My right eye couldn’t focus.

Maybe that’s not an accurate description.  It’s more like…what I saw was akin to a funhouse mirror.  I opened my suitcase, removed the cleaning fluid and scrubbed my contact.  It seemed to have a minor effect.  I kept testing it all the way to the airport in Eagle.  And before I came to a final conclusion, we were on the plane.

We were running late.  You see the plane had been grounded in Aspen for three hours.  On its way back to Van Nuys earlier in the day.  That’s what the pilot told us.  You see it’s been precipitating in California.  To the point where Mammoth Mountain got 95" in two days.  Everything was backed up.

Wolfgang told us at breakfast on Sunday that the reason the dining room seemed empty was because everybody had bailed.  In advance of the big storm in Vail.  But when the sky broke into blue about 10:15 Monday morning above Tea Cup Bowl we thought we were home free.  That we’d made the right decision.  That our return trip would be effortless.  So we were shook up when we got back to the condo to prepare to leave and found out we were delayed.

There’s a trepidation flying into weather.  The pilot told us to expect it to be bumpy over Palmdale.  But the takeoff was smooth.  The Colorado sky was clear.  Except for the sliver of moon through the front window.

So I opened up the "Sports Illustrated" in the seat pocket beside me and started to read.  Well, TRIED is more like it.  The words, they were a blur.

So I had Luca throw me a pillow.  I lay my head back.  I tried to fall asleep.  But despite awakening at 7:15.  Despite skiing all the way back to Blue Sky Basin.  My eyes wouldn’t close.  Those runs in the blowing snow on Lionshead the day before kept running through my brain.

It was silent within my Bose noise-cancelled domain, but my head wasn’t empty enough to travel to never never land.  And then a synapse fired.  I could get out the headphones’ cable, remove my iPod from my laptop bag and listen to music.  I wanted to hear the song in my brain.  The one I was reflecting on while I was thinking of skiing in the sixties.  Simon &  Garfunkel’s "For Emily,  Whenever I May Find Her".

At first the iPod wouldn’t come alive.  If I leave it off for a few days I have to jump-start it, resetting it by holding down the center button and the click wheel just above it.  And once the iPod came alive, it showed almost no juice.  But finally a sliver of power bar appeared.  And I dialed in the duo from Queens.

I didn’t play "For Emily" first.  I wanted it to sneak up on me.  But this was a mistake.  When you need to hear a certain song, only it will do.  When it finally came up, I played it twice.  And then the live take.  And then I didn’t know what to do.  All I knew was I wanted to hear the RIGHT music.  That I didn’t want to fast-forward through everything on the iPod, cherry-picking what sounded right.  So I went to a smart playlist.  The one that contained the 200 most played tracks in my iTunes library.  I didn’t want to spin the Top 25, I wanted to be surprised.  Which is why I didn’t spin the Top 100 either.  With 200 tracks, I might be caught off guard.  And I was.

Amazing what you’ve played thirty or forty times on your computer.  Stuff that you’d never believe you loved that much.  But somewhere over Utah I heard a song that sounded so right that it had me jumping in my seat, grooving like the teenager I once was, infected, POSSESSED by the sound.  That song was Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ "The Wild One, Forever".

Tom Petty’s first record is the best.  Maybe because it was produced by Denny Cordell instead of Jimmy Iovine.  It sounds like the basement it was cut in.  A late night record for fans, for believers, not the entire universe.  The "hit" is "American Girl".  But the absolute best tracks are two quite ones.  Each one the second to last cut on the side.  "Luna" and "The Wild One, Forever".

Life is about hope.  Extinguish hope and you die.

You don’t have to be in the corporate boardroom.  You can be in the bar.  In a barn in the country.  You’ll find some guy spinning his story, what happened to him, where he’s going.  It’s self-validation.  The reason Tom Petty is so great is he sings about those guys, there.  Real people.  What they feel.

Yeah they call you the wild one, said stay away from her
Said she could love no one if she tried

Guys love a challenge.  Oh, they don’t MARRY the challenge.  Because you can never hold on to the challenge.  She’s just too elusive.  Guys marry the women who are nice to them.  Who are compassionate.  Who are supportive.  Who understand them.

Oh, some guys make a mistake.  They tie the knot with the challenge.  You know these people.  They’re bitter.  When they’re alive enough to tell their tale.  But that’s just what every other guy has, a tale.  Of the time when they got their dick hard and WENT FOR IT!

You know her.  She was tall.  And skinny.  With long hair.

Or maybe it was her charisma.  The way she gave you attitude.

You had to get closer.  To the flame.

Girls can never understand.  Why we’re attracted to the unreasonable.  Oftentimes someone all the rest of the girls HATE!  Or maybe it’s just that they don’t write many songs from this perspective.  Or maybe it’s after sleeping with the leader of the pack, girls don’t boast about it.  They reminisce and weep silently.

But then somethin’ I saw
In your eyes told me right away
That you were gonna have to be mine
When the strangest feeling came over me
Down inside no matter what it takes
I’ll never get over how good it felt
When you finally held me
I’ll never regret
Baby those few hours
Will grow in my head
Forever

The operative word here is "hours".  A glance can be a whole relationship to a guy.  We don’t need history.  We just need moments.  Which we never forget.

Not that it’s reciprocal.

Yeah, it’s been a long time but I don’t mind
Yeah, it’s all right I understand

If you don’t know a guy who has confessed to one of these dreams that the moment he believes they shared was a highlight of his life, you just don’t know that many guys, at least not well.  We should hold it in, but we’re bursting, we’ve told all our buddies.  We can’t hold back.  We’ve got to make contact.  To be let down easily.  With a flip of the head, with a laugh.  But, despite the rejection, we still treasure the experience.

Down inside I knew right away
I’ll never get over how good it felt
When you finally kissed me
I will never regret
Baby those few hours
Will grow in my head
Forever

Women think it’s about sex.  That that’s all we want.

But that isn’t true.  We just want to be close to you.

But two more words come after the last line quoted above.  "And ever."

The song doesn’t end there.  Like real life, endings are not abrupt.  It’s just like the break in "Here Comes My Girl" off "Damn The Torpedoes".  The record changes groove.  And as Mike Campbell’s guitar sparkles softly, your mind is set adrift.

But nothing written above reflects Tom Petty’s vocal.  Actually, it’s ALL of the above.  The swagger of a guy trying to connect.  The shrugging off of the rejection upon REconnection.  And the pathos of a guy confessing to a buddy what happened to him.  It hurts, but it feels so good.  These are the stories that keep you going, that make life worth living.

Suddenly, the plane started to bounce.  And then brilliant flashes of light shone through the front window.  As if someone were setting off firecrackers just in front of the cockpit.  I looked up at the monitor, and the icon of the plane was over Palmdale.

Clouds out the window confirmed the light show in front of us.  Our beams were being reflected by the their amorphous fuzziness.

And then, after banking over the Santa Monica Mountains, the plane dropped down onto the tarmac in Van Nuys.  Where, despite the pools of water on the ground, the rain had stopped.

As the bags were being placed in the cars, as we were saying our goodbyes, Chris came up to me.  He asked, "What was that song you were rocking out to on the plane?"

I told him, THE WILD ONE, FOREVER!