The Odyssey
So before I begin describing the past events I would just like to say that it is currently 4:53 in the am on tuesday morning and I have not slept in 21 hours. I should also warn the reader that this will be a very long post
We will begin a week ago with the bethel minnesota bar scene. So after work myself another dude and 5 chicks head out to wreck havoc on the local watering holes. Our first stop is the dugout where we enjoy $7 pitchers of miller lite and watch the regulars play bingo around the bar. There were two highlights, both involving meat. The first was the larry burger. I ate half of someone's and it was incredible rivalled only by the billy goat double cheese in the category of unbelievably good tavern burgers. The second was when a man walked in with a cardboard box filled with a potpurri of meat products and anounced 1 for $2 or 3 for $5. Curious I looked at some sliced meat and found it to be the most suspect looking grey meat I have ever seen. All in all good place, if I don't crash hard following work today I will enjoy one for dinner I'm sure. Upon leaving the dugout we strolled on down to the vanishing point, which was interesting as it had younger customers, all men I believe and one attractive barmaid. We saddled up and discovered that beer could be had for $1 a glass. Not bad. Played a little pool, and I actually played remarkably well for me. Especially when I had caroline line up my shots and I subsequently hit the ball without looking where anything would go, was 2/2 in fact. The barmaid was funny as she gave us 30 free plays on the jukebox in an obvious attempt to keep the young women around and gave us the rundown on their various weekly specials. Not a bad night, didn't get very drunk at all and had some good talking with charlie and caroline, and then with everyone while playing pool.
We will now jump ahead to the really big shew (or show to those who don't know of ed sullivan's show). The talent show to be more exact. On thursday we had half a day and then after various games and such a talent show was put on. I demurred from displaying any talent but the quality of the acts was by no means meager because of my absence. The first talent was a bet rather than a talent. The lousiana fellow Ross (I will discuss him much more to come) had a bet that he could drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up. We decided this would provide the perfect backdrop for the show. His strategy was interesting; he chugged a lot of milk early on and used a sort of direct and simple logic, which was that because cake made him thirsty for milk, whenever he got stuck he would have some cake. The other acts were good. A fellow named kyle (who incidentally plays for sub zero) sang and played the guitar for a song he had written called room for improvement. It was funny to look around and see all the young ladies in attendance studiously paying attention to what was a quite decent performance. The piece de resistance of the show though was our resident lesbian kathy dressing as a man and putting on a sort of strip show dealy. She painted on a goatee and had various costumes picked out and ready for use in her two different dressing rooms (I'm still not sure why she needed both of them). This was possibly the most surreal experience of my life. Kathy is very upfront about her sexual orientation, and I personally have no issue with it, but it was a little bizarre to sit and watch her go through her performance, which was admittedly not too bad, because it had this sort of "YOU WILL BE COMFORTABLE WITH THIS" vibe. At random times she would try to draw audience members into the show with mixed results. But the best was when she tried to get Ross into the show (I should mention that there has been a bit of tension there) and he twenty minutes into a gallon of milk demurred muttering rather loudly "Milk". The crescendo of the show was at the end when Kathy and several others were line dancing in front and I sort of realized the absolute surrealness. You had a tame (not taken too far) strip show going on that had gone into the realm of country line dancing acted out by a lesbian posing as a man who at this point was wearing a white sleeveless shirt (one vulgar term for it is wife-beater) that shall we say wasn't quite thick enough, in front of an audience that was unsettled to various degrees, all with Ross on the side really suffering through the milk. I nearly lost it when all the individual elements sort of came together in my head and shed many tears laughing at the absurdity of it all. I really wish I could convey what I felt better. Anyway by the end of the show and around the 40 minute mark Ross went outside to try and throw up with about a 1/3 of the gallon left. I followed and was treated to an amazing sight. Ross who is about 210 pounds was grasping with two hands a small sapling for support that was nearly buckling from the weight and yelling at the milk demon to get out. Sort of a self-exorcism. Phrases commonly used were "Get Out of Me!" and "It hurts bad!" with the truest louisianan accent you could ever wish for.
