Alright, just left my appointment and everything was good. I'm just going outside the parking garage, waiting for the lights to turn green so I can drive back to Berkeley and I believe I left off where Adam was trying to tell Google in the front of the road that has thrown what happened to his mother. I'm not the radio, I think it was interfering there, but it looks like I'm still recording. There I was trying to explain to Google how I didn't know what the hell happened to my mother. He thought, you got like you, you should know what happened to your mother. I'm late, I'll be free to ask her now, but someone's got to know. Is there anything that you might know about your mother? I can't let go, I got to figure it out, even if you don't want to. Well, I thought about it for a while and I said, I remember visiting Nana, my grandmother. We would always visit her in the nursing home. There's nothing wrong with her, but we visited her in the nursing home. I think Uncle Billy told me one time, I remember here and Uncle Billy talking about how she had some kind of nervous breakdown. She was one of those women who didn't trust doctors. She was a teacher and I guess her work got the best of her, or perhaps she was one of those women who had one of them made life fit. Nana comes out to give you pause. I don't know what they call it, that's probably what happened to her. You never had? Uncle Billy, what the hell happened? Yeah, I guess I should have asked him. Maybe that's why he was always chasing the opposite, chasing life's little exhilarations. I'm not really sure, but I'll seem so fuzzy now. I guess you could say that I just didn't want to know at the same time. I kind of like the way you look at her. The eyes of a dying animal. Like a deer, and you just shot. You know, a buck, there's no more buck. And you wonder if your arrow was really meant for his heart. You look at those eyes and you think, wow, you're almost done. You're on your last breath. In case my grandmother, she wasn't on her last breath. I feel in it. Maybe those were the same eyes my mother was trying to run away from. I remember wrestling through her stuff one time. She was a letter, you know, like any kind of letter you would find from one kid to another kid or one teenager to another teenager. It was a peculiar letter though. It didn't make any sense. I think it was a little bit different from what she was. I guess it was some kind of pen pal game. Now there's something to Google that sounds interesting. It seemed like it made sense, but it also sounded like they're speaking, you know, the way a radio operator speaks in code. Oh, you mean like, you know, the way we did back in the army? Yeah, exactly like that, but it was with nicer words. You don't suppose those letters were code. Why the hell would my mother be writing in code? I'm just saying, you know, just like you were talking about your grandmother's eyes. You don't know why they looked that way. And here you are reading off a letter and you don't know why I looked that way. Well, let me tell you, your grandmother was crazy and your mother was writing in code. I don't really know what to make of all that, but it don't sound right. Let me get this straight. Your mother was valedictorian of her class. That means she got the highest marks among any other students. Well, yeah, there was some contention, I believe, remember who told me. I think it was Uncle Billy at one time. He told me that she was actually what do you call it? She was a saluditorian. She had a... she was second-high. The highest, the valedictorian had killed himself. Wait a minute, this story is getting so much weirder and weirder every day. Yeah, it turns out he was the son of the librarian. Well, she was obviously setting him up to be some Ivy League, Ph.D. Totten professor that he didn't want to be. I think he just wanted to write music, write country songs. How do you know all about this would-be valedictorian that killed himself to save your mother? That's just what Uncle Billy told me. I don't really know the details. Well, if fuzzy details and half memories are all we got to go on then, let's keep at it. Tell me more about this letter. You know, you know anything? I remember she was saying she was writing to this man name. Oh, what was his name? What was it a woman? Miss Lane, I think. That's who it was. And they were talking about all the different people that they write to you. Wait a minute, wait a minute. She had one pen pal who talked about all the other pen pal they wrote to. That's not just a pen pal, that's a special game. What are you talking about, a special game? Oh, it's a letter writing game. I don't know what you mean. Of course you don't, because you never played one. Look, how you save on stamps. You ever been a part of a mailing list? One of them stupid ones that spam you every day? Yeah, I can't stand those. Well, no shit. For some of them are nice enough if you consider it nice to only spam you once a week. Tell you all the weeks news in one message. It's called a digest. Okay, well that's what they were doing at 10 pounds. They were sending each other digest. Your mom must have been a part of a ring. A ring? Yeah, a ring. She probably had more pen pal than most people knew about. What we need to find out is how she... Who was the pen pal? Did she... maybe she took off to go visit some