Thought Sausage

Dude...seriously...this shit has gone beyond "holy shit I'm livid" levels and graduated into "this is so fucked up its funny" territory.

How so you ask? Well weeklong driver (aka Ben) works @ a bar where the other bartender (I assume there is only two because these circumstances could not possibly occur any other way) was fired this week (for whatever it is bartenders get fired for). Apparently Witt's (yes i'm name dropping cos it is my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want) only recourse was to force Ben (who had this week/day scheduled off for a year now) to work Friday. I'm assuming there was some conversation along the lines of "What happens if I can't work" and the answer was nothing short of total human annihilation because that is basically the only thing that _SHOULD_ be accepted (and even that's me being generous).

The net result of this is that we find ourselves without somebody to drive the bus from Chicago to Lisbon Iowa. Worst case scenario, we all take shifts, but that would mean we can't drink, and that there is just plain crazy talk. So a network of about 50 people have been scrambling to find somebody willing to drive a bus from Chicago to Lisbon iowa (about a 5 hour Jaunt I'd guess) and then drive the car Ben will be driving to Lisbon around 3am back to chicago. Yeah...it's that much of a clusterfuck now.

The good news is that we actually have the bus here in Chicago now. It is firmly ensconsed in the Pressure parking lot and I'm about to motor up there and start filling it with supplies. It sounds like Ragbrai 07 will be yet another year without a toilet on board because teh original plan was to build one off the AC drain this morning (well Ian and Paddy were going to do that). As of right now Paddy is at work and ian sounds naked and painfully hungover. So there's that.

the bus ALMOST didn't make it here for typical bus reasons. First pro-driver called to inform Ian that the brake lights didn't work. Joy-de-fucking joy. Turned out the culprit was a blown fuse. This was fixed in short order (pro driver laboring the point that we now owed him $303 dollars because fuses are 3 dollars). Fast forward and hour and the driver calls to inform us that the "overheat light" is coming on and said light was "off-putting". After a 3 way conference call with the A1 Vacation Land (where apparently the mafia buys all their RV's and supplies of a vacational-nature), pro-driver was reasonably convinced the overheat light was actually broken (common in large trucks) and he wasn'tgoing to blow up. He went on to meet us in Bloomingdale where Paddy Ian and myself met him. Ian then successfully drove teh bus into the city through India town (where citizens have no regard for street signs or designated pedestrian crossing zones) and to Pressure.

We were almost short another man as of last night when Drew apparently ate something that made his bodice do comedic things like run a fever, piss out his ass and cease all ability to think in a linear fashion. Food poisoning sucks. But he seems to have recovered sufficiently to where he's a few beers away from his old self.

In short, I have no clue what the driver situation is, I am packed and ready to go...the Irish have all arrived from their various locations around the country and this thing looks like its actually going to go off. WOW