Fried, green, brain-matos.

Hey people. Last Thurs at 8 a.m. Me and Dan left MN to pick up a ten-year-old used Suby, in Florida. Yes-- 1400 miles away.

I borrowed TPam's GPS & road atlas, packed a carry-on with road food and a couple changes of clothes, pulled on my new awesome "Natasha" boots (get out the friggin' bullwhip), and hit the airport.

At our very first connection they gate-checked our carry-ons because the overheads were too small-- and somehow lost them between the door of the plane and the baggage loader thingy 10 feet away. They not only lost them, they didn't scan them into the system so it was like they didn't exist.

If you haven't just gasped and scooted closer to your screen, you don't understand people. This bag had my kitty hat in it! And my choppers! And my cool new end-of-the-season-sale Van's! And the new scandalous undies I bought at Target. The elderly man who rang me up went to a lot of trouble for these-- turning all red while fumbling with the little plastic hanger thing and getting all exasperated. Not only that-- look at this haul-- headlamp, ninja wear, other awesome hat, south beach diet bars...

By the time the Delta employees determined, "Yep. You guys are pretty screwed alright." we were almost missing our next connection. We were supposed to take this little train to the next terminal-- but it for some reason went down as soon as we got on. After figuring out it wasn't going anywhere any time soon, we got off and ran. We ran through this whole underground passageway thing, past 3 of those moving sidewalk deals. I had a hold of our one remaining bag- the messenger bag containing our laptop & electronics, so was kind of dying after a while. It was like running with a big bag of kitty litter.

Dan was ahead of me and I was getting really pissed he wasn't waiting. Then he goes, "Well, here. Let me take the bag. I'll be able to run with it better." (Really? It's easier to run not carrying a giant heavy bag? Seriously??!) Those who know me well, know that was enough to make me refuse to let go of the bag ever. He'd have to pry it from my Charlton Heston hands.

We made the flight. We made the next connection, and arrived in Tallahassee a mere 8 1/2 hours later. They still had no clue about our bags. So I'm now in Fla, wearing snow boots and a wool turtleneck.

Eventually we got them back (six hours later), after this whole stupid episode of them being locked in an empty office in the ghost-town airport. There were NO employees, no people, anywhere-- and they knew we were coming because they'd called to tell us where to pick up.

I resorted to putting on a show for the security camera- pretending to kick down the door, flipping double-barreled birds at the dark office, and shadow boxing at the camera, trying to get someone to come out of somewhere. I suppose I'm lucky TSA people didn't tackle me. Finally they let us have them.

Let's just say, things continued to go down hill. If I was Godzilla, the city of Tallahassee would be a smoldering ruin by now. There would be crumpled cars and burning piles of shit all over the place.

By 1 a.m. we'd taken a $60 cab ride, lost our other bag (the one with our computer etc in it.)-- (Not to name names, but hubs left it in our cab), dealt with the used car people (whose computer kept crashing so we were trapped there for a while while I frantically tried to locate our cab driver), been directed all over town looking for a hotel by the GPS which was apparently freaking out, making us do U-turns all over and bringing us back to the same skanky Super 8 over and over like freaking groundhog day.

The last time we wound up there I just started laughing. It was that or cry. So we sat in the lot and laughed like a couple idiots, then went, "You know what?-- Screw it. Let's just drive." It was like the city had become a venus flytrap and we were the hamburger. So we fired up the so-far not-very-trusty GPS and headed north.

I was so trashed by now from all the stress and lack of sleep, it took me a while to realize the GPS had somehow decided we should avoid interstates at all costs, and was routing us through every back road in northern Florida/southern Alabama. When I finally figured out another way from the maps, we were stuck waiting for this bizarre middle-of-the-night parade of at least 50 'Bama state troopers, and various other vehicles with government seals on the doors to pass before we could get on the highway. It was kind of like a David Lynch movie.

35 hours from the time we left on this mission, we decided neither of us could function, and pulled off to find a hotel. This was me. I stood three feet from the elevator turning in a circle looking for it. Yeah, fried. Nothing 12 hours of sleep wouldn't fix.

Insert angelic choir music. This was our bed.

Look. Behold the super cleanness, the soft comfy-ness... When we laid down it was like, "TIMBER!" I could feel all the fluid in my body leveling. We were both out within minutes.

Here's me after sleeping for twelve hours. Okay, not straight. If I'd have been a robot there would have been little access panels hanging open and stuff sparking inside, and probably smoke drifting out. I woke up about every 2 or 3 hours feeling like total crap-- sweating, shaking, disoriented. I drank as much water as I could. I suppose living exclusively on caffeine for that whole time was a bad move health-wise.

I thought I was all normal the next day, but things tipped me off I wasn't. Like not knowing what town we were in, and having no memory of eating my banana, and two minutes later wanting to eat my banana and finding only the peel. My brain was trying to reset.

Got home Sat night. With nothing going on sun I decided to check out the mountain bike race at the trail. Now that's a fire!

Some of the girl racers-- Sam in the camo, Lisa in red, and Kristi in the orange. Kristi is basically superhuman. Races with the advanced men. I'm obviously in total awe of all these gals.

Someone showed up with this bike-- super skinny road tires. The guy doesn't go with the bike.

I took a bunch of video and visited with some people. It was fun, but I still wasn't right and started getting an ocular migraine (where my vision shatters and becomes tunnel-vision and I get kind of disoriented). I was like that for a couple days after my big crash, but hardly ever get these, only a few times in my life really.

I still feel kind of weird, but will just drink lots of water and eat actual food for a few days. If I can help it, I'll never fly delta, or go to Tallahassee again in my life.