of these pen pal's? One or many? It's possible. But she came back looking like she had... Well, I don't even know if she'd come back. I mean, for all I know, she was in... You know, she had just gone to Dallas or San Antonio or Houston and waitress the whole time. Something tells me you don't just walk away like that and waitress. Your mother leaves anything behind. Yeah, I think she left... I left a King Edward Goldcoin behind. Well, there you go. How do you know your mother didn't come to London or to England to get that gold coin? It's possible. Why... she could have found it in the States. She could have found it in Texas. Yeah, but it's all we got and you're here. Well, maybe. Google and I went back and forth over and over again. I told him it was making my head spin too much. I said, you know what? I'm not liking London anymore. I want to get out of here. Well, where are you going to go? I mean... This is all on a bet. What? That's right. You don't remember? We played roulette for the next flight. We told the spinner to be here. Whatever you call that roulette guy. Whatever flight is leaving at midnight and that minute on the hour, we're taking it. We told him that? Absolutely. So you're telling me that you and I ended up here in London because of that last night with a dealer. That's right. You want to give him for us some girl. What happened to the girl? She walked off and she was crazy. After a couple more beers, you said, let's do it. Let's take that flight to London. It's just sitting there. So we took our winnings and we bought ourselves some tickets. There weren't those seats, but we were on standby and sure enough, someone decided to get off that plane. Well, that same girl that was listening to you. She thought you were so crazy. She did not want to be on that flight. So you're telling me this girl that I was trying to impress was actually from London. She was... she walked off the plane, that gave us the two seats. That's right. That's what happened. I don't know how you can't remember this stuff, Adam. Maybe I just had too much to drink. Not certainly looking at a tell. I was just about to black out. I don't really know how much he knows about what happened in Iraq. Now I have to figure out what the hell was I going to do with all this money and the summer ahead of me. I mean, I'm here in Europe now. Shit, everything is nearby. I might as well make a European vacation out of it. I thought about it for some more. Since we're on the subject of taking beds, how about we head on over to France? I think that guy who solved all this. He solved the... How are you going to go to France? That's right. Maybe we can go figure out what goes up with him. Go see the rifle power while we're at it. Not right. How do we get to Paris anyway? We just fly there. We're still the airport. Do you know where you are? You don't know where you are. You don't have to fly there. We can take the train now. What? That's right. We can head on over to Waterloo Station. Buy a ticket and the train will drop you in Paris. No shit. No shit. Well, hell, let's go do that. The next thing I know, do go and I. We're waiting in Waterloo for this here channel that they call it. And the white I call it the channel. That's how you get to Paris if you're in London. You're going to sit there and wait around for... Go to the airport, go to Heathrow, crazy ass place. Spend your money on that train just to get there. You know, spend your money on the train to get to Paris. Sure enough we were in the tunnel that goes under the channel. The tunnel under the channel. Chugging away. Chug, chug, chug. And it drops us right at the garden, no word. I don't know what that means. It means Northgate and French. But, sure enough, we were walking around France and China City. Don't get me wrong. This place was a sight to see. You had... had your... African... looking like... They didn't speak a word of English and they didn't. We're looking like they were about to sit there and... jibber jibber and swahili. And the next thing you know is spitting out beautiful French. I don't know what it is about that language, but it does sound cool. I'll never speak it because French with a Texas accent just... That's like putting maple syrup on your wavelt French arrow. You don't want to do it. Go anyway. The first thing we did when we got out of that train station was... You get to be at the talent. Yeah, that's an amazing thing that tower. I hear the man have built that wing crazy. And it's hard to believe that it was... just built so that they could have the tower. I guess we have towers nowadays. We all know what happened in 9-11. Some of the finest towers in this country were destroyed. I don't get it. I mean the French... Why do we hate the French so much? I mean they were colonizers. I mean they didn't want to run some airplane into their tower. They have to go run it into our tower. Anyway. We went up in that thing and sure enough they got all these flags from all over the world... ...put in just the right spot so that when you stand in there under that flag... ...you're actually looking in the direction of that country. I didn't know it but I was standing right under the Egyptian flag. I was staring right at each other. When I sit here thinking about that now... ...where I am... ...how I ended up here... ...it was no doubt that I could not even