The Origin of the "Balltrain"

I've been asked several times over the years how the nickname "balltrain" came about. You may or may not care but I anticipate for some it might be a somewhat entertaining story.

 

In the late 90's there was a dance club on the west side of what is now the Gateway called Club Axis. We didn't hit this place up often (my memories were more at The Bay on 4th south at least until we all actually turned 18 at which point the dance clubs didn't seem as cool anymore). I want to say this was Sophomore year for me but it might have been Junior year. A group of us where at Club Axis dancing. The club was obviously dark with lots of strobe lights everywhere. There was a stage as well as some pedestals at each corner of the stage. I found myself on a pedestal dancing with a group of girls. Truly I was king of the moment! That moment lasted but a mere instant as I somehow lost my balance and started shuffling backwards, sending the girls behind me off the pedestal and down onto the floor below. As I stumbled backwards, about to fall off myself, I of course flailed my arms out and grabbed the girl(s) in front of me in an effort to balance myself. Turns out a 200+ lb dude is more of an anchor for a couple teenage girls and I dragged them down with me, creating a train of sorts of people falling off the pedestal onto the ground. Luckily nobody was seriously injured (my memory of course is the pedestal being way high off the ground. . . reality is that it was likely 1/2 a step above the stage and only marginally higher above the ground).  My pride of course was seriously injured and I'm pretty sure I didn't dance with anybody the rest of the night. Not only were the girls no longer interested in my sweet dance moves, my friends were VERY interested in mocking me relentlessly for creating a falling train of sorts at the dance club. Thus the "balltrain" was born.

 

The story above is true and undeniably had an impact on this nickname gaining legs and now becoming my lifelong nickname such that all my social media handles are based off balltrain and even my wife has had to adopt the rachetrain moniker. Also I'm a big guy which I'm sure helps a nickname like "train" stick around. We probably aren't comparing the small skinny kid to a train. Nevertheless, I feel a long overdue confession is in order of the true origin of the name.

 

Most readers of this post will be familiar with Saved by the Bell and it's overwhelming popularity in the 90's. I was a huge fan and continued to be a fan of "T-NBC" Saturday morning programs long after the original Saved by the Bell closed out its series. In fact, the original Saved by the Bell ended in 1992 and it was really Saved by the Bell: The New Class that carried from 1993-2000 which were my prime teen years. (143 episodes of The New Class vs only 86 of the original). I loved watching T-NBC as well as some cartoons and finished off Saturday mornings with NBA Inside Stuff. Great times indeed. There was a second show on right after Saved by the Bell: The New Class called City Guys. This show was basically Saved by the Bell but set in New York City. I watched both of these shows basically all the way through and I must have blended them together in my mind for quite some time. There is a character on City Guys called "El-Train" (I always thought it was just L-Train but IMDB corrected me). I certainly didn't realize it at the time because I had never been to New York but I'm imagine the L-Train character name had something to do with the subway system. I liked the character and in particular I liked the nickname (the characters "real name" was Lionel Johnson in the show).

 

Somewhere along the line of our growing up years we do stupid stuff or make up stupid lies and we end up being embarrassed about them. I don't remember exactly when but I do know that somewhere along the line in high school (and definitively before the above mentioned Club Axis incident) I started referring to myself at school as "ball-train". Yep, there it is. I gave myself the nickname and somehow (surely with the help of the Club Axis incident) the name stuck and became in some ways an identity of its own. My very first email I setup for myself was balltrain@hotmail.com. . . my personal email that I still use to this day and people always joke to me "you still use hotmail?"

 

I had a long period where I doubted myself as I got deeper into my adult years. I could've sworn the character was from Saved by the Bell: The New Class. When IMDB first came around I kept searching through that series and cast and characters over and over and couldn't find the "L-Train" character anywhere. I was so frustrated as I just KNEW I had grabbed that name from Saved by the Bell. I don't know how many times I tried to look it up but it was a LOT as I for whatever reason wanted that confirmation that my memory was correct. Memories are funny things.

 

Quick sidebar- I just KNEW the time I went to Britney Spears with my buddies on the front row in 2000 was on August 18th. I knew it because it was my mom's birthday so easy to remember, right? Imagine my surprised a year or so ago when I pulled up the setlist to see it was August 14th, 2000 not August 18th. Trippy but clearly our memory fails us.

