Dan Washburn's Sporting Life

It's always hard to say goodbye

(It's even harder when you have to say it in Chinese)

Well, I don't have the plague.

Not yellow fever, psychosis or leprosy, either.

How do I know this, you ask? Did I feel a case of the plague coming on and run off to the doctor?

"Hey, Doc. I think I'm coming down with some of that, uh, plague that's going around. Got any Robitussin?"

No, nothing like that. It's just that there are certain diseases -- plague among them -- that you must be tested for before moving to China. And I'm moving to China.

Seriously. Cross my heart. Pinky shake. Booga booga. This is for real.

My year-long gig as an English professor at Shanghai University starts Sept. 1. My flight leaves in 35 days.

Thirty-five days! I better write quickly. I've got a lot of packing to do.

My last day at The Times is Saturday. This is the last Sporting Life column I will write for a while.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Dan, you're crazy. But, c'mon. Admit it. You've thought that before.

You've likely got two questions for me. Everybody else has.

1. Do you speak Chinese?

My answer is always a quick, "Yes." But then I laugh and admit that I'm lying. Seems my future employers were interested in my grasp of my own language, not theirs.

Native English speakers are a hot commodity over there. Shanghai is a city of more than 15 million -- and less than 1 percent of the population speaks English. Yikes!

But that's nothing new for me. I didn't understand half of what y'all said when I moved down here almost four years ago.

Just kidding.

Kind of.

2. Dan, are you a spy?

Well, duh. Obviously. Why else would I spend one-seventh of my life in the Chicken City. Poultry world, you have a new capital. Its name is Shanghai.

But seriously, I do plan on doing some spying while in China. However, I will spy on no one important, no one in particular. I will choose people at random and follow them. I will jot down notes on a yellow legal pad and take photos with my new digital camera.

I will send my findings via carrier pigeon to Back Porch columnist Jim Chapman, who seems like he'd be into such nonsensical espionage.

(Mental note: Try to keep fake talk of spying to a minimum before moving to communist country.)

Perhaps the most difficult question is also the most simple. Why?

"Why not?" is what I usually say to that. It's purposefully vague and has a certain gung-ho-I'll-try-anything-as-long-as-it's-not-bull-riding-again spirit that fits perfectly with the concept of this column.

Truth is, I'm not sure why I'm moving to China. Truth is, if three months ago you had told me that I was going to be moving to China, I would have looked at you as if you were dying of the plague.

I wish I could cite some higher calling, some deep and burning desire to teach the people of the world the joys of the English language, or even a longstanding longing to learn about everything and anything non-Western.

Nope. I was just trying to figure out how I could get my summers off. Really.

This plan -- both silly and shallow, I know -- was hatched innocently in Honolulu in late May. I was there for my brother's wedding, lying on the beach during the last day of my 10-day vacation. And I didn't want to leave.

I daydreamed about Natalie Portman and more days off. I determined that Natalie Portman was probably unattainable, so I concentrated on the days off.

"That's it!," I thought, "I'll become a teacher."

(Now, teachers, please don't get mad and send hate mail. I know that teaching is really a year-round job. I know that most teachers need to get a second job during the summer, anyway. I know that 35 days from now, I will likely be in way over my head. Please understand that this was just a daydream ... and that I was likely still feeling the ill effects of a poorly-prepared batch of poi.)

I thought about going back to school. But then I stopped thinking about that, because I never much cared for going to school -- the actual schoolwork part of it, anyway.

Then I remembered hearing that some teaching jobs abroad require nothing more than a bachelor's degree and a willingness to travel. I was qualified.

I mentioned the daydream to my dad, a college professor. He mentioned that he had some connections in Shanghai. Ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom, I'm headed to China.

Of course, I'm now realizing, it's not that simple. I need to sell off most of my possessions (if you're interested in any furniture or appliances, drop me a line). And I need to get stuck with so many needles even Scott Weiland would cringe. Gotta stave off that nasty Japanese Encephalitis bug, you know.

But with every unexpected step in the moving process, with every goodbye that crosses my lips, I realize -- more each day -- that there is much I will miss about this town I've called home since the fall of 1998. (I was never able to refer to Gainesville as a "city.")

