Gary ~ May 18

 

I Lived To Tell About It And Now I've Got Nothing To Say

 

I know it's going to be a good day to die when I finally do it, even if I don't have a spectacular view of the Rockies to inspire me as I expire.

 

After spending 30 minutes on hold while waiting for a live agent to "be with (me) in a moment" after I called Enterprise Car Rental's Roadside Assistance line, a woman came online and told us that she'd send someone out to change the tire and get us on our way.  That's cool, and how long will that take, we enquired and she said, "I don't know, we're going to have to call (one of their subcontractors) and send them out to you. They will call you soon."  OK, whatever.

 

We waited in the car, with all traffic whizzing by us at 80 miles an hour, hoping everybody would stay in their lane, for another 15 minutes until we finally got a call from a towing company dispatcher who told us she would send someone right over to help us out. Great, and when can we expect the guy to show up?

 

"I have a driver," she said in broken English, "about 40 miles away from your location so he should be there in about 45 minutes or maybe one hour."

 

Oh shit, we thought, as the speeding traffic continued to whiz by.

 

"And we have to charge you an extra $55 for (some reason), is this OK with you?"

 

"Yeah, I don't give a shit," I felt like saying, "Charge me whatever the fuck you want, just get me the hell out of here, that's all."

 

Instead, I said, "Yeah, sure," and that was that.

 

Until Eddie couldn't take it anymore. Wait another hour for somebody to come by and change the tire?

"Fuck that shit," he said, "I'm going to change the fucking thing myself."

 

And he did.  And we drove back to the Chautauqua and grabbed a bite to eat at the Dining Hall, which, thank God, was open til 9pm. We got there at 8:30, which meant that I had spent almost 12 hours on Thursday, schlepping people from the airport to the Chautauqua, which actually I didn't mind doing in the least and in fact the whole thing turned out to be a great adventure, and that provided me with lots of material for future funny stories.

 

Yesterday (Friday) was lots of fun too and there's a lot of potential funny stories there as well, but today is Saturday and I want to focus on the present moment, and not muse on the past, although I'll do plenty of musing on the past in future 30 day writing marathon submissions.

 

Today I am having lunch on famous Pearl St. with Elizabeth, I woman I met somehow on Facebook. When she saw from a video that I posted on my homepage, she private messaged me, saying she lives only 2 blocks from where I am staying and "let's get together for lunch while you're down here." I said OK, sure, and I guess we have a date for lunch today, since I just texted her saying I'm up for having lunch but I have to be back to the Chautauqua by 2pm.

 

We're having a special meditation here today at 3 o'clock and I don't want to miss it.

 

When a friend of mine heard that I was having lunch with Elizabeth today (Elizabeth is a Facebook friend of hers too), she private messaged me to say, "Watch out for this one."

 

What she meant by that, I have no idea and didn't ask.

 

I'd rather find out in person.  Which is what I am going to do today.

 

BTW, the reason I titled this piece the way I did is because I am sitting here freezing and the inferior brand of coffee that they provide here at the Chautauqua never kicked in, and I felt totally uninspired this morning and didn't feel like writing anything. Plus I felt miserable and grumpy,

 

But I wrote anyway, because what choice did I have?