Trash

I could write a whole book on my friend Trash. Trash grew up in Albany to an overbearing mother and an overaccomodating father. Mom was a nurse, dad was a community organizer. Trash was born to challenge expectations. In 8th grade, without his mother knowing, he rode the city bus down to the private Catholic military boy's school, took an entrance exam, and got a full-ride scholarship. His mother forbade him to attend. He would be socially awkward and she didn't want her boys fighting. Father said it was ok. So Trash attended school, and like his mother predicted, did not have a romantic relationships with a girl until he was 27. His parents don't know about any of his relationships, and think that he is gay. He refuses to clear it up.

I met Trash when I did an exchange at the Air Force Academy. Trash is brilliant but hates meeting expectations, so he was a classic underachiever. He double majored in Computer Science and Mathematics. I met him in a math class; or maybe Officer's Christian Fellowship. (He was a guilt-ridden Catholic back then). Any chance he got, he climbed Colorado 14ers in the dark, or drove too fast in his Miata. (He had several warrants for his arrest in various states for speeding--all of which he had to clear up before he could get top secret clearance.) Trash was born for cold weather. He took me and a few friends to Pikes Peak in the winter, in the dark. He slipped across the icy trail in a t-shirt and shorts! When he was at combat survival school (a school where people learn to handle torture) Trash was the only pilot who did not respond to lengthy exposure to frigid water. Trash wore a pair of white long underwear most of the way up Mt. McKinley. The heat is so intolerable to him that when Trash got stationed in Vegas and hated it so much he had to drink 7 beers a night just to fall asleep.

Trash and I decided to ride our bikes across country when we graduated. On the way to the airport, Trash crashed his Miata with his bike on it. He hitched a ride with the Tow Truck who brought him to the airport. So, Trash showed up the night before our ride with a broken bike. We raced across town to the one bike store that might still be open; when we got there, they had just closed! As desperate people do, we threatened bad Karma and intense badgering at the front door if the cleaning employees didn't help us. They reluctantly let us in and fixed the basics on Trash's bike. The next day we started riding from the Oregon Coast, and rode 180 miles through the coastal mountains and the Cascades in the pouring rain. When we were high enough in the cascades it started to snow. I experienced my first intense bout of hypothermia. At first I was cold, shivering convulsively. As we continued up the mountain pass, I began to turn a little blue. It was hard to tell if I was riding uphill or downhill. Trash said I started to weave and when he stopped me, I said that I was warming up. He knew we were in trouble then, and flagged my mom who was supporting us on our first leg. I shivered for four hours in a hot tub. Trash said many people would pay money to see a person get hypothermia. He thought it was interesting.

When we left the second day, I made my mom drive us to the exact point we got into the car, just to make sure we covered every square inch of the journey. That day Trash's wheel broke, and we barely made it the nearest bike shop. The beginning was the worst. Our fortunes improved the rest of the trip. For 28 days we averaged 120 miles a day. In each of the towns we planned to stop in, we had contacted friends of friends, parents from the parents clubs of the Air Force and Naval Academy, and loose acquaintances. So we had a place to stay each night. I had this theory before the trip that romance was simply a matter of presence, and if two people spent enough time together they would eventually become attracted to each other. Now, I don't think that is true. After five days, I was sick of hearing about the Politics surrounding a rare species of butterfly, how to write a computer program in C++, musings on the sociology of bovine communities, the height of corn as it varied from state to state. Back then, I didn't like hearing about all Trash's obscure fields of expertise. Now, I am more interested.

Trash is not really his name. But Trash is a name he was given once. When we got to Boston on our ride, one my friend’s parents (she is a little loony sometimes) was trying to recall his name. She burst out in recollection, "Trash, that's right". Both Trash and I liked it. Trash kind of fits him.

