Tales From The Road

Tales from the road….

I live in world of completely bizarre random occurrences; this is a fact of life that I have just had to accept. Somewhere along the way I pissed off the universal dealer of Entropy: defined as- lack of order or predictability and or the gradual decline to disorder. With the universe having a general chip on its shoulder about my life’s predictability, I have come to expect the random. So much so, that if things seem too normal I take it as a calm before the storm. I have never once questioned this as a theory; rather I have fully accepted this principle as a law. I do not intentionally put myself in situations where these events occur, they just happen. One day it’s a car driving through a wall at Quiznos and hitting my table and they next is a cracked out vet demanding I do push-ups in the aisle of an airplane (all of which have happened to me). Those around me have gotten great joy from the recounting of these experiences and asked me share these tails with the “F” word nation. If you think I am making these up, I will tell you all the same thing I tell my wife-watch the movie “Big Fish.” I remind her that just like at the end of the movie when they are at the funeral and the son learns his dad’s stories are all true, she will at my passing be privy to the same experience. I will be adding these stories in from time to time on this blog for the pure entertainment of our clan. May you get a good laugh and say to yourself, “man I am glad this did not happen to me.” So without further fanfair let me tell you what happened to me a few months back and why Mr. Sandman decided that sleep was not in the cards.

I like sleep, not kind of, not sort of, but I truly love it and therefore give it the proper respect it deserves.  I was the kid in college that if there was not a solid reason to be up past 11, I was in bed. I was mocked and ridiculed for my beliefs, but no amount of mockery or even noise for that matter would stop me from crawling into bed when the time seemed right (good night moon, good night Quinn). Now that there is a bit of pretense let me tell you how my last week unfolded. As stated before I have no issue staying up when there is something to do, and that something just so happed to be tearing the roof off and getting on the Mothership at a George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic  concert. My 3 week out from 40 body got down to some booty shaken funk for three straight hours. By the end of the show I was gassed tired and ready to go to bed. I knew full well that I would be up a 6 and life would go on. What I did not expect was how the rest of the week played out.

Knowing that I had to be 3.5 hours into Idaho early on Wednesday morning I decided to leave Tuesday night and drive most of the way there. Realizing I would only be in my room for a limited amount of time, I decided that I would save my company a few dollars and stay at the less expensive of the two options. The Motel was newly remolded and I thought, “Buddy you are a team player.” So after knocking out about 2.5 hours of my drive I arrived at my domicile of choice and set up camp for the night around 11:30 PM. Shortly after crawling into bed I heard someone speaking in Spanish outside my door, then speaking slowed  and that is when I noticed my door handle start to giggle. Was I shocked this was happening, absolutely not! As I mentioned above, randomness finds me and I have just come to accept it. But what I did not accept is when my amigo from south of the border began to bang on my door. I took this opportunity to express my discontent and exercise the shadier side of my vocabulary in both English and Spanish (Baxter, yes I speak Spanish). The banging on my door got to be absurd and at this point I was just pissed. In polite 1 am terms I called the front desk and asked for the cops and or security to come pay my fine knocking friend from south of the border a visit.  There was one last bang on my door, a yell from security and that ended by bi-lingual tirade. With all of that happening you can imagine I did not go straight off to slumber land. My late night visitor caused me to not really decompress and go night-night until around 4-ish.  Being that I had to be up a 6:00 it was a rough morning. That was day one.

The next day still confused and a bit pissed off at my late night visitor I got on the road and headed to my next destination. My mind raced all day in a caffeinated stupor with thoughts of sugar plumbs racing through my head or at least a solid desire to go back to bed. As the day came to end I settled in for a long winters nap. I closed my eyes and even laughed a bit to myself about how crazy the night before had been. The thought, “this shiz always seems to happen to me” crossed my mind then I was off to slumber land.

At this point in the story you may say, “that’s a peaceful end” or “how could lightning strike twice?”  This is the point where this story gets down right absurd. Let me paint the picture….. Me in bed……. Time 4 A.M…… Fire Alarm going off…… My eyes burned with sleep and mind screamed with confusion as I stumbled to grab my laptop bag and car keys. Emerging from my hotel room I noted that the hallway was full of exhausted and equally confused folks making their way down the stairs to the parking lot. It was bad enough I barely slept the night before, but being wakened by an alarm when one is in full hibernation mode is strait up cruel! The next hour and a half I sat with my head in my hands cursing my life and wondering what I had done to upset the universe in such a drastic manner. Like all suffering mercy was granted and I was able to crawl back into bed for 30 minutes of drastically needed sleep.

Looking back I can see the humor in the situation, but I can honestly tell you that this stuff seems to happen to me all the time. I guess in the end it makes for good story, and who does not enjoy a good story! Life is all about experiences, go out and justify it………