George contacted me via LinkedIn this week. Seems he is alive in kicking in Portland, Oregon. More to come. - Wayne

To Live and Die on the Deschutes

After those last couple of depressing posts, I thought I'd throw in another little trinket of a story. After George's dad had convinced Mike, George and I to move up to Humboldt, we decided to pay an end-of-summer trip to George's uncle Boyd in Vancouver, WA. Boyd was to take us whitewater rafting on the Deschutes River in Oregon, a river which he professed to have intimate knowledge of. This sounded like a fun way to avoid our ever-growing responsibilities such as finding jobs and enrolling at the university, so we piled into three cars (as we had additional friends joining us) and made haste for Oregon. The Deschutes, for those of you not in the know, is located in Northeast Oregon, just over Mt. Hood. Whitewater rafting is one of those adrenaline-soaked activities that you either love or spend years in therapy over, and I've yet to figure out which side of the fence my experience falls on. After setting up camp, Boyd decided to take us for a run down the river -- FRAME IN. This was an important detail as you'll come to find later as I did. Boyd instructed us to straddle the raft, one leg inside, one leg outside. There was a rope that ran across the top circumference of the raft which allowed you to hang on should things get a little dicey. Having the frame in the raft allowed us to enjoy a more "sturdy" ride. Since this was my first whitewater trip, I was just concerned about staying in the boat but after making the first run down the river I felt like a seasoned expert and was ready to explore the river sans-frame, the way I was told it was meant to be experienced. I think we were all a little cocky after that first run.

During the evening the three of us boasted about how the river "would be conquered" the next day. To celebrate this would-be feat, George noticed that two attractive women had set up camp next to us and decided that we needed to impress them. So, doing what any naive college dude would do to impress a girl, we agreed that we needed to impress them with our eclectic college music. This almost never worked for us because college music back then was either dark and spooky or extremely angry. There is that rare case in which you pop the first CD you find into your car radio player, curious as to what it is (because it's too dark to read the label) and hoping the honeys in the tent next door will be so smitten that wild, carnal lust will ensue. This isn't the case when said CD is "Flood" by They Might be Giants and the first track is "Birdhouse in Your Soul". There's really no way to save face after that. Needless to say, the objects of our affection were thoroughly unimpressed, though nice enough not to laugh too hard at us. I seem to recall George hiding behind my car in embarrassment, leaving me to face the music alone. Jackass.

Fresh off our rejection the night before we took the frame out of the raft for our morning trip down the river. Again, I can't stress how confident we were in our newly acquired rafting skills, so having the frame out of the raft seemed like the right thing to do. In hindsight, it probably wasn't. The various rapid areas of the river had names such as "Boxcar", "Oak Springs", "Sheep Dip" and "Elevator I and II". I'm not sure why they were named as such but they should have had names like "The Colostomizer", "Compound Fracture" and "Massive Head Trauma I and II".

As we embarked through some of the smaller rapids I began to think that taking the frame out maybe wasn't such a good idea. Holding onto the oar was ditched in favor of holding the rope as our raft began to "taco" in some of the insane parts of the river. Then it happened, smack-dab in the middle of "Oak Springs": Mike elbowed me in the face and into the water I went. When I was finally able to open my eyes, I still couldn't make out which way was up. It was literally how I imagined it would feel to be in a washing machine. I was trapped in a little cul-de-sac underwater and pretty much ran the gamut of emotions that leads to acceptance, all in about 20 seconds. I had pretty much accepted the fact that this was it, this was how I was going to die, but I somehow popped up to the surface, noticing that my friends were about 200 yards down river looking for me. Or my body, I suppose. I lived, so no permanent harm done -- just a blow to the ego.

Instant Death?

So I want to say thank you to George for introducing me to Boyd and the Satan-spawned whitewater trip from hell. I won't forget it. Ever.

The X-Files

Now that you know a little about George and his status, I think it's prudent that we provide our best theory on why George disappeared. Our own X-Files, if you will. Wayne touched on this subject in his "Context" post so I'll throw out there why, at least to our best collective discussions; we believe he remains unfound all these years.

