You Toucha My Bubble, I Breaka You Face

As some of you may know, and as others may not know and probably don't care at all (in that case, why are you reading this in the first place?), I happen to have a much larger personal space bubble than do most others. If you come too close to me, I'll either move away or tell you right to your face that you need to step back. I had a couple incidents happen to me this weekend in which I was reminded of my unusually large personal space bubble.

On Saturday, I tried to return a gift card to King Soopers. It was a gift card for AMC Theaters, and there aren't any in the area, so I wanted to just return it and get the cash. After talking with three separate King Soopers employees, I made the unfortunate discovery that those particular gift cards cannot be returned or redeemed for cash. The only problem with this system is the fact that one single King Soopers employee can ruin the whole thing by falsely telling the person who bought the card that the recipient can return it if he or she so chooses. Not true. Once the card's activated, there ain't a thing you can do about it. I asked to speak to a manager, and this short, stocky, angry-looking gremlin of a woman waddled over to me and got about 4 inches from my face to explain the system one more time. "How can you justify selling an unreturnable item with a gift receipt?" I asked. "The whole point of a gift receipt is to make returning the item easier for the recipient of the gift. It serves no purpose if the gift cannot be returned." This troll looked at me as if I'd just tried to explain to her my very own version of a modern Unified Field Theory. I think I spoke too fast. She probably wasn't prepared for all those two-syllable words in a row. The worst part was the fact that her stanky fish breath was fogging up my glasses with how close her stupid face was to me. I had to take a shower when I got home just to get the stench of failure and self-loathing she exuded off me.

Today, I went to New Life Church to see Charles Colson speak. I don't care for New Life Church. They've got theological holes in their policies Ted Kennedy could fit through. But I digress. We happened to be there on communion Sunday, and we all had to get up and walk to the back of the church to pick up the elements. As I walked next to my sister in line, I reached behind my back to adjust my shirt, and my hand collided with the belt buckle belonging to the guy behind me. You have to understand this means that he was standing no more than two inches from me. I'd never met the guy before, and it wasn't like we were exactly squished together in line. He was just way too close to me. That's all there is to it. I was creeped out for the rest of the service, barely able to concentrate on anything but the fact that the guy sitting to my right had no problem with standing close enough to me to actually constitute sodomy in seventeen states.

Cause That Makes Me Feel Safer

I live in a town almost exclusively populated by white upper middle class Christian Republicans. The biggest news in town is when one of the 40 or so pastors' kids gets busted for having pot at school. Again. There's not a whole lot happening in Monument most of the time. If someone is in a car accident, we can connect ourselves to them three different ways in no more than two degrees each. Yeah, it's that kind of small town. But for some unknown reason, every member of my family insists on locking our front door even if they're just leaving to get the mail. It's insane. Locked doors only keep people from getting into your house at night in one of those "home invasion" type dealies because they don't want to wake anybody up by breaking the door down. If a thief sees that a house is empty, locking the door isn't going to do jack to stop him from stealing all your stuff. Who's going to hear the door being broken? That's right, no one. I'm sick and tired of coming home from a ten-minute trip to the grocery store and having to knock on the front door of my own home. You'd think we lived in Compton.

I'm Mean? Well You Can Go To Hell

I can't tell you how many times it's been hinted at that people think I'm a jerk. And I'm only talking about the last two weeks. Why do you people think I'm so mean? What did I do to you? I've been called mean in a class in which I haven't once spoken to anybody in a negative way. In fact, I barely talk at all in that class. They still somehow think I'm mean. Is it my evil-looking eyebrows? Is it my cynical sense of humor? Or is it my complete inability to get along with stupid people, empathize with stupid people, or care about stupid people, and my propensity to make fun of stupid people, threaten to break the legs of stupid people, and just generally ignore stupid people's assumption that they "are just like everyone else," or "are human at all," or "have rights"?

If you don't see the irony in drinking Starbuck's coffee while protesting at a newly erected Wal-Mart, if you don't find the humor in making fun of babies and punching retards in the face, or if you like anything at all related to France or the French people, then I don't want you reading my blog anymore. It'll be detrimental to your well-being, and you'll probably be brainwashed into not being such an idiot. That's a big change for someone like you, so I'd take it slow.

