the idaho trip part 1 - the part where we almost died

Hello.

I've been trying to figure out the best way to describe this trip. Overall I would say the trip was not half bad...however the first half was not good in any way. It was positively the most surreal trip ever. Several moments where the three of us looked at each other and went "wow, is this really happening"? I kid you not. Okay. Here we go.


Before everything went awry.

At about 11:04pm we got on the freeway. We dropped Moz off at my father-in-law's house and continued towards Idaho. Now, clearly I realize this is an exceptionally late time to leave on a vacation. It was slightly a spur of the moment decision. We had discussed leaving on Saturday to spend the night but we figured hey, why not leave now? Let the adventure start early? So Kramer, Zack and I booked a hotel at what we thought was a quaint little hotel/RV park with a kitchenette just outside of Lava Hot Springs.

And then we got there.

And it looked like something out of a Hitchcock movie.

Oh wait, that would mean it was classically done. This looked like something out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Had we not already book the room we would have gotten the hell out of there. We decided to stick it out, we'd already paid, it was about 1am and we were just ready to fall asleep. We figured we'd be out of there in the morning anyhow and we could figure something out.

So we went in. It looked like a prison cell mixed with a dorm room. There were concrete walls with cracks, a daybed for Kramer with ripped, but clean sheets. The "kitchenette" was a mini-fridge and a sink with an empty cornucopia shell. There was a coffee maker and no coffee. There was a shower curtain separating where I sleep from where I pee. Come. On.

As terrified as we were, the place was relatively clean so we figured we were safe sleeping, in full body sweats. So we tried to sleep.

That is when the drunks entered the hotel parking lot. It's late, the bars are closing and since the only thing to do in Lava Hot Springs besides, you know, visit the hot springs, is drink, that is what everyone in town was doing. And then they all came to party at the Bates Motel.

We heard women talking about their parole stories, people puking and coughing, men yelling. And then, just as we drifted to sleep in the midst of all this, Zack woke me up.

"Jord, do you see that."

"Mmmmpbbbhhh". That's what I sound like when I am sleeping.

"Jord, look out the window." So I cracked my eyes open and I am greeted with flashing red and blue lights.

Really? COME. ON.

"Officer, I'll be honest with you. I'm on..." Apparently the next word out of arrestee number one was "probation". I thought she was going to start rattling off prescriptions so I pulled my pillow over my face right there. Aadi slept soundly next to me until arrestee number two started yelling at the officers. She needed to pee. "Go on the floor, I don't even care." There was no way I was going out in the middle of that, Aadi could take one for the team or learn to use the toilet.

Eventually the cops left. None of us got much sleep and about ten minutes after we'd woken up we were out of there after I said goodbye to the little several-legged friend that I'd found in our sink. We had no plan, no hotel, but we knew we were not spending another night in Lava. And we didn't, and it was such a relief.







Zack did a recap during his segment on 101.9 The End this morning, it's much more exciting when you listen to him tell the story.