Pat McMahon is the bomb! His morning talk show was my first stop on Thursday morning, and our interview was light and fun.

The drive to the studio, however, was a bit of a stressfest. After inhaling some food from the hotel’s complimentary continental breakfast (Dave: half a waffle; me: granola, whole wheat toast… see photo, titled, “Breakfast in Jail”), we set out with our Mapquest directions into the annoying construction maze around our hotel.

Phoenix is building a light rail system (“You’re not driving through traffic; you’re driving through jobs!”), and it seems that every route D the B and I need to take is turned into a videogame with giant orange cones, heavy machinery, bogs of mud, “No left turn” signs, blowing dust, and murky pools of water. Plus, other drivers seemingly hell-bent on killing us.

I drove. D the B navigated. We both yelled a little and cursed a lot, and we finally arrived at the address in my notes from Simon & Schuster. The building did not look like a TV studio, and D the B said as much. We had two minutes until my official arrival time for the live show, and I was lost in worrying that we’d somehow gone to the wrong place. I was going to ruin Pat McMahon’s show!

Of course, the fretting was for naught. We found the office/studio and the sign out front:

“Melicious!” a female voice squealed from the inner office, then Laura, the producer, appeared. She fussed over me with compliments, gave me water in a AZ-TV mug, and introduced me to the crew. She was all-together lovely and welcoming and I instantly felt better.

Then the front door opened. “Yo, Melicious!” Pat McMahon breezed through the reception office with the casual confidence of anyone going to work in the morning—it’s just that his work is in front of the cameras instead of a computer screen.

Someone turned on the TV in the lobby, and we watched Pat do his opening segment. As the footage of Texas Rollergirls rolled while he did a promo for my appearance, he said, “On the Flat Track, Melicious sometimes flies into the audience, landing on fans. I wonder if they charge extra for that.”

The first guest was a woman wearing a lovely Chinese-inspired silk blouse who was there to talk about tea. She took tea VERY seriously. Pat enjoyed a freshly-brewed cup of green while she explained that the caffeine in tea provides a “sustained lift” rather than the “dramatic jolt” of coffee.

Next up: The president of the Arabian Horse Association to talk about a big Arabian Horse show that’s in town this weekend. In the lobby, he seemed like an uber-grown-up: blow-dried hair and pointy, polished shoes. But on air, he did alright. He was very passionate about the horses, and the B-roll of the Arabians was really beautiful. They pranced and preened, and their coats were so glossy… they are definitely the Rollergirls of the horse world.

After the horse people, there was a flower lady. The flower shop she owns delivered 300 floral arrangements on Valentine’s Day. The deliveries took 12 hours, and she and her staff worked 48 hours straight to prepare. I learned that the reason my fresh flowers always wilt and die very quickly is because I don’t cut their stems and change their water every 2-3 days. Note to self: get a cactus.

While I was watching Pat and his guests, D the B was roaming the streets of Phoenix, almost getting arrested. D the B’s project, while I’m signing books, is to take photos of every cup of coffee he drinks on the tour, along with a picture of the person who servies it to him. The only place for coffee near the AZ-TV studio was a Jack in the Box, so D the B gutted it up and got the fast food coffee, snapping a pic of his server and the coffee-fixin’ area. On his way out the door, a female manager stopped him.

Manager: “Sir, were you just taking photos inside?”

D the B: “Yeah.”

M: “We have a no photos policy. I’m going to have to ask you to delete them.”

D the B: “Um, yeah. I’m not going to do that.”

M: “Well… I’m going to have to call the police, then.”

D: “Ok. But… do you think I’m a terrorist? Do you think I’m a corporate spy?”

M: “No, sir, but we have a policy and I’m going to have to ask you to delete the photos or I’m going to call the police.”

D: “Well… can I talk your picture?”

M: “No! I do not authorize you to take my picture.”

D: “OK. I’m going to go now.”

M: “Sir, I’m going to call the police.”

D the B walked back into the building. No one showed up with handcuffs.

My 8-minute segment with Pat is a blur, but I know it was a fun conversation. Pat asked the usual questions - the difference between banked and flat track, how I got started - but it has such a great sense of humor and timing, it felt fresh. And the ending of the whole shebang was so perfect, it was as if we’d rehearsed it.

Pat: So what’s my Roller Derby name?

Me: Either the Prime Minister or… the Party Machine.

Pat: I can’t be the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is British; I’m Irish. So… Party Machine it is. [brilliant smile at the camera]

Next on my schedule was an interview with Skatie Couric at the NPR station in Albany, New York. According to the notes from secret Rollergirl HQ in the basement of the Simon & Schuster building in NYC, the show The Round Table is heard on more than 500 NPR affiliates. I tried not to think about that while I talked to Skatie Couric about why Flat Track has taken off, what it brings to the lives of the girls who skate, and how other girls can give it a whirl.

Then I was starving.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, does restaurant research as well as D the B. I’m great at finding the best dishes on a menu once I’m at the restaurant, and he’s a freakin’ pro at discovering the best spots. We’re the Dynamic Dining Duo… or something silly like that.

