Incommodious

And so it begins, the bloggailic tale of The Trip. I've decided to divide the story up into days, since the full account would take 20 pages, and this will make up for not blogging for a month and a half.

Preface

Let me go back to several months ago when I suddenly realized that I've never been anywhere ever except inside my cubicle at work or at my apartment. I was looking at a map of the country I live in, which is marginally bigger than my cubicle, and realized I'd seen about 0.00001% of a third of it. This is right out. Especially seeing as I was plunging down the slippery slope towards the brick wall of 30. I decided that when I splattered against that wall it wasn't going to be at Honolulu Harry's like the last few walls have been, I wanted to splatter somewhere new and fun. I tossed around the idea of going on a cruise, debated nearly every one of the 50 states, and then finally decided I was going to my nation's capital. I figured the hub of the country was a good place to start.

Day 1

Thursday morning we got up ridiculously early to finish getting ready, Mum stayed at my house to drive me to the airport. We got there in plenty of time and I flopped and fumbled my way through all the check points. This process was not sped up by the fact that my drivers' license, SS card and other necessities vanished into the ether a couple weeks ago. After I'd taken off my shoes, outer shirt, inner shirt, sunglasses, hair band, toe ring, fake nails, neck brace, garter belt and peg leg, and placed them all into the little plastic bucket for scanning, I hopped my way through the rest of LAX in one sock. I settled in to wait for boarding, and apparently the one-leg effect gave me the appearance of a diving board, because the little boy next to me immediately began trying to jump onto and leap off of my lap. I'm sure his family will mourn his loss. Once I boarded the plane I realized I'd been put into the middle of 3 seats, between Sergeant Shaky Hands and Countess Curious. After I'd been grilled by the Countess about my book, explained it chapter by chapter, assured her I wasn't anyone famous, didn't laugh at her airplane joke, and had nearly every drop of 7-Up splashed out of Shaky Hand's cup onto my feet, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

I landed in St Paul, Minnesota, in what turned out to be Great Wall of China airport. I believe it was approximately 37 miles from one end to the other, and seeing as I'd landed at mile 2 and needed to catch my next flight at mile 36, I had a lot of walking to do. Much to my delight I utilized the moving sidewalks and made several people jump a mile when they rode the left "Walk Walk Walk Walk" handrail, and I came up behind them shouting "It's fun da fly!!!" A couple of you will understand. I made my next flight with moments to spare and quickly surmised that the aircraft was a few inches smaller than my toilet. It was like flying on a pencil. This time I was in the aisle seat of only 2 seats, which if combined would be smaller than my desk chair. I gained a better understanding of the old cliché "connected at the hip", seeing as I was connected at the hip, waist, shoulder and parts of the neck to the man next to me. His super villain identity didn't stay under wraps for long, lo and behold he was the Notorious Nudger. As if we weren't touching enough. I think that twitchy elbow of his ended up touching parts of my face and the back of my ears. Apparently I'd also been seated directly above the landing gear, and when we touched down I'm pretty certain I formed a new bum split. I leaped off that plane as quickly as I could and was about to do a full wet-puppy-shake until I saw a man a few paces ahead of me in the airport suddenly drop his bag, extend his arms, and start doing toe touches. I was not about to look that silly, especially having to favor the new bum split and peg leg and all, so I just flopped all the way to baggage claim and avoided eye contact with the lady and her 3 noisy children who kept wanting me to take a picture of them.

Lest I give the impression that every moment on the aircrafts/pencils was wretched, let me insert here the Mecca of Sky Mall Magazine. Great honk... Bill Engvall was right. I could literally spend every cent I ever earn for the rest of my life in that catalog. Besides the life-sized voice activated R2D2, Star Wars Battleship and Marshmallow Shooter with laser siding, there was a portable hammock, a motion-sensor mole repeller for the garden, and toe-less socks.

Elaina arrived promptly, we went and got Taco Bell and were given 35,000 packets of hot sauce by the lonely guy at the drive through, went back to her cute apartment where I ooh'ed and ahh'ed, and then collapsed. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.....

Chant Down Babylon