Trash likes to be nude. Not in a sexual, sensual, perverse, provocative way. In the same way that this old man in Italy who claimed a home in an abandoned railroad tunnel on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea between two towns along the Cinque Terra. Trash found out about a nudist colony in France with a grocery store--he couldn't wait to grocery shop naked. One time Trash got beaten with a phonebook by cops in New Orleans because he flashed some ladies for beads. Trash has shown up to a good many parties naked. Trash also applied to be a male stripper while living in Vegas (He figured he may as well make a living doing something he liked, and he is very egalitarian...always contributing to the fight for equality of men and women.) The strip joints asked if he could sing and dance. "We do dance numbers here...it’s a little different then female stripping where girls just show up and do their thing." When Trash said he could neither sing nor dance, they had a good excuse to turn him down (although a few did mention he might want to bulk up a bit if he wanted to be considered in the future--He is 6'2" and 165lbs) They didn't say anything about his disproportionately large feet, hands and nose (maybe they believed that was evidence of the size of his package). Trash settled for using his free time in Vegas building a plane out of metal scraps.

My favorite story about Trash takes place on his first tour to Afghanistan as a rescue pilot. Trash had time on his hands, and needed to get his mind off the heat, so he researched the process for making alcohol. He discovered an ingenious process for making grain alcohol in a wartime situation. He first stole yeast from the chow hall. He fermented sugar water with the yeast outside his tent in the 140 degree Afghani sun for two weeks. He then acquired two buckets. One was large and had a lid, and the other was lidless and fit inside the large bucket. He placed the smaller bucket in the larger bucket and filled the smaller bucket with the fermented sugar water. He ordered a fish tank heater online, placed the fish tank heater in the small bucket. He then placed the whole contraption in the refrigerator. As the fermented sugar water was heated with the fish tank heater, the alcohol evaporated. It then condensed on the inside of the lid of the larger bucket, cooled, and the droplets rolled down the edges of the larger bucket and collected at the bottom. This process of distillation was then repeated a second time, producing 140 proof hard liquor. Trash’s liquor made him one of the most powerful men in Afghanistan. He now had the ultimate bargaining tool. Among the many things Trash gained possession of was a 6-month shipment of Otis Spunkmeyer muffins which had been sent to the Chow Hall. Trash used the canvas from torn down tents to make mini-parachutes. He then loaded up the muffins in trash bags, tied the parachutes to them, and dropped the muffins from his Helo as he performed low-flying operations over Afghani villages. Trash called his actions “Operation Peace Muffin.” Evidence supports the fact that his operations had a huge impact on American-Afghani relations. Previously, Trash’s crew had reported hostile reception from the villagers, as the helo was frequently the target of rocks and sticks. Once Operation Peace Muffin was in effect, villagers greeted American helos with great joy, waiting for the manna from heaven.

Trash has crossed the country by bike, train, motorcycle, car, and plane. He is good at all forms of transportation, swimming, boating and running too, only you can't cross the country swimming or boating, and he hasn't had time to run it. Since our cross-country ride Trash has come to Colorado to climb the 14ers. He always invites me even though I am much slower than him. The first one we did was Bierstadt. Its only 3.1 miles round trip, making it the easiest 14er. Trash and I did it in the middle of winter, though. Under the cover of the snow, these 2.5 foot bushes were buried. For five hours we wrestled our snow shoes out of the bush branches underneath us, to reach the summit. Trash had forgotten his winter coat, and was in a long underwear shirt. On the way down, despite my insecure protests (I trusted Trash’s experience, if not his judgment) Trash kept taking us left, left, left all the way down. When we had reached the base, we were 180 degrees from my car, and nightfall was approaching! We had no more food or water, and couldn’t see in front of us. Somehow we found my car after 10 hours of groping in the dark.