Ross never did throw up and we subsequently all piled in 2 suburbans and 2 minivans and headed for the black hills. The trip out there was relatively uneventful, but in the end we arrived in the Sheridan Lake area at 430 in the morning and after many attempts to find everyone else our car just crashed at squirrel campground, was quite nice to feel the cool air and the smell of the pines, not to mention being able to see the milky way. Charlie (the able dancer from before who I mentioned) and I chose not to sleep and read by the dock of the marina for a while, watched the sunrise from the hill, and went searching again for everyone else at 630 in the morning. We didn't find them. When we got back we had breakfast and noticed one of the fans go by. After blocking off their way back we met Jared our boss and then the door to the minivan opened and Ross still in his sleeping bag with sunglasses yelled, "Where the hell ya'all been?" This was funny not only because of Ross but because he had obviously been awakened by Jared at an early hour to go looking for someone or something, a theme that would be repeated every morning of the trip.
So I enjoyed Friday on essentially zero sleep, I caught about 40 4 second naps in the car on the way as I'd lean on my hand, fall asleep, my hand would fall away, and I'd awaken as my head suddenly dropped. They say that not sleeping is like having a .08 blood alcohol level, they do not lie. This wasn't a problem in general except when we went to Rapid City. I should note that while people in Florence may say that they "live in the shadow of the dome" (which is a dome to the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore) but Rapid City denizens can claim to "live in the shadow of the big brontasaurus statue on a hill" We were treated to a lecture by the forest service in a large air conditioned garage, and while it was interesting, going into the history, ecology, and management of the black hills I discovered an interesting phenomenon. While I was for the most part awake, there was about 5 minutes where for whatever reason blood was diverted from my brain to a different region of my body. Rather than being an exciting sensation it just made me really, really tired. I was quite relieved when it went away. In the end I was up for about 43 hours straight without any sleep more than 10 minutes, and no more than 15 minutes total.
The next day, Saturday, we went and saw crazy horse, was cool but at this point not really worth the price of admission, went to Sylvan lake which was just about the coolest lake I've been to. Has lots (I originally spelled lots as louds) of climbable rock both in and around the lake. You can jump off any number of ledges ranging from 7 ft. (what I did) to perhaps 30 ft. (what other people did). We then went the needles which are huge stones that tower above the rode. I climbed one in flipflops in what would be a weekend of poor footwear choices. Amidst all the phalluses there was one monolith that was actually yonic in nature, which was refreshing. We continued went up to a lookout where the white suburban that I rode in and drove wouldn't start. Jared the amazingly astute person that he is removed the gas cap and put it back on and then the car started, apparently vapor lock. We continued onto windcave which is the 3rd largest, and possibly soon to be 2nd because they keep discovering new passages, in the states and is where the local native people believed bison emanated from. We then drove the wildlife loop in custer state park and saw many bison, praire dogs, and where I started feeling a little sick. Then the white burb died. We were going downhill without brakes for a moment until the driver shifted back into drive from neutral and finally got it stopped. I was rather out of it and climbed up the hill to meditate. We finally got out of there 3.5 hours later after we towed the burb to a ranger's station where it got towed. I meditated to help clear my head, but still had to endure a rather unfortunate dinner at pizza hut because all the other eateries were closed by then.
I should note here, that while I have slept and it is 4 days later, I am quite drunk and waiting for a man known as golden bear or magnum to pick me up, I am not a male prostitute.
