Shibber me Timbers

We were driving the RV to Memphis and had picked up a band of pirates. They were getting all rowdy and swashbuckling around in a frenzy when our manger RSB called. Someone had called in that we were cruising around appalachia with an RV of rowdy pirates swerving around the road and firing canons at enemy tractor trailers. "Um, I got a call that you have a bunch of pirates in your RV. Do you know anything about that?" RSB inquires. "No." I lie. "We just picked up a couple guys who were broken down and needed a lift" *away from phone* "Hey can you guys keep it down back there, It's my boss on the phone..." Wait a minute, that wasn't the phone ringing. It's the alarm clock...

That's what I get for watching Star Wars III before going to bed. Ugh - 4:30 am, time to get up to go to the airport. Only got 4 hours of sleep... Joel drops us off at the airport. We check bags get to security and realize I accidentally typed in Anilia's maiden name when I bought the tickets so her ticket says MAIDEN NAME and her ID says MARRIED. You'd think I'd remember we were married by now and that she changed her name. Luckily the lady lets us through security without too much of a fuss mostly because her name is unusual and not BETH or JANE. Oh and it is her birthday today. (Anilia's not the security chick, well maybe hers too. How would I know...) Later I realize that I have her old passport with us too which does have her maiden name on it. But we don't have to go through security anymore so it is a non-issue.

We get to our layover in Chicago to find that the way finding signs there were all designed by dyslexic Chinese children, then poorly translated by middle eastern customer support phone operators and finally randomly hung up around the airport by retarded baboons who have escaped from substance abuse research labs. Eventually we find our terminal and that our flight has been delayed. Anilia plops down on the floor and I go and fetch us a salad. I bring it back and in my eagerness to please, I pop open the plastic container. The top half of the salad goes splattering onto the floor, leaving a plastic tub of lettuce and two chick peas in my hands. A flight personnel lady immediately appears to see which of the retarded baboons is running lose around the airport flinging salad around like it's Feces Friday. I apologize and she assures me it's ok with the same look I imagine she gives the little kids who just peed their pants in seat 16F.

We sleep most of the flight into St. Louis. Go collect our bags and hop in a taxi. As usual we get the taxi driver who happens to be celebrating his first day in the country and we have to tell him how to get to where we are going even though we are not from here. We get to the RV dealer to pick up our RV and they have not retrieved it from where it has been repaired yet. SO a couple hours later we finally get our RV back and drive a couple more hours to Columbia. Now we have just eaten at a brand new Ruby Tuesday and checked into our RV park. Thoroughly exhausted we are ready for bed. Tomorrows forecast is a high of 36 with a 30 percent chance of snow tonight. Looks like we will be setting up inside again. Luckily we have a vast supply of matches should our locks ice up.

Things to be Thankful for

I am thankful for VACATION Vacation is an interesting concept when applied to a job that involves driving around the country all the time. Typically you look forward to a break from your daily routine, perhaps a bit of traveling followed by some relaxation and communion with friends and family. So it's a little bit different when you are taking a break from constantly traveling to do some more traveling. Our plan was to drive the RV from IOWA to St Louis to drop it off at the dealers, fly from there to Baltimore, pack up our room so our friends could move in there for a bit, drive to VA to meet up with Anilia's parents and then drive down to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. When we are done here we will be flying back to St Louis to finish out this phase of the tour.
I am thankful for DICKFER'S BOX Dickfer and Box were kind enough to pick us up at the airport and take us home and out for dinner. It was nice to meet Cindy after having been leaving sarcastic comments on her blog for a couple months. She was lots of fun and Dickfer was his usual sassy self. We zipped around town and to our house where we anticipated finding piles of cat poop piled up to the ceiling. Luckily the cat poop was placed into bags first and THEN piled up to the ceiling. We dropped off our bags gave the cats some pats, watched video of lock melting mayhem then headed over to Los Amigos for dinner. Dickfer pulled a U-eee swerved up to the curb and popped off his mini bling rim onto the sidewalk. I tossed it back in his car so he could pimp out his ride at a later date. He already has a subwoofer installed in his brake pads so he's half way there.
 I am thankful for MEXICANS We roll up into Los Amigos for some Mexican fare and some sangria. Food was fab-tastic, drinks were divine and cell phone activity was high. Cindy topped off the night by attempting to eat the fruit from the sangria carafe, peel and all, much to our amusement.

