I smile as I merge onto 82 west knowing I’m heading away from the east coast and The Lady has returned to riding shotgun.  I’m eager to play a new mix of Johnny Flynn, Felice Brothers, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Jerrod Niemann and Florence & The Machine for her.  All is good but I thought we were going to have to put the shotgun metaphor to use a moment ago because we just stopped by a friend of a friend of a friend’s house to pick up some contraband for our road trip to Cali and a new friend freaked us out. The Friend came out to the driveway to wave us in and our first clue was his face looked fiery red and he constantly stared at his feet in order to not make eye contact.  I like to joke and be California cool most of the time but as soon as we walk into the house he pulls a gun from a drawer and tells us “if a big black sheriff with a big black gun comes in here and grabs something out of the frig don’t freak out.” I know immediately I am going to play this situation closer to the vest than normal.  Not to mention, I look around and see I’m standing in the middle of the kitchen/dining area and it’s been converted into a prison like weight room.  I'm glad I'm not wearing my flip flops right now because this place isn't over the top clean like some tweakers homes and I don't think there's a neighborhood watch on patrol in this culdesac. It’s easy to see that our roid’ed out southern speed freak is coming down from a few days of partying and is not looking for a joke as he bolts out the back door.  A roommate comes from around the corner and tells us the same stuff about the sheriff.  The Lady says “it’s nice to be on the inside of a small town southern cop mafia,” and the roommate says “it has more benefits then the outside.”  Our Friend bolts back into the house with a new twist that he doesn’t want to deal with our small time business anymore and suddenly we seem like an inconvenience.  We don’t even try to make small talk and start shifting towards the door when he throws us a small container of his homegrown weed and says “this is some homegrown mississippi trash and I don’t want any money for it because I don’t want to deal with you two anymore.” I catch it, keep heading for the door and shuffle the lady to the car.  We are laughing as we hit the freeway continuing to look in the rear view mirror for the big black sheriff and happy that all our worryation didn't have us easily queasy. I keep having visions of Dukes of Hazard and mention to The Lady that she’d look great in Daisy Dukes.  We don’t know this yet but it turns out that we made it to Old Bricktown in Downtown Oklahoma City safely that night and had a really nice dinner at Bourbon Street where we were lucky enough to be seated close to a two person dinner jazz and blues band that had us tapping our toes the entire meal.  After that we had a night cap at Mickey Mantle’s and saw a new cigar torch that is an open fire hazard and a good gift for any guy.  If you are stuck in Okalahoma City, Ok for a night or two, hit up Bricktown in the downtown district and you'll find more than you can pick to do including canal rides and over 40 bars and restaurants.

In the end we made it back to California just in time to attend an Old Friends Christmas party.  Moco, Saul and Green Eggs were there from the old school along with many facebook friends I haven’t seen in person for a long time. H’s house use to be a second home to me and it’s great that old friends make The Lady comfortable and before we knew it new friendships were created.  He had a small taco bar and mark my words the food is always the best and fresh at H’s house.  His hand squeezed lemonade infused with vodka was sharp and not to sweet.  In addition there is no armed party or hassle when H and I talk medicine.  Just old friends sitting in a garage that we’ve sat in a couple hundred times studying five different strands that his brother has developed as old and new friends mingle and it finally sinks in that Christmas is almost here and the first decade of a new millennium is almost over but that wasn’t a time for reflection so I continued comparing breeds and drifted off watching The Lady dance.