation, I said, “We’ll take it!”
“Already ahead of you, I told him yes, and got the address and phone number,” he held up a piece of paper.
My relief was immediate; maybe we won’t be homeless after all. And after spending £800 a night, eighty pounds felt like a dream come true.
We’d averaged fifty pounds per hour each with the balloons, so to stay afloat, we’d need to work around four hours a day. But we had enough for now, so we decided to wrap up and make sure the new accommodations checked out. We walked back to the Royal Mile, found the address, and knocked on the door.
A well-dressed man with a short-cropped beard answered. We told him what we’d been told, and he invited us in. We entered a spacious, vaulted loft with a large window overlooking the Royal Mile. He waved his hand towards the large open living room area and said, “Make yourselves at home, use the sofa or floor as you wish, there are blankets and pillows in the closet if you need them, and here’s a key.”
“And it’s eighty pounds per night, correct?” Jonathan clarified.
“That’s correct.”
“Is that eighty pounds each, or eighty pounds total?” I asked.
The man studied me briefly, and I got the sense my question had been asked ahead of its time. Then he said, “I live here because I love the arts, and even though I myself don’t have a creative bone in my body, I like to see it, I like to hear it, and I like to support it when I can. So it’s eighty pounds for both of you.”
“That’s very kind of you, thank you. Should we give you the money now?”
Already starting to walk back to his desk, he waved at a large, ornate, and very expensive-looking jar and said, “Just put it in there whenever you have it.”
I got the feeling he didn’t much care whether we paid or not, but I immediately dropped my half in the jar to show we weren’t freeloaders.
Jonathan said aloud, “Man, this place is beautiful.”
“Thank you,” the man said, “Do you see that bridge out the window? The one to the left of the castle?”
We looked out the window and saw an old stone bridge with a single lane of traffic steadily passing over it, “Yes,” we answered.
“That bridge was built over 600 years ago, and it’s still in use. When the agent first showed me this place, she pointed it out, and I fell in love with it. I’d looked at other places on the mile, but as an engineer, that felt like the sign that this was where I was supposed to be.”
“That’s amazing,” Jonathan said.
“You’re an engineer, so do you design bridges?” I asked.
“Hardly,” he smiled, “I’m the guy who tells the oil companies where to drill. I do the surveys, submit reports, then they go out and get the oil.”
I asked, “What happens if you get it wrong?”
He looked at me seriously and said, “I don’t get it wrong.”
Judging by his beautiful home perched above the Royal Mile, I believed that to be true.
“I work from home, so I’m here most of the time. I sleep from midnight to 7:00 am, so please keep things peaceful during those hours; other than that, you may do as you wish.” Then he sat down at his computer and began typing.
I looked out the window and saw several of the performer pitches below, all ringed with audiences watching the shows. I took a deep breath and felt truly grateful for this place, for our team, for Jonathan’s foresight in bringing balloons, for trust, and for trials and tribulations, all of it.
It was everything we’d come for.
​
* * *
Each day we returned to the park, and each day the kindness of strangers paid our way. True to his word, the Indian Samosa guy found us each day, and each day I’d buy twelve more of the fiery treats. These pastries became my primary food source for the rest of the festival, and after a few days, I got used to the spices; like everything, it takes practice.
Chapter 39: I Will Never Give Up
Before the trip even began, we’d loosely talked about trying to get to Ireland after the Fringe. The plan was simple: if we made enough money performing, we’d take the last week off and head to Dublin. At first, it seemed like a total pipe dream, but once we’d secured affordable accommodations and our balloon money fell into a groove, we dared to think it might actually be possible. Every day we twisted a little extra, putting aside every spare cent that we could.
By the end of the two weeks, we’d scraped together just enough for flights.
We wouldn’t exactly be vacationing; to make it work, we’d have to start performing or twisting balloons the moment we touched down in Dublin.
We also didn’t have enough for a hotel, which meant our only option was camping, assuming the gear we’d stashed in the park two weeks earlier was still there.
I don’t usually make deals with god or the universe, but I couldn’t help myself this time. I decided that if our camping gear was gone, it was a sign to stay put, but if it was still there, we were destined to go. I hung back when we reached the park, afraid to look, but then Jonathan’s laugh broke out loud and triumphant. “Yes, it’s still here!”
He jumped the small fence and hauled out our black trash bag, everything still inside and undisturbed. Suddenly, the Ireland plan wasn’t just a dream anymore; it was happening.
The next morning, we caught the earliest train to the Scottish coast. I leaned against the window, eyelids heavy, as fields blurred past in shades of gray and green. From there, we boarded a puddle-jumper bound for Dublin. When the plane dipped low, I was impressed by the lush emerald colors below. Ireland was exactly what I’d imagined, and I wanted to be excited, but after three weeks of uncertainty and struggle, I was too tired to feel anything.
Grabbing our gear from the baggage claim, we left the airport on foot and walked for miles, packs digging into our shoulders all the way, until we reached a campground. We pitched our tents as the sun went down. Soon after, the sky ripped open. Rain hammered and wind tore, whipping the tent walls ominously.
The next morning, there was a brief break in the clouds. So we ducked into the campground’s lone structure, a tiny laundry shed, where an American traveler had strung every scrap of clothing he owned across the rafters. His tent had filled with three inches of water. Seeing his situation made me realize how lucky we were that our tents had held up.
Some other campers said it was a hurricane, and I later heard it was the outer rings of Hurricane Danielle pushing across Ireland. Whatever it was, it was an incredible storm.
Word around camp was that it would rain all week, but we walked into Dublin anyway, hoping to perform or twist balloons, but the streets were slick and empty. No one wanted balloons in that weather. And we made no money.
On the way back, we stopped at a little grocery store. I needed to somehow stretch ten pounds into a week’s worth of food. I walked up and down every aisle again and again, calculating and recalculating, but it was hopeless; there seemed to be no way to make it work. I made one last loop, hoping for a miracle, and near the emergency exit at the back of the store, I found a wire rack filled with day-old bread. Each bag had a sticker reading “one pound.” So I grabbed two of those. A small jar of peanut butter for four pounds, and a tiny honey bear for three pounds, rounded out my rations. Other than a candy bar I splurged on one day, it’s all I’d have to eat for the next six days.
I found myself slowing as we passed restaurant windows, looking at people laughing over steaming bowls of soup or plates of roast meat. Stomach rumbling, I dreamed of the day we’d be able to afford meals like that, when we could see museums, sleep in hotels, or, my greatest dream, take a cab instead of dragging gear across a city on foot. That, more than anything, I dreamed of. Not having to haul gear to the ends of the earth.
The week crawled by. It rained incessantly. I was exhausted, hungry, and by the end, too broke even to pay for the last night at the campground. We walked to the airport instead, arriving at sundown. Around midnight, I stretched out on the concrete floor to try for some sleep, but security came through and nudged me awake. “No sleeping in the airport.”
So we wandered around the gates, noting grouchily that the airline’s gate areas had seats with armrests, and there was no way to lie down across the chairs with the steel arms sticking up. We continued our search until we found the Air Canada terminal. It was all tarped off and in the middle of a remodel. But the lights were dimmed, and their chairs had no armrests! We went towards the back and lay down amidst construction debris, hoping the security guys would pass us by, which they did. I will always hold a special place in my heart for Air Canada, because they allowed us weary travelers to get a little sleep that night.
In the morning, we took a 6:00 am flight back to the coast of Scotland, caught a train to Edinburgh, walked to a different train station so we could use our original return ticket to London, got to London, and walked straight to the airport, where we waited for six hours to board our flight to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. We landed, cleared customs, and then boarded our connection back to San Diego.
I don’t know how many days it took or how many times the sun rose and fell on the return. But, eventually, there was a feeling of warmth on my face, and the impact of landing gear hitting a runway. I lifted my head off the wall of the airplane and realized we’d landed in San Diego. Inside, I was elated, but my exterior was too tired to show it. It seemed to take forever for the people ahead of me to deplane. When I got to the door, I saw they’d rolled up one of those old-style jetbridges with a staircase that dumps you directly on the tarmac. I descended the stairs, blinded by the newly risen sun in the eastern sky, and as my feet touched the earth, I dropped immediately to my knees, kissing the concrete. I'd always thought things like that were an exaggeration, something from movies, that no one does that in real life, but it’s real. When you’re that happy to be home, it’s the most natural-seeming thing in the world. The culture shock of being in other countries for that long, combined with the stress we’d been under and the fact that we’d hardly slept in weeks, was all a drain.