begin to tell my story until I had arrived... ...here on the steps of this place. This ancient place. Well... ...I just laughed it off when I was there under the tower. I kept just thinking. Here on Coobley... ...gold me and he's going to take me to Egypt. And all he did was take me to Luxor Hotel... ...so you can hit on the load... ...some fancy flight attendants. And then... ...what did he do? Well... ...he leaves me. I left him. I met up with Google and apparently we played roulette... ...like we were some experts at a game with a chance. And next thing we knew we landed in London... ...and we're staring at the Rose Dead Eston the next day. I don't get it. What the hell... ...who's trying to tell me something here? And he's all going off telling me about how my mother was... ...make it sound like she's some sort of spy. Well, I don't know. She's no make any sense. Mother was a good Christian. The same that she had as died. If they can't they rarely hit you... ...like such a young age. I always wondered how long she had known she had it. Maybe she did travel the world. Maybe she knew she was dying. And didn't want to let anyone know. And she wanted... ...to get her last chance... ...at a memory. Maybe she's been up in heaven right now, saying... ...at least I remember... ...getting to do what I wanted to. Maybe she did. If I knew I was dying and I was valid at killing her... ...I wouldn't go to college. Screw that. I'd... ...do what I'm doing right now, travel the world. Like that. Like, uh, ... spun being said... ...I'm here staring at differentlyød like revenues and shares. trying to make sense of my letters and some old stone that apparently as many meaningful layers to it. And then this year Google who has been sitting on solving all my problems. Well, as you know, well naturally Google and I, we went together to have some proper French food. That's right. I kept telling Google, no, I want to eat at one of them places where you sit outside. And they served you, you know, French food like whatever it is, French fries and mayonnaise or some guts of an animal, but I'm not going to go give my money to a place. And all they want to tell people is how great France was. Now I'd say we go somewhere better. I'd say we go somewhere that puts us in the spirit of what we're trying to do. We're trying to travel the world here. We are in France, but come on. Unless you're willing to spend ton of money on a meal, I suggest you go find yourself some ethnic food. Whatever we did. We found ourselves some good old Marigas and couscous. That's right. I learned how to scoop that couscous up with my hand. Only after the succulent taste of mint, lamb and mint. We're shoveled down my mouth. We're going to eat it all night long. It's a bit of a waffle cone with chocolate. And the line's out the door. That's what these people are after. Google finally gave in and we had some French food. I kept telling them it was great, but Google kept going on and on about how wonderful the Algerian food was. I think what we had was something like kidney sautéed and some fancy cognac. That's exactly what I was hoping to get. I'd never had a kidney sautéed in cognac hell. It wouldn't be sparse if I could have some rocky mound noisier sautéed in cognac too. It'd be a taste of my de good. That's what happened. We hung out at some bars here and there. But it wasn't until we were in the loop. I believe it was AC here. Google had to go to museums constantly. He had a voracious appetite for food as well as knowledge. He couldn't stop. He had to go to the Louvre, the Muse d'Orsay, the wine museum. He had to go to some museum of Africa. I mean, he was just loving that pair of eyes. Well, I don't know what to tell you next, but we decided to see what would happen if we just let water lead away. I don't know if you know what I mean by that, but up until now, I'd followed many people in life. I followed what's his name, Tyler Adder, to the Navy recruitment office and you saw where that got me. I guess I didn't really go anywhere after I came back from the military. Followed the orders of my dad and you're going to go to college. Sure, I'll go to college. I don't really know what's going to happen to me after that. I just studied. Yes, I made okay grades. But it just seemed like following is what you had to do. No one ever told me that I should consider being a leader. I mean, they say every man has a leader inside of him, a leader of what? Those are times I felt like I had a leader of beer inside me. I followed my mother. After she died, well, I tried to follow her. After she died, I thought she'd just gone to work. I wanted to follow her. Maybe I thought she'd wanted to go grocery shopping. I think she was just taking me on grocery shopping and forgot to take me. So I took on that front porch. Daddy, of course, had to hold me down most of the time because I wanted to go running off saying, she forgot to take me. She forgot to take me. She forgot to take me on grocery shopping. She forgot to take me on grocery shopping. You're going to have to figure that out and learn it. Dig in your hues and fight. That's what I saw all about. I was tied in a dump. I was one who was a fan. Never wanted me to fight. They were too busy digging their ground so they could dump their trash. I was going to let that happen. I was going to let myself have a stroke. I