I am thankful for MESS MOUNTAIN After dinner the dynamic duo dropped up off at the house and we began to clean up the wondrous mountain of magical mess our roomy was kind enough to leave for us. I should have took pictures, they would have been a great addition to this blog.

I am thankful for MR. CLEAN We had to spend an entire day scrubbing and sanitizing the kitchen to bring it up to prison standards so we could even consider making a sandwich in there. I later tried to talk to roomy at a moment when he wasn't hiding in his room smoking. I thanked him for taking care of the cats and then the opposite of thanked him for letting the house turn into a disaster area. He seemed incapable or unwilling to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with the current state of affairs so I left the room rather than bang my head on desk and flail about like an injured fish being riddled by machine gun fire. Because no civilized person would bang their head on a desk and flail about like a fish being riddled by machine gun fire and I could think of no other logical alternative. Ahhh what a wonderful homecoming. Needless to say we decided we will not be continuing on the next phase of the tour after all. Clearly we need to be at the house and not out making money on the road.

I am thankful for WAGGLY DOGS

So after a couple days of house cleaning I got some new tires, replaced the corroded battery in the Jeep and we headed on down to Ron and Ann's. Upon our arrival we were greeted by waggly dogs and a smattering of cats. Luckily their house was pretty clean so we were able to relax and enjoy some conversation.
I am thankful for VEGITARIAN TURKEY & KOSHER WINE We got up bright and early and made our way down to Atlanta for Thanksgiving festivities. We've had a great time hanging out with everyone eating and drinking various fine wines and being merry. Having lots of laughs, Bush Bashing and Looney Tunes in German echoing through the house. Now we get to be lazy for a couple days until we fly back to St Louis and continue the tour.
I am thankful for HATING ANILIA'S PHONE In cell phone news it looks like Anilia is leaning towards switching to either T-mobile or Cingular. Anyone have any experience good or bad with either of these?
I am thankful for GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH

In Case of Snow Emergency, Bang Head Here

Yesterday we had a fabulous display of winter wonderment which started off with some nice rain which evolved into snow and was then further enhanced by 50 mph winds gusting about like air on crack. Ah yes, beautiful glorious IOWA. So this morning we got up in our hotel room... Oh wait I guess I should back up a bit here and explain why we are in a hotel room instead of our RV. Recently our carbon monoxide detector started going off in the middle of the night alerting is to the fact that we need to open up some windows or go back to sleep and die. Well as I have noted before we are currently in IOWA and it is NOVEMBER so it is FREAKING COLD outside especially at 3AM. So you can imagine what fun it is to wake up to: BEEP BEEP *flashing orange light* BEEP BEEP *flashing orange light* uuhhhmmm... wha? is it time for toast? OH SHIT. Then having to jump up and open the windows and go open and close the door in succession to fan air in and out as icicles form on my nipples and my fingers turn blue.
See all of the RV parks in this state closed 2 days before we arrived here for winter, because all God fearing sensible people who live in RVs have headed south like nature intended. SO we can't go anywhere to plug in for electric so we must run our generator to keep a charge to the batteries that run the blowers for the furnace. The brilliant design team at COACHMAN who built our RV thought it would be a good idea to place the exhaust for the generator directly below the fresh air intake for the furnace. I can just see how that design meeting must have went:
designer: hey boss here's the new design I came up with for the Mirada.
head engineer: Steve, these cup holders have bolts sticking in the middle of them everything will just fall right out of them and spill on the floor.
designer: Yeah Bob isn't that a hoot. But check out the front end suspension. I've got it set up so whenever they break going downhill at 45 mph the whole thing will start to shake like a giant vibrator of death on wheels.
head engineer: That's all well and good but we need something else that really says "You cheap bastard you should bought something a little above bottom of the line, loser"
designer: Hey I know. Let's put the exhaust for the generator right below the fresh air intake for the furnace that should show them.
head engineer: BRILLIANT!
both: mwah ha ha ha ha!!!
*Lightning and thunder flash and crack as view pans back to reveal conference room is located atop a dirty tower in a spooky castle*
Cut back to my blog...
So we took the RV in to have them take a look at the CO problem and after conducting a battery of tests they determined that the problem may in fact be that the afore mentioned exhaust/intake placement. They re-routed the exhaust pipe closer to the front of the RV away from the furnace and the sleeping quarters. We figured our problem was solved and we could return to our normal routine of sleeping through the night with heat and electricity. Well they say that there is a sucker born every minute and it's 5 o'clock somewhere. SO a couple nights ago after having this fixed we went to bed and lo and behold just as I'm falling asleep... BEEP BEEP *flashing orange light* BEEP BEEP *flashing orange light* uuhhhmmm... wha? I don't want any popcorn... OH SHIT... AGAIN More windows, frozen nipples, blue fingers, you know the drill.
I go up front and I can smell exhaust coming up from under the drivers seat. I look down and... *slaps forehead with open palm, then looks for something harder and heavier to slap forehead with* I can see right through to the ground in one spot and I realize that they have actually relocated the exhaust pipe to someplace worse than where it was. I shut everything off, open up the windows and drive to the nearest hotel... can't fit an RV in that lot.. To the 2nd nearest hotel and get a room. And so we have been in a hotel ever since. But I digress.
I really wanted to tell you about our fun morning. We braved the icy aftermath and arrived at our WALMART to do our daily event. It was 19 degrees this morning with a wind chill factor making it 1 degree. We have been told that though the client really doesn't like it when we don't set up the tent, that it is acceptable not to if it is 45 or less out. OK let's see 19 degrees, wind chill of 1 degree, 30 mph winds, snow covered ground... Yes I believe we will be setting up inside today. So I go to open up our trailer to try and extract a sign and possibly a fake plant and the locks are covered with a bubble of ice. I chip away at it a bit with a key, then go inside to purchase some de-icer. After about 15 minutes of standing out in the 1 degree weather squirting de-icer into the lock then jabbing at it with the key over and over I decide to go inside and thaw my face out and see if they sell propane torches. I go in and find the cheapest model propane torch which is about $12.95 and having the upmost respect for bureaucratic procedure and, more importantly, feeling sure this will make for a pretty hilarious conversation, I ask Anilia to call our manager and request authorization to purchase the torch to melt the ice out of the locks. So she puts the call in to RSB (previous readers may remember this character) to explain our situation and get the OK to proceed in a logical direction.
Now keep in mind our headquarters are in Tampa Bay and it is like 80 degrees there right now. It is quite possible they have never witnessed ice in any environment other than floating in the pina colada they are sipping after spending their morning at the gym staring at the tight shorts on the asian guy in the corner. RSB informs us to proceed at our own risk and if we damage the locks we will have to replace them at our own cost. Being the masochist she is, Anilia drives the ice pick further into her head by following with: Well, what do you suggest we do? Clearly baffled by the prospect of making an intelligent (or otherwise) decision he confers with an unknown associate in the background. And comes back with an ingenious approach straight out of the arctic survival handbook. Hold a match to the key and then stick it in the lock. Anilia politely and confusedly ends the conversation and relays our new orders. We look at each other and both know what this means. We have to buy a video camera now. We should have done it long ago but now there is no excuse. This situation calls for motion picture rights. Now it just so happens that we are standing in a WALMART after all, so within 2 minutes we are the proud owners of a new video camera. We realize that it has to charge before we can do anything so we put it away for now and I just use the video capabilities of my digital camera. Now in the interest of our client I am not posting the video of us attempting to heat up the key with a match outside in the wind, finally giving up and the getting the blow torch and heaving the locks open in no time. Sorry that video will remain in storage until after we have finished this job. You will have to physically see it on my computer if we are hanging out and not otherwise for now. (Edit from future self - Sadly this film was lost later, when my laptop was stolen, and may never be seen.)
So after all this silliness we finally melt our way into the locks do a happy dance and go to open the door. Our high spirits are quickly deflated as we realize that the whole door is also frozen shut. We contemplate how long it might take to work our way around the perimeter of the door with a match. Luckily after banging and tugging on it a bit we manage to get it open and can now face our day with signs and goodies. Later that day we get a call from RSB. He has called to perform our employee evaluations. I get a perfect score, superior in every category. Anilia gets an almost perfect score. The only less than perfect area: WORK HABITS. TO WHAT EXTENT DOES THE EMPLOYEE DISPLAY A POSITIVE, COOPERATIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS WORK ASSIGNMENTS AND REQUIREMENTS? COMMENTS: Can be a bit sarcastic at times, but overall great attitude. Hmmm... obviously RSB does not read my blog, or realize that I help write a lot of what goes into the reports that reflect Anilia's less than perfect attitude.