Before I do that I want to reiterate some things Wayne said earlier about George. George was (and I believe still is) a really great person to know. Witty, urbane, kind, intelligent -- all the good qualities you'd expect your close friends to have. He was an extremely likeable guy and for most folk, if they hadn't met him before, would immediately take a shine to him. I hope that paints a clear enough picture of the type of individual we're discussing here.

So...on to the theory.

Wayne stated earlier in his last conversation with George, that George had come in touch with his spiritual side, which I think we all thought was great since he really didn't verbalize or demonstrate much of his beliefs during the time we knew him. We all grow as individuals over time and spirituality becomes more important the older we get -- it's a given variable of growing up. I've often heard that when people have a spiritual awakening, they take stock of their lives. People, places, activities, etc. are analyzed and the parts there of are either retained or discarded depending on how they fit with the new-found beliefs.

I recall during the last conversation I had with George that he was ecstatic with his self-discovery. He spoke of it for at least an hour and how he looked at things in a different light. It was refreshing yet puzzling to have this conversation with him. I was happy for him, yet there were many nuances that bothered me. Here's an example:

Me: Have you heard the new U2 album "Achtung Baby"? It's awesome!

George: No. I don't listen to that stuff any more. I threw all those CDs away.

Me: Umm...okay....

Achtung Baby? No dice.

So for the three of us, based on our last conversations with George, the nearest we can figure why George hasn't been heard from in over ten years is because we don't fit in with his enlightenment.

This has been a conundrum for us over the years. We were (and remain) good, decent, supportive people with high integrity that I think most folk would be honored to have as friends. This is not meant to be self-aggrandizing, but rather part of the question as to why George may have felt it necessary to sever ties. Even though our theory revolves around these conclusions, the truth is that we really don't know why. And that's just sad.

We're on the road for answers -- for our own enlightenment.

The truth is out there.

Context

One of the strangest things about this whole “disappearing act” is the last conversation I had with George. The last conversation any of us had with George. Notorious for my lack of exacting memory (particularly in contrast to the other authors…) I will attempt to recreate the gist of the conversation.

In my conversation with George I sensed a hesitation or reticence to come to the point of what was bothering him, as something clearly was. As I probed over the phone, George finally admitted that he had recently had some kind of epiphany about who he was and the “type of person” he had been in the past (we were in our very early twenties then). George expressed remorse for the person he’d been in high school, for the things he had done that now made him uncomfortable and for the attitude he’d had spiritually.

Context: George was one of the nicest guys I knew in high school. He was kind to his juniors well beyond most of his peers, he easily crossed boundaries between groups, and frankly was just the kind of guy I wanted to be one of my closest friends. I think I can speak for Mike and Nathan in that they felt the same way. He treated people well, didn’t pillage the local populace, and seemed to genuinely care about his fellow human beings. George is a great guy, no doubt about it.

In my continuing conversation with George, I couldn’t get him to pinpoint his deep regrets. We all have regrets, we all have things we hope nobody ever finds out, but I was struck with how hard George was taking all of it. As the conversation finished, George intimated that he really couldn’t continue in his “old lifestyle” and that he was really turning over a new leaf. Recently married and hinting that he was getting more interested in his spiritual side, we ended the conversation on a very strange note (at least from my perspective) with George saying something like, “I just don’t know, I just don’t know”.

And that is the last any of us have heard from him.

So now there is some more context to this mission. These closest friends, these guys that I’ve known since I was barely me, we all are missing a chunk from the past – one of the four that disappeared.

8 Second Ride

So, the trail was heating up again with the discovery of the Flannery website. But did it contain any clues to his whereabouts? You be the judge...

Some earlier indications had pointed to Texas but we really could not picture George living in the Lone Star State. But now, after reviewing the content of his site, we believed he was located somewhere around Dallas.



I have marked 3 potential locations based on our research of public records.

A Little History

Whenever beginning a sojourn of any historical significance, it's important to remember where one's been. That said, I offer this quick look back at our dear friend George and how he became AWOL.

