Photo description: The aquarium at The Dublin Underground (Rory’s bar) has some interesting admission requirements. Or elderly fish.

IOWA CITY — Good afternoon! I’ve made it safely to scenic Madison, Wisconsin, for Independence Day weekend after wrapping up a breezy 39 hours in Iowa City.

Speaking of which: Due to the whiplash of my travel schedule, there will be some days where I only have time to tie up loose ends here on the blog. I don’t want to spend all of a new stop writing about the last one, and frankly, some days are going to be less coherently poetic than others.

The last night in Iowa City was one of those stays, so let me fill you in before taking off to see what Madison’s all about:

Finding Rory

I checked into The Dublin Underground on Friday to see if I could locate Rory, a local bartender who bought me a drink on Thursday, at his bar. When work set me free around 2:30 p.m., I poked downstairs to his green, shag-carpeted Irish bar — no dice. It was just a bunch of people watching a “clip show” episode of The Simpsons. Rory wasn’t there. I ordered a draft pint of Bud Light anyways. (“This show is getting increasingly hard to follow these days,” one customer did add.)

I ended up swinging by Dub-Und again by 7:30 or so, and Rory was downstairs, having his standard Tito’s and soda, surrounded by close friends at the far end of the bar, just like how he had encountered me across the street at Deadwood’s rail. That’s apparently his spot all over town. And I say “close friends” just based on their body language. Rory was grinning and laughing from ear to ear, and people kept inching closer to be the nearest face in his tightknit circle. I walked over to get his attention, and he didn’t even notice me for about 30 seconds.

When he saw me, his eyes lit up — all he said was “INDIANA! … this kind lady will take care of you” — and I took a seat to have my second Bud Light of the day. I sat and waited to see if he’d come chat with me, and the crowd never let up. More and more people trotted down the crooked stairs to his wooden box of a basement bar. A half-hour went by, and he never got any more free. Couples and elderly folks and strangers and wanderers alike hopped down to greet Rory, and I eventually left without saying goodbye. Didn’t wanna hijack his vibe.

That’s Rory’s place. Not mine. It was Friday night, and the loyal subjects of Dublin were filtering in to see him. Rory is the king, and I got the King’s Welcome — I am grateful for that alone.

Finding Alex

After my attempt to have another conversation with The King of Dublin fell through, I ended up taking a seat at GENE’S, the Iowa City Graduate’s open-air bar (presumably, named after iconic University of Iowa alumnus Gene Wilder). The crowd was packed. I had taken the last seat at the rail, and prepared to wait 5, 10, no maybe another 10 minutes for the masses to let one of the barkeeps breathe for a second (Luke, if you’re reading this, you’re killing it, and you did an excellent job for the Jazz Fest crowd.)

I sat, thinking about just how neat it felt to be a stranger in a vibrant city again, to shed my reputation and just experience other people having a good time. Exist through osmosis. Be the least important person in any room.

Then I got a tap on the shoulder.

(Uh-oh. Fuck! Someone’s gonna kick my ass.)

I turned around and immediately recognized an old friend from college. The following thoughts raced through my brain at dial-up speed (which, for the scale of the operation, was still pretty fast).

• Hey, I know that smile?
• And those glasses...
• And that voice is familiar?
• It’s you. Oh my god, it’s you! I know who you are!
• But I can’t remember your name right now! And most importantly — what the fuck, you’re here in Iowa City too?

This stranger — and importantly, not a hellbent alcoholic planning on kicking my ass for taking his chair during Happy Hour — was Alex Farris, a man I knew very closely 10 years ago.

Alex is someone I met through our mutual involvement in HoosOnFirst, an improv comedy troupe, around 2010. In the following years, we also shared paths through our journalism studies at Indiana University. I was a writer/editor type, and he was a photojournalist (and a crackerjack one at that). He graduated in 2012, and I graduated in 2013. Together, we left the IU School of Journalism with bolstered resumes and a good bit of acclaim behind our work.

But truthfully, Alex and I were able to bond Friday night over just how much we’ve changed away from that, at least for now.

I’ve told my story here: I’m a lifelong writer who got into typing stuff for newsprint, tried out the marketing thing, and now I’m working for myself, creatively speaking.

Alex took a harder, much more powerful alternative route: He became a doctor.

After four years of school and various job opportunities to be objective and uninvolved as a journalist, Alex found that he wanted to do more altruistic good in this world. So he went to med school.