I made my way through the terminal, and after collecting my luggage, I went outside to meet my mom, who had agreed to pick me up.
I was home, even though I didn’t have a physical home. My mom said I could stay with her in the fifty-five-plus community for fourteen days. Short as that was, at least I had a place to crash while I figured out my next steps. As we drove, I told her about the trip, but she seemed distant through it all, and I knew something was on her mind. When I finally stopped talking, she said, “I have something I need to tell you.”
“Yeah, ok?”
“You know your best friend, Brennan. Well, he moved into that house by the lake, and, well, they were throwing a party, and Brennan and another guy were drinking and decided to swim across the lake. But they didn’t come back, and no one could find them, so Brennan’s girlfriend called the police.” She paused, the next words catching in her throat, “I’m so sorry, honey. They both were found drowned the next morning… He’s gone.”
My mind exploded: Brennan’s dead?! Of all the things I could have imagined her saying, I never could have imagined this. I couldn’t handle it and turned my head to look out the window, tears pouring freely down my face.
My mom continued, “And just when things were going so well for them. He had his girlfriend and newborn son, and he was working. I didn’t know how to tell you, but I knew I had to. I’m sorry, it’s not supposed to happen like this.”
“It’s ok,” I said, trying to reassure her as I simultaneously dove into my own spiral of loss and regret.
If I hadn’t gone on this trip, if I’d gone to visit him instead, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
No, that’s not true. Brennan and I had been best friends, but we’d grown apart after he’d moved away. There would have been no reason for me to visit him; I just would have been home instead of abroad when I’d heard. Suddenly, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time he and I had spoken. I cried for the rest of the drive, wondering if this was some kind of punishment or a sign.
Should I give up? Have I become too proud and dared to dream too big?
I couldn’t get past it; I kept thinking of his girlfriend and their newborn son, only a few months old. It wasn’t fair, his life cut short right when it was truly beginning.
​
And then it hit me, a tragic warning, Brennan’s final gift to me.
Our light can go out at any moment.
Like meteors streaking through the sky, here for a flickering moment, and gone the next.
Nothing we dream of doing can be put off until tomorrow; we must take every day and burn brightly.
My heart is broken, but I won’t quit.
I’m going to push harder than ever.
For Brennan, for my new best friend Jonathan, for a life bigger than the one my circumstances offered.
My mom’s little trailer came into view, and with it came a perfect certainty.
I will never stop, and I will never give up!
Chapter 40: This Is Unusual
My mom’s sofa was home for the next three weeks, seven days over the limit. In that time, I picked up as many gigs and balloon shifts as possible to save up cash. As an unexpected bonus, when I unpacked all of my travel bags, I found $800 in travelers’ checks that had somehow been overlooked. These I cashed out immediately, trying not to think about how many travel woes would have been eased if they’d turned up sooner. Still, it was nice to have extra now.
​
Jonathan and I set a meeting with an apartment placement service, but as gig workers, neither of us looked very impressive on paper. The lady was very nice and really tried to help, but eventually said, “I’m very sorry. You’re saying you could pay your rent, and I believe you could, but I just don’t see where your money is coming from.”
​
Jonathan and I looked at each other, then he looked back at her and said, “Well, we’ve got it right here.” We both reached into our pockets and collectively dumped $3,500 in cash on her desk.
​
The woman shook her head, “You need to have a normal job with steady income and bank statements to prove it.”
“But we have enough for first, last, and a deposit?” Jonathan countered.
​
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “I have to be able to show it on paper. This,” she motioned towards the cash, “is unusual.”
Realizing this wasn’t the place for us, we thanked her and left.
​
I felt pretty down about it, but Jonathan said he had an idea.
​
Later that day, he told me he’d found a family that was renting out their spare room, and he’d already started moving in.
“How did you find them?” I asked.
​
“I know them through church,” he said, “but there are lots of rooms for rent. Just grab a paper and look up some listings, try to find something in the Escondido or Rancho Bernardo area.”
​
With no other choice, I got a newspaper, opened the classifieds, and called a few listings. One seemed particularly promising; a guy renting out the third bedroom in his apartment, so I went to meet him. The place was in a gated community, the kind where the automatic gate is always open because it’s broken. But it was good enough, and though the guy himself seemed a little high-strung, his other roommate was cool. Best of all, he was ready for someone to move in immediately, so I gave him a deposit and moved in the same day.
​
That night, I started practicing juggling in my second-floor bedroom, so naturally, the dropping props made sounds that carried down to the first floor. The guy who’d rented to me started yelling and being totally psycho, so I stopped.
Then I took a shower, and when I got out, he walked into the bathroom behind me and screamed at me for leaving the shower curtain open, “It’ll mold if you don’t shut it!”
I hadn’t even been there twenty-four hours and already knew this wasn’t going to work, so I avoided him as much as I could and stayed in my room with the door locked whenever I was there. When the first of the month rolled back around, I was already packed and out of there.
​
The next place was a second-story apartment, and the residents were a mother and a son. She was a first-generation immigrant from South America, and he worked as a manager at a local pizza place. They needed to rent out one of the bedrooms to pay their bills, but since it was only a two-bedroom, she slept on a small bed in the dining room next to the kitchen. The only thing separating the two spaces was a cheap spring-loaded rod with a yellow, flowery shower curtain hanging from it. I asked if it wouldn’t be better for her to take the room while I used the dining room, but she assured me that she was very happy where she was. So, I moved into the bedroom.
​
Entertainment is a night owl’s game. You finish late, then drive home still buzzing with adrenaline. When you finally walk through the door, your body and mind are wide awake. My evenings typically began at midnight. I’d go to my room and practice for an hour, working out new juggling patterns, filling my head with visual pathways the way a musician might rehearse scales or chord progressions. Those hours, when the world was asleep, were the most productive of my day. No phone calls, no emails, nothing open, and no one asking for anything, just silence and space to study, read, write, or dive into self-improvement projects. It was a strange rhythm, but it worked for me, even if it collided with the lives of the people I was living with.
​
By two or three in the morning, hunger would kick in, and I’d wander into the kitchen to make myself dinner. I knew the lady of the house was trying to sleep just inches away, so I’d tiptoe in as quietly as I could, but she would always open the curtain and greet me pleasantly. I’d apologize for waking her, and she’d insist it was no bother, then wish me a good night. She was always so kind, but eventually I stopped making food late at night because I felt so bad about disturbing her. That meant long days of training and working, followed by going to bed without dinner. Or I’d get something on my way home, which cost money I didn’t have. So, I knew I needed to find something different. I told Jonathan about the dilemma, and he crafted a plan. The house where he had been staying was charging $350 per month for a bedroom. But they also had a small garden shed in the backyard. It wasn’t much, unfinished two-by-four construction, an eight-by-ten, eighty square foot, tool shed. With some work, though, it could be big enough for a bed. The homeowners said they would insulate it, install drywall on the inside, and run electricity so it would have basic power, all for just $275 a month. There would be no bathroom, kitchen, sink, or running water; I’d have to go inside whenever I needed to use the facilities. Still, I was excited about the opportunity. I’d be closer to Jonathan, and we’d be able to train. I told them that if they built it, I’d be happy to come. So the man of the house and his oldest son got to work, and a few weeks later, they said it was ready.
​
I moved again, this time into a garden tool shed. My fifth move in just eight months.
​
My new accommodations were small, but after the challenging roommate situations, it was nice to have my own space. On one wall, I placed my bed; on the other, I set two old-school footlockers. One held all my juggling equipment; the other acted as a dresser. I put a few cardboard boxes inside the dresser-style one to separate socks, shirts, and shorts. Then I sat on the bed and marveled that I’d managed to fit all my worldly possessions in just two footlockers. Each time I’d moved, I’d gotten rid of more of my treasures, favoring mobility over memories, but I’d still doggedly held onto a few items. Picking up my crisp-looking yearbooks, I debated, not for the first time, what to do with them. I had one from middle school and two from high school: one for the eleventh-grade year and the other for my partial year of twelfth-grade, the year I’d left early.
