memphis
The road trip started out successfully. Everyone was organized into cars, gas money was paid, hotels were found, la dee dah. Then: an hour south of Champaign J's car got a speeding ticket (she tried to bribe the police officer with chocolate chip teddy grahams to get out of it, which didn't work very well). The forwards (including me) were in Camille's shitty mom-van which was being driven by Tonka. We passed by J laughing, so of course the karma fairy took revenge a few hours down the road when the van started to heat up and we had to pull into a gas station in a town named, I kid you not, Dongola.
As soon as we stopped the car we noticed that the engine was smoking. Tonka proceeded to freak out because it's not her car. A friendly policeman who is also at the gas station inspected under the hood but had no idea what could be wrong with it. Luckily (I suppose) he knew a group of sketchy looking guys in camo and John Deere hats who were loitering next to the door, and called out to one named "Chico" to come take a look. Chico informed us that it was our water pipe that was busted, but that we could probably make it to Memphis if we watched the heat and didn't stop.
So we drove for about ten minutes before the heat gauge suddenly went all the way to the red and Tonka had to pull over again. One of our headlights went out and the other one looked like it was dimming. We sat there in the dark on this creepy road in the middle of nowhere for about an hour figuring out what to do. The only map in the car was a state map of Minnesota (where Camille is from) so we couldn't find where we were. We also didn't know the non-emergency number, so asking 911 for a tow truck company's number was the only option. Everyone's phone except mine couldn't get a signal. yay Sprint?
After an hour another car pulled over and approached us. Katie was terrified that it would be some mass murderer but it turned out to be a little old lady who was extremely hard of hearing and became convinced that, instead of our water pipe being broken, we just "needed some water" and that we were on our way "to a rummy game". She was confused as to why we would drive six hours to play cards. Then two state police cars pulled up, flashing lights and all. We explained the situation and they offered us a ride to Anna, the nearest fairly large town. Riding in a police car is pretty awesome when you haven't broken any laws, but damn if it wasn't intimidating when he asked for our IDs and typed our names into the state database to make sure.
From Anna five of us took a taxi to Carbondale, where Tonka's boyfriend Danny lives. Tonka and Molly stayed with the van and rode in the tow truck back to Danny's house. Unfortunately, she didn't have the keys and he was in Miami, so we had to move twenty sandbags off a hidden trapdoor to the basement, which had no lights and was filled with rats and power tools. Guess who got volunteered to go first? yeah, me. Unfortunately Danny is apparently paranoid about burglars so there was a PVC pipe blocking the basement door. Tonka slammed her entire body weight into it and knocked the pipe down, but for a while there we were seriously worried about not getting in.
Then we got a call from Erin (who was back in Champaign with the other people who were supposed to come the next morning) explaining that Lipa was on a rampage and was insisting on leaving right then, at midnight, and was also demanding a bed in Danny's house. Did I mention the heater in the house was broken? fantastic.
Somehow we made it to Memphis about ten minutes before the game was supposed to start. The entire field was a giant mud puddle about four inches deep, and since we actually had to tackle and get tackled in it, everyone quickly became completely covered head to toe. Because of my position in the scrum I was actually the muddiest, and once mud gets into your mouthguard it never comes out. The game itself actually went really well, much better than any of last season's even though we were missing three starting seniors. We scored the first points of the game, but ended up losing 4 tries to 1. Janelle almost had one right at the end.
Afterwards we were so muddy that the Memphis women took pity on us and let us shower at their houses. The pair whose house we got were really really nice and had an adorable dog and adorable southern accents. "Will y'all be fixin' ta take a shower now, or didya want some biscuits first?" I wish I had a southern accent. Then social, which was toga themed, except half the people were wearing shower curtains or carpets instead of sheets, and everyone was wearing real clothes underneath. The social was strange because the Memphis men's team and the team they played were there, along with various people's families, and some honest-to-god babies. No idea whose babies they were. We postponed Erin and Molly's wedding because there were so many people there we didn't know, but Erin did sing the Chuck-E-Cheese birthday song for Molly's birthday. It felt more like an awards ceremony than a social, but at least they fed us cheese and mashed potatoes and we got to sing some rugby songs. The Memphis girls really like singing and kept going long after we ran out of verses.
If I were the marrying kind
I thank the lord I'm not, sir
The kind of rugger I would be
Would be a rugby - what, sir?
(Winger, sir!)
Winger, sir? Why's that, sir?
'Cause I'd never get any
and you'd never get any
and we'd never get any together
we'd be all right in the middle of the night
never getting any together!
(repeat chorus, change position name, point your elbows at someone else, etc.)
Ended up sleeping at Danny's house again last night, except this time at least the heat was on and I had a couch instead of an uncomfortable bed. Everyone made fun of me for eating fries after I had picked them up off the floor where I dropped them. No one has heard of the five-second rule? Gosh.
Then we came home this morning. Molly has the best road trip music ever. Zooming down 57 blasting Pinball Wizard? Awesome.
In general I would sum up this weekend as "an experience".
MADAME RANEVSKY: You ought to be a man by now; at your age you ought to understand people who love. You ought to love someone yourself, you ought to be in love! Yes, yes! It's not purity with you; it's simply you're a smug, a figure of fun, a freak...
oh russian playwrights.