Airline Tsaoism

Recently I've been flying a lot.  This means that I've been stuck in airports without free wireless and relying on m.youtube.com to stream mindless garbage into my brain via the cell phone internets.  It also means that I've had a lot of time to work on patients and anger emotional evasion techniques.  Most people don't practice these techniques and it quickly becomes apparent how readily people will loss their minds over situations that are completely out of their control.

It doesn't matter how loudly somebody curses the airlines or the airports, that lightning storm is still going to be hanging over MSP airport, and the crew is not going to be able to load your baggage into the plane.  Furthermore it doesn't matter how many times you turn to me in your seat and sigh heavily, we aren't going to land in Billings anytime before 1am.

It doesn't have to be that way.  You simply need to be a touch creative.  I do that while basing my creativity in the roots of Tsaoism.  

For instance:  The Billings Logan International airport has one of the slowest baggage claims in the continental [The] United States.  Most people take that time to brew up a tasty batch of pissed-the-fuck-off with a side salad of grumbling-at-the-floor.  I'm much more clever.  Here's the scoop.

Using deductive reasoning I estimated that the baggage would again be slow on my final return from Madison WI, so I called ahead to MBSE with a game plan, and followed that sales call with a text the moment we had touchdown.

Text from Me:  Touchdown

Now that I'm in the elite status with NWA (airline...not the rap group,  although I really wish I were), I get to sit first class.  This means that I'm first off that plane and first coming down the escalator.  I don't stop there.  I keep on trucking past the baggage claim and right out door 4.  There, waiting like a rally car with a sexy driver...actually not like that, that exactly...is MBSE in my STi.  We let the motor spin, the turbo boost and the clutch drop on our way to a dark parking lot not even a 1/2 mile away.

She is in a sarong without those time consuming panties that seem to take a lifetime to remove, and I've expedited my race towards full nudity by not owning a pair of underroos.  Now with the windows down far enough for legs to jet out into the night and let the moans of 10 days in Madison without touch escape, we work up and incredible sex sweat.

There...all better.

I fire the STi back up and roll to door 4, walk inside as the bell goes off for the luggage to start moving out and 3 bags later I have my checked bag in hand.

Only thing left to do on a night like that is to poke a little smot, drink some beers downtown and return for the scheduled double-header.

Tsao be with you...(and also with you)

I'm Fucking Famous

I went to see where another fire was burning outside of Billings by checking billingsgazette.com.

Turns out I'm sort of a big deal.

People know me.

I want to be on you...

This Morning

10:00am (still asleep)

MBSE: Do you smell smoke or something burning?

Me: No... (closes eyes and goes back to sleep)

10minutes pass

Father: WAKE UP BEFORE THE HOUSE BURNS DOWN!

I take a second to stare out the window with my -5.25 shitty vision, and even then I can tell that there is a serious fire taking place about 100 to 200 yards away. I snag my glasses from the night stand and head up the the balcony that is a floor above my room. I'm greeted with a hell of a view.



This size of fire continues for about 10 minutes before it runs into some rocks and the firefighters (fooooya-fiiiightaaas heeeeeeeeyyyyyy, fun indian joke for anyone in Leadore with me a couple years back) are able to subdue the flames to a state of smoldering. The air temperature here is 31.5C (89F) and the wind has been gusting up to around 56kph (35mph), so it should be pretty easy for this thing to kick back up into full force. The phone rang a couple minutes later to give us an automated evacuation alert. We promptly ignored the warning and continued to watch the PoPo and Firefighters put out the small blazes still left at the base of trees and sagebrush. A coast guard looking chopper did two flybys with a water bucket and I got a picture of it dumping and returning to the pond for a refill.




I've been working from home for the last week, and I haven't really found the time to put together any blogs. I've just been swamped...

Happy 232nd [The] America

I swear she doesn't look a year over 218.

I went on a fun little trip the week of the 4^th, and I want to chronicle it before booze and weed erase it from my spank bank.