I suppose I always figured I was just passing through, though. I kept the Pennsylvania plates on my car. But one year quickly turned into two ... then three ... now four.

Other than the town I grew up in, I've never lived anywhere longer than Gainesville. And it's grown on me. I'm a small-town boy at heart. I like the fact that I can walk into a grocery store, a bar, a barbecue joint and be referred to by name.

So, naturally, I now choose to live in the most populous city in the world's most populous country -- where most people won't be able to pronounce my name, let alone remember it.

This column was originally going to be a list of things I would miss about Gainesville, but the list got too long. And I got hungry.

I jotted down items like "seeing the mountains while driving north on Pearl Nix Parkway on a clear day." But then it turned into a roll call of my favorite local foods (Monkey Barrel pizza, Hickory Pig barbecue, Los Rayos quesadillas, etc.). I had to break for lunch and get some Brunswick stew.

I did more than eat here, of course. I tried to do a little living, as well. Items not on my resume before I moved here: bull riding, lawnmower racing and handgrabbing for giant catfish in Mississippi, to name a few.

I found it fitting, in an odd way, that my swan song was a swan dive into a pit of mud at the Redneck Games. Quite a Southern sendoff.

So now it's on to the next column, er, chapter of my life. It comes with subtitles, and I have no idea how it ends.

Just the way I like it.

(By the way, I'm off next summer. Anyone want to backpack to Tibet?)

Redneck Games: You might be a redneck ... if you enjoy this column

When I stepped out of my air-conditioned car, the heat hit me like a right hook. The sun was searing and inescapable. Everything, everyone seemed to be surrounded by an abstract haze, kind of like the watercolor paintings that rise from hot highways in the summertime.

I was standing in a crowded parking lot in East Dublin, Ga., which is east of Dublin, Ga., west of nowhere and, for the past seven years, home to the annual Redneck Games (imagine the Olympics for people in overalls). Events include the seed-spitting contest, the hubcap toss, redneck horseshoes (in reality, toilet seats), the armpit serenade, bobbing for pig's feet and, my specialty, the mud-pit bellyflop.

I left my Toyota Corolla with Pennsylvania plates and trudged through the maze of American-made trucks. Sweat began to stain my T-shirt immediately.

It was 103 degrees. I felt like I was walking inside someone's mouth, and that someone was getting ready to spit. I rubbed the back of my neck. I could feel it getting redder by the minute.

As I walked, a flat-bed truck drove by carting people like cattle. A handwritten sign on its side read "Redneck Limo."

The Redneck Games started as a gag in 1996 when those other Olympics were held two hours north in Atlanta. Five-hundred people showed up for the first one. In 2001, the crowd was estimated at more than 15,000. And on July 6, despite the heat, even more people -- some 20,000 or so -- packed Buckeye Park along the banks of the Oconee River (the river is where most of the attendees eventually ended up).

"I guess they're just a bunch of rednecks at heart. Everybody is," said Lewis Blue, a lieutenant with the East Dublin Police Department, who has worked security at the games since their inception. "It's just a lot of fun. We don't have any trouble. We may have three arrests throughout the whole day."

"So what exactly is a redneck?" I asked. I would repeat that question several times throughout the afternoon.

"It's just somebody who likes to get out and have a beer or two in the sun by the river and just have a good time and relax," Blue responded.

"So, are you a redneck?"

"No. No." Blue paused, then added. "But there are plenty of them. Some admit it. Some don't."

Most on hand at Buckeye Park not only admitted it, they celebrated it. They proudly displayed their redneck pride to ... well, all the other rednecks at the games. Confederate flags flew everywhere. Booths sold bumper stickers emblazoned with slogans like, "Never Apologize for Being White." One woman, who had to be close to full-term in her pregnancy, painted "Future Redneck" on her bare belly.

"A redneck is a hard-working person," said Randy ("everybody calls me 'L-Bow the Gin-U-Wine Redneck'") Tidwell. Over the years, the 41-year-old from East Dublin has been adopted as the Redneck Games' official mascot.