don't think so. Now that I think about trying to follow mother to the grocery store, I realized she would leave in me. I see a left for her. I was going to let her go. I was going to let her go. I was going to let her go. I just seen that maybe I never let myself really become the sailor that I wanted to be. I never had a chance to let the water take me where I wanted to go to follow the water. I tried. But it took me off course. I kept me back to land. I was going to go to college and that's not really following anything. That's just learning. When you get out, you're not any more. You're not better off than you were in some ways. Sure you know calculus and you know how to write term paper after term paper. When you start your job, you're not going to need to know all that unless you're going to be an engineer. I don't really know what I'm going to be. Well Google, he got sick and tired. He was just about way to go. I think he wanted to follow the canal. He decided to follow the paper.

Alright, so where was I? Did I tell you that Google is all frustrated with me? Yeah. I just wanted to come up with good ideas. I mean, I guess I kind of liked this idea of taking the canal. I didn't really know what I was going to lead us. But now I guess I was meant to follow Google. Taking those canals, someway, someway. Real maze. There were so many times that we were at some kind of water intersection, some walk that had to be open this way and that way. And we got here, you could say, okay here, I need you to get off here. Well, go get some food at this store, then come back and meet me and ask his other dog. I'm not going to be sure how to get there. Waited. No. I guess I never really actually knew how we got out of France. We just bit. It was almost like. Trying to figure out how you learned your third or fourth language. You don't really remember. You just remember one day's beginning. Well. We had to go. I guess Germany seemed like the right place to go. Compared to here, that was great, that's for sure. And I never really knew where to go. And I never really knew how closely related Texas was to Germany until I actually went there. See all the famous names of those settlers. And the town. Some ways up out of those back in central Texas. And talk about happy. I mean, not everywhere, but. Germany did not feel like a prank. Germany was one of those places where. Maybe Cops and a bridge. We could look over along the riverbank. I'm sure it's not there be a couple of people just sitting out there. Right in the middle of the city. I didn't feel like it had many immigrants. I mean, they had a lot of Turks there in Germany. We had a lot of donor cabab. That stuff was pretty good. And guess what? Where do you think Google wanted to go? Naturally, I wanted to go to checkpoint Charlie and. I mean, I didn't see all these. See that museum where they show you all the things that happened. At the Berlin Wall. You know, 20s and less Berlin, where they made all the movies. Where they put people behind the seats of a car. Inside the seat, not just in the back seat, but inside the seat of a car. Or where a man thinks he's freedom. A few seconds away only to be gunned down after some little. Spaking his paperwork was discovered just after he crossed the border. I don't know why I feel like that actually exists. But it didn't matter. We spent five minutes there before Google. Like, come on. We have to get out of here. There is a museum that is just going to knock your socks off. I was like, what means you can knock my socks off? Well, he showed it to me. That was for sure. I forgot what Canadian it had. You know, it was one of those. It was on an island. I didn't even know Berlin had islands. But it was called Museum Island. They got a funny name. They had the gate of this tower in that thing. It was unbelievable. I had never thought that you could take the actual gate to a city from ancient Babylon. And then build it inside another building. That's what they did. And then after that we went to the museum, another side of Berlin. The only thing that was there was the bus with an effort to keep it. That's right. Here we go again, not any need it. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how it happens, but we do. That woman. I've never realized it before. But I felt like I had seen her before. She was definitely in some way the stupid image of my own mother. I don't get me wrong. Mother had strong emilyu hair. Kind of the younger emilyu hair from the 70s qualities about her. You see her, those eyes I could stare at you. Those eyes were the same. Just as pretty as her voice. I'm sure there were a lot of women out there who tried to copy that voice, but they could do it. When we got there and saw the bus with an effort to get her, it looked at it and I was like, that is absolutely amazing. I could not believe I was staring at something that was built so long ago. They knew it would tell me. You know there was a copy, right? I've never seen a much of a woman. What the hell do you mean? She's only one of these. It's not on everybody's necklace for God's sake. Well, I'm just telling you, there's a copy. They made more than one. And the Germans didn't really restore this one until that, but they brought it back to Germany. It's one of the deals that they made with the authorities of each present time. What the hell do