​
Picking up the eleventh-grade one, I cracked it open and started reading some of the messages people had written. As everyone knows, the number of signatures in your yearbook is directly related to how cool you are, so I’d run around trying to get as many as possible. But as I read them now, I realized I didn’t even know who some of the people were. Turning another page, I saw one from a girl I hadn’t known very well, but who had asked if she could sign my yearbook. When I handed her the yearbook, she put her phone number, a big heart, and a message encouraging me to call sometime. Right next to this message, unsurprisingly, was a message from my high school sweetheart, declaring that we’d be together forever. I smiled at that, because it was a sentiment we shared. We’d often talked about the life we wanted to build together and how we’d get married as soon as she was finished with college.
​
Seeing these messages in the yearbook shifted my attention to one of my other remaining treasures.
​
Having attended high school in the mid-nineties, I lived through the great age of note-passing. While my teachers taught, I would sit and pretend to take notes, while in reality, I’d be writing to my girlfriend. She’d be in her class doing the same, and between classes, we’d briefly meet to exchange them. She and I had written to each other this way for two years, five days a week, six classes a day. I’d saved every one of her letters in a box, stacked in the order they’d been received. Were it not for the one letter I’d left in a pocket and run through the washer, I’d have had a complete collection of every single note she’d ever given me. These letters felt important, like a play-by-play record of the love that had grown between us, and they’d survived the previous purges because I couldn’t imagine getting rid of them. I randomly pulled one of the leaves from the middle of the stack and read her now-dated message. It told of a disagreement she’d had with one of her stepbrothers, and how her stepdad had yelled at her, and how she couldn’t wait to see me for the few minutes we’d have after school before she got on the bus to go home.
​
It was sweet, but hardly the kind of thing I needed to save for all eternity. I pulled out and read a few more, and like the first, they spoke of things teenagers speak of, things that didn’t have the import today that they’d had back when I’d first read them. We were both out in the world now, trying to find our way, and these notes and these yearbooks were things from the past.
Of course, they meant something, but they were also quite heavy…
I sat torn over what to do with the last of my sentimental possessions. Then I remembered a quote I’d once read:
“The eagle can only soar so high because it packs so lightly.”
​
There’s my answer, I thought. Without giving myself time to think about it or change my mind, I dropped the yearbooks into the box of handwritten notes, picked up the whole thing, and walked out to one of the trash cans already set by the curb. Opening the lid, I placed the box of letters and yearbooks inside and covered them with a few pieces of trash to conceal them from curious eyes. As I walked away, I waited for the feelings to hit, the sensation that I was making a terrible mistake. But I didn’t feel any of that; instead, I felt lighter and more prepared for whatever lay ahead. That’s when I realized the truth: she and I were together, in love, and our connection strong. I didn’t need the letters themselves, and I never did; what mattered was the relationship, not the pieces of paper we’d passed back and forth to build it.
​
Then another quote came to mind: “The things you hold onto hold you down.”
Yes, and right now I can’t afford to hang onto anything if it slows me down.
​
One day, I thought, when this is over, if I’ve failed, I never want to wonder if I somehow sabotaged myself by not doing enough or giving up enough. If I fail, let it be because I wasn’t good enough, not because I didn’t sacrifice enough.
Chapter 41: The Work Is Working
We religiously attended the San Dieguito Manipulation Society’s weekly juggling club in Encinitas. For the last few meetings, everyone had been talking about the upcoming Lodi Juggling Festival. It was a smaller regional festival, but it still sounded awesome. Jonathan and I were as broke as ever, though, so we’d decided to pass on it.
However, as the festival drew near, we sat staring at empty calendars.
Jonathan tapped the empty date boxes with his pen. “You know,” he said, “we don’t really have anything booked for this weekend. Just our restaurants. If we did go, it wouldn’t hurt our bottom line.”
“And it never hurts to go to a juggling festival,” I added.
So the day before it started, we changed our minds and decided to go. The problem was that we had no idea where it was actually being held. We knew it was in Lodi, California, outside of Sacramento, but we didn’t have an address. We didn’t have anyone we could call for details either. Just the vague idea that it would be in a park somewhere.
Did we let that stop us? Heck no. The next morning, we loaded up and set out on the eight-hour drive to Lodi.
When we arrived, we were not greeted by a tiny little town. It wasn’t a megacity per se, but it was large enough that finding a juggling conference without an address was daunting. We drove all around, hoping to stumble upon some clue, but came up with nothing.
Hours passed, night fell, and we still hadn’t had any luck. So we stopped into a CVS hoping to flip through a local Thomas Brothers guide. But Thomas Brothers had vacuum-sealed all their city guides in plastic, so we couldn’t see the pages without buying a copy. It was smart business on their part, but we couldn’t justify paying twenty-five dollars for a book we’d only need once. “Screw it,” I thought, scoring the plastic with my thumbnail. I peeled off the plastic as quietly as I could, then we looked up the various parks. To our dismay, there were dozens of parks, and any one of them could have been the festival’s location. As we pored over the pages of our ill-be-opened guide, a friendly employee reminded us that the store would close in five minutes. Ugh, we started trying to memorize the various parks around the city, but then Jonathan spotted a copy machine.
​
Running over to the machine, he photocopied a dozen of the more relevant-looking pages, then we ran to checkout. Instead of paying twenty-five dollars for the booklet, we got out for around fifty-three cents. As we walked out of the store, they locked the door behind us, undoubtedly confused by the two guys who’d asked if they knew anything about a “juggling festival.” We continued driving around the city, visiting park after park and making our best guess as to which ones might be hosting a festival. But time and time again, we’d find empty playgrounds and empty parking lots.
We wondered if we’d sent ourselves on a fool’s errand. Had we driven eight hours for nothing?
Still, we pressed on, and eventually, around 11:30 pm, we saw the telltale light of juggling torches in the distance.
Pulling into the parking lot of Micke Grove Park, we saw a big metal shade structure, with dozens upon dozens of jugglers tossing and talking. Beside this was a grassy field full of fire jugglers.
We walked around and said hello to a few folks, but we were pretty beat, so we called it a night.
The evening was cold and crisp, but Jonathan decided to brave it and just cowboy camp in the bed of his truck. I set up my tent under some pines and went to bed. Despite my tiredness, I could not sleep; I was too anxious for sunrise and the juggling it’d bring.
* * *
In the morning, a glassy sheet of dew covered the grass, and the earth was squelching with moisture. But despite the cold and damp, things were already in full swing. Workshops, demonstrations, games, socializing, prop buying, and, of course, juggling. Festivals are like that, nonstop.
The first workshop I took was a three-ball intensive taught by David-David-David, who had just returned from Europe. There he’d learned about something he called “Flow.” He explained that flow is a state of mind, a trance-like state we enter through movement, a moving meditation, a concept I felt very attuned to. He also showed us how he’d begun isolating movements in juggling, breaking apart the usual rhythms and experimenting with loosening the body’s joints to achieve a more fluid, graceful movement. I loved what he’d shared, knowing intuitively that the style he described would become a central part of my own exploration of juggling.
After that workshop, I worked on numbers juggling until a gentleman walked up and asked if he could film.
I said, “Of course,” and he filmed for the next fifteen minutes, capturing a few nice runs of seven and eight balls. I might have forgotten all about it, but a few years later, I discovered the Jugglers Database online. Clips of these runs had been uploaded there, likely the first videos of my juggling ever online.
That night, we went to the show and saw some wonderful performers. The standout for me was the headliner, Tony Duncan. We’d seen him in juggling videos, but never in person, and his performance was exceptional. Not only did he juggle with his eyes closed, but he also started doing patterns with his eyes closed, even managing a respectable run of Mills Mess, a pattern in which the arms weave back and forth as if they are chasing each other. The crowd, of course, went nuts!
Impressive as that was, he’d saved the best for last; he swallowed a sword! I was deeply curious about sword swallowing and, unable to resist, I approached him after the show and asked how he learned. Tony, gracious and direct, offered a simple piece of advice: “Get a sword.”
No mystical secrets, just a straightforward starting point.
* * *
​
After the main show, there was a “renegade” show. The renegade show is an open forum where anyone can get up and perform. The standout of that show was the juggler who started his chainsaw and strapped the trigger down so that the blade was spinning at full speed. He then juggled it, but lost control and dropped it. The blade bit in when the saw landed on the stage, and the whole thing raced across the floor like a remote-controlled vehicle. Straight towards the front row it went, launching itself straight off the stage. Were it not for a few scraggly bushes that intercepted it mid-flight, it would have mauled people in the front row. That moment, exciting as it was, taught me a lot about chainsaws and safety. Danger bits can be exciting, but if there’s any real risk to the audience, it’s not worth it. A performer can choose how far they’re willing to push regarding their own safety, but they don’t get to make that choice for the audience. In that same show, another performer took an unperforated industrial roll of toilet paper, wrapped it back and forth and back and forth between two points, and then twisted the whole of it to make a sort of rope. Then he anchored the toilet paper by its ends and proceeded to slackline walk across it. I was amazed that the toilet paper could support his weight and even more impressed by the creativity. I loved this outside-the-box thinking side of performing. I realized that was one of the things I wanted to explore more on my own: creating cool, unusual acts and props.