"A redneck," Tidwell continued, "is someone who don't necessarily get any recognition. They do all the hard work that nobody wants to do. We work hard. We play hard. We die broke."

Tidwell, who drives a wrecker for a living, kicked off the festivities by running in the official Redneck Games torch -- propane, of course -- and lighting the ceremonial barbecue pit. Later, he ran the torch down a hill to signify the start of the evening's fireworks display.

"It's a party atmosphere," Tidwell said. "In a sense, it's like one big family reunion."

Tidwell wore nothing but a pair of overalls and a floppy fishing hat. No shirt. No shoes. He said it was the same outfit he wears every day.

By the middle of the afternoon, Tidwell's neck and shoulders were glowing, some shade beyond red. He was scarlet. Rednecks, he told me, don't believe in sunscreen.

"Too much like lotion," Tidwell said. "Rednecks don't like lotion."

But they like fun and games. And they take the two seriously.

After winning the hubcap toss, 24-year-old Eric Outler of Vidalia, Ga., thanked God and the late Dale Earnhardt for his victory.

"It means a lot to me," Outler said, looking at his trophy topped with a crushed Bud Light can. "It's like winning the Daytona 500."

Without a doubt, the events that attract the most attention are bobbing for pig's feet and the mud-pit belly flop.

Ashley Richardson, a 19-year-old from Milledgeville, Ga., won the pig's feet competition for the third year in a row. This year, he set a new world record: seven feet in 19 seconds. Afterward, he posed for photos with a pig's foot in his mouth.

"You've got to push them to the bottom, and you've got to grab them," he explained. "You've got to put a good grip on them. It's going so fast, you don't taste them. You don't even have time to taste them."

Back in 1999, MTV sent some of its "Real World" and "Road Rules" participants down to East Dublin for a Redneck Games throw-down. But many of the pseudo-stars threw up instead.

"The kids had to bob for the pig's feet," Blue remembered. "They would bob and get them and then run over in the corner and get sick. But they were a bunch of New York people. Not rednecks."

Twenty-six-year-old Ron Johnson of East Dublin won his third straight bellyflop title this year, no doubt due to his home-mud-pit advantage. But by the time the last Budweiser had been drunk that day, nearly everyone had taken a dip in the dirty drink. It was cool in there.

It's not lotion, but a nice thick coating of Georgia red clay blocks those harmful UV rays quite nicely.

Even the "Redneck Nanny" Barbara Braswyl -- so named because the 47-year-old has (yikes!) 12 grandchildren -- took the plunge, soiling her homemade American flag dress in the process. No worries, Braswyl makes a new dress for every Redneck Games.

"I'm going to do a John Deere one next year," the Wrightsville, Ga., resident said.

First into the mud pit? Who else?

I gave my best Yankee, er, Rebel yell and let my flop fly. When I cleared the mud from my eyes, L-Bow gave me a thumbs-up. I had the official redneck seal of approval.

Five hours later, I was still picking mud from my pockets.

Dawsonville Down Under: Kangaroo court rules NASCAR country

As a kookaburra cackled in the distance, a wallaby wallowed in the shade of a tall tree. Nearby, a red kangaroo hopped, then stopped. She stared at me quizzically. Her baby joey -- face, feet and tail all peering out of her pouch -- stared, too.

Ah, the sights and sounds of ... wait a minute ... Dawsonville?

Where were the ear-splitting engines, the checkered flags, the Bill Elliott Coke machines? After all, this is the birthplace of motorsports, not marsupials. Right?

Well, just down the road from Thunder Road -- where during prohibition, moonshine runners out-raced police cars and paved the way for the NASCAR drivers of today -- sits the Kangaroo Conservation Center, an unassuming 87-acre plot that just happens to house the largest collection of kangaroos outside of Australia.

No signs lead to the property. An 8-foot bamboo gate opens slowly when visitors buzz themselves in. Entry is granted by reservation only.

The center does very little advertising, and yet its tours are consistently booked. Word-of-mouth and unsolicited media coverage -- of which there has been plenty recently -- have provided the center with all the publicity it needs.

The New York Times, in fact, ran a feature on the center in late May.

