Our story starts about a week ago when Wes asks me if I’d like to join him for a quick trip to Edmonton to drop off Andrews car. The last trip was a blast (see paragraph 1) so I gave him the thumbs up. We were set to leave Tuesday afternoon and it was a turn-and-burn so we should be back Thursday afternoon.
Right off the bat there was trouble. I’m along for the ride, but Wes is yawning less than 30 minutes into the drive. Apparently the guy hadn’t slept for about 24 hours and was now settling in for an 18-hour, 1000 mile drive. Fine, I’ll take the first shift. I drive until I get sleepy and we trade back and forth through the night. We end up in Edmonton around 7PM on Wednesday evening.
At this point it seems like a far wiser move to hang out with Andrew and Mark for the night, then get on the road in the morning. So the trouble begins. Dinner and beer is handy at a local brewery, where the Stout runs over like there’s no tomorrow. We were there for quite a while, and I vaguely remember throwing back a shot of something (whiskey) and washing it down with some more syrupy ale. I don’t really remember leaving the bar... but vaguely remember playing a game or two of Halo back at Andrews house, and announcing that I was too drunk even to play Halo -- which is surely impossible.
Fast forward.
I wake up at about 8:30AM in the upstairs spare bedroom. I’m feeling great, especially since I basically blacked out the last couple hours of the previous night. I’m feeling really great, actually. I wander downstairs to find Wes chilling on the living room couch. I mosey over. He smiles at me and holds up his left arm, where his wrist is slightly ’S’-shaped. (Wrists are supposed to be ’I’-shaped) At this point I’ve taken in the fact that he has a too-small towel wrapped around his waste instead of pants like everyone else. WTF?
Rewind.
Wes wakes up at about 7:30A and is immediately in a state of confusion. Instead of waking up on the living room couch, where he most definitely went to sleep, he has awoken on a utility table in the basement. Also, instead of waking up fully clothed, as he most definitely was last night, he has noticed that he is no longer wearing any pants or underwear. He finds a towel (too small) and wears it like he owns it, then trudges upstairs and asks Andrew where his pants have gone. It is suggested that Wes talks to me about that, since Andrew was not in charge of Wes’s pants that night. At this point Wes notices that his wrist has taken on a new letter-shape and is throbbing like a motherfucker.
Fast Forward.
Andrew’s girlfriend is now awake at 8:00A and making a quick stop in the basement to let their cute little dog, Harley, out of the kennel. She wrinkles her nose when she gets near the kennel because there is a definite odor of poop filling the basement. Expecting to find that Harley has sprayed dog poo everywhere, she is surprised to find a tidy little doggy house. She starts heading back across the basement with the dog under her arm when she finds a pair of jeans plopped in the middle of the floor. She picks them up and is horrified to find that they are literally filled with shit. Shit! Bouncing up the stairs she now also notices some new brown stains on the plywood landing at the bottom of the steep stairs.
We are now back to the point where I have joined the second act. Andrew, Wes and I have reasoned two valid explanations for the evidence. The first, but unlikely, explanation is that Wes somehow crapped his pants in the middle of the night, and went on a laundry mission to the basement. During his trip down the stairs he tripped down the stairs. The more commonly accepted version of this story is that he woke up in the middle of the night in desperate need of the facilities. Clenching his butt cheeks tightly, he blindly searched for the hallway door that would reveal the throne, but in the beer-induced fog he hung a Rizzy instead of a Louie and opened the door that led to the basement. There’s no landing at the top of the stairs, just three pie-shaped stairs that make a hard left, so if one were to take a step with your left foot you would catch nothing but air. That’s what we think happened to Wes, and he cartwheeled all the way to the bottom.
In the fall to Andrew’s dungeon Wes manages to break his left wrist in two places. Laying helpless at the bottom of the stairs he loses consciousness... either due to the beer, the pain or possibly a shock to the noggin. This was the precise moment that his bowels decided they would no longer function as a team and dumped their contents into his jeans. He must have been there for a while, because said contents managed to seep through those jeans and leave a nice signature on the stair. (see below)
At some point Wes regains consciousness enough to move his ass from the bottom stair. Noticing that there was something seriously wrong with his pants, he sheds them (along with his boxers) to the basement floor and crawls up on the utility table to catch some more shuteye.
This is taking too long, so I’m gonna speed up the story. We hit up a clinic, they send us for X-rays, then back to the clinic where we are told that Wes is going to need to move this story to the emergency room where they can knock his ass out to set the bone before casting. It’s now noon and we’re sitting in the E.R. waiting room while Poopy Pants devours half of Andrew’s Subway sub. (note: this ghetto hospital has moved the receiving area and waiting room into the ambulance garage while they remodel the old area) The attendant almost immediately calls Wes’s name and announces that there is a room ready and he needs to prepare for the procedure. "Have you had anything to eat or drink in the past four hours?" Ummm, seriously? We’re told to come back at 5PM so that Wes can be properly anesthetized with an empty stomach. At this point the fire alarm goes off and we learn that someone is stuck in the elevator on the sixth floor. This place is seriously starting to worry me.
Back at the house we pack up the Armada with all of our stuff and hook up the now-empty trailer so that we can get on the road as soon as Wes has his cast. At 5:00P we drive back to the hospital and park the truck within site of the E.R. Time for more waiting. (That is what waiting rooms are for) An hour later the three of us are now in Wes’s little room waiting for the doc. Wait, wait, wait. Andrew has a meeting at 7:30, and for some reason needs some of Wes’s business cards, so the two of us head out to the Armada to grab one.
As soon as I open the driver’s door of the Armada there are red lights going off in my head. The interior has been ransacked, and I somehow didn’t notice shattered glass EVERYWHERE! Some asshole has busted the passenger window and taken all sorts of good stuff. My backpack with my laptop and passport, some CDs and DVDs, some car parts... all gone. Fuck. We quickly decide that we aren’t telling Wes about this until he’s out of the hospital and back at the house. We head back into the E.R. to smile and reassure Wes that he will indeed wake up from the anesthetic. At 7:00P Andrew and I are kicked out of the room; the procedure finally begins and we take the Armada back to the house.
About two hours later we are allowed to be back in the room with the poor guy. He is a little groggy, but makes some sense as we grill him about the operation. Hours pass as nurses pop in and out, poking and prodding. An invoice is dropped off totaling about $4000, to be paid immediately. "Hey Darren, will you go out to the Armada and get my wallet out of the glovebox?" FUCK. "Ummmm, Wes, there is a small glitch. The truck was broken into and your wallet is now gone." Can you believe this? So no cash, no credit cards, no license. The hospital generously reduces his bill to just $800 and will mail the invoice to his house. Whew, at least we got a break there, gotta love Canada!
The rest of the trip went smoothly. We left early the next morning with plastic taped over the passenger window opening. About 500 miles and we had to explain everything to the US Customs agent at the border, but he waved us on through with little more than a look at Wes’s arm, the missing window and our pathetic faces. Another 500 miles and we were back in Portland late Friday night. My head was on the pillow and I was snoring by 3AM. The next morning I called Wes and told him not to worry, I’ll never tell ANYONE that he shit his pants in Canada.
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