I took off for Hamilton on Monday morning and pretty much felt like a bag of dicks. I got some sort of throat virus (presumably from a bus station skank) and it was rocking my world. After taking a few Ibuprofens, I was pretty much ready to hit the road. My car on the other hand was not ready. It was downtown at the tire shop where they had just put my summer tires back on and aligned it all (drives like a badass again). My first attempt to get a ride was from the rents. They both were at work so my search continued. Not being afraid to lay a little groundwork for the future (read: present), I went next door to try and get a ride from the hot 16 year old that likes to wash her car in her swimsuit. Sadly she didn’t answer the door (I assume she was touching herself to the mix tape that I gave her and didn’t hear me ring the doorbell). I finally got a ride from the grandma that watches the kids across the street. So I guess it is true what they say, “although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, senior citizens CAN still serve a purpose”.

I finally get the car, load up the boat, longboard and some clothes and hit the road. The drive was nice now that I’m rockin the satellite radio. Comedy and re-mix techno are the shizz. But aside from getting a few new pumps for the raft, the trip was pretty uneventful.

Pulled into Hamilton at about 7PM and stopped by the hotel to see my sweet little hotel friend X-tina. Chatted (read: hit on her and talked dirty) with her for a while and then went and saw the rest of the crew. Finally settled into the Coin for some beers and called it a night. Actually I went back to my Mexican’s house and watching bow hunting for turkeys. If you ever get the chance to watch guillotine bow hunting for birds when you are drunk, TAKE IT. It is hilarious, and I don’t even hunt…or care to start.

Woke up around noon (to a nice naked pic of X-t) and went up to Darby to get my one of my favorite burritos. It is a little place called the Little Blue Joint. You must stop in and have one if you are ever passing through. After that tasty treat we (Mex and I) went to a fishing access just outside of town and planned on floating to Main St in Hamtown where my Mexican’s house is located. For those of you that don’t know, the Bitterroot River just killed a guy (or gal, not really sure), and everyone and their fucking mother’s dog felt like they needed to tell me about how I was going to die on this river. Turns out the river is a slow moving lake with only 1 section that actually has anything worth mentioning (read: wave that can put water in the boat). All in all it was a nice float and a good excuse to drink some beers. Afterwards we hit up the brewery and failed miserably to get some girls to come out drinking with us.

Next morning I woke up and started my trek towards Idaho. Everything was going quite well until I was a few hours into the trip. I was racing across some pretty open/barren land and I started to recognize a town I was quickly approaching. Everything seemed so familiar although I know that I hadn’t been down the road before. I soon put together the mental puzzle pieces and realize that I was in Leadore Idaho. The same town I was in when doing firecamp catering. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but Leadore isn’t even close to the path I wanted to be on. To further the problem, I was running low on gas.

Me: What’s the fastest way to Boise from here?

Gas station attendant: Airplane (laugh). Did you just come from Salmon?

Me: Yep, I’m sort of an idiot.

GSA: You aren’t the first to miss that turn. The quickest way is to go down to Arco.

Me: Do you just have 85 octane fuel (my car manual recommends 93)?

GSA: Yep, but you can put in some octane boost if you fuel up, that will get you to about 89 octane.

Take a look at this map and you will see how far off I went:

Should have gone this way.

Went this way.

Original trip would have been 336 miles. My new trip was 432 miles. Ooooopps!

The nice part about that drive though, is that I got to really open ‘er up. You can see for miles down there, and it is so empty in this mountain valley (think napoleon dynamite landscape) that you can spot any and all cops (there were none). I also had the radar/laser detector on, so I spent about 30 minutes of driving at an average speed of 120mph. Even with the reduced octane fuel I never had any engine knocking. Go Subaru.

Things shake a bit at this speed.

Finally got into Boise around 5, met up with PIC and his girl and went to the downtown “Alive at 5”. When we got on the bikes to go down there, I was expecting the skanky methed out version of downtown drinking events that Billings so eloquently hosts. What I got instead was a sweet party. The booze was better, the music was better and the people…well the people were just dead sexy. Younger, hotter and did I mention sexy. PIC had to go to school, so me and his girl went and got some food downtown. We ate outside and I just sat back and filled up the spank bank (which really paid dividends the next morning in PIC’s shower, HEY OH!). After dinner we went up to the road that leads to Bogus Ski Resort and did some longboarding. I tell you what! It was the shit! It is a 20+ mile road and steep. We bit off a 6.1 mile chunk of that road and made it our bitch. In that 6.1 miles we descended just under 2000 feet. The chip and seal was a little rough and lit our feet on fire from the vibrations, but you can’t have everything.