 

So anyway somehow within the last few years I was determined once again to find this mysterious L-Train character and this time instead of Saved by the Bell on imdb I realized I needed to search for TNBC or 90's Saturday Morning NBC lineups. And there it was: City Guys. I knew immediately "This is the ONE!". Took it straight to IMDB and there was the character name I knew I had latched onto.

 

So why haven't I shared this before? Easy answer. I was more embarrassed about making up my own nickname than I was about a public embarrassment incident that I couldn't hide anyway. Nobody ever needed to know about the City Guys and their great character nickname development. Even the great Rachetrain herself was only made privvy to this story earlier this year when I finally broke down and shared it for the first time.

 

I turned 41 years old today. It was a great birthday and I'm grateful to be alive. I hope I can continue to share fun memories (and continue to gain new ones) as I move forward in life with wonderful friends and family around me. Hope I was able to give back a bit to everyone that gives to me with this story so call it my birthday present to everyone!

 

Memories of Gerry Lind

 

                                     (Gerry visiting me on my 40th Birthday. This is the last picture I have with him)

The pain of this experience is very real and very deep. I know the deepest pain is being felt by immediate family and to all of them I send my love, support, and condolences. I feel like I’ve been permanently wounded and I’m not sure at what point it will heal. I’m sure with time that will come but the scar will remain forever.

This past Friday was definitely in the top few worst days of my life. Anything that could come close is certainly before any of my kids were born as I know they’ve never seen the level of hard crying they’ve seen over the past few days. You feel fine for a minute. You steel yourself and get yourself focused on something. Then an opportunity for your mind to drift comes along and in reality you couldn’t focus on anything else anyway and suddenly you’re back to sobbing.

From the time I got my drivers license and through my Junior year (Gerry was a grade older than me) I’d pick up Gerry to go to school and drop him off on the way home. Typically I’d hang out for a while and we’d play tennis or video games or just talk. I’d say 99% of the time in the morning when I’d pull up to his door he’d open his front door and give me a 1-minute finger asking me to wait. Who knows what he was doing that he could open the door and ask me to wait but not be ready to just come out. I’d yell at him getting in the car that we were running late and it was his fault. I never did drive off and leave him at home despite the threats to do so. I’d wait, we’d head to school, have a great day and better afternoon hanging out after. The image keeps popping up in my mind but now I’m screaming at him “Wait! Just wait! Please wait!” and then I’m sobbing. I just think when you lose somebody close to you, regardless of circumstances, you can’t help but attempt to rewind time and wonder what you could’ve done differently. I know I’ve been doing the same mental gymnastics related to my dad now for 30 years. . . wondering if I could somehow go back and do something to change the trajectory.

He and I along with Jake Cantwell went to the Tool concert just a couple weeks ago. It was circumstantial that he could come as the ticket was original Ben Gehrke’s but Ben was out of town and we were looking for somebody that actually liked Tool. I was pumped when he said he wanted to come. We attended so many concerts together in our teen years I can’t really name them out. We made the X96 Big Ass Show an annual event.  We saw Morrisey at Salt Air (His favorite band was The Smiths. Sidebar is the opening band for that show was a group called the Smoking Popes. We liked their sound and I bought a beanie at that show. I’ve used that Beanie as my main ski/snowboard beanie ever since up through and including yesterday on the slopes with my son at Sundance. I thought about Gerry and that concert every time I hit the slopes before and certainly will going forward. We loved skiing and boarding together. Second sidebar is on my older son’s playlist during that trip he played “How Soon is Now” and I pretty much lost it).

                                                      Smoking Popes (with Drew on the lift)

Back to Tool. We met up for dinner before hand at R&R and had a great dinner and conversation together. Gerry and I weren’t uncomfortable talking religion and spirituality together frequently and we had a level of that discussion with Jake that night, mostly based on meditation and the positive effects it can have. We joked it was a pretty deep conversation to have heading into a death metal concert. The concert was great and the entire evening felt perfect. I had for myself been through a rough couple of days at work and remember thinking as I drove home how great it was to take my mind off things for a night and just enjoy being with my friends. I hope he felt the same. As with anybody close, if I had known that was the last time I was ever going to see him I probably wouldn’t have left his car all night.

We could always talk for hours on end. Mostly football, music, politics, our kids. Finances and spirituality were frequently on the table as well when different decisions points and challenges arose. When we were kids is was mostly music, sports, girls. We constantly were discussing our need to get girlfriends and who all the hot girls were at school. Funny to think both of us ended up marrying girls from our high school but that were not our girlfriends during that time (we never had any girlfriends as high schoolers).

