The baseball team was up and running again for a new season and we had a good feeling about our chances in the lower league. We got a new recruit named Wout who was a Dutch kid who had grown up in Philadelphia. He was a quiet dude but he was a great ball player and the team welcomed him in with open arms. The team was entered into a pre-season tournament of camping and baseball, we looked at it as a chance to party all week-end. The tourney had 8 teams and we played fairly well finishing 3rd in the end. The big mon=ment for me came on Saturday afternoon when we were playing our 3rd game and 2nd of the day. I had been drinking and smoking for a few hours and was feeling no pain when the game started. When I came to bat for the second time I hit the first pitch down the left field line foul, but just and it went a long way. The next pitch came right down the pipe and I swung with all I had. I hardly felt the ball hit the bat but when I looked up it was sailing out to left field in a hurry. When I see the left fielder just look up as it sails over his head and over the fence, I was absolutely stunned. I had never hit a home-run out of the park in all my years of playing and the feeling I had was one of the greatest I had ever known. I ran around the bases hooting and hollering like a madman and I loved every second of it. We lost the game 8-1 but knowing that 1 was my first ever out of the park home-run made it feel like we had just won the world series. When I decided to play again I had 2 main goals in mind, to hit a home-run and to win a championship, now I had only to win the championship to complete my baseball bucket list and with the team we had, I might just accomplish this by years end.
The roof garden was progressing nicely and I was loving every minute of the work, unfortunately that was about the only thing enjoyable about being at the house. With taking a break from the pool hall, Etienne was spending all of his time just lying around in bed and slipping slowly into depression. I had very little sympathy for him as I find it hard to have any for people who have it all and can’t find a way to be happy about it. I still tried to help him just the same, for one he was my good friend and secondly, his depression was affecting the whole vibe of the house and it was bringing me down. Everything I tried was useless as he was determined to be a listless slob, the worst part was that he would never get dressed and I don’t mean shirt and pants, I mean he would not even put on underwear as he traipsed through the house, very disturbing. There was nothing I could really say about it as he could just tell me to get out if I said anything he didn’t like so I tried to stay as positive as possible with the door to my tiny hole closed at all times. Sometime during the summer he got the idea to go back to school and finish his degree that he had abandoned in his youth. For a few weeks he was full of energy, running around town getting things organized for the fall semester, but soon after he fell right back into lying around the house naked all day. The move to Spain was starting sound better and better.
Duke had brought up the plan for Spain a few more times as the year progressed. He said they were in the process of finding the perfect villa to start from. I told him that I was still interested and would probably go if they sorted it out. I had the feeling that it wasn’t really gonna happen and it was probably like most things in life, just talk. I felt a bit of trepidation when he told me that in addition to him and Eric, there would be 2 other partners in the venture. One I had no problem with, his room-mates girlfriend Katja, a Russian girl who was laid back and easy-going. The potential problem I saw was the involvement of his girlfriend Lena, she was a Russian-American from california and she was the most pretentious, stuck-up bitch I had ever met. She looked down her nose at everyone she saw and they seemed to be fighting every other day. When I mentioned my concerns to Duke he reassured me that the girls would only be silent partners and that I would mainly be dealing with him or Eric. With that I put my apprehension to the side and started thinking about what it would be like to leave Amsterdam, I loved the city more than any I had ever been in but I was really getting sick of cleaning up after people. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to even have a job much less two of them but I was going on 5 years of being a cleaner and enough was enough, I knew I could do so much more. Added to the fact that life around the house was becoming more and more untenable with Etienne continuing his downward spiral into depression, my thoughts were growing each day about a life in the Spanish sun.
I got a reprieve in August when Etienne decided to take a motorcycle trip through Europe for 3 weeks. The timing could not have been better because it just so happened that my great friend John ( the one from Colorado who had put me up in the first few months of my odyssey ) was coming to town and now I had a whole apartment to myself to put him up in. It was awesome seeing him again and I felt happy to return a little hospitality for one of the people who helped along my journey. We had a blast while he was here going out drinking and smoking most every night. I took him out to see the VATOS play a game and we were in the midst of a 7 game winning streak and firing on all cylinders. Our short-stop Ricky had hurt his ankle and I was now playing the position and if I do say so myself, very well. We of course won and just like the VATOS, we had a bbq to show my friend John how we do it! As with all things that are fun, the time with John went by much too quickly and before I knew it I was saying good-bye, hoping that it was not the last time I ever saw him, a feeling I was having much too often. Etienne returned a week later with great stories of a trip any motorcycle rider would have loved to have been on, but unfortunately within a few days of his return, he was back to lying around in a melancholy state. With the start to the fall semester only a few weeks away, I was hoping that would start to bring him out of his funk, but I was beginning to wonder if even that would be enough.
Duke told me they had narrowed the search down to just 2 properties in coastal towns near Malaga. They were going down there to view them and maybe even sign a contract if they found the right deal. I felt very mixed emotions about the news as it seemed that it was really going to happen. On the one hand it was a bit exciting to think about a fresh start living in a villa on the Spanish coast and growing weed and managing the place would be a welcomed change from having to clean up after folks. On the other hand I loved Amsterdam more than anywhere and I couldn’t imagine any other city being as cool, I also had almost 10 years of good friendships built up here, some I considered as brothers and leaving a great support network like this for a place where I knew no one and didn’t speak the language was a bit daunting. I decided to leave it up to fate, if they returned with a contract for a place then I would see it as a good omen and make the commitment to leave, but if they returned with nothing, then I would tell them to count me out if they still wanted to pursue it. The week they were gone was one of the most restless weeks I have ever had.
A Continuing Story About Life on The Run