Where I left off was Ricky, Navy girl, and I were all asleep in a tent on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. At some point in the middle of the night, we heard coyotes or wolves near our tent. This made Navy girl scared, which in turn made me scared because I was relying on Navy girl to protect me. But, ever brave, we decided to go outside and ward off the coyotes. Ricky and I had brought 2 guns with us on the trip. However, his was the smallest pistol I’ve ever seen. It was like one of those little guns Kitty from Gunsmoke would wear in her stockings. It was so small that Ricky couldn’t fit his index finger around the trigger, so he instead had to grip the trigger with the tip of his index finger and thumb – basically a sideways OK sign. (My pistol wasn’t much better.) Ricky lit the lantern and we started looking around the camp. I pointed out to Ricky that holding the lantern only meant that the coyotes could see us and ensured that we couldn’t see them, so he turned it off. With the lantern off, we could see that there were no coyotes in our immediate vicinity, but, like the kids in the horror movies, we headed up the path to make sure. After walking about 50 feet, a field mouse ran across the path about 5 yards in front of us. Never before have I been so happy that a person had forgotten to take the safety off a gun because the moment the mouse entered our field of vision, Ricky’s finger and thumb went into automatic rifle mode. Had his safety not been on, Ricky would have plowed a full load of caps into that mouse. With the danger of the mouse behind us, I pointed out to Ricky just how trigger happy he had been about a little Tom and Jerry mouse. He replied, “That thing wasn’t a mouse. That was a huge rat…..and it could have had rabies. Did you see the teeth on that thing?” I responded that I had not because I was temporarily distracted by the SWAT team movements of his finger and thumb.
We found no coyotes, thankfully, and off we went the next day to Idaho for our friend’s wedding, parting ways with Navy girl. Once in Boise, we took our friend out for a typical bachelor party. After much alcohol, we ended up at some strip club on the outskirts of town. Now, I love Boise and the natural beauty that surrounds it. However, there was no natural beauty to be found undressing in that strip club. In fact, one girl’s teeth was so bad, Ricky kept asking her if she could be his partner at a corn-on-the-cob eating contest. This made one of the locals mad and, of course, a near brawl almost ensued. Luckily, we left without incident and headed back to the house.
The house where we stayed was the home of the mother-in-law to be. This lady had a thing for hats. Not just any hats, but those humongous this-would-be-a-sombrero-if-we-were-in-Mexico garden hats. For no reason other than we were drunk out of our minds, we decided to wear the hats as we filmed ourselves hassling the groom-to-be who was trying to get some sleep at this point. All I remember about my hat is that it was blue. When I finally passed out, I had no recollection about what I did with the bright blue hat.
At the wedding the next day, I was seated by the mother-in-law to be. She was wearing a beautiful bright blue dress and I complimented her on choice in clothing. She thanked me and then said, “I had a great hat that went with it, but when I came by the house this morning to get it, I couldn’t find it. In fact, a couple of them were missing.” All I could muster was, “Gosh, that’s a shame.”
Our friend got married and I’m convinced that his in-laws were convinced that Ricky and I were retarded. Next stop, Salmon Mountains, Idaho.
From Mark Whitman: Highly disappointed there were no comments where Ricky walked into the tent with the Navy girl doing his Silence of the Lambs best. I guess this was before the movie.
Well, 2 things. 1st, despite my occasional foul language, I am trying to maintain some level of sophistication on this site (if you don’t count my idiotic ramblings) and 2nd, there are just some things that are better left to private conversations. Despite all of that I will later post about what Ricky did at the petting zoo in Idaho Falls, ID. It’ll make your head spin.
From Sully: I love it. I am impressed that Ricky made it from Oxford across the great plains to Idaho without dropping his pants in public! Or at least in front of Navy Girl!
I’ve tried to keep the story of the trip rated PG-13. I promise you there were times when Ricky and his pants somehow managed to become disconnected. As you can imagine, there are some locals in various western states still sitting at a bar saying, “There was these two guys came through here about 15 years ago, and one of ‘em……….” You know how the story goes from there.