We had just hung out earlier in January during the College Football National Championship Game in his basement with Mike Davis and Derek Cushing. He was showing us his newly installed golf simulator and we had a great night watching the game and playing a couple rounds. We had always got together for lunch several times per year but this last year we had re-engaged in golf and date nights more than in previous years. I was excited to be spending more time with him as our kids got to ages we could go out without babysitters.

I really wish I could’ve been there more for him in that I did not know he was suffering and certainly not to a deep level. As I move forward and achieve new age milestones in my life I know it will be crossing my mind each time that I wish he was around to celebrate with me. He came to my 40^th birthday and I’m super grateful he did as that was the last time I was photographed with him. I hope he’s one of the first there to see me on the other side someday.

Gerry. I love you man. Thanks for being a great friend and a true brother.

Some great personal memories for me with Gerry in my life, in no particular order:

Football:

BYU Cotton Bowl 1996. We watched this game together on New Year’s Day 1996 and I remember us jumping up and down together when Omarr Morgan had the interception on Kansas State’s final drive to seal the game. My personal favorite BYU team ever and several members of that team are still on my personal top list of BYU players including Steve Sarkisian, Chad Lewis, Tim McTyer, and Shay Muirbrook.

Super Bowl 2000. Gerry’s mission farewell was on Super Bowl Sunday. The game was the St Louis Rams with the Greatest Show on Turf (Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt) against the Tennessee Titans. It was the game where Kevin Dyson was tackled on the final play at the 1 yard line and the Rams won. A ton of us stayed at Gerry’s house deep into the evening watching the game after being there all day for his mission farewell and luncheon after.

BYU Las Vegas Bowl 2015. We got absolutely dismantled by Utah continuing on a very long streak of heavy L’s. This was a fun weekend lots of friends were able to come down together to enjoy it. At least fresh of the loss of that game we weren’t too unhappy when Bronco announced his departure a few days later.

                                                    Las Vegas Bowl in 2015

BYU Idaho Potato Bowl 2018 vs Western Michigan. Zach Wilson’s perfect game up in Boise. Gerry took Clint and I took Cannon. We had an awesome time and I had discussed visiting Boise again this coming fall with our sons again.

                                            Idaho Potato Bowl with Clint and Cannon in 2018

Music:

Not For You Elk Ridge Middle School. Gerry and I along with Matt Hearty and Brandon Clough had formed a band and had tried out for the talent show with Amy Salles as our singer to sing the Cranberries “Zombie” as the song. We made the show but Amy ended up needing to back out so we scrambled and figured out how to play Pearl Jam’s “Not For You” on a couple days notice. Gerry took over lead singing duties and it became an all-timer for everyone that saw the performance.

Skiing/Snowboarding:

Snowbird- We loved skiing originally and Snowbird was our go-to resort. I still feel like Snowbird is the best resort Utah has to offer. In my 9^th grade year I had shoulder surgery from football and was up on the slopes probably way too early compared to my recovery needs. We hit the tram first run, I took some moguls and ate it hard and popped my shoulder out of socket bad. Gerry’s little brother Clark was with us and while he may have heard some expletives in his life before, the dude had certainly not heard a string of expletives  like what I laid out with my shoulder coming out of socket (and staying as such. I didn’t get it back in until I was at the bottom of the hill). That particular day was a short day for me with Gerry on the slopes.

    

                                                        Gerry, Me, Cush           

Brighton- Gerry decided one day that we were going to learn to snowboard. So we bought snowboards and thought we’d be pros in short order. Boy were we wrong. Our first time we went with Ben French night-boarding and we thought he could teach us a bit. I remember being unbelievably sore the next day to the point I could hardly walk because we fell so much that night at Brighton. We eventually figured it out and became decent boarders. We found a little cliff area one-time on quad-Wednesday and he called it the “Rock Garden”. He was one of the first of our group to go off the cliff that day.

Career:

Gerry and I talked all the time about BYU. I knew I wanted to go to BYU but didn’t know what I wanted to do for my career or major or anything else (who really does as a high schooler?). One day we were talking about it in front of Gerry’s dad Ed and he told me I should do accounting. I asked him why accounting. He said it was a great program with 100% placement. “What does that mean?” I asked. “It means if you graduate from that program you have a job when you graduate” he said. “Done. That’s what I’m doing”. And that’s the story of how I decided to major in accounting at BYU and I never wavered from that decision. It did indeed lead to a job more than a year before I graduated and has led to a great career overall.

                                             Younger (and skinner for me) times. Good times.