Vacation Update #1

(Pictures may be added to this post later on, depending on if I get a camera/access to faster internets/scanner.)

Monday: First, we got a late start. Jeff didn't wake up. Despite our late start, we did manage to get to Indy in plenty of time for the first official item on the itinerary: Dinner with a friend of ours from high school. In the meantime, we thought we'd drop in on our mutual friend Mario. Mario, however, apparently does not know how to get to his own apartment, as he sent us looking for an exit that was on a completely different highway.

Then, as we were driving all the way across Indy looking for an exit that didn't exist, I spy with my little eye an object in the road ahead of us. My astute vision tells me that it's a piece of rubber from a semi tire that you always see on the highway, and my brilliant inner monologue tells me it won't do damage to my vehicle, and besides, there's a semi in the lane next to me blocking any merging opportunity I might have had. Then I get closer, and note with rising alarm that rather than a soft, harmless tire, I'm approaching something that looks large and heavy. The following conversation ensues:

Andy: Uh, I think we're about to hit something.
Jeff: What is that?!
::CRASH!!::
Andy: Um, a ladder?
Jeff: We just hit a ladder?!
Andy: Well, we definitely hit something.
Jeff: We hit a ladder!! That can't be good.
Andy: We've still got power though. All systems feel normal.
Jeff: That's it. I'm calling Mario.

At Plainfield, well outside of Indy, we stop and check the car. No damage. Whatsoever. None. We go in, buy me a Diet Coke and Jeff some form of drink concoction that I couldn't readily identify, and have the following conversation with the clerk:

Andy: What's this?
Clerk: Oh, you can donate a dollar to Riley Hospital.
Andy: Righteous. That's a good idea. I think I've used up all my good karma.
Jeff: And all of mine.
Clerk: What happened?
Andy: I hit a gigantic wooden ladder on the interstate. The usual.
Customer in line beside us: Whoa, you guys almost hit that ladder too?
Andy: No almost about it, my friend. The ladder menace has been destroyed.

Mario, of course, was given hell for this, to which he replied, "Well, it's a good thing you guys got here, because I've got a business meeting to attend and having two white guys with me will make me look more legitimate." Mario's other great quote of the night was "I want some goddamned calamari, and I know that's a weird-as-fuck thing to say, but I just wanted some bad for like two weeks."

There were other events of the night, headlined by dinner with our friend Orilla (Mario had the goddamned calamari, and flirted with our waittress incessantly to the point that she put cheese on my soup approximately 2 seconds after I told her not to), but honestly, it's hard to top the sheer adrenaline rush of crushing a ladder on the interstate at speeds in excess of 65 with your indestructible land yacht. In fact, the rest of the night, every time a driver did something dumb that irked me, I just said "Somebody throw a ladder in front of them." It's my new catchphrase.

Odd facts about Minneapolis coming soon!