The next morning, Jonathan and I were under the pavilion talking with Robert Nelson, the famous “Butterfly Man,” who, despite his rather aggressive stage persona, is one of the most gracious, intelligent, and kind people I’d ever met. He’s the kind of person who makes you feel as if you’ve known them all your life, even if you’ve only met them a few minutes before. We were talking about performing and the show the night before, and Robert was saying that one of his favorite acts was the one that had used a bunch of words with more than one meaning, and how he’d been so impressed by their use of language. In the middle of this, Dave Finnegan, the author of The Complete Juggler—a foundational book in the juggling world, walked up to our little circle and asked, “Hey Robert, what cha’yall talking about?”
Robert seemed to grow in size; his face grew stormy, then, in a booming voice that carried across the whole convention area, “We were just talking about what a FUCKING ASSHOLE YOU ARE!!!”
My jaw dropped; Dave’s done so much for the world of juggling that it cannot be quantified, and he’s also one of the nicest people you could ever meet; I was shocked by Robert’s behavior.
But Dave’s head rolled back, and he laughed heartily. Then he shook his head and said, “Oh, Robert,” as he walked away.
Robert stared daggers into Dave’s back as he went, holding the character a little longer. Then, he smiled despite himself.
I don’t know the actual dynamics of their relationship, but it was clear to me that this was their way of playing. Despite the harsh words, the impression I got was one of friendship and mutual respect.
I’d never thought about it until that moment, but Dave was the proverbial good cop of juggling while Robert was the bad. I count it among my career highlights to have been there with the two of them that day.
After that, “The Games” were announced. This is a friendly time of competition where all attendees are welcome to participate. It’s all in good fun, but it’s also quite competitive. I decided to participate and did relatively well in a few, but didn’t win. Then they had the diabolo high toss competition, and I threw mine higher than everyone else, so I won! After that, to my great shock, I won two more of the games. I knew I’d improved, but I never imagined I’d have a chance of winning anything.
The work is working, I’m getting better, and I vowed to train even harder.
* * *
As soon as the convention ended, we headed west for San Francisco.
On a previous visit to Pier 39, I’d seen a knife and sword shop, and figured it was my best bet for finding a sword to start practicing sword swallowing.
When we got there, I explained my plan, and the salesman raised a skeptical eyebrow but agreed to sell me a sword anyway.
As he handed me my receipt, he said, “You be careful now.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Walking out of the shop, I was officially on the path to becoming a sword swallower. It still seemed impossible, but at least now, I had the tools to give it a shot.
Chapter 42: The Big Break
I closed the door of my little shed-house, then walked barefoot across the backyard to enter the main house. Once inside, I made a bowl of cereal. Mid-bite of Raisin Bran, Jonathan emerged from his bedroom down the hallway. As he passed the table, he dropped a newspaper clipping in front of me and said, “What do you think of this?”
Seeking actors, caricature artists, jugglers, puppetry artists, magicians, and more. Open call audition notice for future cast members of LEGOLAND California Theme Park.
And then below that, in bold letters:
We will not be auditioning clowns. No clowns!
I laughed out loud, and Jonathan laughed with me.
“The clown part?!” he asked.
“Yeah!”
“That was my favorite part, too! So what do you think?”
“I think we should go for it.”
“I do too. It says there are audition spots on Saturday and Sunday, but we’ve got gigs both days.”
“If we show up early, and I mean like 90 minutes before it even starts, maybe we can be in and out quick enough to still make our other gigs?” I suggested.
“Worth a try,” Jonathan agreed.
Below the main text, there were instructions.
Bring with you:
– Biography
– eight-by-ten Headshot
– A five-minute piece to show your talent
Reading my mind, Jonathan said, “Yeah, we’ve got some work to do.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. We’d been so focused on practicing and making enough money to survive, we’d never thought to write a bio or get professional headshots. Nor did we have a five-minute audition piece ready.
“We’ve got four and a half days to get it done,” Jonathan muttered before taking a bite of cereal.
“How are we gonna do the headshot? There’s no time to get studio shots done, and I don’t have the money anyway.”
Through a half-chewed bite of cereal, Jonathan said, “Yeah, I got an idea.” He stood and walked back to his room, quickly returning holding one of the familiar 35mm red and grey-beige Marlboro cameras we’d taken to Scotland.
“We’ll get a roll of black and white film and shoot it with this.”
“Is that going to be professional enough?”
“It’ll be more professional than the ones we have now.”
We both laughed because anything would be more professional than the nothing we had now.
“What about costume?” I asked, “Do we just wear our happy face pants?”
“We could,” Jonathan mused, “But I think we should get something more professional, black slacks, matching shirts, like the teams who compete in the championships, maybe something shiny.”
“Gotta spend money to make money,” I said wryly.
“Spend yourself rich!” Jonathan declared, and we laughed again.
“Okay, let’s go costume shopping, get film, then go to the youth center to work on the five-minute act and take pictures.”
“I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” Jonathan said.
“Break!” I said, jumping to my feet with exaggerated urgency.
We were ready to attack the day.
* * *
We carpooled to what we jokingly called the pimp store, a shop specializing in colorful suits and garish shoes in every imaginable color. I don’t think it was actually a “pimp store,” that’s just what we called it. And I don’t think they thought of themselves as a costume shop, but they carried clothes flamboyant enough to pass as costuming.
We wanted to look polished, like a real team. We tried on a bunch of different looks. I remembered from my high school yearbook photoshoot that the company had recommended wearing darker colors to look more professional, so I pushed for dark shirts, hoping it’d help. We ultimately went with matching black slacks and dark burgundy button-downs.
From there, it was straight to the church youth center. We put on our new outfits and cleared a wall for shooting. We quickly realized we couldn’t be both in front of the lens and behind it at the same time, so we used the camera’s timer. We’d press the shutter, sprint into place, try to look natural, wait for the click, then go back and do it again. It was entirely amateur; we had no lighting, no gear, and no idea if we were getting anything. But we kept at it, hoping something would turn out.
After we’d burned through the roll, we drove to a nearby drugstore and paid extra for one-hour film developing. Then we sat in the parking lot and waited.
An hour later, we were flipping through the photos. Half were crooked or out of focus, but there was one. And we only needed one that could pass as a headshot. We asked the clerk to print an eight-by-ten, and they told us to find the negative and load it into the store’s printer. We’d never done that before, so they had to come out and help us get it set up.
“How much are eight-by-tens? I asked.
“Ten dollars each,” they said.
“Oh, okay,” I said cheerfully, pretending that the price didn’t pain my wallet.
“There you go, it’s all set, just type in the number of copies you need and press the green button. Then you’ll pay at the register.”
The clerk walked off, and Jonathan and I looked at each other.
“Well, we only need one, right?” Jonathan said.
“Technically, yes, but if something happens to it or heaven forbid they want another one, we’ll be kicking ourselves if we don’t get at least two.”
“Okay, two it is,” Jonathan agreed.
Once they were printed, we picked them up for a look.
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Hands down, it was the best picture we had of us. With headshots secured, one of the three requirements for the audition was sorted.
Next, we sat down to write our bio. Neither of us had ever written one before, but in high school, I’d taken a special three-day course on résumé writing. It’d taught me little tricks like using strong action words, highlighting strengths, and keeping it simple. So I took over the task, making us look as professional as I could.
Across the top, I wrote, “Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1998: Rootberry.”
We had been there, and it sounded good as long as I didn’t mention that we’d survived by twisting balloons. Then, I filled in the rest with a blend of hopeful exaggeration and vague accomplishments until it read well enough. Neither of us had a computer, so I visited my girlfriend and used her mom’s computer to type it up. Like the headshot, I printed two copies, which gave us two “promo kits.”
With the time we had left, we put together the tightest five-minute act we could. We focused on the material we were most comfortable with, like our giant beanbag act, some club passing, and the diabolo bit we’d been working on. Our strategy was to hit ‘em with something, then change it up quickly, making sure they never had time to get bored.
