The Year I Lived In Caliente

Last weekend me and 7 of my closest friends (or 6 and the Guildie, however you slice it) crammed in a van and headed south and then west a little for a stay in Caliente, Nevada. Never heard of it? Well, I have, and now I have been.

You see, for as long as I can remember (or at least for the last year) I haven’t liked the 4th of July. Because Frik and Carebear leave town and I don’t get to see them. And I mope around the house. It’s depressing. The family used to have root beer floats on the 4th, but it turns out that I’m the only one who liked them. In my family, no one plans anything, and no one does anything, and the 4th is just another day.

I told Sukie a few weeks ago that I wasn’t looking forward to the 4th because Carebear and Frik were going to be leaving town, and she thought it was cute but that we’d do something fun for sure.

Well, Sukie got a text asking if we wanted to go to Caliente this year. She asked me. If I was a young, spry guy, I would have done a back flip right then and there. Holidays with the best-est friends ever! Yeah! Last month’s crazy all-nighter would most certainly be out-done by a national-holiday-hangout-of-epic-proportions.

I would at this time like to apologize for those of you whose feelings might be hurt by my devotion and dedication to my friends. I am most astonished by the fact that I have any friends at all, to be truthful. If they were ones, they would be cold ones. And a one that is not cold is hardly a one at all.

I think the story of this weekend could be told through food. I had:
1 – Rancho burger @ Hermies in Cedar City. Thank god for people who work at restaurants who can actually recommend good food.
2 – Pancake breakfast @ the park in Caliente. My sweet zombie jesus I don’t think I’ve ever had pancakes so good.
3 – I almost forgot! Navajo tacos that were actually flown in from the reservation! Oh wait, no, it was just that one person knew how to make frybread. Only a goddamn ignoramus would think that the tacos had anything to do with the tribe.
4 – Pizza from Pioneer Pizzeria in Caliente – that was some really good pizza. Looking back, what the hell is a nice pizzeria like that doing in a place like Caliente?
5 – Breakfast at the Branding Iron in Caliente – they didn’t have a table big enough for the lot of us! But it was a damned fine breakfast burrito!
6 – Tacos at Carebears uncles house!
7 – A delicious pork sausage sandwich at Cafe Orleans in Cedar City! Ask Frik about his Muffliatto sandwich (yes, I know that’s actually a spell from the HP books – but I swear it’s not that different from the name of the sandwich, which has the same effect of silencing the target!)

Ah, the food was good and it was good to remembers it.

I loved the parade (A-Wiki, Anyone?), which hearkened to a parade I witnessed when I was younger and lived in Brigham City. BC is bigger than Caliente (but so am I.) I did grab for cash, and get sprayed with hoses, most of the afternoon was spent in line for tacos, which we could have made ourselves, but how would that 6th grade class get to Washington D.C. then? I am glad that I was able to get the water out of my ears, it would have hurt badly to have to pop those bad boys on the ride home, let alone walk around with swimmer’s ear the rest of the weekend. I got $3.50 in change.

Oh yeah, and before I forget, swimmer’s caps and Riot Shields. Oh weeeeeee’ll be quite ready next year, damnit. Of course I had to make my trademark cynical comment that getting sprayed with firehoses isn’t something that Holocaust survivors or Hippies would find very fun. But it was fun. And they used the hose on the truck, which was like an insta-tsunami. It whetted the tacoes, and the baby. Yes, think of the poor sleeping baby who gets at least a bucket’s worth of water splashed on her?

Oh, and think of me, carrying my pouting son on my back in to the middle of the street just to get him wet. His disposition went from sour to silly VERY quickly. It was just silly fun, and it was like being young again.

Our cottage was awesome, it smelled bizarre and there was a gas leak which we figured out in the middle of the night, and the smell went away the day after we turned off the gas to the stove. Hmmm…

We had a working theory that the cottage was where FLDS husbands took their wives to consumate their marriages, which is a bizarre thing to think of, considering it did have a distinct creepy air about it. But I liked it anyway, I think you could put a bunch of people you love in the creepiest of places and it would seem great instantly.

Oh, and I bought a straw hat. It was an impulse buy, but at $2.29 anything that keeps the accursed sun off of your head is like manna from heaven. It was actually funny because once you got used to the hat it was a good thing to wear – anywhere you go your face doesn’t get nearly as hot. I must have been a sight, in my weird sunglasses T-shirt shorts and Adidas, to wear this strange straw hat. I have to say, the hat got a lot of use, and a lot of people tried to steal it away from me.

The things that I liked the most was losing any sense of time at all, and spending time with friends playing games. Yes, we do it every couple of weeks anyway, but it was a nice combination, all that calm small-town-ness and friends and good (really good) food and the cottage which was the epitome of shelter from the storm, it always stayed cool.

I also liked the trip to the green-grass place, with the wading pool of doom. Sukie’s shocked that I’m still writing a blog entry.

I think I’ll stop, but I must say to my friends, I love you, I had a lot of fun, and we should hang out more often.

And to Guildie: Apology *not* accepted. You had an emotional outburst! It was an honest moment and you should stand by it. Besides, you’re only apologizing because it’s driving me crazy.

Addendum: Ok, Guildie, you win this round. Apology accepted. I feel bad, but I still maintain that you shouldn’t. I apologize for how I was acting, I was being an ass and completely deserved the retaliation. I can’t promise I won’t be an ass again, which is basically what accepting an apology is to me; a promise to not ‘do wrong’ again.