There are just too many things in the world around me that suck for me to be all happy and cheerful and ignorant. First and foremost is, of course, the fact that Barbara Striesand has a career at all. Apparently, film producers in the 60's and 70's based their casting decisions solely on the size of the cadidate's nose. Clearly, being "uglier than Kathy Bate's love-child with a baboon all covered in diarrhea and butt sweat" was in.

And what about Kevin Costner? The man is barely believeable as a human being, let alone as a "character" he's played. If he's an Academy-Award-caliber director, then I'm a lesbian midget mud wrestler.

I'm so sick of my classes right now. I was given a week to write a final paper in my religion and pop culture class. Now that is one waste of a class. It's taught by three professors, and of course, the more knowledgeable of the three is the one who's only taught a single day. The one who teaches the most is a frickin' moron. She's about as informed on the subject of religion and pop culture as an Amish athiest. I've heard more coherent ideas come out of someone's mouth while they were vomiting. Oh, that reminds me of a joke I came up with in class one day: What's the difference between professor Campbell and huge, steaming pile of crap? The crap knows when to shut up, and is most likely better educated.

...And From Then On, America Declared "Personal Responsibility" To Be An Unconstitutional Sentiment

Raise your hand if you've ever heard or seen one of those commercials about how if you don't talk to your kids about marijuana, then they won't know what to say when one of their friends offers them a hit. Or something like that. Can you believe this? Can you believe we're actually hearing people say that? It's appalling. God forbid we actually take responsibility for our actions. Oh, no. That would be far too nice of us. We have to blame it on our parents. "He asked me if I wanted to take a hit, and since I've never seen a single tv show or movie in which marijuana was even mentioned in passing, and I also never went to school, and I also have been living under a rock for my entire life, and I probaby also have mild brain damage and an IQ of 13, I said yes, and now, thanks to my parents, and not placing any of the blame on my own stupid actions, I got caught with pot at school. I should probably be put in a foster home, since these parents clearly don't love me enough to say. 'Don't smoke pot,' because if they'd just said those three little words, I would've definitely agreed with their position and never done drugs or even cheated on a math test or argued with my siblings, because I listen to my parents that well." That's what kids would say in the magical make-believe world those commericial's producers are living in. Why on Earth would anyone ever disobey there parents, especially if those parents never disgraced their child by spanking him? The child, out of sheer awe and respect for his wise, all-knowing parents, who learned their lesson about pot at Woodstock, should just blindly accept that his parents are right all those times. Unless, of course, they spank him. Then they're always wrong.

For Seriously

This is actually what I had in mind when I originally began writing all the reasons I'm better than my lady fans' current boyfriends.

I've been told several times over the course of a week that I'd make good marriage material. Now, not to impugn the word of all my beautiful female friends, but I think that's a giant, stanky, steaming load of donkey shit. Do you know what kind of father I'd make? I'm the kind of guy who would teach his children the alphabet incorrectly just to laugh at them after their first day of kindergarten. I would tell them horrific bedtime stories, and then tell them they'll come true if they ever eat mayonnaise in my house. I would refuse to let them eat dinner until they can guess what movie I'm quoting. I tell dead baby jokes. And I laugh at them. Right in front of babies.

OK, so maybe none of that is actually true, but I just don't get this whole marriage material thing. What you're really saying when you tell me that is, "I definitely don't want to date you now, but let me try and make you feel better by telling you that someone will want to date and marry you someday." That's about as encouraging as, "Well, at least you're not dead right now." Thanks a lot. I feel so encouraged and not at all patronized.

Seriously, I'd like to know, is there something fundamentally undatable about me? Is it my looks, my height, my sense of humor, my inability to stand any closer than about eighteen inches to anyone, my weird laugh, the fact that I hate French people, my politics, my hatred of stupidity, my love of chicken fried steak, or just my general "if you look at me wrong I'll probably set you on fire and play with your carcas" outlook on life? I want to know.