Next morning we got up and started to prepare for a river day. PIC and I were sort of being beavers and opted out of the Main Fork Payette trip (after almost killing MBSE a couple days earlier on the Stillwater River I didn’t have my daddy pants back on yet) and settled with the Boise River. The Boise is a super mellow float with a ton of people from the city on it at all times. It would be super chill, but the town is a touch mormon and have strict booze laws regarding boozing outside. It was a sweet day to be on the river.

As you can see it was a bit on the warm side in Boise.

We capped the float off with some sweet zza and beer (and beer and cheese paring), and then we drank it up downtown. The next morning I decided I didn’t want to go all the way out to Bend OR only to turn around and have to drive to Billings in a day, so I opted to head back up to Hamtown for the fireworks and 4^th of July tomfoolery. Before that PIC and I did a sick 2 mile smooth stretch of longboarding right at the ski hill. It was another epic run. I said “epic”. I suck.

Drove back up to H-town the “correct” way and it was a MUCH nicer drive. There were a lot of passes and roadside rivers and it was in the woods instead of the desert. The South Fork of the Payette is a sweet looking river and someday I’m going to return to it and float it (who’s with me?).

I bought some fireworks from a mildly foreign guy that night and it was a blast. Haggling for fireworks in a nearly empty stand is funny shit to me.

Foreign Guy: That will be $55.

Me: Damn, I guess I’ll have to go get them somewhere else because I only have $46.

FG: Sold.

The best part is I still got raped. Hahaha.

Woke up on a couch the morning of July 5 (feeling like another bag ‘o dicks) and went to the farmers market for an Amigo’s Burrito, rented two PFDs from a fishing shop and then went floating with 4 other people. Good times. That night the Mexican and I got fucking housed at the Coin and the Rainbow and ended up playing with a kitten in his front yard (trying to get it to kill something) and yelling at cars that went by. Times like this sure make me miss the small towns.

We went inside around 3AM and I don’t think the Mexican even made it to the menu of Semi-Pro before he hit his proverbial wall:

So I'm Returning To Madison And...

It’s back to the real world for me today as I’m sitting in the MSP airport waiting for my connecting flight to Madison. Sitting here is much better than sitting middle seat of the exit row on my flight from BIL to MSP. Here’s the scoop: I sit down in my assigned 7A seat with nobody in the 7B and a large dude in the 7C seat. After everyone is on board we give each other the knowing “Dude, we rock and have 3 seats for the 2 of us” look. It wasn’t but a split second after that that I look around and notice that a flight attendant is pointing at me (Let me take a second to state that I use the term flight attendant simply to remain PC. They are not flight attendants. The plane full of passengers and I are the ones that are “attending” the flight. They are working the flight. But because of the growing hypersensitivity of our [The] American culture, it is no longer acceptable to refer to them by their initial tag…whores). The lady says “please change seats with this kid” who is too young to sit in an exit row, and allow the mother/daughter pair to sit next to each other in my delightful double spot.

For my attempt at generosity I get a big ‘ol bag of reverse Karma and I’m stuck between two big dudes. Sandal man and Scotchy McDrinksAlot. Sandal man was cool and racked out within minutes. Scotchy McDrinksAlot needed to start probing me.

Scotchy: Wheres ares you goooooin…

Me: Madison WI. I work there during the week, but live in Billings.

Scotchy: You musts make banks!

Me: …

Scotchy: So what does you do out theres?

Me: I work for a company doing FDA start-ups for drug companies. I’m working at one now that makes another form of Botox.

Scotchy: I’m 46. Look at my face. Should I get some of that face shit done?

Me: I don’t know, I’m just helping the company get started and I’m not really into any of that cosmetic surgery.

Scotchy: So are you sayins that I should or shouldn’t?

Me: Lay off the McDonalds, booze and saturated fats for about 2 years and I think you would look 10 years younger.

So I didn’t really say that last part, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t want to. It’s just that I REALLY didn’t want to get kicked off of an airplane for being the first guy to triangle choke a drunken dude in an exit row after he attacked me. Instead I acted tired and tried to fall asleep in a seat that smelled like any seat on a downtown subway without the added bonus urine smell (Did I mention that this was an 11:25AM flight? It was.). I was fairly successful in this endeavor with only one small interruption from Scotchy (presumably his buzz was wearing off).

