Fear and Loathing in Ohio

"God is all powerful, and Duct Tape is the magical force that holds everything together." - a friend of Tammy's on the connection between God and Duct Tape

Still fuzzy, but how have a pictured of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost standing back to back to back, bound with yards of duct tape around their waists, but unable to break through it's mighty force. (which handily explains how they can be three different entities, and yet all the same thing - a concept I always had trouble with)

We (Tammy and I) actually never made it to the Duct Tape Festival. After only 3 cups of coffee for me, we set out on our journey to Cleveland with a pad of directions from some website. Saturday was sunny and hot (luckily, I had the foresight to apply sunblock), and Tammy has a cute little 2-door with a sun roof, so we got to enjoy 70mph air conditioning for 3 hours straight. Some time around 1am my face finally got over that tingly feeling caused by driving too fast with your head out the window.

Because we were bored, I decided we should see how many trucks we could get to honk for us on the way up. As passenger, it was my responsibility to hang out the window and signal the truckers. When the trucks started to thin out, I tried for some SUVs, a few cars, and one mini-van, but none complied. Tammy suggested the ASL for "honk your horn" may be different for non-commercial vehicles.

Once in Cleveland, Tammy realized she had directions from her house, not my house, and in the direction we were traveling there was no hook-up to the road we needed, so we cut through some side streets. By this point I was ravenous and was quickly consuming what was left of a bag of Combos Tammy had gum-banded closed in the back seat.

Hunger abated, I was back to boredom, so I started picking out victims to short the rubber band at. Nearly everyone had their windows down, but one boy gave me a slightly nasty look, so he became the target. I missed and it flew over his windshield instead of into his ear, but it was still a riot. *note to self - buy bag of rubber bands to keep in car

Once on the right road, we got to Avon, but couldn't find the damn park we were supposed to be at. Avon isn't very big, and we stopped twice to ask directions, but when we finally found Veterans Memorial Park, there were no stands, no music, and no cars Tammy recognized.

Plan 2 - lunch at McDonalds while we called everyone we could think of who might have an inkling of where we were supposed to be.

Sadly McDonald's sucked *note to self - don't forget to complain to McDonald's. Tammy checked the directions again. We tried calling the church that was sponsoring the event but no one was there. Tammy searched online for Duct Tape Festival. She texted everyone she knew. I was returning my food and we were about to walk across the street to the fire department (as a former EMS chick, I know fire/police/ems usually know when an event is going on and where) when Rob called.

According to Rob, there are two Veterans Memorial Parks. TWO. In the same town. Which is not a big town. Sheesh! And Rob (who was playing in a band at the festival) had looked at Tammy's directions and said, "Yeah, that's how you get there."

So, plan 3 - we met Rob, his brother Brad, and 3 other guys whose names I don't remember at Panera Bread. Rob gave us directions, which we screwed up. We were only 3 streets away from Panera, but we missed a right turn and ended up in a cul de sac. To our right, weeds. To our left, a hill with trees beyond and a dirt path that led 8 feet into noting before fizzling out. In front of us, woods, weeds, a rusted chainlink fence...and a stop sign.

Why we needed to stop, I have no idea. Where the oncoming traffic was, beats me. When we knew it was clear to go, how should I know? Because we had to stop, and because we were way too tired and doubled over laughing, we took a picture while waiting for the through traffic to pass. I've been trying for 2 days to post the picture, but Blogger is a stubborn mistress.

Panera Bread was fun. I ordered a fruit salad with blueberries. Not fresh blueberries, like you buy in the plastic carton at the grocer. Gooey blueberries, like you would put on ice cream. It would figure they were covered in that purple gook that stains anything permanently. I was taking a big bite of salad when a blueberry rolled off the fork and landed between my breasts.

I looked down in shock, then looked up to see that Brian had been watching me and knew I had a berry rolling around between my melons. I must've turned red. I gave a small wail and covered my face. Tammy said, "What? What happened? - Never mind, I don't even want to know. The bathroom's that way, go to the bathroom."

In the bathroom I parted my cleavage like the red sea, but saw no berry. I had to dig around to find it beneath a breast. Thank goodness no one came in the restroom, because I figured it'd be a snatch & go sort of job and hadn't bothered to get in a stall. Never underestimate the connivery of small blue fruits.

Anyway, the trip was fun, even though the most eventful occurrence was a berry in my bosom. If blogger gets over its snit, I'll post the pic of the stop sign, as well as a travel pic of Tammy. There's also the story of super gluing my car back together, which I'll be saving for a rainy day on blogger, but it's something to look forward to.