Showering. Something you probably take for granted on a daily basis. But after spending close to four months on the road, we consider the act of showering somewhere between an enjoyable experience and something you would sell your soul for.

We started off this journey comfortably. We showered at my mom’s house. We showered at the house Jay grew up in during our stay in Los Angeles. Things got a little more out of the ordinary in the northwest when we showered and stayed at my stepdad’s great aunt Pinky’s house. But we definitely weren’t roughing it when we were being hit with the naked, dual headed shower sensation in Cape Cod, or in a cleanly kept condo located thirty-eight floors up in Chicago.

We have roughed it, showering at a dirty truck stop in Hastings, NY while paying eight dollars a shower to do so. We’ve had showering situations some would consider humorous, like when we showered in Jay’s cousin Tony’s artsy house in Portland. His shower was located in a room that was like a melting pot. The shower was next to the kitchen stove which was under a bedroom loft, where Tony and his girlfriend Stephanie slept. That time when we stayed with five girls in Delaware was pretty good too. The PTP crew upped the total shower hungry twenty somethings to nine that Wednesday morning, with only one ill-pressured shower available for use.

And oh, we’ve gone showerless. But let me tell you something. Showerless in Spokane is nothing compared to showerless in Mobile. It is humid and sticky in the south. If you don’t shower, you don’t survive.

Our most recent escapade to find a shower involved meeting girls at a bar on Beale Street in Memphis and latching on to them like they were the fountain of youth. Yesterday, Zach managed to finagle four showers from the attractive blonde working the counter of Hard Rock casino’s health and spa in Biloxi, MS. Today in New Orleans, we shower in a tub surrounded by rubber ducky curtains belonging to Ben, a friend of Brian Conley, who we briefly interviewed in Philly.

Despite the uncertainty of where and when we will shower next, there are two things you can count on.

There is no such thing as a group shower for the sake of conservation. And we will always use your shower products.

There are days when it all just makes sense. Today was one of those days.

We started off the day by heading to a rural part of Tennessee to interview a goat farmer, who, after fifteen years of accounting, just wanted to find something where she could be outside. Zach and I toured the farm, seeing as many as sixty goats, but none caught our eye more the fainting goat. The fainting goat actually faints, although the babies do not. The adults freeze up because of a sudden boost of adrenaline caused by fear. So when the Puppy (aka Zach) wildly chased a goat, it was no surprise that the goat helplessly fell to the dirt with legs stretched skyward.

Back in the city after our country experience, our next interview was with an articulate, environmentally conscious entrepreneur, who at twenty-seven year, just moved to Nashville from L.A. with his banjo playing fiancé. With eyes as green as his cause, this first time entrepreneur and former male model explained how he planned to put “sexy” into the worldwide green movement through the means of bamboo underwear. In stage one and a quarter of his business plan, his company will be called “Bambooty.”

Over beers that night we interviewed Chris Pandolfi, a banjo player with the Infamous Stringdusters bluegrass band. The Stringdusters have recently received worldwide recognition, taking home three IBMA awards this week in Nashville. Now 28, Chris has been playing the banjo since he enrolled in Dartmouth for environmental studies several years ago.

The thing that interested me the most about the interview with Chris was that when asked “what would be the one thing he would tell his twenty-three year old self,” he thoughtfully replied that he would like to hear what the younger Chris would have to tell him today. The reason for the answer was that the younger Chris played the banjo for fun. Today’s Chris plays professionally. With the territory has come pressure. Pressure to perform. To live up to expectations. To deliver. It’s a completely different feeling Chris derives from playing now compared to ten years ago, so much so that he has begun to play the drums on the side to regain the innocent sensation he once had when he first picked the strings of the banjo.

The number one answer interviewees respond with when asked the question we posed to Chris is to “take risks.” Or “believe in yourself.” As interviewers, we’ve made the connection that although the question asks what an interviewee would tell their twenty-three year old self, the answer we receive applies to their current situation. So the question subconsciously reads, “what would you tell yourself?” And more often than not, their answer revolves around fear, and going back to the optimism of their twenty-three year old self.

Today we were exposed to experience and inexperience. We saw how fear, drawn from experience, can literally paralyze, like the fainting goat on its back with its legs stuck in the sky. Or how a lack of knowledge, like a first time entrepreneur, a baby fainting goat, or picking up drumsticks can afford that innocent sensation that the world is a clean slated canvas.

by Noah Pollock
noah@pursuethepassion.com

A nickname can be a beautiful, or truly awful thing. Some are lucky enough to have a name conducive to an automatic nickname. Daniel Weber has been D-Web since the day he was born. Other appellations intend to offer a constant reminder of some joke among friends, then spreading to people completely uninvolved with the original joke. So was the case with my middle school/high school moniker Rat. In this, the long tradition of applied sobriquet, I offer for your approval Zach “Puppy” Hubbell.

What began as a cynic’s condescension of youthful exuberance, the Puppy has become so much more. The greatest nicknames spring from humble beginnings as the new owner grows into the name, like bougainvillea slowly occupying the seemingly uninhabitable face of a brick wall. Zach Hubbell, arguably the kindest, gentlest soul this world has ever known, has become the Puppy, for the reasons listed below and almost certainly more that we have yet to discover.

Youthful Exuberance: Constantly excitable, the Puppy has a seemingly endless reserve of earnest interest in everything. Furthermore, this excitement cannot be hidden behind a veneer of apathetic adulthood. At 25, the Puppy still giggles like a schoolgirl at the thought of a hike, fun night out, or a delicious meal.

Voracious Appetite: If not told to stop, the Puppy would eat the plate on which his meals are served. I once saw him eat an entire set of patio furniture with little regard for the impending stomachache caused by the consumption of large quantities of metal. The Puppy loves food, much like, well, a puppy, while constantly maintaining the svelte-ness of a 2-month old Golden Retriever.

Run, Puppy, Run: Upon arrival in every city, the Puppy rips off his shirt and starts running. To where he runs we have little idea, knowing only that he gets lost nearly every time. But this Puppy, with the aide of opposable thumbs, always calls home for directions. Dripping with sweat, he wanders back into whomever’s home we are currently occupying and rhetorically asks permission to use the shower.

Crate Training: As the fourth member of the group, the Puppy sleeps on a bench. He recently discovered the hallway of the RV as a more spacious sleeping area. He had neither blanket nor pillow for the first 2 months of the trip, having been finally bestowed both by Christian Eichenlaub of the Humane Society of Minneapolis. The following is a partial list of sleeping environments utilized by the Puppy: face down on top of the RV, face down on a 38th story Chicago balcony, carpets in nine states, off the edge of a California king-size bed, a basement in Buffalo, somewhere in Vegas, many couches and a hammock. The Puppy recently said that he naturally analyzes the depth of carpets in every home he now enters, judging whether or not they would be suitable to sleep on.

At this moment, we sit in a beautiful beach house in Cape Cod. Some of us work. The Puppy is out chasing the Frisbee.

Good nickname?