In a snap, it was Friday, and we dashed off to our evening restaurant gigs to twist balloons. But for once, I wasn’t thinking about tips or tables. All I could think about was that in the morning, we’d get our shot.
I didn’t feel ready, but we were going anyway.
* * *
​
Arriving at the audition’s address, we found the parking lots filled to overflowing. We couldn’t believe it; every entertainer in Southern California had come, and hundreds of people crowded about. Scattered throughout this sea of heads were bright flashes of red, blue, and yellow-wigged individuals.
Despite the ad’s clear instructions, there were clowns. Like, a lot of clowns!
Jonathan shook his head. “Didn’t they read the ad?”
“Guess not,” I laughed, “Good thing we’re jugglers.”
“Yeah, whoever thought that would be a step up.”
We both laughed, then started unloading the gear.
Walking up to the place, we saw a line wrapped around the building. Luckily, Jonathan, in his infinite wisdom, had called ahead to reserve our audition slots. We explained this to one of the line managers, who led us straight to the front to sign in. Then we were told to wait.
Sean McKinney and Jeff King from juggling club suddenly appeared and said hello. They were both light-years better than us. A fact made all the clearer by Jeff’s chainsaw.
“You’re gonna juggle that?” I asked.
“Yeah, on a rolla-bola. It should get their attention.”
“Yes, I think it will,” I answered.
Then I saw a guy pulling a red wagon with a big green ball perched in it and recognized Roger the Juggler, the street performer I’d juggled fire with on the beach that day.
I pointed him out to Jonathan and said, “That’s Roger, he’s really good too!”
Jonathan just nodded his head, then shrugged, “We’ll just do our thing.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s all we can do.”
In a funny way, seeing these guys removed a lot of the stress; they were going to crush us, and we had no chance of competing with them, so there was no reason to be stressed. Let’s just go have fun.
A lady walked out and started calling names, “Jonathan and Bill, Roo-berry?”
We stood up, and Jonathan corrected her, “It’s Rootberry.”
“Ah, Rootberry, right this way.”
We entered a medium-sized theater and saw a clown on stage performing a dance bit with a mop. In the front row, a series of folding tables was arranged, a panel of judges seated behind them. Off to audience left, there was a row of chairs for performers to queue in.
Our handler pointed to these chairs and indicated we should be seated.
The clown on stage was making big, wild gestures, dramatically filling the space. I looked at the judges and saw they were all stone-faced, clearly not enjoying the performance. One even flipped through notes, making use of the time.
When the clown was finished, the judges thanked him.
The clown stood there stubbornly, then asked in their normal human voice, “So what did you think? Did you like it?”
One of the judges coughed gently, then said, “Thank you, Mr.” They glanced at the sheet to double-check the name, “Bonkers. If you’re a fit for us, we’ll call you. Have a good day.”
The clown stood his ground, turning his palms forward and raising his shoulders slightly. I got the feeling he’d expected to be hired on the spot.
The judges busied themselves with their notes until the clown gave up and gathered his things, all the while muttering under his breath. Once he’d packed up, he walked past us waiting auditioners, and said, “Good luck.”
But his tone made it clear he didn’t actually want us to do well.
Once he was out, the judges called the next performer.
A woman rose and delivered a theater monologue.
Another sang.
And I can’t remember what the third did, because we were up next.
“Team BerryRoot?”
“That’s Rootberry,” Jonathan corrected.
“Ahh, Root-Berry, what will you be doing for us today?”
“We do a juggling act,” Jonathan answered.
“And where do you do this juggling act?”
“We do events locally, and we just returned from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where we performed for a month.”
“The Fringe? Really, how did you like it? I’ve always wanted to go there.” The judge leaned forward in his chair, genuinely interested and smiling.
“It was great,” Jonathan said, “We performed on the Royal Mile, and even earned enough to make a trip over to Ireland for the last week.”
“Fantastic, well, I’m excited to see it. Do you need anything from us?”
“Yeah, can we play this CD?”
“Sure,” the judge motioned Jonathan over and loaded it up, “When should I play it?”
“Just give us a moment to set up, and we’ll be ready to go.”
“Yes, of course, take your time,” said the judge sincerely.
We placed our juggling clubs near the back of the stage, the diabolos near the front of the stage, and hefted the giant beanbags since we’d be starting with those in hand.
“All set,” Jonathan announced.
The judge gave a thumbs up, then hit play.
The Charlie Brown theme song, “Linus and Lucy,” by Vince Guaraldi, came on, and we started. I spun one of the bags on my finger like a giant basketball, while Jonathan came in swinging the other two wildly about. This transitioned into some juggling between us, but then Jonathan made a “mistake,” and one of the bags crashed to the floor. We stood there pretending to be confused for a moment, then I pelted Jonathan with my extra beanbag. He staggered exaggeratedly, while I ran up to grab the bag he’d dropped. He recovered enough to pick up the remaining bag from the ground, but by then I’d snuck up behind him like a scene out of the Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner cartoon and swung both of mine to “squish him between.” The bags made a loud smack, and he staggered again. This made the judges laugh. We returned to the juggling, and after rolling through a few different patterns to demonstrate actual skill, I gathered all three bags while Jonathan dropped to one knee and styled towards me as if to say, “Clap for him.”
And they did, the judges clapped! Something they hadn’t done for any of the other auditioners.
I took a breath to calm my nerves and switched to juggling clubs. We did some passing and had a few drops, but nothing harmful to the act. Then we did our diabolo act, tossing the spinning top back and forth between us, taking turns doing tricks, until we built to the most important moment of all. In diabolo, there’s a trick called a whip. In this trick, you pop the top off its string, throw it in the air, then fling the string through the air, snagging the top an instant before it hits the ground. It’s a seemingly impossible move, like catching a fly with a pair of chopsticks. Individually, we could only hit it about 70% of the time. But here’s where the genius of our finale kicked in, for the final move, Jonathan threw the top up, and we both whipped at it at the same time!
If both of us missed it, it’d slam to the stage, and we could play it off comically, like, “Whoa, what happened?”
Or, if only one of us got it, we could play it like, “Neiner neiner, I got it, and you didn’t!”
But if both of us got it, the top would suddenly become suspended between us, caught in an unexpected and seemingly impossible tug of war, and we’d both take a bow.
Jonathan entered this finale sequence, and as he prepared to throw, I saw him give a little shrug. “Here goes nothing,” I imagined him saying. He threw the top up, and we both swung for it. Whoosh! Both of the sets of strings flew true, and suddenly the top floated magically between us!
The judges actually whooped and clapped, genuinely enjoying the performance.
We bowed, big smiles on our faces, then gestured for them to stop the music.
“That was great,” said the judge who’d been talking with us.
“Thank you, and thank you for having us,” Jonathan answered.
“I only have one more question,” The judge said, pointing at me, “Does he ever talk?”
“Sure, he does, hey Bill, say hi to the people.”
I stepped forward and said, “Hello.”
The judge smiled encouragingly, waiting for me to say more. But I didn’t, and silence fell over the room.
Sensing the tension, Jonathan interjected, “See, he talks.”
The judge laughed, “So you’re kind of a juggling Penn & Teller act, got it,” he said, making a note in his booklet.
* * *
We ran to our cars, hoping not to be late for our gigs, and joking all the way about how that had been a good experience, and that it was too bad we weren’t gonna get it.
Then we shouted our final, “See you laters,” and tore out of there.
* * *
The following Tuesday, the phone rang while Jonathan and I were on a lunch break from training.
He answered, “Hello.”
“Yes, this is Jonathan.”
“Well, hello, Robert from Legoland.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re interested.”
“How many shows? Would this be like a weekend thing?”
“Five days a week huh, and six, twenty-minute shows per day.”
When he said this, my eyes bulged. Six shows a day? This was the dream. We’d be real full-time jugglers.
“Fifteen dollars an hour? Plus benefits, medical, dental, vacation, and stock option, I see.”
I raised both hands in silent celebration, mouthing “Yes, yes!” Across the table.
“Well, I’d have to talk to my teammate, but it definitely sounds interesting.”
Then I heard him say, “Is the fifteen dollars negotiable? When he and I talked last, we’d been thinking twenty-two dollars an hour.”
I stared at him, silent thoughts exploding, WHAT! Don’t negotiate, tell him yes! We’ll take it!
Jonathan held up a hand to calm me.
“Ah, the highest they’ll go is eighteen dollars? I see,” he said, sounding genuinely disappointed. I was about to come out of my skin. Say YES! I screamed internally.
