Patrick Swayze will never be accused of being one of his generation's great actors. But in 1987, Swayze delivered his generation’s “Grease” by playing Johnny Castle to Jennifer Grey’s Frances “Baby” Houseman in “Dirty Dancing,” a movie that generations of girls, as with “Grease” before it, can watch countless times, swept away by the story of love that can’t be denied.

            Nineteen years later, facilitated by SportsJournalists.com, that movie helped bring Doc and spup together.

            Las Vegas glitters and glows in the American Southwest, as conspicuous in the parched desert landscape as a diamond in a goat’s ass, the perfect perversion and logical end game on the road to the American Dream, the ultimate come-on whose payoff never matches its implied promise, where Orwell’s minions have excised “excess” from the dictionaries and too much is never too much. Las Vegas, a city whose myth is matched only by its reality, run by steel-hearted whores whose payday comes not in your hotel room (although you can get that, too; just ask your friendly cab driver) but on their smoke-choked gaming floors. Las Vegas, where you have a better chance of getting comped a penthouse suite at Bellagio than you do of getting a stand-by seat on a plane out of town. Las Vegas, so crass that its official marketing slogan seems to encourage and celebrate infidelity – Sin City, indeed. Las Vegas, where the Ten Commandments long ago ran for cover, hoisted a white flag and called it a day.

            Las Vegas, everything you want and nothing you need.

            Las Vegas. Fuck, dude, perfect.

            I packed my iridescent green shirt and my leather pants and caught a plane, more than ready to loose myself in the bacchanalia.

            The Missouri River begins life high in the Rocky Mountains, on the eastern side of the North American continental divide in Montana, a rocky gully indistinguishable from thousands that carve their way through the crags and corners of America’s western backbone, no hint of the mighty, muddy force it becomes when, thousands of miles later, it joins with the Mississippi River, southward bound to the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri River, 2,341 miles, rolling through Montana, North and South Dakota, marking the border between Nebraska and Iowa before separating Missouri and Kansas until, in Kansas City, it turns east, splitting its namesake state in half, the northern plains and small hills from the ancient Ozark Mountains and hollers to the south, the lifeblood of towns along its banks before railroads relegated the giant paddlewheelers to the dusty bin of history labeled nostalgia. The Missouri River, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s journey to the Pacific Ocean began in earnest more than 200 years ago.

            Our plan was six months in the making. Float the Missouri River, getting in touch with nature on its terms, just two guys, a canoe and whatever awaited us around the next bend, Lewis and Clark writ small – like, really small. Willy and I looked forward to it all summer, waiting for a three-day weekend that would work for us both. Finally we settled on the first weekend in August.

            Our plan was six months in the making. Six months or six years, it wouldn’t have mattered. We were woefully unprepared for the hell that awaited us.

            I have most weekends off now, the first time since working construction in the Pacific Northwest that I am so blessed. Saturday, Sunday, just like a real person. On the odd occasion that I have to work Friday and Saturday night, I get the Monday beforehand off, giving me a three-day weekend. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, just perfect for a three-day bender. And on June 28 while perusing sportsjournalists.com, I suddenly had plans for July 8, 9 and 10. “WANTED: drinking partners” read the thread title. Aw, who could resist a come-on like that? I clicked on the thread and opened it up.

            And down the rabbit hole I went.

Hello again. It's that time of the year when I have settled into my new job, when I'm becoming acclimated to my new surroundings, when the bartenders at my new bar know me by name and drink (thanks Natalie and Amber and Cat and Dana for that on-tap IPA), when I finally started going to the gym again after five-plus months of vegetating, when I'm putting the California debacle behind me day by day by day, when it's about fucking time – in other words, Welcome to Joe's new life.

Hello again. It's that time of my life when I dread the next unexpected phone call, when I wonder what the next tragedy will be, scared to even think about it, when I'm so tired of dealing with all the loss this year has brought, when four deaths are four too many, four too many, when Jan. 1, 2007 can't get here soon enough -- In other words, this is the Year of Suck.

Hello again. It’s that time of the year when I’m finally leaving Southern California, when I’m putting this shithole of an apartment behind, when I have so few possessions left that it won’t take much to load them up in a trailer, when this constant reminder of everything at least won’t be staring me in the face every fucking day – in other words, Friday (March 31) can’t come soon enough.