It Has Been a Crazy Week (1 of 2)

This has perhaps been one of my craziest, most random weeks ever. EVAR. And I do mean that. God, I am so freaking tired. Maybe it's the Vicodin.

It all started last Saturday. Saturday night, you see, was the big post-apocalypse themed play party in Seattle, held in honor of Twisted Monk's (the business) 5th anniversary, and in celebration of Twisted Monk's (the man) birthday. So, Makal and I packed our backpack full of essentials--the buffalo leather bikini I made, a chainmail shirt for him, rain gear, etc.--and hopped on the bike. Oh, have I not mentioned the bike? Well, subscribers to this blog should know about it by now: a 2008 Honda Shadow Spirit, which Makal named Bucephalus. I call her Buce for short. So, we donned all our motorcycle leathers, hoisted the fairly heavy bag onto my bike, and set off up I-5.

On the way to Seattle, we had to stop in Olympia, which is where our car was. Oh, have I not mentioned that either? Yeah, well... on the way home from our last trip to Seattle a few weeks back (you might recall why we were there) our car died. It just up and stopped running as we were pulling into a rest stop; we hadn't even parked yet. Apparently something broke and something else blew a cap and all sorts of fluids got into all the wrong places. Car guys call that a "catastrophic engine failure". The estimate to repair it was ~$11k aaand... yeah, who has that kind of money? So we had to go back to Olympia, Seattle party or no, to sell the car for parts to a mechanic who specializes in Saabs. Except when we showed up at the shop on Saturday, he wasn't there. Nobody was there. We were obviously going to have to meet with him on Monday, meaning an extra night in Seattle and a day of missed work. As there was nothing we could do about that, on to Seattle we went.

Upon arriving at the hotel, a cheap affair across from the airport, we entered the office and spent 10 minutes with our eyes wide open in shock as the receptionist/clerk/what-have-you guy was on the phone with tech support. It was the goddamned computer software, you see, that those guys made him use. He kept having to log in whenever he tried to do something and he didn't have the goddamned time to talk to tech support because he had customers standing there trying to check in. And yes they were standing right there while he was on the phone, but he couldn't do a fucking thing about it because of the goddamned software and he wanted the customers to know how pissed off he was that their software was so fucking hard to use. Oh. Em. Gee. So glad I didn't see any children in the vicinity; even I was offended by his colourful language (but then, in cases of old farts at run down motels, I tend to side with the technology). As I said, most surreal check-in evar.

So, there we are in Seattle. Makal was exhausted from not sleeping well the night before, so he napped while I finished stitching the lace onto my outfit and did my makeup. We had a fabulous time at Monk's party, watching people play and enjoying the opportunity to socialize with fellow kinksters. I was out of commission for the evening as I continued to recover from a rib contusion, which was kinda lame. But there was no shortage of interesting corners of the room to look at, and no shortage of pretty people in pretty costuming to gawk at--I mean admire. We even met a small contingent of Portlanders and commiserated about the lack of a structured community in Portland.

Skip to Monday, when we re-packed all our stuffs and headed back down to Olympia. Luckily the mechanics was open this time, and we got into the car to finish clearing out a lot of the things we'd left behind in our rush to get home from the last trip. By the time we got the bag back on me, gawd, it was a lot heavier. Uncomfortably so, and the additional weight was not only wearing on my muscles but was making the bike struggle a bit. I had nearly fallen asleep basking on the bike in the sun back at the workshop, so when we got into Olympia proper we stopped for coffee and mailed ourselves some of the heavier items from the bag (the box ended up weighing just over 15 pounds and I fancy a lot of that was the chainmail). From there on the ride was a breeze... until we got to the home stretch. By then, my ass was so sore from all the bumps and whatnot that my posture was shot and it was all I could do to not whimper the whole 30 minutes through Portland. We had put the 600th mile on Buce just before our last rest stop, so considering that Makal got her at the start of the month that should give you a good idea of how much riding we've been doing!

Now, I think this post is long enough that I can hit publish and give y'all a good bit of reading, so that is exactly what I'm going to do. But don't think that the ride home was the end of our crazy week--no, it gets MUCH crazier--and I will surely be back in a few hours to tell the rest of the story. I think a hot bath and another Vicodin is in order before doing so, though...