House on the Rock

The House on the Rock is a rather unique road side attraction that was featured in the novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Anilia and I both really enjoyed this book and most of Neil's work in general. It just so happened that we were about an hour away from this while we were staying in Dubuque. We realized this on Saturday and further realized that since we had Sunday off we simply must go check it out. So we did. Now this is what I would have to say is the mac daddy of road side attractions so far as I have seen. This started out as just a cool house that this guy started building up on a chimney rock that has sort of a lodge feel to it. People being the curious lot that they are kept nosing around trying to see what he was up to. To try and deter them he started charging money which just made it more popular and became his source of income for the rest of his life which he spent working on the house every day. He also collected things, lots of things, lots of big weird things. Eventually he sold the house to another guy who continued adding to it and also collected and displayed his big weird collections. It now is over two and a half miles to walk through the "house" and full of many bizarre collections and displays. It is really more than I can hope to describe through words or pictures. I do have a few of each though which I present here in my feeble attempt to share this enormous, bizarre and truly unique oddity. So when you first enter the house it is just a really cool lodge style house with plushy couches and lots of exposed rock and wood. Parts of the house are built with the existing rock as a wall and in many places the house is built around existing trees so that here and there a tree trunk is running up through the room. The house is furnished with lots of great glass work, statues and antiques from around the world like you see here.


Also not to far into the house you start seeing and hearing what will be one of the largest and what I would call insane collections. Auto-matron musical orchestras. These are collections of instruments which are hooked up to a complex array of devices which play the instruments. Here we see one of the smaller ones. I believe this one played a russian sounding piece. The musical menagerie is visible through a picture frame window and at this point which is still pretty early this is the third or fourth of these we have encountered.

So next to this device is what they call the infinity room. It is a single unsupported hallway that extends out over the forest floor a couple hundred feet up and it built in such a way as to create the illusion that it extends into (in reverb voice) INFINITY AND BEYOND. Well it attempts, pretty obvious it doesn't but hey it's still pretty cool.

After more cool house bits we cross over into the part that is no longer really the house but mile after mile of weird and wacky collections. For example there is his gun collection, now these are not your daddy's guns. No these are strange creations like these bad boys.

We go through more areas of strange displays of old odd antiques and more auto-matron machines and get to a section that is called something like the SPIRIT OF THE SEA or perhaps LOTS OF BOAT CRAP. Anyway part of it is a giant sculpture of a battle between a giant octopus and a sea whale creature. Now this thging is several stories tall and the whole room wraps around it. Here it is atttempting to EAT ME!

There is also another one of those auto-matron orchestras in this room by which an octopus plays "OCTOPUS' GARDEN" about 100 times by the time we have made our way out of this room.
SO now we get into a new area called the HALL OF MUSIC I think. and we are about to see many more of the auto-matron orchestras but many of these are entire rooms that are huge a gloriously decorated to levels of utter whatthehelledness. Here are sections of two of them that each were larger than a typical house room.

AND

After many more of these bizarre feats of engineering we come into the worlds largest carousel. Now this is the part that I mainly remember from the book AMERICAN GODS this is where they all get together for their meeting and I must say it seems as good a place as I can think of for a bunch of outdated gods to have a meeting of the minds. The carousel is too big to get a decent picture of the whole thing. But here is a close-up that is actually a décolletage of two pics of it one blurry one still.

Now at this point there is only one logical way to go after so much sensory overload and that is down into the belly of a giant gorilla head and into the strangest room yet....
OH NO DON'T EAT ME!!!"

Now this next room is really hard to try and describe as it is by far the weirdest and is way to massive to try and capture in a picture. Just imagine a giant interactive still life made from mostly whiskey stills, giant steins, massive wooden clock parts, elaborate organs (I'm talking like electric Beethoven wet dreams here), Huge wrenches, chandeliers, winding staircases and various figurine sculptures all integrated together in what must make perfect sense to a complete looney. Anyway I couldn't hope to capture the enormity of it in a pic, so I focused on a small little section of clockwork orange.

But before it's all over there is also the largest of the automated orchestras yet. This one including mannequins and a steamboat full of musicians. Here you see just the seated orchestra half. Even one of their feet was rigged up to tap his foot to the music.

There was much more I've left out after this but at that point I was bored and over-stimulated and ready to be done with it as I'm sure you must be with this blog. All I can say is if you ever get to Wisconsin it is worth checking out for sure. Oh and Anilia hates her phone.

