If at Birth You Don't Succeed (22 page)

As we became more tired and desperate, we entertained other less plausible methods of finding the damn hut. “We should just burn all the leaves in the forest down so it's easier to see,” Josh suggested. I considered it.
3
Let's be real. We were all very moved by
FernGully
as children, but that's a cartoon. Trees don't actually feel anything. And in all likelihood, Smokey the Bear doesn't care about Canada.

Our only rays of hope were the occasional hikers who had arrived in these woods through a genuine love of the outdoors and might know some navigational techniques that were better than holding a smartphone up in the air and cursing Google Street View for not including mountains. Whenever one of these wildlings would pass by, we'd frantically call to them, “Excuse me, do you happen to have any idea where the HemLoft is?” And they'd say, “Um … I think it's a-boat five minutes that way,” gesturing so vaguely that
that way
could be anywhere. With renewed purpose, I'd cling to whoever's back was less sore at that moment and set off again. Not once, but twice, we ran into a little boy who cheerfully informed us that the HemLoft was actually in the
opposite
direction. We were officially in a Canadian
Twilight Zone
episode. At this point, even MY legs and arms were starting to give out. It was that awkward moment when you realize that the nothing you've been doing is just too much for you.

I suggested that my friends set me against a tree and leave me to die, but although we'd been lost deep in the woods for the past hour and a half, it turned out we were only about a two-minute walk from where we'd abandoned my chair on the side of the road. So instead of leaving me for the white walkers, they just set me back down in my comfy chair. Brad stayed with me to recover from his brief but traumatic exposure to sunlight and physical activity, while Josh and Aaron went back to search for the HemLoft, following the lead of whichever small boy they deemed more trustworthy.

I sat on the side of the road, peering into the forest with anticipation and making idle chitchat with Matt, a mellow Redditor and bassoon craftsman who'd opted out of the search in favor of relaxing with my brother and me. Even though I was tired and it was the last day of filming, I remained the consummate host and asked Matt deep, probing questions like “What does your tattoo say?” and the more philosophical “Nice up here, huh?” while we waited. Finally, echoes of excitement were heard coming from the trees, cries of “It's over here!” and “We found it!” Josh and Aaron emerged from the wilderness, beaming with pride and glistening with sweat, to report that they had, in fact, found the mythical HemLoft.

A feeling came over me that was similar to when you're driving into Orlando and start seeing the signs for Disney World … only more Canadian. But getting to the HemLoft wasn't going to be easy. Josh explained, “It's not far, but it is an
interesting
path.” “Interesting” meant that in order to get to the HemLoft, we needed to climb up a small but almost vertical cliff side with very few solid footholds, and I couldn't simply be carried up it—I'd need to be handed from person to person.

If this had been an officially sanctioned Canadian tourist spot, there might have been ropes, pulleys, helmets, or, more likely, a simple declaration of “Hell no, you can't do that.” I responded to this news of imminent peril with all the concern of a golden retriever on his way to the park. All I heard was “…
blah, blah, blah,
tree house,
yadda, yadda
…” as I had trained my mind to only recognize words that I liked. So, blissfully unaware, I wrapped my arms around Aaron's neck, pulled up my legs, and went for one last piggyback ride up a mountain.

The gravity of the situation didn't hit me until the actual gravity of the situation hit me. As we ascended farther up the rock face, I could feel my grasp slipping. My whole body clung for dear life. Aaron, now understandably out of breath, stammered, “I'm not going to be able to hold your legs, so you gotta hang on tighter.” It dawned on me just how difficult this climb was. The grip of my atrophied swizzle stick legs and the brute strength of Aaron's sculpted Roman statue body were the only things between me and a splattered mess of Zach on the rocks below. I had never been more grateful to be on horizontal ground than when we reached the top of that cliff side. I also felt the familiar mixture of gratitude and embarrassment for nearly strangling and/or crushing my two helpful friends.

