Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Feast 1: Getting There

I have decided I must write down my Feast memories somewhere, and this seems as good a place as any. Perhaps I was inspired by outside sources (yes I'm a copycat Heidi, sue me :D). This is mainly for my own memories, people don't have to read/comment unless they want to. And yes, unlike certain other people *coughAaroncough* I WILL be finishing this, whic means there will be four or five Feast posts.

It started on Monday morning, my dad and I arose before six and got in the car to drive two hours to join Paul, Andrew, and Susan for the trip south to meet our bus. The trip took about four hours, but it didn't seem that long; mainly because the conversation was entertaining. It was the usual fare; started off with talk of Evolution vs. Creationism, and conjecture as to why scientists will support a theory they know to be wrong; it evolved into talk of the 'Taking Over the World' thread that had been raging on MH lately, and other various wars/factions associated with MH/HT. Paul put forth his theory that the wars against Peeps and Olives were merely peices of Aaron's ultimate plan to take over the world; ie, we'll take out Peeps and Olives, then move onto the rest of the factions.

It was here that I came up with the idea that in a few years you'll be able to go to the Military History section of a bookstore and find a book entitled "MouthHouse Wars," and that at the center will be a huge fold-out diagram of everybody associated with these wars, and what factions they belong to; and that, if you work everything out, everybody probably should have both killed and supported everybody else at least twice. Paul showed me a sheaf of his comics; some of them were quite good.

We arrived in Altamont, IL, and drove around those ridiculous flat IL roads looking for the church where we were to meet the bus. We found it, stopped at the church for homemade ice-cream, before loading up and setting out on the seventeen-hour ride to CO Springs, CO.

The ride went fairly well; we watched stupid movies and talked. Most of the Altamont kids were jock-ish and kind of ignored us; but we talked to a couple of the more geek- (read: Star Wars) inclined kids.

Memorable moments: Paul created a new superhero, Meta-Chap. His power? He can chap people's lips. He and I sort of collaborated on a comic featuring him:

Evil Bad Guy: HaHA, Meta-Chap, now you are captured, and my evil minions will take over the world, and...

Meta-Chap: I have chapped your lips! Your evil monologue is cut short!

EBG: *Gestures to minions* Just kill him.

M-C: *Dies.*

Um, passing through Kansas (or maybe we were in CO by then) in the evening, we saw a stealth bomber flying pretty low. (Or was it a fighter? I keep forgettting. The military-geek kid explained it to us, and I still forget.) Anyway, 'twas cool. Paul took a picture of it, but only as it was fading. As I remarked then and Aaron would remark later on seeing it: "Well, it's either a Stealth Fighter or a smudge on the camera lense." I also came up with this dialogue:

"It's a picture of a stealth fighter."
"I don't see it."
"That's because it's a STEALTH fighter."

Also, while passing through Kansas, I could not help but notice the landscape, or lack thereof. That baby is FLAT. I remarked to someone, "I don't know what the Indians saw in this place." They said to imagine hordes of buffalo roaming the praire. Then I could see it; but still, you'd think that two of them eight hundred years ago might have a dialogue something like this:

Red Pony: You know, if you take away all the buffalo out here, what do you get?
High Horse: I dunno. Grass?
Red Pony: And what else?
High Horse: um... Grass? There's trees over there. No wait, that's also grass.
Red Pony: Yeah. Without the Buffalo, this place is pretty sad.
High Horse: So what do we do, move?
Red Pony: Maybe not now. Maybe we could wait till alot more people arrivve and shoot them all for us.
*High Horse and Red Pony stare at each other, and decide that the conversation never happened.*

(In case anyone's curious, I came up with this ON THE BUS. This, my children, is what fifteen hours on a bus will do to you.)

Sleep was a fitful thing that night; I'd doze off for a couple hours, wake up, read myself back to sleep, wake up again. I remember thinking that direct city lights are harsh, but are rather pretty when reflected panoramically in bus windows. however this thought came when I was half-asleep, so it should probably be ignored.

We arrived in Co Springs about four hours ahead of schedule, drove around a while, stopped at Wal-Mart for some stuff, then went to have breakfast at Perkins. I had what Susan called a "Heaping plate of meat and white flour," (pretty much their whole breakfast menu was variations on this).

Well, we drove down to CC and found the registration place. We were two hours early, but people were already registering. Susan went out for a quick scouting run, and almost immediately brought back reports of some weirdo in a purple toga. :P :D

Soon the bus dropped us near our rooms, and we had Arrived.

(Note for this and future Feast posts: if there is something essential I have left out, let me know. These posts may experience some slight editing. ;-))

7 comments:

Rachel D said...

That stealth figher? I think my group saw the EXACT SAME ONE from our plane. Whoa. That's totally weird.

Oh, I am so so sorry that you had to drive through Kansas. It's such a boring, flat, hot, dry place. Full of tumbleweeds. Did you see the tumbleweeds?? (The dude who moved us out of KS brought back a tumbleweed to show him family. He still has it. :D

Post the next bit of Feast-tastic fun soon, okay?

Heidi said...

Ok, so if you and Paul end up deciding not to go to the MI retreat, I will stop by your houses on my way there and kidnap you! HaHA! :D ;)

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of us got together and started writing a series. ...I think we would argue about what format. ;) "I want to do comics!" "No, humorous novels!" "What if we make a movie?!" :D

Ethan said...

Rachel: That's weird. Maybe it was keeping tabs on the mysterious mass movement of Lutherans. ;-)

Oh, I forgot to mention tumbleweeds! They were to only other interesting/cool thing about Kansas. Did you say you used to live there?

Heidi: I am going, I hope (registration still in the works), but we may have to kidnap Paul. But it seems not to matter to you (as in, eep!). ;)

I think an MH movie would be really cool. Of course, it would probably be more like a series of skits, filled with in-jokes only we would get, but it'd still be fun. Or we could have MHers do my Monty Python sting-thing. :D

OOh, another idea: we could split into groups, ie., one for comics, one for novels, etc, but all in the same 'world,' like SW. THAT would be cool.

Seriously tho, a group of us should do that. :D

Aaron.D.Nemoyer said...

Hey, I will be finishing my Feast Farce.

How’d Paul discover my ultimate plan to use all the factions I’m part of to take over the world?

The Military History (Hmm... M.H.) book on the MouthHouse wars will actually be entitled “The MouthHouse War: The Rise of Nemoyer the First”.

I still think that picture just shows a speck of dust on the camera lens.

Kansas, North Dakota, and parts of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Oklahoma are all quite featureless and pretty desolate. Saskatchewan was too, but know half SK’s population is moving to MN, so it’s become entirely featureless and entirely desolate. ;-)

I rode well over 20 hours on the bus from Fort Wayne to Arlington, TX for the 2003 Higher Things conference, and that was after driving straight from central-PA to Fort Wayne. I had fun using my flash camera in the morning when the people who’d decided to sleep instead of watching movies and playing games were starting to wake up.

Why did you write down a thought you want us all to ignore?

Some weirdo came to a youth conference in a purple toga? What a freak! ...oh.

Aaron.D.Nemoyer said...

You left out meeting a freak in a purple toga and some Canadian Girl and both their next of siblingage.

Aaron.D.Nemoyer said...

I haven't even seen any tumbleweeds in Kansas the couple times I've been through. Just some really big tires. I saw a sign in WY once that had a town name and "population 1".

We should get ne big group that we do the MouthHouse comics, the MH book*s*, *and* the MH movie*s*! B)

Ethan said...

Hey man, it was Susan doing the scouting, I just reported what she reported. :-P

My family has a bigger population than that town. :D

To the last comment:

YES!