HOLY CRAPOLY

Last night was the first Friday night that we have had in a few months that we were able to go out and enjoy like a normal weekend. Usually we have to work on SAT so we have not had a real weekend so far on this tour. Instead we have had a pseudo weekend consisting of MON and TUES when most people are not going out and many places are actually closed or hoping that you don't come patronize them so they can close. So we got all dressed up last night and went out for a night on the town. A barista at Panera had recommended we check out the Busted Lift (hitherto be know as BL) downtown for fun and adventure. So we went there and the bartender Matty gave us the rundown on the local bars and restaraunts. We went to another bar called LOT 1 to get some grub and got to talking with a couple of fellows there named CODY and DOUG. They grew up together it seems and are of course locals because lets face it there is not really any reason to go to IOWA unless fate has befallen you to be born there. Fate can be a cold hearted bastard sometimes.
Having befriended DOUG and CODY we all headed down to the BL for more drinks and LIVE MUSIC. The BL is an irish style pub which is pretty authentic european in flavor. It's an old rathskeller with old wooden tables and stone walls and felt very much like a lot of the pubs we saw in Ireland. The bartender was pretty cool and our new friends were fun to hang out with too. I also ended up sitting next to the only black man in DUBUQUE, IA. His name is MISSION. Some backstory on Mission: He has come up from New Orleans for a job that fell through leaving him homeless and was offered a job at the BL when the owner found him digging through their trash. He has nine children. He also spent 11 years in prison. He was recently asked to be in a porn flick by the producer who made DAWN of the DEAD after he slept with said producers girlfriend and she reported back that he would be good for the part, which he declined.
Now I was having a good time chewing the chaw with MISSION and Anilia was engaged in conversation with our new friends CODY and DOUG. Somehow they got on the topic of EAST DUBUQUE which is on the other side of the tracks (literally) and the other side of the river where there are many dirty, seedy bars that have nude dancers as their primary form of entertainment. MISSION overhears them and asks if I am going to let my wife go to these strip clubs with these other guys and I tell him SURE WHY NOT. Well MISSION makes the jump in his head that I am of the persuasion that I want to have these guys come home with us and play patty cake with my wife. Of course he does not come right out and say this because that would violate some sort of behavioral protocol. But he starts vaguely alluding to this in terms that I am not quite grasping. Eventually I start to realize what he is getting at and that further if we are not prejudice that he would be willing to perform "services" for us and I think perhaps he thought some money should exchange hands in the process as well. Now all this is being revealed in vague confusing terms clouded by some alchohol and the afore mentioned social boundaries. So it takes some time for me to realize that this is in fact what he is getting at. SO I finally had to explain in plain english what I thought he was getting at and that he was a bit confused about the reality of the situation and that we were not prejudice but we were not going to be bringing anyone else home black or white, but thanks anyway.
So once we got that straightened out we were able to return to normal conversation about prison time and the bartender's girlfriend's fake breasts. The band started into a Bob Dylan cover and it seemed like a good time to move on. We rolled out of there and stopped by one last bar where they were playing dance music but IOWANS don't dance so we did for a bit before strolling back to our RV to crash for the night. I woke up this morning and walked to the gas station across the street from where we were parked to get some coffee. I walk in and the girl behind the counter is all like "I SAW YOU AT BEANIES LAST NIGHT!" I am fairly sure that we were not in any place called BEANIES but I am not from around here and don't want to be rude. I simply respond "YEP". To which she follows up, in true IOWAIAN FASHION with "HOLY CRAPOLY" and proceeds to tell me how she hasn't slept since 9am yesterday cause her kid woke her up and how she went out drinking last night for her friends bachelorette party then ate some food at BEANIES where she saw me, though I have never been there, and then came straight to the OKEY DOKEY (This is actually the name of the gas station) to work all night. I make some comment about things not always going according to plan when alchohol is involved and pay for my goods and get out of there. Holy crapoly folks, holy crapoly.

BYE BYE ATLANTA!

We have finally and sadly departed from Atlanta and made the trek up tp IOWA to begin phase two of our tour. Big thanks to Joel and Lisa for their great hospitality and taking us out for fine dining. Our last night with them we went to a new little restaraunt called POP. It was scrumptious and we killed off a bottle of tasty austalian wine. Also the waitress took a group shot of us. After dinner we gave them a tour of the RV and played "Lets see how many people we can fit on the dashboard while John balances a TV on his head. And as a final farewell present LISA did the SAFTEY DANCE! So now we are in IOWA until Thanksgiving at which point we will be driving to St Louis to drop off the RV, fly to Baltimore for a minute, Drive down to VA to meet up with Anilia's rents and ride down to Atlanta for Dinner. Then we fly back to St Louis from there and continue our adventure. YEAAAAH!