It wasn't long after we continued down into the trees that I spotted the HemLoft, where the other Redditors had gathered. It stood like a proud Hobbit hole in the sky, a wooden orb supported by the trunk of a towering old-growth pine tree running through its center. The ordeal we'd just been through to find this place made it feel as though we'd uncovered an ancient relic. I finally knew what it was like to be Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones was wearing a lavender hoodie and blue track pants, and had to be carried by a man in much better shape than he was. Still, it was an incredible rush.

The HemLoft was on a steep slope, and a bridge of five dainty wooden lily pad steps connected the tree house to higher ground. Aaron got down on his knees with me on his back and started crawling across, carefully using every ounce of strength and balance to avoid slipping and killing us both. The trip was treacherous to begin with but was made even more dangerous when I, ever helpful, started choking.

“Don't cough, you son of a bitch!” he said.

“Your head …
cough
 … is on my … windpipe!” I gasped in response.

As I was clinging and hacking for dear life, I suddenly understood why the mustaches and moose enthusiasts of the world would be afraid to let me go down waterslides and crawl across rickety bridges. If I had taken that second ride down the slide at the pool all those summers ago, I might have gotten stuck and snapped both my legs off, or caused a fifteen-kid pileup in the waterslide, creating a dam of children and drowning everyone. And if that bowler-capped killjoy had let me roll over the suspension bridge, I guess there was a chance that the friction of a steel wheelchair could spark a fire that would burn across the ropes to ravage the Ewok village beyond. I could see the headlines: “Crippled Boy Allowed to Have Fun, Fifteen Dead” or “Disabled American Destroys Eighth Wonder of the World, Revenge for War of 1812?”

With one final forward heave, Aaron slung me off his back and sat me up inside the tree house, both of us exhausted but satisfied. After we caught our breath, we saw a ladder bathed in sunlight that led up to a tiny loft and thought,
What's a few more steps?
Reaching the top, we poked our heads out of the hole in the HemLoft's roof and waved to the Redditors below, basking in our triumph.

The journey had been unconventional, unsafe, and profoundly uncomfortable, but in spite of all the hiccups, we'd accomplished what we had set out to do. We'd made a show that embodied the spirit of adventure and the camaraderie of Reddit. We'd gone forth not hindered by fear, but propelled by friendship. As we sat together, with Brad behind the camera capturing the exchange, I thanked Aaron and Josh profusely for carrying me all this way, but for the first time, I allowed myself to admit that, in my own way, I had carried them too.

The show may have been called
Riding Shotgun
, but I had been a driving force the whole way through—despite doing none of the actual driving. A year earlier, I was wrapping up a different kind of road trip entirely, where I was the star, yet still very much a passenger. That travel show had a bigger crew and a bigger budget but a lot less heart. On
Riding Shotgun
we never asked whether something could or should be done; we only asked how. Where
Rollin'
was about showing me the world,
Riding Shotgun
was about my discovering it for myself.

When the four of us had set out six weeks earlier, we had no idea what we were getting into; we only knew that we would be figuring it out together. There was always the risk of bruises and broken bones, but they weren't worth missing an adventure over! The gatekeepers and network executives and lifeguards of the world might've seen me as a liability, but Josh, Brad, and Aaron saw me as an equal. To them, I wasn't a disaster waiting to happen, I was part of a team who made a journey richer for one another. Sink or swim, climb or fall, we were friends, and friendship is something that is crazier than any slide, more deeply rooted than any old-growth pine tree, and stronger than any amount of hemp rope hundreds of moose can trample.

 

CHAPTER 12

With Apologies to Gene Shalit

No matter what good fortune falls into my lap, people always tend to view my life as an underdog story. The only times I really agree with that assessment are in regard to my love life. I was the runt of the romantic litter. I was the guy who, at twenty-seven, had never had a girlfriend or even really made a move, and seemed to be well on my way to playing the title character in a real-life reboot of
The Forty-Year-Old Virgin
. But even then, I still held out hope that I would one day emerge as the romantic lead of my own story, that after years of mishaps and missed opportunities, I'd finally seize the moment and get the girl.