Another time we climbed Lincoln. After the Bierstadt trip, I was concerned I would not have enough grace for the chaos that I would inevitably experience hanging out with Trash. Driving up to the mountains to meet him, I prayed that I would have the grace to treat Trash with respect and kindness. I imagined that prayer being answered by Trash doing something I thought lacked any common sense, while I brushed it aside with a tinkling laugh like Audrey Hepburn. Instead, after we climbed the mountain and returned to our base camp, I felt really sick from the altitude. While Trash cooked dinner, I went inside Trashes $500 tent to lie down. My nausea felt worse by the time he finally joined me, and I asked if he had a plastic bag just in case. While he looked, I projectile vomited all over his felt-lined tent, his $800 sleeping bag, his face. All Trash said was, “Mmmm, I was cold and now I am warm! Plus it smells like pizza!” We had to pack up the base camp in the dark, wrap up the barfy top-of-the line gear, and hike back to my truck. I then thought I lost my cell phone, and made Trash trapse back up to base camp with me to find it. I finally found my phone as I emptied my car out after we returned. I suppose my prayer was answered. It was easy to be gracious to Trash, because he was the most gracious person to ever be barfed on.

Trash is an artist genius computer programmer. He wrote a program for the Air Force that spits out awards, and wrote a program for his colonel’s wife that helped her complete her graduate work. He does it for free—I guess that gives him a little wiggle room when it comes to meeting Air Force expectations. For instance, during the work day, he alone drinks all the beer left in the squadron refrigerator (which is filled at the rate of one 6 pack from every student going on a check ride). On The last climbing trip I went on with Trash, he brought two bottles of wine in Nalgene bottles to enjoy at base camp.

In Japan, Trash lives out in town with a housing allowance. One of the stipulations is that he can not sublet his apartment. So he has two Japanese women living there rent free in exchange for their cooking, cleaning and companionship. As one can imagine, most in Trash's command believe that Trash rules a harem of Japanese women. Trash never bothers to clear up rumors. So, Trash’s parents continue to think he is gay, and Trash’s grandparents gossip about all the women he goes on camping trips with.

I am so grateful for Trash's last visit to CO! I was in the throes of despair when he forced me to climb Snow Mass with him and a girl friend of his. I met them in Aspen, and we completed a fairly leisurely 3-day, 25 mile round trip summit. I had a really good time. The first day, getting out there, I was so down. Once I got going, endorphins kicked in, and I felt better. It was really low key; no pressure, and a slow pace. We hiked 10 miles in and pitched a tent at Snow Mass lake. Then the next day we climbed Snow Mass. It was really beautiful and dangerous. We got caught in a hail storm at the top and both me and Trash got electrocuted a little bit..adrenaline always helps depression. I was forced out of my funk and it was really pretty. Plus we had mac-n-cheese-tuna dinner with red wine the first night, and tortilla soup with Trash's patented couscous, raisin, almond, chicken breast, cracker side dish the second night. Trash and I were the only ones to summit due to a sudden hail storm early afternoon. I might not always trust Trash's sense of safety, but I always trust his sense of adventure. After we climbed up the steep precipice to the top,I stood up, getting just a tiny bit electrocuted. When I sat back down, my hair stuck straight up. We downed a salami, sheep Parmesan, blueberry bagel sandwich and returned, tennis shoes slipping on the hail-littered boulders. Trash's bald head got just a little electrocuted as we started down. We slid down snow fields on the way down; me on my butt, Trash skiing on his unusually large feat. Both Trash and I agreed the storm was one of the most amazing beauties we had ever seen. The way the storm rolled in on us, then over us, then rolled below us reminded me of the Holy. Then, after stopping at Trash' favorite dive diner on the way home, we saw a beautiful rainbow.

Where will Trash’s life take him, once he is released from the shackles of his Air Force commitment? First, somewhere cold. He wants to finish is plane, become an airplane mechanic, a hairdresser (they are really the best therapists—plus they hear the best stories) A bush pilot, an aviation lawyer, an engineer, contractor, consultant, computer repairman/programmer, and car mechanic. Trash will probably set up a storefront in Northern Alaska with little wooden signs advertising all of his services. I will not live in Alaska. But maybe Trash will give me permission to write the book!