So I would like you all to know I'm back in Missoula safe and sound and that in the last 72 hours I gained little more than a mug with Tim's face in it, a bazillion pairs of stunna shades, and a stomach full of gas fumes.
I went to Butte on Saturday to visit my co-authors Sam and Max and the rest of the Butte folks because my plans to be in Seattle were totally hella dashed by various evil forces and I wasn't about to spend my long weekend off work moping in my living room by myself (it has literally been raining in Missoula for 45 years and I have henceforth been steadily regressing into a mushroom-like state). As such I thought it better to mope in Sam's dad's living room instead.
Turns out Butte is pretty much how I left it: the restaurant food gives everyone immediate heart disease, Sam's cat has far too many toes, teenage boys inexplicably freaking love me and carve their own faces into mugs they make in ceramics class, the booze floweth like a sweet sweet river, and if it's not the 3rd of July or St. Patrick's Day it is the ghostiest of ghost towns ever. The only bar with a pool table that was open last night had about 8 men in once-flashy leather jackets and had googly eyes and just generally made me think I had in fact walked into the pre-release center and not a bar. High points: we barbecued delicious items and made bananas foster today, we have plans to shear Max and spin his hair into the softest wool in the world, and Sam gave me the neon sunglasses he owed me so now I'll never go out of doors either squinting or uncool.
BUT my car did more crazy things on the drive home than it usually does, the main one being that the fuel gauge was all like, "I cease to actually say what you have in your gas tank." I didn't have any cash to get extra gas play-it-safe-style, but I banked on the fact that this car has pulled through in amazing ways before and I would get home. After about 30 miles of jumping straight from quarter-tank to fuel light on to quarter tank and back, however, and terrified the old machine would putter out in the one-lane construction zone, I pulled off at an exit, called my superman roommate, and read Flannery O' Conner as the bluest dusk descended.
Dylan arrived, siphon hose in hand, and after we inhaled only fumes for a while, he called his mom (read: his mom) for pointers, but eventually we gave up and left my car there. We'll get it tomorrow or something. Moral of the story is that we could have never taken a road trip in the '70s.
I'd like to heretofore give a big shout out (is that what the kids still say?) to Dylan for rescuing me from the Montana wilderness, buying me soup when I had mono, and cleaning the downstairs bathroom, and to his mom for raising a dude who was okay with being my mom this month. Thanks, Dilbert, for keeping it real and saving me from my otherwise obviously impending doom.
Post script: I'll get a picture of Tim's mug up if I ever wake up tomorrow.
well good thing you drove because I was high off gas fumes for a good 15 minutes.
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