So with the burb broke down and pizza hut in my gut I went to sleep. Ross had some memorable quotes the following morning, I should note that he had at least 3 beers by 1130 and I had one, anyway the quotes, "desperate times call for desperate drinking," "We have to be like Indians, can't count on our cell phones, burbs, marshmellows, cooking oil, and I can't believe its not butter whipped," later he would claim that Burt Reynolds would be the 5th man on mt. rushmore and related the history of the mountain. Essentially it was that 100 million years ago the indians carved our forefathers into this rock. How did they know ?!?!?!?! Ross is awesome. He's been whoopin' and callin' since he came out of the womb. anyway while everyone else was at mt. rushmore and sylvan lake for a second time charlie and I hung out with his cousins. We went to the hole in the wall, which is an abandoned(?) mining operation (lithium?) that was pretty cool. Went through a short tunnel and then came to a whole in the ground that was 100 ft of rock to the surface on all sides. The water looked about as inviting as any I've ever seen but I wasn't going near it, nor would I eat the wild raspberries growing all around in fear of contamination. After that we went to Hippie Hole where I jumped off a 15-18ft high rock into water. It was a delight. The scariest part was climbing the rope ladder back up to the rock, it was actually much scarier then the actual jumping which I did three times.
The next and last day we went to Dakota point where there were more cliffs to jump off. It took me a while to work up the courage but eventually I jumped off a 20-25 ft rock into the water, was long enough to have an O Shit moment on the way down. I did that twice. After that we waited around, got the white burb back, broken fuel line apparently. Got back to MN on tuesday at 415am and I stayed up the whole 40 something hours a second time which was a little nuts. Starting singing upbeat positive songs about dracula and having to live because we're all gonna die while working the next day. In any event, jayadev and brody should be here soon to pick me up, but until then its lots of water. Hopefully the tourney goes ok. Drinking tonight was fun. I am as always, you're drunken reporter in a random minnesota field -joe little
OH one more thought. At mars while drunk on the way to the airport(?) I was in shotgun and decided to pretend drive drunk to see if I could do it. Driving drunk I learned is a bad idea, but what I really messed up in was trying to change the radio station while pretending to drive. Bad idea. Let this be a lesson to any who drive after drinking or tired. Let the radio be and focus on the road. This has been a public service message from yours truly, I hope I didn't say anything stupid but if I did I'm sure I'll hear about it. ta ta
We will begin a week ago with the bethel minnesota bar scene. So after work myself another dude and 5 chicks head out to wreck havoc on the local watering holes. Our first stop is the dugout where we enjoy $7 pitchers of miller lite and watch the regulars play bingo around the bar. There were two highlights, both involving meat. The first was the larry burger. I ate half of someone's and it was incredible rivalled only by the billy goat double cheese in the category of unbelievably good tavern burgers. The second was when a man walked in with a cardboard box filled with a potpurri of meat products and anounced 1 for $2 or 3 for $5. Curious I looked at some sliced meat and found it to be the most suspect looking grey meat I have ever seen. All in all good place, if I don't crash hard following work today I will enjoy one for dinner I'm sure. Upon leaving the dugout we strolled on down to the vanishing point, which was interesting as it had younger customers, all men I believe and one attractive barmaid. We saddled up and discovered that beer could be had for $1 a glass. Not bad. Played a little pool, and I actually played remarkably well for me. Especially when I had caroline line up my shots and I subsequently hit the ball without looking where anything would go, was 2/2 in fact. The barmaid was funny as she gave us 30 free plays on the jukebox in an obvious attempt to keep the young women around and gave us the rundown on their various weekly specials. Not a bad night, didn't get very drunk at all and had some good talking with charlie and caroline, and then with everyone while playing pool.