Scotchy (to flight attendant): Can I buy a scotch on the rocks?

Woman Holding Order Ready Edibles (flight attendant): One moment…

(a minute or two goes by before she returns)

Scotchy: Can I get that drink I ordered?

W.H.O.R.E: Sir, I can’t sell you that drink because you are seated in an exit row.

Scotchy: Why not?!?!

W.H.O.R.E: Because you must assist others in the event of an accident (presumably an accident besides letting this ass clown on the airplane), and I can clearly smell that you have already been drinking this morning.

Scotchy: Oh…

W.H.O.R.E: Would you like to buy a box of snacks for $5?

Scotchy: No…

It was at this point that I continued to appear asleep as I didn’t want to be the recipient of a barrage of non-coherent babblings about how he should be able to have a drink when he wants to.

I know some of you were worried that he might have to sober up before getting in a car and driving somewhere once he got to his hometown of MSP, but fear not, he STUMBLED off of the plane after that 2 hour flight.


4 HOURS LATER

My plane to Madison was supposed to be a quick 55 minute ordeal. Turns out this was just not a good day to fly for me.

We all load the plane at 5PM. Upon walking on the plane I instantly notice that it is REALLY warm. I take my seat in the first row (no first class on this plane) and wait for a big fat hot person to sit next to me. This never happens, but the stewardess (she wasn’t a W.H.O.R.E yet. She only had one stripe on her shoulder) comes on the intercom and tells us “the AC is not working on the plane so please keep the windows closed to reduce heat.” I don’t have anyone sitting next to me (read: sweet double seat for me), but they put the crazy screaming baby right behind me (read: balances any sweet out). We proceed to sit on the plane for about 45 minutes in that heat without pushing away from the gate when the captain tells us “we are waiting on a fuel truck in order to get a bit more fuel to fly around some storms.” The captain then tells us to go back into the terminal and wait there where it isn’t as hot. We are only in the terminal for about 15 minutes before they rescan us all back onto the plane. After another 15 minutes of hot cabin waiting and taxiing, we are finally airborne. For our suffering they give us a free alcoholic beverage. I got a beer and it was tasty. Mainly because I was so GD hot at that point.

As we approach Madison, once again the captain comes on. “We are waiting for some storms to move out of Madison, but with the extra fuel we should be able to circle for about 20 minutes and let all the weather blow off to the east.” He was right about the fuel, but sadly not about the weather. We circle for exactly 20 minutes and then take off for LaCrosse Wisconsin. Another 30 minutes of hot ass airplane and we land.

This would have been a great time to get out, cool down and stretch the legs a bit, but sadly we didn’t get that opportunity. One of the grounds crew people came running up to the plane and told us “TSA has already gone home from this airport, so anybody that gets off of the plane will not be allowed back on.” 2 fat drunk dudes tap out immediately. As they pass I got a great big wiff of sweaty balls and the glorious sight of two guys’ backsides that look like they have been soaked with a wet rag. Moments later 4 more people tap out.

We just continue to sit on the tarmac with the door open for some seriously weak attempts at AC when I notice a smell that is very unbecoming and not quite the sent of sweat, fear and hatred for NWA that I had grown accustomed to over the last couple hours.

Lady behind me (to the stewardess): Is there any way we can get off the plane to get a new diaper and change my daughter.

Ahhhhh…the smell of baby shit in a sweat soaked airplane. Just can’t beat a smell like that. I try to distract myself by attempting to unweld my jeans from my now rashing ass.

We get refueled and get our safety speech for the 3rd time for this plane. Then right before taking off we get a knock on the door and quick stroke of luck. One of the ground crew had driven to the store and bought diapers and some wipes. It may still be hot, we may still be tired of that fucking aluminum tube we are all stuck in, but it no longer smelled like body processed peas and carrots. And for that I rejoiced.

We taxi to the end of the runway, where once again the captain comes on the PA (his voice was on the PA, he didn’t ejaculate on the PA…as far as I know). “Looks like another storm is blowing into Madison. We are going to wait this one out on the ground.” So we sit…again.

Finally we get into the air, do some flying things and land in Madison. 10:30PM. Damn it feels “good” to be “home”.

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