Like A Child

Sometimes, I really miss having the cognitive abilities of a six-year-old. The world is so much simpler. There's hardly any self-consciousness to speak of. You just do what you want, consequences be damned. That seems to be the attitude of my yongest cousins. They came out here to visit us over Easter weekend for the first time in... several years. We had to pack a lot of stuff into a four day period. One thing we did was take a tour of the Coors brewery up in Golden. This was the first time I'd been able to go there and actually be able to get my three free drinks at the end. Very nice. For this whole weekend, our house was littered with small toys, board games, arts and crafts, and a giant exercise ball my mom uses for her back or something. They especially loved that ball. I slept in the basement for four days, and every morning at about 8 am like clockwork, I heard that ball bouncing ten feet above my head on the wood floor in the kitchen. I just miss the time when it was still socially acceptable to turn around in your chair and just stair at the people sitting behind you in church. If I tried that now, I'd probably end up kicking some random dude in the neck for lookig at me funny. I'm not sure why I have such a problem with people staring at me. Maybe it's because I hate all the attention. Or maybe it's because most people are ugly, and I don't want to have to subject myself to their massive ugliness. Or maybe I just have a much larger and more complex personal space bubble than most people. If you stand too close to me, even if I like you, I'll still probably start slowly moving away from you. I gots to have my space. Wow... talk about going on a tangent... I actually had several ideas for what to write in this post, but I couldn't get to a computer in time after they left, which was yesterday morning. Now, I've fogotten most of what I wanted to include in this piece. No matter.

A New Blog

I was recently invited to be a contributer on my friend's community blog, The Gates of Gehenna. There are several other people already involved in it, and I look forward to the potential discussions we may have on this thing. Visit it if you like. I know I will.

When You Live In A Small Town

My brother and I were sitting right next to each other, sending IM messages back and forth. We began playing a game. One person sends the other a made-up word, and the second person has to invent a definition for it. I thought some of the words and definitions were pretty funny. I wrote down some of the highlights.

'Pifh: Short for "langpifh," it means to giggle underwater with licorice shoved up your nose.

Hiltiga: Latin for "my pants are soaked in cobra venom."

Kiltsiff: To sort out one's kilt from one's underwear while doing the laundry.

Alcamandia: The process of turning fish poop into pixie stix using only your nose, a fork, and six glasses of silty water.

Theasty: Prop food used during the taping of a tv sitcom.

Rendoona: A small bottle made out of yak butter and sand.

Odenhtel: The biggest clump in a bag of frozen peas.

Vastinestentilten: (adj) Having large vericose veins in the shape of famous horses.

Fendim: (Yiddish origins) A tree growing straight out of a pile of moldy tupperwear.

Endogenuim: Microscopic shavings from a mechanical pencil that is mistakenly placed in a traditional wood pencil sharpener.

Pentilken: A group of five albino giraffes tied together in a sack at the bottom of a river.

Hokinfer: The last fraction of an inch of soup in a bowl that signals that the eater needs to begin tilting the bowl.

Assman: Half man, half donkey, half AWESOME.

It's actually pretty fun. You should try it.

Girls Are Icky

I haven't said or even thought that phrase in a long, long time. Probably since first or second grade. That doesn't make it any less true. Male/Female Comm made me want to bite a couple people's heads off today. Some people are so incredibly stupid, it makes my left eye twitch a little.

Don't you hate it when someone's talking to you, and they assume that because you're not punching them in the face that you actually care about what they're saying? So do I. Hey, girl who always sits to my right in that class, please lower your voice when you tell everyone around you that Mondays are your busiest days of the week. If I cared any less, I'd be peeing on you right now. What? You mean you don't pee on people you dislike? Is that just me?

To the girl who always sits to my left: It's pronounced "irrelevant," just like it's spelled. I've never before met anyone who has actually pronounced it "irrevelant." You should be hanged.

We were talking about male/female communication and differences in education, and the prof mentioned something about male-biased testing techniques. I had to hold my breath to keep from laughing out loud. Apparently, the all-male testing boards make up questions that would be confusing or downright impossible for women to answer, like, "If Mike has two penises, and Jerry has four penises, and Lorena Bobbit subtracts fifty percent of the total penises in the room, then how many penises are left? *Bonus question: Why was Lorena out of the kitchen in the first place?*" or "Half the urinal cakes in the men's bathroom are blue. The other half are twenty percent pink and eighty percent purple. There are four purple cakes. How many pink cakes are there?" or "Christopher Columbus could reputedly crush a full, unopened beer can on his forehead WITHOUT EVEN TRYING. On a scale of one to ten, how awesome is that?" or even "Should women be allowed to serve in the military? A) No; B) Hell no; C) God no; D) Only if they wear those hot nurses' outfits."