“Well, like I said, I have to double-check with my teammate, but if I were to guess, with all the benefits and everything, we’re probably in. When do you need to know by?”
“Three days? Okay, we’ll be in touch.”
Jonathan hung up the phone, and we both exploded, jumping up and down like kids at Christmas. This was it. Everything we’d been working for. Everything we’d been training for. This was the beginning of the dream. We were going to be professional jugglers.
Once we calmed down, I made him recount the whole conversation, every detail. And he did, until I stopped him at the part about negotiating.
“Dude, why were you pushing back? What if we’d lost the whole thing!”
Jonathan grabbed his little pocket calculator.
“Forty hours per week times fifty-two weeks is 2,080 hours. Multiply that by fifteen dollars, and that’s $31,200 per year. But if we’re making eighteen dollars per hour, it’s $37,440. That’s over twelve thousand dollars more between the two of us, per year.”
Dang. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t argue with the math.
“That… was totally worth it!” I shouted.
Jonathan laughed. “In life, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”
I couldn’t help myself, I jumped up and started doing a little victory dance, singing:
🎵 Full-time jugglers, livin’ the dream. Stock option, ben’ies, and a medical team. Eighteen dollars, oh what a sight, this is what we came for, this is the life! 🎵
Jonathan interrupted, “Don’t forget, I still have to talk to my teammate and get the okay before I can accept.”
I paused, stared at him, and then sang twice as loudly:
🎵 No more ramen, no more stress! 🎵
And we, of course, laughed.
* * *
After the high had worn off, we sat down and got serious. We knew landing the gig was only the first step; keeping it was what mattered. We made a checklist of what we needed to do to give ourselves the best shot.
1: Ramp up training and rehearsals.
2: Start running the full juggling act until it is show-ready.
3: Replace any tired or beat-up props.
Next, we considered the logistics of fulfilling a five-day-per-week contract. We lived in Escondido, so it was a thirty-five to forty-minute drive to Legoland.
Jonathan typed some numbers on the calculator.
“One-way commute is 35–40 minutes. Let’s average that to 37.5 minutes one way. Round-trip is 37.5 × 2 = 75 minutes per day, or 1.25 hours per day. Then our weekly and monthly totals would be, five days per week = 1.25 × 5 = 6.25 hours per week. Times the four weeks in a month = 6.25 × 4 = 25 hours per month.”
Twenty-five hours per month just sitting behind the wheel. A commute that would be both boring and inefficient, two sins we avoided at all costs.
Then, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, Jonathan said, “We’ll have to move.”
My thoughts began to race; if we did move, it’d be my sixth move in just one year, and the homeowners had just built their shed into a little bedroom for me, which was so nice. But, at the same time, the lady of the house was a light sleeper, and regularly, when I was in the kitchen making a box of mac and cheese at 2:00 am, she’d come out and give me withering looks. They had four sons of their own, three still living at home, so we’d joined an already full house. Accommodating as they’d been, it wasn’t purely out of niceness; they had us there because they needed the money, and I’d often felt that this arrangement was strained. So, maybe our leaving would be for the best.
Jonathan continued, “Tonight is juggle club in Encinitas. I have to run some errands in that area anyway, so I’ll leave early and see if we can find us an apartment.”
I nodded, “Sounds good.”
* * *
When I saw Jonathan at club later that night, he said, “I got us a place, $675 a month. It’s less than a mile from the beach, two blocks from the skatepark where Tony Hawk rides, and just down the road from here.”
“Dude, that’s awesome. Can we go see it after club?”
“The office will be closed, but I can show you the building. It will still be a fifteen-minute drive to Legoland, but I figured the other plusses balance that out.”
“It sounds great, studio or one bedroom?”
“They only had a one-bedroom, so I figured we could share.”
“Naw, you take the bedroom; I’ll set up in the living room; I stay up the latest anyway. Do we need to make a deposit to lock it in?”
“No, I already paid it; it’s a done deal; we move in February 1, 1999, two days from now.”
Oh wow, that’s fast, I thought, but it was also the exact way we operated. If something seemed like a good idea, we did it, no hesitation, consequences be damned, ‘cuz this dream ain’t gonna chase itself.
“Alright,” I said, “how do we tell them?”
* * *
The “we’re moving out” conversation didn’t happen until the day of our move, and it went about how I expected. The first words out of our landlady’s mouth were, “Oh, great, thanks for the notice. I was counting on that money, but we were nice and didn’t ask for a deposit, so now you can do something like this. I knew I couldn’t trust you guys!”
I felt bad, but after living there for those few months, I knew there was nothing we could have done to alleviate it. Her love languages were anger, guilt trips, and belittling. So even if we had given more notice, it would only have meant being around her longer while she was pissed.
I exited the house, but could still hear her screaming inside. I felt bad for Jonathan. His room was in the house, so from day one, he’d been dealing with the worst of her episodes. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was 11:07 am, and I set a goal to roll out of the driveway at noon. Back in my little shed, I executed the familiar ‘moving protocol’ and organized everything into its proper place. Then, with each trip to my vehicle, I ran, pretending it was a military operation rather than a leisurely activity.
Jonathan and I finished loading up almost simultaneously and jumped into our cars. I looked at my watch; it was 12:15 on the nose. I’d packed up my entire life in just sixty-eight minutes.
Jonathan rolled down his window and yelled, “See you at the new place,” then he pulled out of the driveway.
I pulled out behind him, then drove close to the curbside trash can to throw away one last bag of trash. As I did, I remembered that this was the very same can I’d used only weeks before to dispose of my yearbooks and my high school sweetheart’s love letters. The Lego contract had happened so fast, I hadn’t had the chance to think about the fact that this move would make the drive to see my girlfriend an hour each way. We’d barely been able to make time to see each other as it was, and my anxiety rose. But then, just as quickly, it was soothed by thoughts of our many affirmations. We were forever, we’d both said it a thousand times, so I didn’t need to worry. And besides, she would be starting college in Minnesota soon, so she’d be far away, too. And we’ll get through it, all of it, and anything else life can throw at us, because this is the kind of love that lasts forever.
I continued down the road, and a glance in the rear-view mirror revealed the house with the little shed in its backyard growing smaller as it faded behind me.
Dream chasing costs a lot. But if you’re willing to give it everything, the journey continues.
Chapter 43: A New Beginning
On February 20, 1999, we pulled into the employee parking lot for our first day at Legoland. The asphalt was still coal-black, and the paint on the directional arrows unscuffed. Past the gate, a path led to modern buildings in clean tan and red, and the smell of fresh mulch and wet concrete hung in the air. Then, rounding a corner, we saw it: the new park, bright in the primary colors of a zillion Lego bricks built into lifesized cars, animals, dinosaurs, and cityscapes. It was incredible. The landscaping was just settling in, with young trees staked upright, and flowers carefully planted in geometric rows. Everywhere had that new-park smell: everything fresh, everything waiting.
We were directed to human resources, ushered through orientation and paperwork, given a tour of the park, met management, and introduced to some of the other atmosphere entertainers. Roger, the juggler, was there, and we shook hands warmly. I asked if Jeff or Sean had been hired, but he hadn’t seen or heard anything about them.
Curious, I turned to our human resources handler. “Hey, quick question—did Jeff or Sean make the cut? We auditioned with them.”
She scanned her clipboard, running a finger down the neat columns of names, before looking up with a polite, professional smile. “No, sorry. Neither of them are on my list.”
Jonathan and I exchanged a look of pure shock. As soon as the handler stepped away to talk to help someone else, we huddled up.
“Are you kidding me?” I whispered. “How did we get in when they are so much better than us?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan shrugged. “Maybe the casting directors thought we were just a better fit for the vibe? It is a kids’ theme park, after all. We’re kind of fun and playful.”
“True,” I agreed, winding down from the surprise. “Jeff is super skilled, but they might not have liked that he brought out a literal chainsaw at a Lego audition. And even though Sean is a former world champion and mind-blowingly talented, maybe they just saw what we were doing and thought it fit the brand?”
We’d probably never know for sure, but we took it as a lesson anyway. The prize doesn't always go to the most technically skilled person in the room, because you never really know what the person in charge is looking for. All you can do is show up and give it your best shot. Either way, we didn't have long to dwell on our luck, because we were up next for a costume fitting.
