Month: August 2013

Today was the day for which we came to Arkansas: I was getting inked by Erik!

But that wasn't scheduled until after noon, so John, Ben, and I grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonalds and headed to beautiful downtown Bentonville to wander and catch a bit of the local ambiance:

If the store had been open, I so would've thrown my credit card balance to the wind and bought this…

We also went through the Walmart Visitor Center. (Hey it's a small town and there wasn't much else to do to kill a couple hours.)

Walmart has a visitor center, you ask? Indeed. From the website:

Visitors can look, touch and explore through a series of family-friendly, interactive displays. All the exhibits are designed as giant scrapbooks that tell the story of Walmart through words, images, artifacts and interactive displays like our virtual tour of Sam Walton's old office and our map featuring information on customers, stores, suppliers and associates from around the world. We've even got Mr. Sam's trusty old Ford F-150 parked in the gallery.

In other words, it's a veritable warehouse of pro-Walmart propaganda.

The funniest things I saw were two items in the "returned merchandise" exhibit. Both pretty much sum up the entire stereotype of Walmart shoppers:

It was still way too early to head over to Erik's studio, so we killed some time at Grounds for Thought and did what geeks do: we got coffee and brooded over our laptops.

We grabbed lunch at Gusano's Pizza and then headed over to Odyssey Tattoo, Erik's salon. John left early because his appointment was first, and he was already in the chair by the time we arrived:

Soon Calvin & Hobbes were frolicking on his arm:

I was next.

John had his return flight to catch, so shortly after I sat down in the chair, he was off. It was a great visit and Ben and I can't wait until we see him again. Maybe next year a trip to the east coast is in order.

The good Doctor and his Tardis were a bit more involved, so it took a while longer…

Three hours later, it was finished!

It was everything I'd hoped it would be. Thank you, Mr. Rubright. I can never say that enough. It is amazing.

From there, Ben and I went back to the hotel room for a bit and then met Erik at Grub's. Added bonus: JP and Earl were in town as well and joined us shortly after we arrived!

A great vacation got a little bit better!

I'd never met either of the guys, but had been following JP's blog for some time. Like Erik, he's exactly the same in person as online and we had a great time. Unfortunately, after three hours of getting poked, I was beat, and shortly after dinner Ben and I bid our adieus and headed back to the hotel.

We did make one stop on the way first, however. Andy's Frozen Custard…

…and bug watching.

Yikes! Are you supposed to put a saddle on and ride that thing? It looks like something that crawled out of The Mist. (Mmm…Thomas Jane.)

But I digress.

Day 2 took us from Wichita to Rogers via Oklahoma.

You may be wondering why we took the "back roads" route instead of taking the much faster I-70 route direct from Denver.  This is why:

Yes, these two fat kids planned their trip around a hamburger joint. If you don't have Whataburger in your location, I feel sorry for you. We had them in Phoenix, but we don't have them in Denver, and while I got to partake when I was in Arizona earlier this year, Ben had no such opportunity. So naturally we had to go.

We arrived in Rogers mid-afternoon and immediately met up with John, who had booked a room at the same Microtel we did. None of us had stayed in one before, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how nice it was—and I have to say that of the three places we overnighted on this trip, the Microtel was the best. (Avoid the Days Inn in Lawrence Kansas!).

One of the things we'd wanted to see on our trip was the Pea Ridge Military Park; not necessarily because of any great interest in the Civil War, but rather simply to get our Park Service Book stamped!

I'll say this: it was beautiful. Arkansas is green. Erik told us it was very unusual for this time of year, but it was still amazing. In fact, that's the one thing I noticed the most after we got off the highway and out of the brown fields of Oklahoma. And the green here was different than the kind of green we have in Denver. Deciduous versus coniferous forests, maybe?

Anyhow, we made our way through the park and stopped along the way to grab some photos…

Even though John and I had never met in person prior to that day, I felt an immediate kinship. Some people have no respect for historic sites:

Absolutely no respect:

(Although I'm sure it's not the first time any of this had been done…)

And sometimes I happen to snap a few photos where everything just seems to come together:

Later, after heading back to the hotel to freshen up, the three of us joined  Erik and his husbear Robert at Frank's Hickory Inn for dinner. Afterward, we headed over to the infamous JJ's for some adult beveraging.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Okay, maybe just one. You pick.

This One Turned Everyone's Heads

The most interesting thing about the start of our journey was seeing the radar installations east of Denver.

Day 1 was punctuated by lunch at Taco John's in Lamar. We'd never been to the chain before. I liked it. It reminded me of how Taco Bell tasted before it was swallowed up by KFC. Ben wasn't as impressed.

The afternoon was full of endless fields, wind generator turbines, threatening skies, and one roadside warning found when we stopped to get gas…

Back in 2007, shortly after I'd celebrated my five-years-cancer-free anniversary, I got my first tattoo. I anguished for months over the design, and finally decided on a simple black tribal design consisting of two geckos head to tail, curving around a roman numeral 5. The design was perfect. The execution was a disaster. The artist I'd chosen in Phoenix decided to "improve" the design—without asking, and as he was in the process of inking me—by adding shadows and highlights. By the time I realized what he was doing it was too late, and my perfect design was ruined. (If it sounds like I'm still bitter after all this time, it's because I am.)

There wasn't much that could be done about the abomination that now resided on my left bicep, but I swore that from that point forward the only person who would ever ink me again was Erik Rubright. How or when this would happen had always been a question since we lived about a thousand miles apart, but if it was meant to be, somehow, somewhere it would happen. And if it didn't and it meant  I would never get another tattoo as long as I lived, so be it. It was better to live with that than risk ending up with another indelible piece of crap as a permanent part of my body.

Ben and I had the pleasure of meeting Erik and his partner, Robert, in person about nine months ago, and it cemented in my mind the fact that no one would put ink to my skin again unless it was Erik.

As my ten year anniversary began to loom large, I started thinking about what I wanted to do to mark its passing. Five years ago—prior to actually getting that rotten ink—I had anticipated adding to the original piece as the years ticked by, but now that I was approaching that ten-year mark, it no longer appealed to me. On the other hand, I couldn't come up with any viable alternatives either—or at least nothing that appealed to me to such a degree that I would want to make it permanent.

Shortly after Erik and Robert were in Denver I ran across a piece of Doctor Who art that really spoke to me. It was an almost cartoonish picture of the Tenth Doctor (David Tenant) standing in front of a semi-stylized Tardis against a pale blue, star-studded background. It was the tenth doctor. It was my tenth anniversary. I'd found my next tattoo! I sent it to Erik and asked if he'd be able to do it. He responded that he could, and that he would file it away for such time that he would be able to personally apply it.

This has been percolating at the back of my mind for some time now, and when Ben and I started discussing possible vacation plans this year, a trip to Erik's studio in Arkansas naturally came up. I ran the idea past John, an internet friend I've known for close to a decade but had never met—asking if he would be willing to join us in Bentonville. He jumped at the idea.

So last Sunday, John hopped on a plane heading south; Ben and I loaded up his new Kia, and headed east…

(to be continued)