We will now jump ahead to the really big shew (or show to those who don't know of ed sullivan's show). The talent show to be more exact. On thursday we had half a day and then after various games and such a talent show was put on. I demurred from displaying any talent but the quality of the acts was by no means meager because of my absence. The first talent was a bet rather than a talent. The lousiana fellow Ross (I will discuss him much more to come) had a bet that he could drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up. We decided this would provide the perfect backdrop for the show. His strategy was interesting; he chugged a lot of milk early on and used a sort of direct and simple logic, which was that because cake made him thirsty for milk, whenever he got stuck he would have some cake. The other acts were good. A fellow named kyle (who incidentally plays for sub zero) sang and played the guitar for a song he had written called room for improvement. It was funny to look around and see all the young ladies in attendance studiously paying attention to what was a quite decent performance. The piece de resistance of the show though was our resident lesbian kathy dressing as a man and putting on a sort of strip show dealy. She painted on a goatee and had various costumes picked out and ready for use in her two different dressing rooms (I'm still not sure why she needed both of them). This was possibly the most surreal experience of my life. Kathy is very upfront about her sexual orientation, and I personally have no issue with it, but it was a little bizarre to sit and watch her go through her performance, which was admittedly not too bad, because it had this sort of "YOU WILL BE COMFORTABLE WITH THIS" vibe. At random times she would try to draw audience members into the show with mixed results. But the best was when she tried to get Ross into the show (I should mention that there has been a bit of tension there) and he twenty minutes into a gallon of milk demurred muttering rather loudly "Milk". The crescendo of the show was at the end when Kathy and several others were line dancing in front and I sort of realized the absolute surrealness. You had a tame (not taken too far) strip show going on that had gone into the realm of country line dancing acted out by a lesbian posing as a man who at this point was wearing a white sleeveless shirt (one vulgar term for it is wife-beater) that shall we say wasn't quite thick enough, in front of an audience that was unsettled to various degrees, all with Ross on the side really suffering through the milk. I nearly lost it when all the individual elements sort of came together in my head and shed many tears laughing at the absurdity of it all. I really wish I could convey what I felt better. Anyway by the end of the show and around the 40 minute mark Ross went outside to try and throw up with about a 1/3 of the gallon left. I followed and was treated to an amazing sight. Ross who is about 210 pounds was grasping with two hands a small sapling for support that was nearly buckling from the weight and yelling at the milk demon to get out. Sort of a self-exorcism. Phrases commonly used were "Get Out of Me!" and "It hurts bad!" with the truest louisianan accent you could ever wish for.
Ross never did throw up and we subsequently all piled in 2 suburbans and 2 minivans and headed for the black hills. The trip out there was relatively uneventful, but in the end we arrived in the Sheridan Lake area at 430 in the morning and after many attempts to find everyone else our car just crashed at squirrel campground, was quite nice to feel the cool air and the smell of the pines, not to mention being able to see the milky way. Charlie (the able dancer from before who I mentioned) and I chose not to sleep and read by the dock of the marina for a while, watched the sunrise from the hill, and went searching again for everyone else at 630 in the morning. We didn't find them. When we got back we had breakfast and noticed one of the fans go by. After blocking off their way back we met Jared our boss and then the door to the minivan opened and Ross still in his sleeping bag with sunglasses yelled, "Where the hell ya'all been?" This was funny not only because of Ross but because he had obviously been awakened by Jared at an early hour to go looking for someone or something, a theme that would be repeated every morning of the trip.
So I enjoyed Friday on essentially zero sleep, I caught about 40 4 second naps in the car on the way as I'd lean on my hand, fall asleep, my hand would fall away, and I'd awaken as my head suddenly dropped. They say that not sleeping is like having a .08 blood alcohol level, they do not lie. This wasn't a problem in general except when we went to Rapid City. I should note that while people in Florence may say that they "live in the shadow of the dome" (which is a dome to the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore) but Rapid City denizens can claim to "live in the shadow of the big brontasaurus statue on a hill" We were treated to a lecture by the forest service in a large air conditioned garage, and while it was interesting, going into the history, ecology, and management of the black hills I discovered an interesting phenomenon. While I was for the most part awake, there was about 5 minutes where for whatever reason blood was diverted from my brain to a different region of my body. Rather than being an exciting sensation it just made me really, really tired. I was quite relieved when it went away. In the end I was up for about 43 hours straight without any sleep more than 10 minutes, and no more than 15 minutes total.