At first, the costumers showed us sketches of blocky, Lego-inspired construction-worker characters, and we braced for the worst. But then they revealed our uniforms: bright red jean pants, blue long-sleeve shirts, yellow safety vests, and white hard hats. We squeezed into the snug outfits and tested their range of motion. Doing a deep squat, my pants got so tight I worried the butt seam would blow out. Still, we kept our complaints to a minimum. If they wanted us to look like the juggling Village People, well, that was part of the trade-off. By joining the Lego team, we’d relinquished some creative control. But the stability we were gaining felt worth it.
During the tour, we were assigned lockers in the Magic Green Room, one of several performer hubs scattered throughout the park. Most performers, we were told, would stay in one area, but since we were a roving pop-up act, we’d be free to work from any green room. No tech support, no microphones, no music, no stage, just the two of us and our props. Street-mosphere-style. I thought back to our poor street-performing experiences in Edinburgh and worried whether we’d be able to hold a crowd.
Lucky for us, the park had planned a month-long soft opening. Restaurants opened, cashiers practiced with phantom guests, and we were encouraged to run our sets as if the park were already live, which gave us time to figure things out.
* * *
This new routine found us clocking in at 9:00 am each morning, then we’d warm up in the Magic Green Room, get into costume, and head out into the park. This first set was always by the entrance, performing for guests as they entered through the gates. After that, we’d return to the green room, and when the time was right, head to our next location: Water Works at 11:00 am, followed by Fun Town at noon, and Castle Hill after lunch. Then we’d round out the afternoon with two more shows at 3:30 pm and 5:00 pm.
At first, we tried to put on proper shows: build a crowd, create tension, and finish with a bang. But we quickly learned that Legoland guests weren’t there to see us; they wanted to see the park. So we adapted. Instead of full shows, we created short, high-impact performance vignettes, most of which were only two to three minutes long, featuring fast-paced juggling, variety bits, and quick audience interactions. No pressure, no big commitment, just a moment of entertainment before they moved on.
One day, while out on one of these sets, a kid took an interest in my juggling.
“Yo man, dat’s tight!” he said.
“Why, thank you, young sir. Have you ever seen a juggler before?”
“Naw man, I play ball, but not juggulin.”
“Well, let me show you some tricks.” With that, I busted out some of my favorite sequences, juggling over my head, behind the back, under the legs, turning every which way, then ending with a high throw and a pirouette.
“Naw way!” he exclaimed. “How you get so guud! Dat’ is tight!”
“Well, I’ll tell you the secret: you gotta practice hard, eat your Wheaties, and never give up.”
His eyes grew very wide, and the smile dropped from his face. He looked at me seriously, then he looked away, then he looked at me again as if waiting for me to say something else, then he tilted his head back and shouted to the sky, “WHAT? What you say?”
Thinking he’d misunderstood, I said it again, “Yeah, practice hard, eat your Wheaties, and never give up.”
His eyes bulged from his head, “WHHHAT!!! WHAT! You eat THIS!?!” As he shouted this, he pointed at his own crotch dramatically.
Suddenly realizing he was too young to have any idea what “Wheaties” were, I interjected. “No, no, W-H-E-A-T-I-E-S, it’s a kind of cereal that’s good for you.”
Still wide-eyed, he held his hands up in front of himself and started backing away, “Whatever man, yu be yu, but that’s sick!”
Realizing he wouldn’t understand, I broke off the interaction, “Thank you for watching the juggling, and I hope you have a great rest of your day here at Legoland California.
I returned to the green room, thankful no one else had overheard this awkward exchange. Lesson learned, I’ll never again suggest “Wheaties” as part of a complete practice regimen.
* * *
​
Once we got the hang of the schedule, I started using the breaks between sets as additional training periods, with the long lunchtime break becoming the main window for practice. In addition to our six twenty-minute shows each day, I did at least two additional hours of juggling each day. This regimen, repeated five days per week for a year, would result in roughly 960 hours of juggling.
I didn’t just juggle anymore; I trained like an athlete. Every session began with the following warm-up, and I didn’t allow myself to move on until I hit all three:
•200 catches of 6-ball fountain
•200 catches of 6-ball half-shower
•200 catches of 6-ball wimpy
Then, and only then, did I begin the “real” practice.
I didn’t have to do this extra practice, of course; we had enough baseline skill to do the job. But I didn’t want this contract to be the end of our journey; I wanted it to be the beginning. If practice got us here, maybe practice would get us to the next level, too.
Chapter 44: The Show Must Go On
About a year into our contract at Legoland, the park installed a temporary stage for pop-up performances, product launches, and special event promotions. The side effect of this construction was that, whenever no special events were scheduled, the large stage sat idle. Recognizing an opportunity, management asked if we’d like to mix up our street-mosphere sets and do three of our six daily performances on the stage.
Knowing our ultimate goal was to perform a full hour-long show, we jumped at the chance. And the following week, these new shows were added to our schedule.
This schedule placed us in the “Fun Town” green room for half the day, which was an energetic shift from the manicured cast of the Magic Green Room, where we’d usually take our breaks.
Fun Town, by contrast, belonged to the slapstick, high-energy acrobats of the fire show. The vibe here was more high school locker room meets suck-it-up-buttercup. They’d return sweaty, soaked, and panting with exertion, then do calisthenics, stretch, or lounge in various stages of undress.
Our shows were scheduled in the gaps between theirs, so whenever they walked in, it was our cue to mic up, head out, and bust a show.
* * *
One day, as we were preparing for our first show of the day, the Fun Town Green Room door flew open, and the one girl from the fire show ran in and said, “Quick, I want to show you something before the guys get here.”
Sensing the urgency, we jumped up and followed her into an adjoining room where the costumes were stored. As we walked in, she was already unbuttoning her costume. “I want to show you my new tattoo. But I don’t want the guys to know about it.” With that, she pulled her pants and panties down, revealing a large star inked across her mound of Venus. Having an assortment of tattoos myself and recognizing the invitation as being related to the tattoo only, I bent over to take a closer look.
“Sorry, I’m stubbly,” she said self-consciously, “until it’s fully healed, I don’t want to shave.”
“No worries,” I said, still looking. The star was an outline, which was a wise choice. If it had been filled in with color, it might have gotten blobby over time and been less delicate. The lower two points of the star curled under, disappearing into the creases of her thigh gap.
“The lines are very clean,” I commented. “There are no blowouts, and it looks like it’s healing well. It’s a really nice piece.”
“Thank you,” she said, seeming relieved, “I love it.”
​
Then she pulled her pants up just as the first of the other performers walked in.
With all the cast members returning, we knew it was time to go to our stage. Once clear of the green room, Jonathan and I looked at each other as if to say, Can you believe that just happened? But we restrained ourselves from commenting until we’d gone around the building and were well out of earshot. We passed through a gate and were just about to comment on this unexpected hoo-hah sighting when a guy in the distinct all-black uniform of a park audio technician ran up and said, “Your microphones are on!”
“Can’t be,” I said, “listen, TEST, TEST,” I repeated loudly enough that we’d have been able to hear it coming from our stage if we'd been left unmuted.
“No,” the technician corrected, “Not from your venue; they’ve got you muted; it’s from the kids’ corner building; your microphones must be on the same channel.”
Looking past our venue, I saw the kids’ corner, the area where the littlest kids and their parents went to participate in activities and escape the worst of the day’s heat.
Jonathan and I reached back and manually muted our microphone packs, then thanked the tech for being proactive. As the tech walked away, we tried to recall every word we’d said since we’d put on our microphones. We couldn’t remember saying anything bad, but had the tech not stopped us when he did, who knows what we’d have said next? After all, it’s not every day someone asks you to evaluate their tattooed hoo-hah.
We went and did the show, and I thought for sure the day was done delivering surprises, but then just five minutes before we were scheduled to perform our second show of the day, I got a call from my girlfriend.
I could tell by her tone that something was wrong. But she was evasive and wouldn’t tell me what it was.
Finally, I said, “I have to go on in a minute. Can this wait?”
That’s when she said it.
“I’ve met someone.”
“What do you mean, you’ve met someone?” I asked.
“I’ve met someone who is special to me.”
“Who?”
“Someone here in Minnesota. We have some of the same classes. We started studying together, and I don’t know…”
“Wait, what do you mean you don’t know? Don’t know what?”
She started to cry. Then she said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“If you’re starting to catch the feels,” I said, “then you need to stop hanging out with him.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But it’s too late.”
Something in me started to panic. “Too late for what? Have you kissed him?”
