One whacked weekend

OK, so it may be premature to write about the weekend when it's only 10:30 on Saturday night -- there may be more adventures yet to come. But even if there aren't, it's already been one whacked weekend. Right now, I'm not enjoying it because the most recent whackiness is that my nose is running like a faucet and I feel like there's a vice on my temples. I was fine until we stopped for dinner in Watertown, South Dakota. Put the car in park and all of a sudden, wham!, allergy city. And I've been stuffed up ever since. Not fun.

But that's not all the wackiness. Yesterday (Friday) I woke up in Minneapolis. We -- Naomi, me and Naomi's friend Catherine, who was her maid of honor -- hopped in our rental car (a 2006 Chevy Malibu) around 1pm and headed for Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We were on our way to the Life Light Fest -- a three day Christian music festival that's free. Free is good, so we hit the road. We could also meet up with some of our friends/supporters who live near there.

Well the weather was nice for us on our drive, but it rained a lot in Sioux Falls, so when we got there ... well.. the parking lot, which was a field, had turned into a bog. We managed to find some grass and parked there but the grounds where the concert was held was quite muddy. And it started raining again. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Do you remember Woodstock 94 -- the 25th anniversary show? It was like that.

So we stood in the rain watching Rick Warren, Rebecca St. James and Audio Adrenaline. But the real fun began when we left. Cars were stuck in the mud all over the place. Catherine and I helped one car get unstuck and tried but failed to get a big church van out of a rut. When it was our turn to try I tried to gun it across a field but soon realized this was not a good strategy. So Naomi hopped into the driver's seat and Catherine and I pushed. This worked, but a spinning wheel managed to get us rather spattered. By the time I got back in the car my boots and the bottom of my jeans were covered. The car was too. Turns out the wheels were especially bad.

Finally getting out on the freeway the car started to shake badly at about 55 mph. By this time it's about 11 or 11:30. We stopped at a gas station and managed to scrap some of the mud out of the wheel wells, but that didn't help much. So off we went down the interstate to where we staying the night ... at 55 mph.

Normally this wouldn't be such a bad thing, except that South Dakota is one of the few states I know of that has a 75 mph speed limit! It was painful having to go 55 in a 75 zone. I had to drive with my blinkers on so that the people behind me wouldn't run into me.

This painful pace turned a one hour trip into a much longer one -- and of course it was pouring too. Not fun. We finally arrived at our destination at about 1 in the morning. Got off the interstate in this town of 600. Story over, right? Nope.

Left at the end of the ramp, down the road into town, second right and then the blue lights started flashing behind me. The cop tells me I was doing 36 in a 25. Couldn't find the registration for the stupid rental car either. 10 minutes later he tells me my ticket would be $99 but he's letting me off with a warning. Never did find the car registration. We complete the block and a half to our friends' house at about 1:20, shed our mud-caked clothes and head for bed. Now we're done right? Nope.

Finally crawl into bed downstairs in their basement about 1:40, turn the light out and ... a cricket chirps. And chirps again. Then pauses just long enough for us to drift almost to sleep and starts going again. At about 2:30 in the morning we give up on the bed and move to couches in various rooms in the house. I eventually sleep on two different couches before waking up around 9:30.

So this morning we cleaned the car -- inside and out -- and scraped gobs and gobs of mud from inside the wheels (which was causing the car to vibrate so badly). I took it to a carwash too and discovered on the way home that the road into town goes from 45 to 25 very abruptly and that's where the yahoo cop must have clocked me. Can you say "speed trap"?

We hit the road today around 3pm for the journey up to Fargo, North Dakota, which is where I am now. The car's running fine. Unfortunately, so is my nose. So I'm going to bed. More adventures tomorrow I'm sure.