In This America

I was taking my time, chillin’ at Borders the other day (because I'm just so cool), and I happened to notice something disturbing. There were twice as many books in the GED test prep section than there were in the LSAT test prep section. Businesses know exactly how much of a product or line to stock, so it's not like Borders has no idea what they're doing when it comes to stocking test prep books. This means that the market for books that teach you how to take and pass a high-school equivalency test is twice as big as the market for potential law students. There are tens of thousands of people every year who take the LSAT, and that's only presumably about half the number of high school dropouts who feel that their current jobs as clerks at dry-cleaning facilities are somehow less than fulfilling. That is about as depressing as an Arab who thinks that this time he'll be able to get through airport security without the hassle of a "random" full body search. Keep dreaming.

The ARC

Yesteday, I went shopping at the ARC store while my brother was in the DMV getting his permit. What a shoddy operation that is. It's almost like they don't care at all that most of their stuff looks old and used. It's quite sad, actually. And very difficult to find things in the right size. Usually, they only have one item of clothing in each size. That's no way to run a business. I'd made my selections, and was standing in line waiting to pay and leave. Checkout too about 10 minutes from start to finish. The lady in front of me was paying with some sort of gift certificate. That alone practically made me laugh out loud. The cashier, who, understandably, hadn't dealt with many gift certificates to the ARC, was quite flabbergasted at the whole process. She called a manager to the front to help her out. The manager's name was, I kid you not, Nadine. I didn't know people in real life were ever actually named Nadine. I was under the impresison that a name like that only existed for the purposes of television writers and trailer trash. Not so. Fortunately for our poor, poor cashier, she had a partner working right next to her. Apparently, her partner's job was to find the tags on the clothes and hold them out for the cashier to scan. Quite an efficient system they have at the ARC. Nadine wanted the partner to leave the cahier station and help her with something, but the partner was clearly too busy for that. She shot back, "I'm working here. Can't you see I'm holding tags?" It was at that moment when I noticed a small sheet on the counter that said, "Tag color price guide." Underneath that, it said, "Furniture -$14.99 and below- black. Furniture -$15.00 and up- black." I'm sure glad they drew a distinction between the two. Wouldn't want them to get confused. Then a guy and his loser friends were walking into the store past me. I overheard him say, "I mean, they're a third-world country, and yet they're a superpower? What kind of s-h-i-t is that?" Yes, he actually spelled it out. That was so stupid, I think my eye started bleeding.

I Wish I Were More Confrontational

I've been accused of not writing about people enough on this blog, so to prove Ashley and Claire wrong, I submit the following:

Yesterday, I was on my way to the Starbucks on North Academy by what used to be Media Play, and I was driving perfectly normally (Ashley can attest to that). I pulled into a parking space, and walked in. Then, behind me, I heard a man's voice say, "Hey, buddy." Since Buddy is not my name, I didn't turn around. Then he said, "Excuse me, buddy." At this, I figured he must be talking to me. "Oh, no," I thought, "It's another guy who's heard of my mad kickboxing skills and has come to challenge me in a fight to the death. All I wanted was a frickin' caramel macchiato." I turned around, and saw a short, stubby man staring back at me. He did not look pleased. He said, "I don't know if you noticed back there, but I was that guy at the stop sign back there, and you came really close back there." Somehow, my intuition had kicked in and told me that whatever I'd done to piss this guy off, I'd done it "back there." Then he said, "I just thought that maybe you weren't paying attention and you came really close back there." Still not knowing what the hell this man was talking about, I responded, "I came close to what?" He said, "To me. I was in that white car in front of you at that stop sign, and you had to slam on your breaks because you weren't paying attention or something." To that, I said, "Well, it's not like I was paying attention to ANYTHING ELSE. I still don't know what you mean." Then he said to me, "Look, I don't want to start up a discussion with you" (I have no idea what that means), "but I just wanted to make you aware that you came awful close back there, and you know if you hit somebody from behind, you're the one who gets a ticket." Thanks for that sage advice, Yoda. It's too bad I have some coffee to drink and a conversation to finish, or else I'd drop what I'm doing and live at your house to study with the stop sign Zen master. Oh, Great Stopping One, lend me a morsel from your infinite wisdom, that I may learn to stop in your image, and that all others’ stopping abilities would pale in comparison to yours reflected in me. I just hope you have enough vacation time, Oh Great One, to take a few days off from your blue collar job driving the Zamboni at the mall. To tell you guys the truth, he looked a little as though he liked being "tapped from behind," if you know what I mean...