you mean, the deal that they made? That's right, as it deals. They cleaned up. They looked at two. They discovered these two heads just being, well, one of them wasn't so great. And the other looked like it. It was a diamond in the roof. So what they do, they cleaned up, and not so great one. And they told the authorities, how about we take this beat up overhead and you can have the clean one? Well, what do you think they thought? They didn't believe how naive they were. You know, when you hire a contractor to come, upgrade your bathroom. It's not like they have never seen your shit before. They know bathrooms inside and out. Okay, if they think that your tile is not going to work no matter how much you believe that it's the right tile for you, you should listen. If they think copper is better for you than some other pipe out there, you should listen. Yeah, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg, but you'll be better for it in the long run. Well, those Egyptians weren't better for it in the long run. They got, short into the stick there, you know what I mean? I can't tell you how beautiful or how much work and effort and upkeep. The Germans do to make a museum that holds someone's head. That's right. By now you're guessing I've been to Egypt and I've seen the head. Let's just say I've seen it in pictures. Yeah, it's not on display the way the one in Germany is. It's stuck in some back corner of a room with a bunch of other heads for that matter. Had you not been in that back corner and had you not been scrutinized and over those ten heads back there, you would never have noticed that that was the never-titty top. What am I trying to say? Well, it's all good to that. All I can tell you right now is you can maybe let me think of you the only one but you're not. The world is a bigger place than you think. Just because you don't know where someone is or you've lost someone doesn't mean that they're not. I'll phone some journey of their own. A journey that you yourself may unknowingly take. A journey that leads you to the discovery of another cell. A journey that leads you to the discovery of your copy. Now it's starting to lighten. It's here. Lessons from Google if I could call them less. I wanted to learn more. And Google certainly loves showing me. Well, tell from her landing to take a short train ride. I'll do a check to Prague. Now that is a fun city. If there was a city in here that could make you feel like you were already a part of a film, that's Prague. If it was back when I visited. It was kind of funny how. It took the train there and it followed the river. So I didn't feel so bad about not taking a boat. But once we got there, the train station was just enough. You didn't even feel like you were in such a great place. Well, we were in an amazing place. Bohemia. Excuse me. Check for public and the area has definitely shared some similar qualities. Now well, Southern Germany lived a nice liberal life while they were stuck to them. They had the nourishment there for years. It was for good attention. When we got one cage left and a hundred people at the party, well, they're not going to get the same poor each time. You got to make sure everybody gets a proper drink. If that means you only get four ounces of beer, we'll have a few. We better damn well be happy with that four ounces of beer. Could be none. And where'd you be? Be on a boring ass party without no beer. Well, anyway. Frog in some ways was a spooky place. Kind of felt like we were getting closer to some dark mysterious path. Kind of like our own iron curtain. We didn't have two afraid to uncover what to pull the shades up on. Yes, sure we saw a puppet show. Yes, sure we had some good food. It was that gypsy woman that spooked me. She looked at me and she said, I must have been a gypsy. I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Google looked at me like, watch your pockets, man. So naturally I was a little on guard. But that's not what she was there for. She didn't have a little clan of girls who wanted to tell me the roses. No kids who came up to tug on your jacket. So to speak. I looked at her and I said, what do you mean I could be a gypsy? You look like you were a gypsy. You come from gypsy. You try to say my mother was a gypsy? Your mother or your father, one of them was a gypsy. Let's go Google. I can't stand this anymore. So we left. My two baller had some more beers. I don't like clogging anymore. Let's get out of here. Where'd we go after that? Why do you think we went to Buddha past? Buddha and past. Can I say I had the greatest time in Buddha past? No. I appreciate the fact that they came from hunting culture yet. What was there to do in that city? Take a bath? Well, Google and I took spent one day at the bath without feeling like we were a bunch of hell mose. Another one of us had a girl with it, so kind of just blew that place off. We went up to their little castle hill. They got this pretty cool maze or whatever you call it. I think Buddha past was one of the first places we decided to have some Burger King or some McDonald's. We were missing some good old hometown food. Well, two of us got bored of that city. We moved on to Vienna. The Vienna was an interesting place. Now that's about a place that looks like it used to be the D.C. Of another world. I never realized how important that city was.