Buttes, Butts, and Grandees
Well that was certainly a surreal Labor Day weekend.
First, there was the aforementioned two-way drive from Madison to Crested Butte (a.k.a. Crusted Butt), Colorado. Believe me when I say that Runaway Truck Ramps are the last thing you want to see after 18 straight hours of mind-numbing driving through Nebraska. MKM and I were completely delirious by the end of the drive, evidenced by the fact that we found our reading of the Harlequin Romance The Spanish Grandee to be laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Then there was the wedding itself, which featured not one, but two piñatas. And a Liberal vs. Conservative beach volleyball match immediately after the ceremony. And not a single chicken dance or electric slide. I loved it.
And we can’t forget Hurricane Katrina, surreal and horrible all by itself. MKM and I, however, got our news about it primarily via Nebraska a.m. radio, which of course only added to the weirdness. We heard, for instance, theories about Halliburton’s weather changing machine (first used by the Soviets to disrupt the 1980 L.A. Olympics) and the big conspiracy to keep ham radio operators out of New Orleans.
The last bit of surrealness, though, was my final arrival back in Madison. The story is long, but the key points are a gas-less car, a charge-less cell phone, a nonexistent key drop box, and one delirious OleNelson stuck in a Hertz lot at 3:00 a.m. surrounded by blocks and blocks of closed car dealerships. Surreal indeed.
First, there was the aforementioned two-way drive from Madison to Crested Butte (a.k.a. Crusted Butt), Colorado. Believe me when I say that Runaway Truck Ramps are the last thing you want to see after 18 straight hours of mind-numbing driving through Nebraska. MKM and I were completely delirious by the end of the drive, evidenced by the fact that we found our reading of the Harlequin Romance The Spanish Grandee to be laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Then there was the wedding itself, which featured not one, but two piñatas. And a Liberal vs. Conservative beach volleyball match immediately after the ceremony. And not a single chicken dance or electric slide. I loved it.
And we can’t forget Hurricane Katrina, surreal and horrible all by itself. MKM and I, however, got our news about it primarily via Nebraska a.m. radio, which of course only added to the weirdness. We heard, for instance, theories about Halliburton’s weather changing machine (first used by the Soviets to disrupt the 1980 L.A. Olympics) and the big conspiracy to keep ham radio operators out of New Orleans.
The last bit of surrealness, though, was my final arrival back in Madison. The story is long, but the key points are a gas-less car, a charge-less cell phone, a nonexistent key drop box, and one delirious OleNelson stuck in a Hertz lot at 3:00 a.m. surrounded by blocks and blocks of closed car dealerships. Surreal indeed.
posted by OleNelson at 10:32 PM
4 Comments:
Have no fear! Not so bad luck is on the way... I am afraid that our luck somehow switched in transit, because since yesterday morning, I:
*failed a pop-quiz over a reading I actually did
*spilled a cup of boiling water on my left hand
*had an allergic reaction which has given me a chin the size of Jay Leno's
If this isn't classic Travis bad luck, I don't know what is.
Oh, man - Crested Butte? You should have blown off the wedding for mountain biking.
oooh, a drive across Nebraska. agony.
but please -- do not tease us with a story of olenelson misery without providing the whole tale. while you provided most of the needed elements of any olenelson debacle -- surreal, worst case coincidence; technological failure; and bureaucratic incompetence -- we are missing the agency, the crucial element of unintentioned self-inflicted-ness. what did YOU do that, while seeming a reasonable response to your predicament, somehow ended up enhancing the misery?
Ah, jpl, you know me to well. The agency of which you speak actually worked out okay in this situation. Desperately needing a charge for the cell phone, I found my way into a closed strip mall and discovered an outlet underneath the sink in the men's restroom. I charged for five minutes, scurried out, and everything went smoothly. This time.
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