She broke down into a full sob.
And then, I felt it. That tearing in the center of my chest, “Oh my god,” I said, “you slept with him, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer. Just kept crying.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked. “And where are you right now?”
Through tears, she said, “I’m on a road trip.”
“Road trip? You didn’t tell me you were going on a road trip. To where? Are you with him right now?”
Her crying stopped. And then, in a voice that was firm, emotionless, and detached, she said, “I’m going to meet his parents.”
It was like a volcano inside me, pressure building with nowhere to go. Not anger. Just the most profound, overwhelming sense of hurt and betrayal I had ever felt.
This was the person who said she loved me. Who said we were forever, that we would make it through anything, together.
All I could manage was, “No.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”
“Wait, no! I don’t want you to go. Why are you doing this?”
But the line was already dead. She’d hung up.
I wish I could say I was ok, but I wasn’t.
And now I have to go out on stage and pretend everything is ok, because the show must go on.
To the audience, our show probably looked no different than any other day. But when I picked up the five balls, something inside me snapped. The part of me that cared about playing it safe was gone. I ran through every trick I knew, smooth and sharp, not missing a beat. Which, all by itself, would have been a solid routine, but I didn’t stop there. I kept pushing. I threw in moves I almost never hit, even in practice. And one by one, impossibly, they landed.
My mind and heart emptied out, leaving only muscle memory behind. I hurled myself into harder and harder tricks, daring the universe to mess with me. Then I went for the one trick I’d never trusted: the five-up pirouette. All five balls launched skyward as I spun underneath. I came around just in time to see them collide and come crashing down in chaos, scattering across the stage.
I froze in place, arms raised like I’d meant it, like it was all part of the plan. And the crowd roared their approval, never knowing they’d just watched the most reckless, unguarded performance of my life. I gave them everything, and nothing was left.
That night, the shock of it caught up with me.
A migraine hit so hard I threw up. And nothing could stop my racing mind. I kept asking if I’d brought this on myself. Had my pursuit of this dream driven her away?
Every time we’d spoken, I talked about juggling, personal bests, new routines, and technical details that were certainly boring to a non-juggler.
And when we’d first gotten Legoland, I’d told her I could only see her once a week, not because I didn’t love her, but because between work, training, and the hour-long drive each way from Encinitas to her house in Valley Center, I just didn’t have more to give. Or maybe I did, but chose not to, because I put the dream first.
So who could blame her? She went off to college in Minnesota. And she was thinking about building a life. A family. A future. And she’d found someone there, someone who was getting a degree, someone more…reasonable.
Not a guy who’s trying to build a career as a juggler.
She’d done what was right for her, and I understood that, but I was still devastated.
Unable to help myself, unable to let go, I called her repeatedly. Then, I messaged her. And when I did get her on the phone, I begged, pleaded, and cried. I offered everything I had to offer, and more, anything to fix it. Until all the self-respect I once had was drained out of me.
She listened, and she cried with me, but it didn’t matter; her path was chosen.
Then she said, “Goodbye.” As the phone clicked, I knew that was it, that we’d never speak again, and my heart shattered.
I sat alone in the apartment, and asked what I’d already asked so many times before: Is this what dreams cost? And if so, what more will it take? How many more sacrifices must I make? And when will it be too much?
It already felt like too much…
I’d never been a drinker; I don’t even like beer. But I need something to take the edge off it all. I can’t feel this much all at once.
I went to the store and saw a twelve-pack of Smirnoff Ice. It looked sweet and harmless, like a wine cooler. I bought it.
Back at the apartment, I cracked one open. Then another.
Jonathan was out on a date, some girl he’d just met, and that stung. Not because I wasn’t happy for him, I was, but because everything hurt.
Everything.
As I sat, I remembered the first time I ever tried alcohol at a high school party. I’d downed a wine cooler and asked a girl doing shots how I’d know when I was drunk. She looked at me, swallowed, and said, “Imagine asking out the hottest girl you’ve ever seen, and she shoots you down. Now drink until it doesn’t hurt, and you don’t care. That’s when you’re drunk.”
So I drank, and searched for that place where it wouldn’t hurt, and I wouldn’t care.
* * *
Later that night, Jonathan came home and realized he’d forgotten his house key. He knocked. No answer. But my car was in the spot, so he knew I was home.
He knocked louder. Still nothing.
He tried the window. It was unlocked. He slid it open and climbed inside.
He found me passed out in bed, a few empty bottles close by.
He called my name. Nothing.
He went to the bathroom to pee and noticed more bottles. When he came out, he saw two more in the kitchen. Eleven empties in all.
That’s when he got worried. He came back to the bed and checked my pulse.
I was breathing, and my heart was beating.
So he let me be.
* * *
I woke the next day with an unforgiving headache and feeling no better than I had before.
But the shows didn’t stop.
The training didn’t stop.
There are no sick days, and you can’t call in heartbroken.
For the next few months, alcohol iced the ache.
And I kept getting up there, smiling like everything was ok, and giving it my all.
Chapter 45: Broccoli Cheese Soup
After clocking in one morning, we walked into the Magic Green Room. Seeing us, one of the costume character performers said, “Oh, hey guys, have you seen the board?”
Turning my attention to the green room noticeboard, I saw this message:
No Juggling Allowed in green rooms!
Seeing as we were the only ones who juggled in the green rooms, this notice was clearly directed at us. I was the biggest offender, because I was practicing all the time.
Once we’d read it, the costume character, with mock sympathy, said, “Well, I guess you’ll have to go outside from now on.”
My juggling had never actually affected her, but she had often said it made her nervous. So it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. She must have complained.
I looked at her slouched on the green room sofa, dressed head-to-toe in costume, wearing everything except the headpiece. Next to her was another performer, also in costume, eating a bowl of broccoli cheese soup. And to his side was yet another performer, in costume as well.
Taking breaks in costume and especially eating in costume were violations of the rules. Yet all three of them were breaking those rules while they sat there, pontificating about the new no-juggling rule.
“I guess when everyone starts following the costuming rules, I’ll have to follow the juggling rules.” And with that, I picked up three beanbags and started my usual warm-up for the first set.
The costumed character huffed, and the performer beside her shook his head from side to side, as if he wanted to protest but begrudgingly acknowledged that they were breaking the rules too.
A few minutes passed, and I started working on a juggling trick called chops and claws. It’s a particularly fast pattern that utilizes overhand catches, which can be quite violent when mistakes occur. I made a dozen catches of it before one of my right-hand catches was miscalculated; this sent the beanbag hurtling toward the three performers on the sofa.
Like a little millet-filled comet, it landed on the handle of the buffet-style tureen soup bowl. The energy transfer acted like a catapult, generating a tiny yet mighty tidal wave of broccoli cheese soup.
The soup distributed itself across all three performers, their costumes, the sofa, and the wall behind them.
The costume character’s eyes grew wide as she took in the yellow and green disaster, and then, with each word increasing in volume, she said, “Oh, MY, GAAWDDD!!!”
The performer next to her looked down at his long-sleeved red shirt and Playskool blue overalls, now drenched, and screamed,
“This, THIS is WHY there’s NO juggling allowed in the green room!!”
Without missing a beat, I said, “It’s also why there’s no eating in costume.” Then I looked at the costume character and added, “Or taking breaks in costume!”
They both started to retort, then seemed to realize that if they reported this incident, they’d have to admit they were breaking the rules just as much as I was, so they bit their tongues.
It was time for all of us to get ready for our sets, so they scrambled to clean their costumes, and I made my way towards the park entrance.
As I walked, I thought about what a godsend Legoland had been. The money and benefits were solid, and we were making a living doing what we loved. But these simple dramas and the repetition had started to weigh on me. Every day it was the same shows, same audiences, same routines. I wondered if there wasn’t something more out there for us.
A few days later, our manager asked Jonathan and me to step outside for a discussion.
When we did, she told us there was a new rule in the green rooms: no juggling allowed, and everyone needed to change out of costume between sets. Jonathan and I nodded and went back to work.
For about a week, all the performers dutifully changed out of costume between sets like they were supposed to, and we stopped juggling in the green room. Predictably, though, the costume rule was quickly forgotten. People stopped changing between sets, and we started juggling again.
The park had every right to ask us to abide by all the rules they’d made, and we could have been more conscientious of our fellow performers. But our drive to improve is what got us here in the first place; we have to keep improving because the International Jugglers Association Championships are only a few months away, and this time, we’re going to compete.