The four of us (George, Mike, Wayne and I) attended the same high school in Ojai, CA. For those of you not familiar with the area, it's a stone's throw from Los Angeles and an even shorter distance from Santa Barbara. Ojai is basically famous for three things:

1. Sprawling citrus orchards
2. The "Pink Moment"
3. Spiritual tree-huggers

With little entertainment to keep us busy in-city, we would often whittle away many hours driving around in Wayne's Isuzu I-Mark, slowly becoming brain-damaged from the poor exhaust system (thanks, Wayne!). Good times! After high school we scattered to different areas of the West Coast. Wayne in Berkley, Mike in Portland, OR, George in Santa Barbara and I stayed local.

As luck would have it after our first year away at college, Mike and myself were somehow coerced into moving with George up to Humboldt. Wayne was the smart one -- he stayed in Berkley. The three of us moved into a brand-spankin' new "manufactured home" in Humboldt (circa the summer of 1990), and thus hilarious hyjinx ensued. Living with two of your best friends can be taxing. Seriously. Don't try it. You'll end up with an old can of refried beans hidden somewhere in your room, complete with a seven-inch high plant growing out of it. Gross-buckets.

After about a year of this living arrangement, things kind of fell apart. I moved back to Southern California, Mike moved to Monterey and George, somehow, someway found a way to get married before any of us. This was an impressive feat considering George drove a Chevrolet Sprint that smelled like a combination of wet cats, rotting fast food and unwashed gym clothes.

A replica of the mighty Sprint that was George's car.

Wayne was the only one able to attend George's wedding and I'm sure he'd love to add the story of the post-nuptial activities including another friend (Dan Allen) and the local bridesmaids. Although Mike and I were respectively disappointed we couldn't make it, we thought the four of us would continue to remain close even though we had gone our separate ways.

After the wedding, that's when it happened. POOF! George disappeared off the face of the planet. No correspondence, no visits, nothing. It's one of the greatest disappearing acts of the last 15 years. Wayne did talk to him briefly in 1994 before Mike's wedding, but George was a little stand-offish, and we had a difficult time discerning why. We were all on great terms with George and his vanishing left us scratching our heads. For years after that the three of us would regale each other with stories from the past and a desire to one day locate and ambush George, if only for closure on our part. In fact, at our ten year high school reunion (which not-surprisingly George did not attend), we made it one of our life's ambitions to find this aberration, even if it did only rank somewhere around #78 on our list of things to do before we shuffle off this mortal coil.

Then came the technological boom of the Internet.

From time to time we would Google George's full name, only to come up with dead-ends or false leads which led to our new mantra of "maybe we'll try again in another six months". As Mike stated earlier, we WOULD NOT pay to find him. After all, we all work with technology in some form so it shouldn't be such a difficult task. Still, year after year our searches were rendered fruitless until a thorough Google search just a few weeks ago rendered a Website which contained the following image (note: contrary to popular belief, his face has been pixelized to protect our search-in-progress. He was NOT involved in some sort of horrible industrial accident involving acidic cleaning solvent and a belt sander. Just wanted to clear the air):

Could this be George?

Could this be the George we once new and wished would stop listening to creepy gothic music?

More to come later as the saga progresses.

Preface

When I received this fortune today, I knew it way high time we began documenting our quest. I will leave most of the story telling to Nate, as he has always been the keeper of our tales, but the Reader's Digest version goes something like this...

My two closest friends and I have been looking for George Flannery for over 10 years. George was also a close friend of ours, who dropped off the map and has never tried to contact any one of us. If you knew us, you would know that unlike most people who would forget about him and move on, we have made it our personal challenge to find him. Now, you might be thinking that anyone not in the witness protection program would be easily found in this age of technology, but we have been bound to some unwritten rules of conduct:

(1) Never pay anyone for information. (ok, one time in 2000, we paid $19.99 to PeopleSeach USA but we never acted on any of the information. It felt too dirty.)
(2) Never contact anyone who might let him know we are on his trail.
(3) Never do anything that makes us look like we are desperate.

We believed that God has a sense of humor and that eventually a major clue would come our way. Well, it has and now the story starts to get interesting. Stay tuned!

P.S.

I especially like how the 'Learn Chinese' phrase is a nice segue with the fortune.