Seven-thirty a.m. Friday saw me on the road to San Diego; at the time I didn’t have a banking account and my agent had hit me off with a check for $15K. No bank nor check cashing joint would turn the piece of paper into money, so dude agreed to meet me at the branch where his check originated.

(You ever try to walk out a bank with that much cash? That shit is absolutely nuts, insane from stem to stern. I had voluminous paper work, ancillary tellers staring at my black ass and a lovely vinyl carrying case, with the bank logo on it, that might as well have read Just Rob Me.)

So, I broke north for LA, hit a trusted friend off with my dough and then made my way for Sactown, where I had a rendezvous set up with baller/rapper Ron Artest. My energy fairly flagged, as I’d been up all night worrying that the check might not get cashed.

(Man, does it suck to be an outlaw journalist! I’ve said it before, but when kids tell me they want to be like me, I tell them niggas to bite their tongues. To be a 40-year-old father of three running around with a brick o’ hundreds is not cute, unless you’re some kind of crime figure. And even then I’m not sure “cute” is the rightful modifier.)

Forrest fires adjacent to the Grapevine were just barely under control. Because of this, the 405 — and then the 5 — had parking lot status. It took almost five hours to wheel my rental Mazda Six 75 miles. And I was cerebrally cooked, a danger to myself and many, many motorists,

Called up my man Gary in Hanford when I hit the bottom of that mountain. I know when I’m licked.

Gary’s great, a top-flight photojournalist and the guy who played host while I cobbled together the book proposal that put that check in hand anyway. We always have ridiculous fun, so it’s no thing to call him. Of course he told me to get off the road and crash at his crib. Ron-Ron wasn’t expecting me for nearly a day and my fam was fine with me not crashing at their place until Saturday night, so made plans to turn off I-5 and take Rt. 198 to Hanford, home of my first full-time permanent job.

When Gary hung up, I stopped at a mini-mart and headed for the john. The cellie rang the moment I took my dick out. With my free hand, I took the call. It was Steven Jackson, the Indiana Pacers guard. I’d been waiting for more than a day for him to call back. Big Steve was supposed to hip my to some facts about Ron Artest.

“Dude,” I said, “I ain’t really free to talk right now.”

“Okay,” Steve said, “let me give you my number. Call me back in 10 minutes.”

“Can’t do that. Swear to God: I’m at a urinal. I’m on the road. Five minutes, man. Call me back.”

And of course Jackson ain’t call me back. After 20 sleepy minutes parked in a dark spot outside that AM-PM, I gave up on Steve Jackson and began looking for that 198 turnoff.

Kaz didn’t want to go to sleep. He’d been hanging out with a gaggle of beautiful girls with a penchant for getting nekkid and he wanted me to hang out with them, too. I so didn’t want to hang out with them. It’s like, I admire nude women as girls as much as the next cat, but I got a girlfriend, yo. I’m getting good at not fucking around. However fallibility has not eluded me. And I was crazy tired. That’s the circumstance that often yields unintended consequences .

Luckily, despite a Long Island Iced T and some downtown cruising, nothing remotely tempting jumped off. I crash for two or three hours and set off to make those next 200 miles to Sactown.

South Sacramento is so hyphy it’s not at all funny. A shocking number of kids walk around in Mac Dre t-shirts. Homies turn tight ones in any parking lot bigger than a postage stamp. And cats start goin’ dumb before sundown. My nephew was already faded when he went to work on my beard and crop of nappy hair. Regardless of dull clippers, he lined up my hairline before too long.

“Now, you official,” he said, standing amid a pile of short naps.

My beard was another story. The nagguh cut my moustache off! And he left me with a crooked chin beard! Luckily, Ron-Ron blew me off, so only my Northern Cali friends, who accept me without condition, had to endure my odd appearance. There was a need to re-cultivate some confidence.

There was less sleep that night than in the one before. En route from a bar to a party, I’d popped a tire and was tooling around town on the donut. Trying to get back to LA and my girl would be drama fashow. So, I just couldn’t rest at all.

Ron Artest had agreed to meet me and Max, the photographer at 10 am on Sunday. Now, I’m lost in Sacramento once you talk north of Arden Fair Mall, so you know I was lost when I tried making sense of the John Doolittle country address sent to me by Ron’s label publicist.

What did I expect of Ron? It’s sort of hard to say. Dude and I had met back in, I think, the spring of 1998, when I was toiling for that sports magazine. Maybe that’s why he was so cordial up in the main room of his beautiful, expansive home. More likely though is that Ron’s just an overall cool muhfucka. His kids are extremely cute and funny and his wife is hecka nice.

We hung out, talking rap and basketball and taking care of photos, for almost all of the two hours the publicist said he’d allot us. Then Ron led us across town to his studio. Now, I thought we’d be walking into something organized and official. Instead it was basic and functional. (Think Hustle & Flow, only slightly more suburban. You would now be reading about it were I not saving the juicy version for an article set to appear in the debut issue of a certain magazine.)

A little more than 20 hours later, my ass draggin’! I’m sick and tired. ‘Cept a nagguh’ wired though, which is why I’m banging out a blog item on the bonkers weekend. The exchange of that donut-rollin’ rental was drama. (Left my Busta CD in the Mazda player!) It rained on the way back to LA. My system is so full of caffeine and Nitro 2 Go that I may have to raid my baby’s Vicodin after I make that 7 am rental car drop.

One thing nearly justifies this whole scenario beyond the 2 Gs I’m getting paid to make the article happen. And that’s the quality of Ron-Ron’s joint, which is set to drop on Halloween. It’s actually not bad at all. More than that, the entire enterprise is just so smart. (If life hands you infamy, make InfamyAde.) Best of all? Artest shares my immense admiration for Deion Sander’s musical exploits. Neon Deion is still the standard-bearer for athletes trying to rock mics. This month, however, the gap gets significantly narrowed.

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