The Cruise

So I got back from Texas on Sunday. I would've posted this right after we got home, but I didn't want to. My Spring Break ended up being totally awesome. A lot of stuff happened; most good, some bad, and almost all of it worthy of repeating here. Maybe I should just start from the beginning.

We left Monument at around 9 pm two Thursdays ago. That's when my family joined eight others for a 12 hour drive through the middle of the night in a motorhome to Gainsville, Texas. That's where we stopped over for about an hour and picked up our thirteenth member, and finished up the drive all the way to Galveston. Fitting all those people into a single motorhome without breaking any bones was a feat in and of itself. That we did it with thirteen people's worth of luggage for a seven day cruise is nothing short of miraculous.

Once we'd gotten on board, we had the opportunity to explore the ship. Un-be-freaking-lievavble. At the time it was built, the Grand Princess was the largest ship in the world. Right now, that record is held by another Princess ship, one which hasn't even been finished yet. It's ginormous. The ship is just under a thousand yards long. From my stateroom, which was very near to the front, it took several minutes to walk all the way to the back. (I refuse to use the correct nautical terms "fore" and "aft" because, well, they're stupid.)

One of the first things we did after the ludicrously unneccessary muster drill was go to dinner. This was my reason for comingon this trip in the first place. You hear stories about cruise food, but nothing quite prepares you for it. "I can eat steak every night if I want? What? I can order all entrees if I feel like it? I can get three desserts just like that? And it's all free? Strange. I didn't imagine heaven to be this crowded..." It was the greatest thing since the invention of kicking people in the face. Over the course of seven days' worth of dinner, I ate 13 entrees (including one day when I had three plates of crab), 11 desserts, 10 kinds of soup, and 8 appetizers. Life was good. Unfortunately, I didn't gain a single pound. I don't know what to do. I barely moved the entire week, so it's not like I was burning calories. Life is so unfair.

We met some interesting people on the ship. There was one group of middle-aged ladies and gentlemen who sat beside the "kids' table" at dinner one night, and while by all rights they should have been annoyed by us, apparently they loved us. They actually looked for us the next day at dinner time, and complained that we'd "ditched" them to sit at the other end of the dining room. One of them had decided that she couldn't wait to get back to civilization in three days to get her eyebrows "done." Of course, by "done," I mean tattooed on. Amercia is, I suppose, just too boring a place to get something like that done, so she chose to mix it up and got it done in Belize. Unfortunately for her, Belizian tattoo artists don't really have a concept of symmetry. One of her eyebrows was half an inch higher than the other. My brother took to calling her "Crazybrows McGavin" behind her back, as if she were a 1920's bareknuckle boxer. She looked like she was constantly trying to give someone a scornful look, even when she was smiling. Ah, the combination of stupidity, alcohol, and foreign countries... priceless.

The shows on the ship were awesome. The Grand Princess has a huge theater that seats probably 700 people, and there isn't a single column anywhere that could obstruct an audience member's view. Quite an impressive feat of engineering, I'm told. Whatever. Anyway, the first show we went to was the only bad one. It was a "comedy magician" named Doug Anderson. And when I say "comedy magician," I mean "a guy who learned a few sleights and combined them with some God-awful jokes that didn't even manage to make a roomfull of drunken idiots laugh." He was so bad, he gave me diarrhea. And not in a good way. The best show I saw was a guy who called himself The Amazing Fernandez. I'm not quite sure how he got that name. Maybe his full name if Fernando Hernandez and he decided to combine them to make it easier to remember. Anyway, as you could imagine, I was too distracted by his stupid name to be excited about seeing his show. I was even less impressed when I got to the theater and saw the sign on screen that announced we were about to see "Canada's premier comedy hypnotist." Canada sucks. Why would I want to see some Canuck telling a bunch of people I don't know and don't care about to run around clucking like a chicken? Well, I got my answer. Fernandez was absolutely incredible. If I try to describe what he made people do, I most assuredly would not do him justice. Suffice it to say that I decided I will never ever EVER volunteer to be hypnotized by a stage hypnotist. At the beginning of the evening, he said that we, the audience, would determine who got the award for best performance for that show (he did two that night). It was an 18-inch-high trophy. When the woman who won the award realized why she suddenly woke up back in her seat holding the trophy, she was so embarrassed, she ran out of the theater before the show was over; I can tell you right now, if she couldn't even stay in the same room with all the people in front of whom she'd just danced like Beyonce, then she definitely would have at least cracked a smile when she became convinced that she was the laughter police and started chastising anyone who laughed by screaming in Chinese gibberish. That night, I became a believer in hypnotism.