The next day, Saturday, we went and saw crazy horse, was cool but at this point not really worth the price of admission, went to Sylvan lake which was just about the coolest lake I've been to. Has lots (I originally spelled lots as louds) of climbable rock both in and around the lake. You can jump off any number of ledges ranging from 7 ft. (what I did) to perhaps 30 ft. (what other people did). We then went the needles which are huge stones that tower above the rode. I climbed one in flipflops in what would be a weekend of poor footwear choices. Amidst all the phalluses there was one monolith that was actually yonic in nature, which was refreshing. We continued went up to a lookout where the white suburban that I rode in and drove wouldn't start. Jared the amazingly astute person that he is removed the gas cap and put it back on and then the car started, apparently vapor lock. We continued onto windcave which is the 3rd largest, and possibly soon to be 2nd because they keep discovering new passages, in the states and is where the local native people believed bison emanated from. We then drove the wildlife loop in custer state park and saw many bison, praire dogs, and where I started feeling a little sick. Then the white burb died. We were going downhill without brakes for a moment until the driver shifted back into drive from neutral and finally got it stopped. I was rather out of it and climbed up the hill to meditate. We finally got out of there 3.5 hours later after we towed the burb to a ranger's station where it got towed. I meditated to help clear my head, but still had to endure a rather unfortunate dinner at pizza hut because all the other eateries were closed by then.
I should note here, that while I have slept and it is 4 days later, I am quite drunk and waiting for a man known as golden bear or magnum to pick me up, I am not a male prostitute.
So with the burb broke down and pizza hut in my gut I went to sleep. Ross had some memorable quotes the following morning, I should note that he had at least 3 beers by 1130 and I had one, anyway the quotes, "desperate times call for desperate drinking," "We have to be like Indians, can't count on our cell phones, burbs, marshmellows, cooking oil, and I can't believe its not butter whipped," later he would claim that Burt Reynolds would be the 5th man on mt. rushmore and related the history of the mountain. Essentially it was that 100 million years ago the indians carved our forefathers into this rock. How did they know ?!?!?!?! Ross is awesome. He's been whoopin' and callin' since he came out of the womb. anyway while everyone else was at mt. rushmore and sylvan lake for a second time charlie and I hung out with his cousins. We went to the hole in the wall, which is an abandoned(?) mining operation (lithium?) that was pretty cool. Went through a short tunnel and then came to a whole in the ground that was 100 ft of rock to the surface on all sides. The water looked about as inviting as any I've ever seen but I wasn't going near it, nor would I eat the wild raspberries growing all around in fear of contamination. After that we went to Hippie Hole where I jumped off a 15-18ft high rock into water. It was a delight. The scariest part was climbing the rope ladder back up to the rock, it was actually much scarier then the actual jumping which I did three times.
The next and last day we went to Dakota point where there were more cliffs to jump off. It took me a while to work up the courage but eventually I jumped off a 20-25 ft rock into the water, was long enough to have an O Shit moment on the way down. I did that twice. After that we waited around, got the white burb back, broken fuel line apparently. Got back to MN on tuesday at 415am and I stayed up the whole 40 something hours a second time which was a little nuts. Starting singing upbeat positive songs about dracula and having to live because we're all gonna die while working the next day. In any event, jayadev and brody should be here soon to pick me up, but until then its lots of water. Hopefully the tourney goes ok. Drinking tonight was fun. I am as always, you're drunken reporter in a random minnesota field -joe little
OH one more thought. At mars while drunk on the way to the airport(?) I was in shotgun and decided to pretend drive drunk to see if I could do it. Driving drunk I learned is a bad idea, but what I really messed up in was trying to change the radio station while pretending to drive. Bad idea. Let this be a lesson to any who drive after drinking or tired. Let the radio be and focus on the road. This has been a public service message from yours truly, I hope I didn't say anything stupid but if I did I'm sure I'll hear about it. ta ta
posted by Joe Little at 4:53 AM
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