I represent 
That too cool you. 
A Hilfinger American red apprentice 
Twisting Humbolt appetizers. 
Fill the pitcher 
Of pay-out filth. 

                -falstaff 
--- 
 

     (Red) Indeed the bond had been set...  and it was much more than the Chumming.Com crew could raise without the help of a heaping plate of self-deprecation and a large dose of self-lubrication.  Half our heroes have been ensnared in a devious web spun by the dark Frau Bruekkku and her Viagra-fueled Wood-Nymph sidekick Lulu.  It seems as if the staff will be delayed for yet another stormy evening, by what can only be called the Yampa Valley Curse, whilst the remaining members of the crew attempt to hold back the dark forces of nature that have amassed at the border and are poised to shut out the lights on our intrepid crew. 
        But tomorrow is another day and if our livers be willing, we will head out into the heart of the desert on our way to more adventure and mayhem.  The crew is slimming things down and taking a mobile unit on the road for the next stint.  Since we were in need of a low-profile vehicle for our journey across the most evil of nations, we have chosen a speedy 
little number with much greater maneuverability and enhanced ability to go underground when necessity.  Besides... the Clipper is in dry-dock, awaiting a new carburetor and taking on some much-needed rest.  So we will travel with 4-wheel drive vehicles and pockets full of scooby snacks.  It all became oh so clear back in the dank ditches of Deadwood........ 
                (~~Dream Sequence with Fuzzy Edges~~) 
        The heat was oppressive and a stench filled the cabin with an odor of ungodly proportions.  My gray matter was struggling to regurgitate fetid little chunks of the previous evening...  a plate of burnt meow-mix, a dope-growing waitress with a penchant for the straight-edge, a birthday cake diorama of Custer's Last Stand in flames and wilding in the streets of Deadwood, in search of a good old ass-kickin' before climbing on the final "Deadwood Tour '98 Trolly" for the all too short ride home. 
        So I find myself at 8am, staring down into the deep recesses of my sole at the head of a tapeworm that looked back with dark eyes revealing an even darker message for my future.  I rummaged around the office a bit and found a pair of rusting tweezers with which to investigate this most recent of mind-boggling discoveries.  Probing deep into my Holley Carb 
with squinting eyes and sweaty, furrowed brow, I was able to grasp the black rubber head of the tapeworm and slowly withdraw it from the injector hole it had called home for most of a lifetime.  Certainly it was this revolting, black 4-inch piece of matter that was causing my injectors to stay wide open while it fed its voracious appetite on copious quantities of 85 octane fuel and 10W-30 crude across the nether-reaches of Amerika...  Right? 
                (~~End Dream Sequence, back to Clarity~~) 
     I shook things off and made an executive decision with what little brain power remained in my cramped skull.  Time to move on...  But I should have listened to the wise, racist Indian outside La Plant, SD and stayed where I was (in a nice Deadwood Delirium) to replace our dead-ass carb that had only recently become the Toenail Clipper's ungainly albatross. 
Instead, I decided to push our crew to new limits in extracurricular mobility and to make for the warm, sunny plains of Western Wyoming without a new carburetor but filled with renewed hope for a brighter future... 
        Again... I should have listened to the Indian...  For the Clipper was to find the only hill in Cheyenne, WY on which to die as the lonely darkness of the western plain slowly devoured us all.  And the hill happened to be the freeway on-ramp, packed with wide-eyed revelers headed for home after a long day drinkin' Coors and enjoying Cheyenne's infamous Frontier Days celebration.  And the Clipper she lay...  stranded in the middle lane on the long, lonely highway to nowhere. 
        It wasn't long before we were surrounded by all manner of local and state law enforcement.  It was readily apparent that we were in a game of 5-card stud and we had been dealt short with only 4 cards to play.  With bloodshot eyes and no knowledge of the hand in front of me, I quickly realized that the classic "bluff" was the only logical way out.  I could only 
hope that the crew was up to the task and ready with their poker faces on hand.  It had been a long, draining 4 days on the road and the chumming.com staff was just barely running on the few fumes available to it at the time. 
     I took point and confronted barrel-chested Trooper John while trying to mind-meld with the crew and figure out exactly what our story was...  for only an idiot would believe the truth and even I wasn't sure exactly what the truth was when it came down to it.  Sure I knew what everyone was willing to admit of their sordid, crusted history... but when ID's begin to run through the infinitely vast network created by law enforcement to crash systems like our own, I had to accept the fact that this could quite possibly be the end of the line for all of us living out here on the lunatic fringe. 
        By some strange convergence of comic coincidence, all of our stories matched and the cursory search of our fake ID's quite surprisingly resulted in little for incrimination.  We would avoid the Chumming.Com office search that would certainly have resulted in our immediate incarceration and lifetime sentence for trafficking in malcontent.  Yes, we would live to see another day.  Our ultimate rescue came from Butch, a jovial fellow with the means to extricate us from beneath the overbearing eye of Johnny Law.  We were towed to a safe house down by the local foundry and told to let things cool down a bit before getting the hell out of Dodge and on the path towards the safety of Colorado and cooler skies...  And that is precisely what we did. 
                                                =#= Red =#= 
 

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