The cruise had four stops: Costa Maya, Playa del Carmen, and Cozumel (all in Mexico), and Belize City. The first was Costa Maya. Man, it was cool just to sit on a white sandy beach drinking Corona and... well, that's pretty much it. It was a bit cloudy that day, so we didn't get a whole lot of sun. Next stop was Belize. Belize is scary. The whole tourist area is just a few blocks long, beyond which are basically the ghettos of the city. I don't know how many times one of the natives yeleld at me through the giant iron gate that was erected to separate the riff-raff from the rich American tourists, "Hey boy! You want a taxi?" Apparently, I just give off this "I'm here to ride around in a taxi while I'm on vacation on a Caribbean island" vibe. Next up was Playa del Carmen, or as we came to call it, the place with all the naked people. Nude sunbathing is the thing to do in Playa del Carmen. It was the only one of our stops where we saw it, anyway. The water was beautiful there, and best of all, there was a bar not 100 yards from our spot on the beach. I don't know what kind of tequila they put in their margaritas, but I do know that that's pretty much all I could taste. Drunken body surfing is fun. Our final stop was Cozumel, which was devastated by Hurricane... uh... Something in late... uh... some month of last year. It's amazing how quickly some of the greenery had grown back. The beaches were still mostly covered in debris. While we were there, all we got to see was basically a shadow of Cozumel's former beauty. I'd love to visit the island again in a year or two and see it fully recovered. It mst have been gorgeous before the hurricane. We hired a guide for that day. His name was Dario. He kept trying to explain to us how Mexico's "free" education system worked. I don't think Dario is familiar with the term "socialism," but I let it slide. He really was a nice guy. That's why we felt kinda bad when we didn't have enough cash on hand to pay him. Oh, well. That's just five bucks that'll have to wait until the next time I eat at Chipotle to make it all the way back to Mexico.

One thing I thought was hilarious was the variety of sob stories we got the street vendors while they were negotiating price. My brother bought a $20 hoody from a teenage Mexican boy who said to him, "OK, 10 dollars. I just need the money." Oh, boo hoo. In Cozumel, my cousin's girlfriend bought a necklace or something from a guy for $12 and her Princess Cruise Lines standard issue beach towel. "It's for my two-month-old baby," he said. Right. I figured that Dario could come close to making $90,000 a year before union dues, repairs to his van, insurance, and other fees plus taxes. Not too bad in a country where one can buy a brand new VW Jetta for US $12,000. The street vendeors were creepy. They kpet telling us, "Here! Here is the right way!" to get us into their shops. That reminds me of another strang ething I noticed in Mexico. Apparently, they think American tourists are obsessed with the penis. I can't tell you haow many times I saw pipes, statues, magnets, drawings, and carvings that featured penises prominently. And speaking of pipes, they sold a lot of bongs as well. In one shop in Cozumel, the owner walked right up to me as soon as my parents were out of earshot and tried to sell me a bong. Thanks, Paco. I'm good.

Then came the drive back. We stopped in Gainsville again. There, we stayed the night with friends of friends. Though I'd never heard of it, Gainsville is a nice little community in... well, somewhere in Texas. I don't know exactly where. It's a big state; cut me some slack. As if we hadn't been eating like kings for the past week, we were treated to some awesome steaks. A lot of steaks. About a pound per person. That's the first time I've ever had as much steak as I could possibly fit in my stomach and not find myself able to eat any more. Amazing. They sure know how to have a barbeque in Texas. I'll give 'em that.

The rest of the drive home was interesting. We ran out of gas in the middle of Texas, and had to ask a gun-weilding, tobacco-chewing, banjo-playing, handlebar-mustache-sporting, Deliverance-extra-wannabe backwoods Texan for a couple gallons to get us to the next town. I was scared for my life. Texas itself is fine, but Texans scare the hell out of me. Several hours later, after we'd finally gotten gas and started back on the road, we got a flat tire in La Junta, Colorado. Just our luck, the tires on the motorhome require a special extender on the wrench in order to remove the nuts, and we were fresh out of extenders. Fortunately, we were able to borrow one from a guy who didn't even think he had the right part, which made us, according to him, "luckier'n shit." Thank you, mister scary Colorado man.