I love the editor of the City Paper, a fact not unknown by the City Paper editor’s handsome, successful husband. However, as much as I love the editor of CP, she has one complaint about me and our decidedly nonromantic love. My editor would like it if I could be funny in what she calls “less words.”
In an effort to finally please a woman at least once in my life, I am now going to attempt to condense a trip of two months traveling and filming people, famous and not, across the whole of America on behalf of orphans (previewed in a May 17, 2006 City Paper story) into nothing but stats:
•Total days traveling: 60
Nights spent at truck rest areas: 4
Nights spent on friends’ floors, sofas, or guest rooms: 13
Nights spent at $40-$50 motels: 25 (Total $1,250)
Nights spent at Malibu mansion: 6
Nights spent at Bel Air mansion (without The Fresh Prince): 12
•Total number of miles driven: 14,850
Total miles driven by me: 14,750
Miles by train (N.Y.): 150
Miles by ferry (Va. and Wash.): 70
Miles by air: 0
•Average price of gas: $3.05
Average gas mileage in our ’65 Mustang convertible: 12 mpg
Average gas mileage in my 1991 Lexus: 24mpg
Number of breakdowns in Mustang: 7
Number of breakdowns in Lexus: 0
Total cost of gas: $1,989
Total cost of car repairs: $850 (including much free work by Zip’s Kar Kare/Mt. P)
•Hours of film shot on trip: 28
Hours of film shot in total: 69
•Times Shawn the cameraman thought to stab me with a fork: 1000s
Times Shawn actually stabbed me with a fork: 0
•I’ve seen:
Fires: 2
Rain: very little
Deaths: 2 (auto accident outside Boston at 3 a.m.)
•BK veggie sandwiches consumed (Me and Shawn the cameraman): approx. 65 Pounds of wild blackberries picked and consumed
in WA and OR: approx. 10
Times animal flesh was consumed (fish): 4 … all by me
•12 oz. Coca-Colas drunk: 248 (all by me)
Empty calories from said Coca-Colas:
34,720 (over 17 days worth of calories)
•Days surfed: 0
Holes of golf played: 0
Days playing tennis: 0 (I’m working for orphans, baby.)
•Number of push-ups: 14,250 (approx.)
Calories burned by push-ups: 14,000 (approx.) (not quite enough to make up for the Coca-Cola)
•Girls gawked at: 1,246
Girls hugged: 6
Girls kissed: 0
Girls I wish I had kissed: 1,246
Girls that may have wanted to kiss me: 1 or 2
Girls I should have gotten e-mail addresses from: 1 (Park ranger at Mt. Saint Helen’s)
••Boys gawked at: 0
Boys hugged: 3
Boys kissed: 0
•Most beautiful place: Glacier National Park, Mont.
Second Most Beautiful Place: San Juan Island, off Wash. state
Third Most Beautiful Place: Almost everywhere else…
•Autographs on John Liberatos’ ’65 Mustang convertible: 86
Celebrity autographs: 21
Celebrities contacted for autographs: 83
•Times Charleston apartment was
broken into while traveling: At least 1 (Chas. Police case #0616752)
•Golf tournaments won by Tiger Woods while on trip: 5
Money won by Tiger during this period: $5,485,000
Money earned by Michael Fechter during this trip: 0
Money earned for orphans: Still to be determined (two cars to sell and film rights … looking good)
Present level of exhaustion: High
Degree of happiness to be home: Considerable
Worth of the experience: Priceless and life changing
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