Mt. Minnesota

It's 6:30 pm, Saturday night. I'm in Minneapolis, eating dinner with my dad, my cousins, and our friend Wayne. We're fueling up for a night of monster trucks, and I'm starting to have second thoughts.

Not everyone seems that excited about going, I had a headache (thanks mostly to an explosive, out-0f-the-blue nosebleed earlier that afternoon), and our host, Kristine, is regaling us with second-hand tales of the ear-splitting racket and noxious fumes at previous Monster Jam events.

We eventually decided to go, and I'm glad we did. Not just because it was awesome (more on that later), but because I'm pretty sure I was destined to go to this automotive spectacular. Consider the following signs:

1. On the drive down, Sam had to carefully pass a flatbed truck with a "wide load" (if you know what I'm sayin') of enormous tires. I realize in retrospect that these tires were too narrow, roughed up and solid to be for monster trucks (monster truck tires are uniformly wide, balloon-ish, and brand spankin' new), but I think this was still fairly prophetic. It's basically the eqivalent of being on your way to a Prince concert and having to skirt a flatbed truck carrying the world's largest purple dildo.

2. Josh's mom bought us breakfast on Saturday morning (this was a very economical trip for me, thanks mostly to generous adults. I spent a total of about $7 the whole weekend, and one of those dollars was loaned to josh). Josh's little brother Sam was there, and, in the manner of cute, hyperactive little boys, he brought a couple of toys into the Hard Times. One of those toys was a pull-back monster truck.

3. I opened up a campus newspaper (the Wake, maybe?) while waiting for my food. On almost the first page I opened upto, right near an excellent article about how Jewishness is the new fad among college kids, I spotted this little signal from the spirits:

Does anyone have any monster truck themed poetry?
Send it in to the Wake!

Cosmic.

This post was originally going to be part of the main monster truck post, but I've decided to post it separately because the main post is getting a tad long. You'll just have to wait a little while longer for the big one...