We had a close call today.

Dan, Jake, Dave, and I were sitting on Dave’s porch watching all the Louisville (pronounced Lewwww-vuuuuuh) fans stream past the house from Rupp Arena when I noticed a huge tow truck. I chuckled and commented to the guys, “That’s one big tow truck, that’s the kind of thing they use to tow semi’s that have a full load…” and at that moment it struck me. It being the realization that the tow truck was most likely headed to pull our bus away from Maxwell Street. Maxwell street, the street where my buddy lives. The street where we were lucky to find a parking spot a couple of blocks from Dave’s place. The street where an impending pain in our collective asses was about to occur. The street this monster tow truck was driving down and likely hooking up the bus and heading to a police impound and thereby bending us over and fucking us in the ass with fines and costs.

I quickly voiced my concerns to everyone and everyone was in agreeance. I started jogging up the street in the hopes that the tow truck had not started hooking up the bus to be pulled away into a land of costly fuckery. As I arrived, huffing and puffing, I was heartened to see that the tow truck had just started getting into place but no actual work to hook up the bus had been done. The red and blues of Lexington’s finest were strobing in the lane next to the Big Bomber. In between sucking in air, I explained to Mr. Policeman the situation… namely, That’s My Bus and Please Don’t Fuck Me. Mr. Policeman conferred with (and deferred the decision to) the tow truck driver and as luck would have it, Mr. Tow Truck Man wasn’t in a punitive mood to make a buck at my expense. God Bless Louisville for coming up with a win, or Mr. Tow Truck Man’s significant other for waking him up the right way, or Mr. Tow Truck Man’s kind soul, or whatever circumstance came to play in my favor today. For that, I thank you unknown circumstances.

Mr. Policeman, who had a cadet (whatever a copper in training is called) shadowing him, explained that we would have to pay a $15 fine and told me that I would just have to move the bus every 24 hours. A minor pain in the ass but compared to the alternative, clearly preferable. I thanked him for not fucking me and he and his retinue fled the scene. Before he left he made an odd observation to us, namely, “Someone called and complained, you’ve got those Florida plates and that Detroit on the front and you know it gets people worried…” which at the time didn’t seem that odd as I was just happy to not get shit on. The most I can gather from that statement is: You’re not from here, so you got lucky I didn’t fuck you on that basis. Duly noted Mr. Policeman, however I will not be covering up the DETROIT lettering I spray painted onto the bumper.

Prior to all of this happening, Dan had put a slice of pizza in the oven to reheat. While running an electric oven that you’re not directly monitoring isn’t that big of a deal, doing so with a gas oven is foolhardy. Dave has a gas oven. An old gas oven. An old gas oven that occasionally gives off a faint odor of natural gas. So, Dan’s slice of pizza cooked away while we parked the bus and Dave picked us up. Dan had mentioned this while we were driving to find a spot but we were all so shocked into stupidity at the moment that we didn’t immediately call Dave and ask him to go turn off the oven. By the time we piled into Dave’s car and I mentioned this to him, perhaps 30 minutes had passed. We had a collective “Oh Shit” moment and rushed to back to the house.

The short end of the story is that Dan’s pizza was alright albeit a little bit burnt, but otherwise edible. I’ll call today a Win as we didn’t blow up Dave’s house and we didn’t get the bus impounded. Here’s to barely not fucking up. Who needs a nap?

Love,
Matt
PS~ Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of the event, I was a bit too frazzled to snap photos… also I had left my phone in the house.

PPS~ I’m dumping the photos I’ve taken between the last update and now. We went to a undergrad college bar down the street called Two Keys. They have a couple of beer pong tables, and that night they raced what appeared to be guppies (folks kept insisting they were gold fish, but we have our doubts that they were gold fish). The other pictures are from last night when we went out to Dave’s buddy Erik’s apartment to watch the Minnesota v UCLA game. ‘Sota won, also we had to climb through a hole in the fence.