"The phones have been ringing off the hook since then," said soft-spoken Debbie Nelson, who, with husband Roger Nelson, opened the center in 1998. "I think people are just fascinated by kangaroos."

And if it's kangaroos people want, North Georgia, believe it or not, is the place to be.

Sherri Donovan, from Brooklyn, N.Y., read the New York Times piece and booked her family a flight that very night.

"Kangaroos are addicting," Donovan said after an afternoon at the center. "The information you get, and the close-up contact with the kangaroos, I don't think you can get it anywhere else."

Roger Nelson would agree.

"In what we call our outback, you'll see more kangaroos in the next hour than you would see if you took a trip to Australia," he said proudly.

More than 200 kangaroos live at the center, and about 95 percent of them were born there. Other unusual creatures also call the center home. Like the tiny African dik-dik antelope, for example. Extend a finger, and the male will "mark" you with a brown tar-like substance secreted from a large gland underneath his eye.

The Nelsons opened their property to safari-like tours in 2000. Last year, more than 3,000 visitors passed through Dawsonville's version of Down Under.

But the center is far more than just a marsupial amusement park. It is a working zoological breeding facility. Australia rarely allows its native animals to be shipped to foreign countries. The Nelsons have filled that niche.

The center has supplied kangaroos to zoos on four continents, including more than 100 zoos in the United States alone. Sometimes, zoos will send sick kangaroos to the Nelsons, who have shown a knack for nursing them back to health.

Throw in the tours, and it's quite a bit to tackle. The Nelsons only have four full-time employees.

"It keeps us hopping," Debbie said. She then looked down and smiled. The pun was unintended.

The center seems less a farm and more a family. All the animals there have names. Several kangaroos spent their first months of their lives in the Nelsons' parlor, not a pouch.

"We get very attached to them," Debbie admitted. "It's sort of like raising a baby. They are very affectionate animals."

We were sitting in the Nelsons' office prior to the start of my tour when Roger stood up from his stool and said, "I'll bring in Emily."

Roger returned with what looked to be a plush doll nestled in his arms. Emily is an 8-month-old red kangaroo. Emily weighed less than a pound when her mother died. The Nelsons are her parents now.

Emily shook slightly when Roger brought her closer to me. It was the only way I could tell that she was real.

"They're very shy animals," Roger said. "Their first instinct is to hop away from danger. They're not at all aggressive like some people perceive them to be."

The Nelsons started raising exotic animals 20 years ago when they lived in Alpharetta. They began working with kangaroos four years later, and decided to focus on the animals of Australia when they moved their operation to Dawsonville in 1998.

That's when the media started calling. Soon the Nelsons and their kangaroos were appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America" and "Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures."

It's been quite a ride for the Nelsons. Back in college, Debbie was an art history major. Roger has a degree in engineering.

"That's what keeps life interesting," Roger said. "You never know where you're going to end up."

You know, Roger, you're right. I never thought I'd learn to throw a boomerang in the Bible Belt. Never thought I'd stare a 200-pound kangaroo in the eye there, either. But I did.

The tour begins with the boomerang and moves on to the blue-winged kookaburras. There are only five such birds in North America, we were told. All of them live at the Kangaroo Conservation Center.

The highlight of the tour is the hour-long trip through the North Georgia "outback." With Springer Mountain -- the southern terminus of the 2,168-mile Appalachian Trail -- looming in the distance, 35 of us squeezed into a converted 1968 Army truck that rumbled through 40 undulating acres.

Kangaroos, mobs of them, were everywhere. There were red kangaroos and gray kangaroos, both the eastern and western variety. Some hopped on by and paid us no mind. But most stopped and stared.

Kangaroos are curious creatures. Always looking, always listening. Their ears move independently. Their eyes are big and black and stare right through you. It's like they're trying to figure you out.

Kangaroos look rather lopsided, really. Their hind legs are huge, with long, floppy feet like clown shoes. Their tales are thick and sturdy. Their front limbs, however, are short and stunted. They dangle downward, as if carrying a small purse.

The largest kangaroo we saw was 7.5 feet from the tip of his tail to the top of his head. He weighed 220 pounds. His name was Red.

He stared at me. And I stared back.

I couldn't figure him out.