He chose Fattoush, a hole-in-the-wall Middle Eastern restaurant with food that was every bit as yummy as my dad makes from my great-grandmother’s recipes. We had a feast: stuffed grape leaves, lentil soup, chopped salad, hummus, babaganouj, pita bread, chicken kebab, kafta kebab, and a mysterious garlic sauce that was so good, I wanted to smear it on everything. Most of the conversation consisted of “mmmmm, this is so good,” and we brought leftovers home to eat before the book signing. On the way out, we got a piece of baklava and when I joked that I wished I could scrape the pan with a fork to get all the buttery bits of phyllo dough stuck to the bottom, the sweet waiter did just that, tucking the phyllo leaves around the glistening diamond-shaped piece of baklava. Heaven.

We made a brief stop at Target and Office Max, splitting up to save time, and I got lost in the parking lot. Which nondescript, sort-of-silver car with Arizona license plates is ours? I walked up and down every aisle, unable to call D the B ‘cause I’d left my phone in the pocket of my jacket… in the trunk of the car.

Is it this one? Nope. That one has a flowered lei hanging from the rear view mirror.

Is it this one? Uh-uh. That one has a baby seat in the back.

Is it this one? Wrong. That one has a rip in the passenger side seat.

Oh! It’s this one, next to the van of annoying people who don’t seem to notice that their vehicle is ding-ding-dinging – quite loudly – because the key is in the ignition and all the doors are standing wide open. Door ajar! Door ajar!

Back to the hotel to watch Wonder Woman on the iPod, i.e., nap with headphones on.

D the B has carefully constructed a binder that holds the secrets to all of our travels over the next few weeks. There are pages with an hour-by-hour breakdown for each day, print-outs of maps and directions to each destination, and notes from the secret Rollergirl HQ at Simon & Schuster. We decided that even though we’d planned just about everything down to the minute, we really did need a handler.

We chose Justin Timberlake. As D the B said, “He’s bringing scheduling back.”

Justin’s earnest, blue-eyed face covers the front of the binder, and we consult him whenever we need to know where we’re going and when.

Justin said that the drive to Tempe was a mere 16 minutes. But a quick phone call to Cindy, the awesome events manager at Changing Hands Books, revealed that in weekday traffic, the 12-mile drive might take more than an hour. I cut my nap short, and – appropriately primped in pink eyeshadow, fishnets and knee socks, and freshly-flat ironed hair – we joined the thousands of other cars inching to the east like some kind of mechanical lemming run.

And we, of course, arrived blessedly, relaxingly early. The first thing I saw when I walked in? My boook!

Changing Hands is the kind of place where I could easily kill an entire Saturday, browsing through books, imagining all the new thoughts I’d think and new ideas I’d learn if I took them home with me. I wanted to look and linger, but then I’d remember I was doing a reading in a few minutes, and feel a little flutter of jitters in my chest. The little flutter turned to big bat wings at 7:00, my start time—there were only about 3 people in the chairs in front of the little stage. But we all agreed that yes, the attendees were probably on Rollergirl time, and by 7:15, there were about 25-30 people there, many of them from the badass Arizona Roller Derby and Renegade Rollergirls. (Thank you, roller family!)

But there were also some civilians in the audience: a lovely young woman who said the book signing was her treat to herself to take a break from school (we agreed that inline skates are inferior to quad skates and the Midsomer Murders is awesome), and an older couple (in their seventies?) who sat quietly near the back.

We watched some video footage, and I explained how Flat Track Derby is played, then the terrifying part started: I read passages from my book. I’m not sure I can accurately describe the floaty, out-of-body experience I had reading from my book to a bunch of almost-strangers. It’s the ultimate “me me me me me me me me me” moment. And I had to struggle a bit to keep it together when the audience laughed at just the parts that I hoped they would.

When the reading segment was over, I answered a few questions, and then the sweet older couple in the back spoke up. They were Bert Wall and Bobbie Mateer, a.k.a., the Ponytail Express… banked track skaters in the ‘50s! (A quick Google search this morning revealed that they were both on their respective All-Star teams for many years!) They told us how they’d toured all over the country, and they played in those Madison Square Garden bouts with tens of thousands of fans watching.

Bert & Ponytail had seen a notice about the book signing and decided to come out to meet the Rollergirls and hear about my book. They said that they are thrilled we Flat Track skaters are reviving the sport, and that we’re all welcome to join their annual Roller Derby reunion. They really couldn’t have been more gracious or charming. And we swarmed them, asking for autographs and photos.

When we encouraged them to come to the Dust Devil this weekend, the Ponytail Express said, “I’m not sure if I can. I have a tennis tournament this weekend.”

Rollergirls… they just get tougher with age.

Then it was time to sign books, and I think that was my favorite part because I got to talk to everybody one-on-one. Hearing snippets of everyone’s stories is a joy, and I’m taking mental notes for my next book.

When the last Rollergirl wandered out, I signed some books for the store to sell, and Cindy gave me a t-shirt that says “Fictional Character” across the chest and told me to choose a book as a gift. I selected a children’s book called “Seventeen Things I’m Not Allowed to do Anymore” because the little girl in the book is definitely a punk-rock-Rollergirl-to-be.

Justin helped D the B and I find our way back to the hotel, and I fell asleep watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, sometime between the #3 story of the day and Keith’s list of the Worst People in the World.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to drink water and realized I left my Dust Devil tickets at home, sitting on my desk, in the folder marked “Important Papers.”

Thanks a lot, Justin.