The question may arise if anyone who wasn’t forced to read the novel Aeroquest because they have the misfortune of being my relative ever actually reads the book, “Why did you ever write such a gawd-awful thing?”
The truth is, I didn’t write it, not by myself at any rate. The essential plot of the novel is such a jumbled mess because the story is lifted directly from a game of Traveller, an RPG from Game Designer’s Workshop. The basic characters in the novel were all player characters. Their design and personalities are created by adolescent boys in the 80’s and the paths they chose in the story strongly reflect the chaos of youth.
The Aero Brothers, Ged and Ham were both created by one of my favorite students of all time. I will refer to him here as Armando Carrizales, though that was not his real name. I am trying to explain the novel here, not mortify an adult former student living somewhere in Texas, or even elsewhere. Armando’s idea was to use Star Wars characters. Hamfast Aero was actually Han Solo in the game. And when Armando wanted to create an all-powerful psionic character, he created brother Ged Solo, using the first name of Larry Winslow’s character Ged Stryker (And Larry did not know how to spell “Jed”). Because I really liked Armando, and he was bright, creative, and a good problem solver, I eventually chose his characters as the main characters of the novel. He was good at organizing expeditions, collecting gear and matching it to the purpose in the adventure before him. But you do need more than heroes for an adventure game, or for a novel.
Emilio Jalapeno was a very different kind of kid, but also Armando’s real-life best friend. He was a skinny kid with a goofy grin, and was always ready with a joke or prank that would either make you laugh, or make you palm your forehead and consider murder. His first Traveller character lasted all of fifteen minutes because he decided he wanted to take his shiny new pistol and kill everyone on the entire planet they were on. That character, whose name I have forgotten, was actually gunned down by his own adventuring party. So Emilio had to start again.
He created the character Trav Dalgoda. He got the name from the first syllable of the Traveller game and a name he spotted on the cover of a magazine laying on the table. Trav was simply Emilio in an RPG form. He wanted to have an eye patch like a pirate, but he wanted to have two eyes. He wanted to wear wide ties with messages on them, like a cartoon screw next to a baseball. And he dearly loved to blow things up. A time would come in the adventure where he had access to really big weapons, and we had to let him experiment with killing everybody on an entire planet. This, then, was the needed comedy relief that kept us laughing through shared adventures. And Trav’s ability to get into really big trouble would eventually drive the plot forward.
Sinbadh the Lupin, a dog-headed humanoid alien, was also Emilio’s character. The fact that he based his entire character on talking like a pirate from Treasure Island was a source of endless hilarity.
Tron Blastarr, the scar-faced villain, was created by Armando again. There was a time when Larry Winslow wanted to create a villain character in the most desperate way possible. But the evil villain Mantis, who was really just a living head on a robotic body, and the enigmatic psionic Xavier Trkiashav never really got their chance to be truly villainous. One became a laughable boob while the other became a hero and the leader of the Psionics Institute. Tron, however, was a perfect pirate. He led the band of adventurers on merry chase after looping, curling space chase, eventually becoming the first player character to get married and have children. He retired as a villain with a fleet of stolen space ships, and a planet (the airless world Outpost1) as his pirate treasure.
So, to claim I wrote the novel Aeroquest on my own is to completely overlook my collaborators. It is a mess of a comedy sci-fi novel that I am still trying to iron out and rewrite, but it is also a story I shared with some who were very near to my writer’s heart.
Catch a Falling Star 
Uber New Year
Who knew that being an Uber driver required the skills of a swashbuckling hero?
But that is exactly what it is. I am approaching the end of my first $100 dollar week. And I have already been on a harrowing ride through the world of ride-sharing for money.
The key to successfully picking up and ferrying passengers to the site of their choosing is a matter of being personable and at ease with driving and talking. Of course, I have talking skills. My whole 31 year career was a matter of learning to effectively talk to kids all day long. And you may not believe this, but adults, people who actually have money and the freedom to choose their own path, are easier to talk to than kids. I have learned about people’s families, people’s jobs, opinions of their bosses, opinions of the government and taxes, and even some tell me about their love lives, both directly, and second hand. If there are two in the car, then they forget that the driver has ears and can hear (within the limitations of really old ears).
One recent passenger was absolutely convinced that no Uber driver actually knows how to drive. That passenger sat in the back seat and sent a barrage of traffic warnings and worries forward for me to deal with at the same time I was watching the road ahead. It was almost exactly as harrowing as driving with my wife as a passenger. I felt like a child again, driving for the meanest teacher I ever had growing up. (Sorry, Ms. Rubelmacher, I learned a lot from you. Don’t give me detention for writing that.)
But why did I say “Swashbuckling hero” if I am only going to talk about talking to passengers? And why all the Batman gifs?
Well, I am talking about driving in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, ain’t I? Do you know what Texas drivers are like? On Saturday I picked up a coach headed for a retirement party at a Luby’s on the border of DeSoto (a southwest Dallas suburb. That was a twenty-two dollar trip from east-central Dallas catty-cornered all the way across the city in a diagonal direction on the tollway and then I-35 South. I had three cars cut me off for driving too slow (by which I mean the speed limit. Hey, Uber monitors that through their app.) The Uber Navigator told me to keep right at a time when keeping right nearly threw me off 35 onto an intersecting highway, so I had to make a quick two-wheeled Starsky and Hutch turn through the corner of the median to stay on course. (Fortunately, Uber can’t monitor that.) Dallas drivers are a combination of speedy predators in WASP rockets, Texas killer grandmas in Cadillacs, and Elmer Fudds going too slow in classic cars from the 50’s. They provide you with a booby-trapped obstacle course to drive through, and go so fast that the speed limit becomes dangerously too slow.
So I definitely appreciate Batman for providing me with all the animated illustrations to use for portraying the high-risk life of an Uber driver. It makes driving this way easier to pretend that I am one half of the dynamic duo driving the Batmobile in Dallas downtown traffic. Yes, it’s true, I am saying I pretend to be Batman.
Leave a comment
Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, heroes, humor, irony, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as Batman, Uber driving