On the morning of September 23, 2012, I woke up in my childhood bed at my mom's house in Buffalo, optimistic that I had finally reached the moment of truth in my own personal RomCom. Though no one in my house knew it, it was one of those Today's the Day! kind of days. Sure, I was nervous, but I was ready to take on the world and confident that no matter what happened, everything would turn out well. That was a really nice two minutes. My next thought was
Where the hell are my dress shoes?

“I don't know,” my mom said, “but it doesn't matter what shoes you wear, you're just meeting Alexis there, right?” I couldn't tell my mother the real reason why the geriatric white Velcro sneakers wouldn't be the optimal choice for this particular trip to New York City. Even at twenty-seven, uttering the words “Hey, Mom, I'm going to the Big Apple to lose my virginity” was not something I possessed the maturity to do. Instead, I did what I was most comfortable with—blatantly lying.

“Yeah, but it's a business meeting” (technically true) “and there's gonna be lots of guys from Google there” (hopefully not true). My cover story was that I was going to New York City to meet with Google to go over
Riding Shotgun
, now that we were in postproduction. In reality, the only “business meeting” I had was a guest spot on an Internet talk show called
What's Trending
that was filmed in LA, not New York. I could have just as easily Skyped in from Buffalo, but this trip wasn't about business; it was about pleasure.

In the movies, all it takes to make a romantic connection is a little bit of serendipity, but in this case it took an elaborate web of misdirection, meticulous planning, and a team effort as I'd be joined by expert field agents: my best friend Andrew and newly transplanted New Yorker friend Kevin.

With the exception of my misplaced “business” shoes, I had planned this expedition to a T. A flight at 9:30 that morning would get me into New York by 11:00 a.m., then the trip into the city would take forty-five minutes by shuttle. Taking into account that I'd be the last person off the plane and had to pick up my luggage, I should be at the hotel by 12:15 p.m. This schedule would leave me nearly five hours of prep time—interrupted only by my brief video chat with
What's Trending
at 3:00 p.m.—to converge with Andrew and Kevin at the hotel and do a complete body overhaul, learn how to put on a condom, freak out, shower, get dressed, and, at 5:30 p.m. sharp, saunter downstairs to the lobby of my swanky four-star digs in my George Clooney–est outfit and begin charming the pants off Stephanie, the delightful reporter who had inexplicably given me a second chance after I'd idiotically chosen waffles over a one-night stand with her at the Best Western in Baltimore.

By all accounts, I didn't deserve a second chance with Stephanie. Still, in the months that followed my epic fail in the Charm City, Stephanie and I had kept in touch in a manner that I was now able to discern as flirty. As Josh, Aaron, Brad, and I had continued across the country filming
Riding Shotgun,
Stephanie and I had continued our correspondence across texts and social media. Dissecting that night at the Best Western over and over again worked as a sort of Rosetta stone and allowed me to receive messages and draw conclusions like
Oh! When she talks about her boobs in the shower, that must mean…
:: checks Google translate ::
… she wants ME to imagine her naked in the shower! By George! I must report this to my colleagues.
“Hey, Josh!” I'd say, looking up from my phone, “she's talking about her boobs!” The sexual tension implied in our winky-faced emojis was palpable.

Over the course of
Riding Shotgun
, the objective of Team Get Zach Laid shifted from finding me any willing woman to facilitating a do-over with the right one. But my second encounter with Stephanie had proven far more difficult to arrange than the first. Our two biggest hurdles were geography and timing. I was staying with my mom in Buffalo but was due back in Austin in a week to start editing
Riding Shotgun
, and a few days after that Stephanie would be moving to Australia for a year. Our window to connect was exactly four days. It seemed next to impossible until Stephanie, ever proactive, offered this: “Sometime during the week before I leave, I'm gonna be going up to New York again to say good-bye to some friends.” For once, I recognized an invitation, took the hint, and bent the truth to meet her halfway.

“Actually, I'm supposed to go to New York sometime to talk with Google about how
Riding Shotgun
went. I should know in a couple days when they want me there. Maybe we can time it so we can meet up?”