Today, he’s a resident physician in Iowa City, working for the University of Iowa’s Hospitals and Clinics. I want to say he’s involved in neuroscience, but I can’t be certain — we got to chill with each other again for the first time in 8 years. He’s doing the Lord’s Work, and I’m doing [gestures broadly] all this in the spirit of growth through storytelling. That calls for a lot of beers.

It’s a shame that we didn’t take any new pictures together, but it just makes me feel all the more certain that we cashed in on much-overdue conversation.

Together, Alex and I caught up, along with his wife of two years, Liz Sokol, who is a very kind person and funny sort.
Had to make sure I included how good her company is. Our evening started off at GENE’S (they had stepped in from Iowa City’s annual Jazz Fest to grab a drink), and Alex noticed me from a table across the bar. He was familiar with my road trip and its mission, but he didn’t quite assemble the reality it could be me at first, where he lives, in the bar he’s at now: Just a guy who looked like me. But as the bartenders (thankfully) were held up and unable to serve me, it gave Alex plenty of time to pick up on my presence. We all hung out for about two hours, talking about just how much we had stepped away fromt he career paths we expected and why we were so involved in the first place. We talked of mental health issues, and how we both are surprised by who we were a decade ago — and how different we might be 10 years for now.

Eventually, we migrated to my top-floor suite to watch a ridiculous movie on TCM (“Point Blank” 1967, — some dude backhanded a beer bottle against some poor sap’s teeth and I may have woken up the entire Quad Cities area laughing; then “Archie Bunker” showed up) and drink some more brew, and enjoy the suite while I still had it for another 11 hours. (I was the only person to have seen it otherwise — it was an unforgettable treat to have Real Talk against a city skyline in a posh room you’ll probably never get to visit again in your life.)

It’s funny, you know? Like I hinted at in yesterday’s post, so much of the pressure of road trips and travel is rushing and hustling to make sure you “see it all.”

And because of the byproduct of both Rory being in his own element at his bar, and the bartenders at Gene’s being overwhelmed, a chance encounter of hundreds of miles (I had no idea he was even IN Iowa) gave us both a legendary night in our longtime friendship.

It’s difficult for me to buy into the supernatural or metaphysical or religious. But when meetups like this unfold so fatefully, it’s almost impossible for it not to feel like something divine.

Notebook Items

BREAKDANCING BREAKS OUT: Aw man, it’s a huge bummer when I gotta relegate stuff like breakdancing to my “running out of time” section, but I did run into some breakers Friday evening. (I posted a quick video earlier today.) They had perched up a block north of the previously mentioned jazz fest, attracting passersby in the early evening. I’ve never really seen B-Boys or that kind of dynamic dancing in my life. I assumed that when I did, it would be somewhere like New York or Chicago or Atlanta. Nope! Iowa City. Put that one down in the record books. Vegas had long odds on that one, I bet.

NO MORE SUITE LIFE: As far as I can tell at this point, that’s the end of king suite upgrades and bougie snacks waiting for me at hotels on this big tour. It was a tremendous privilege to have that waiting for me, but the road ahead will see me planning more frequently for snacks and groceries. Which, is to be totally expected, but I’m being transparent so those of you playing along at home know that I’m not being sponsored or anything.

KEEN ON KINNICK: The very last thing I did in Iowa City before leaving was check out Kinnick Stadium, the Hawkeyes’ venue for football and plenty of other things, I’m sure. I don’t follow Iowa closely, beyond the normal rivalry a Big Ten school might offer, but I’m willing to go to war for them on their new moniker of “The Greatest Tradition in College Sports.” That’s a superlative that virtually every major university has some sort of claim or unique entry to, but Kinnick is something different, beyond yea-rah music or an animal mascot. At the end of the first quarter, everyone in attendance — both Iowans and visitors alike — are encouraged to wave to the Children’s Hospital which towards over the stadium, and wish the children in treatment all the best in their battles, and to know that everyone downstairs is thinking for them or praying for them. I feel like a big goofy idiot for even saying this, but the very thought of this tradition makes me want to cry, especially because my buddy Alex is involved with the fight now. It’s fucking beautiful. There’s no spite or revenge in this tradition. It’s 100% love, and the sort of uniting force that I most appreciate about sports. “The Wave” started in 2017 because of a social media suggestion, but I hope it sticks around. It’s so pure and sweet.

Well, it’s time to make new memories here in Madison. “On Wisconsin” and such. I’ll report back later.

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-moose