The Hitchhiker's Guide to Minnesota.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Midwestern United States lies a largely unregarded purple state whose Scandinavian-descended life forms are so amazingly nice that they still think helping every potentially-axe-wielding stranger they encounter on the side of the road is a pretty neat idea.

One Thursday, a boy driving on his own in the dead of winter suddenly realized that something was going wrong with the very large—and very borrowed—vehicle he was driving. Sadly, before he could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and he was nearly lost for ever.

This is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.

***

It was a long time ago. Ancient history. It was so long ago that, when it happened, I didn't tweet about it or post anything on Facebook or tumblr because they didn't exist. Even if I had wanted to blog about it, I would have had to wait until I got home because that's where the Internet was. I didn't have a smartphone, because those hadn't been invented, either. Cell phones had been invented, but they were roughly the size and weight of a brick and got the same reception as one in any place with a population under a million people, which was very much where I was at the time. And, at any rate, I didn't have one of those, either.

What I did have was a gigantic SUV that I was borrowing from my girlfriend's stepfather. I had recently used this to travel the 400 miles between the town I grew up in, where I had just spent Christmas with my family, and the college I no longer attended in northeastern Iowa. I had done this for two reasons: first, because they returned from the holiday a few days earlier than the school to which I had transferred (largely because it was attended by the girl I was seeing at the time) did; and secondly, because although I had spent the majority of my two years at the former school waiting by the phone to talk to the girl I was seeing at the time, talking to the girl I was seeing at the time, and then feeling depressed when I had to get off the phone with the girl I was seeing at the time, I had still somehow managed to stumble into a few decent friendships, and I wanted to visit.

That piece went fine; there was no catastrophe there, except possibly the fact that the only beer anybody had was Miller Lite, and the resulting catch-22 of needing to be drunk already in order to be able to tolerate it enough to drink the amount necessary to get drunk in the first place. The actual catastrophe was waiting somewhere along the 350-mile stretch of road that lay between my former college and my current one. More specifically, it was waiting just outside of Austin, Minnesota, which is the birthplace of a large number of things, including my friend Jess, whom I like, and Spam, which I rather don't.

The gigantic vessel I was piloting, like most things from America, was powered by explosions and had a voracious appetite for fossil fuels, so it wasn't terribly long before I had to stop for gas. Because commerce is one of the most powerful driving forces of the Universe, this happened approximately three minutes before the impending catastrophe decided to stop impending and start doing Very Bad Things inside the most expensive part of the vehicle it could find. This happened to be the transmission, which I worked out rather quickly when I got back onto the Interstate, attempted to return to the proper speed, and discovered that it had suddenly decided that second gear was the only way to go, and would hear nothing of first, third, or fourth. Accordingly, the maximum speed available to me suddenly dropped to thirty miles an hour, which seemed to upset approximately everyone who came up behind me doing seventy-five, even through most of them were from Minnesota. Shortly thereafter, in case I hadn't got the first hint, it began to lurch about violently every few seconds.

In a brilliant synopsis of the overall situation, I shouted "Fuck!" a number of times before pulling over to the side of the road and activating my vehicle's short-range distress beacon (which, in that part of the country, is better known as "raising the hood"). The temperature outside was slightly above average for early January in Minnesota, hovering around six degrees Kelvin, so I stood next to the beacon to signal that I had not, in fact, been rescued yet. Meanwhile, in an apparent effort to keep warm, time compressed itself so that several weeks passed between each vehicle that went whooshing by, which, in most automotive dialects, translates to a hearty "fuck you," but in the Minnesotan dialect, is accompanied by a small one-finger wave from the steering wheel and translates more accurately as "I'd really like to stop and pick you up, but unfortunately I'm on my way to a lutefisk supper/potluck and my car is entirely full of my relatives and possibly also a hotdish, so I'm very sorry, but would you accept a rain check?"

Nothing happened for a long time. After that, nothing continued to happen, but more urgently, and at a lower temperature. Eventually, it got tired of hanging out on the side of the road and went off to happen somewhere else, which, in all likelihood, was somewhere in North Dakota. It was precisely at this moment that someone finally saw the distress beacon, wasn't transporting their entire family to any fish-gelatin-based church fundraisers, and stopped to help.

As my rescue vehicle slowed to a halt, a million warnings, news stories, and horror films about the dangers of hitchhiking flashed through my mind, were completely ignored, and fell right out of my head. Instead, my attention was focused on a different problem: I couldn't for the life of me figure out why, of all the vehicles in Minnesota—a number that, although perhaps insignificant next to the quantity in, say, New York or Los Angeles, was still, overall, a respectable total—this was the one that had chosen to stop. It was tall and yellow, with the name of a school district painted on its side, yet it was only about half as long as it seemed that it should have been. I was still puzzling over this when the doors opened, and then, just as the driver looked out at me and said "car trouble, eh?" my mind finally finished registering that I was really, truly, about to hitchhike...on the fucking short bus.

There are a number of events in life whose sole purpose in occurring seems to be part of some bizarre practical joke the Universe has decided to play on you, and this qualified in every possible way. I assume that the next thing that happened was that the driver offered to give me a ride to a mechanic's shop in the next town and then did so, but honestly, the details here go a bit fuzzy because I suddenly noticed that, not only was I hitchhiking on the short bus, but that I was not its only passenger. There was also a boy, roughly ten years old. In a wheelchair. Wearing a helmet. At that point, all the rational bits of my brain came to the realization that their services were no longer needed, and promptly passed out.

When they came around again, I was once again standing next to my disabled vehicle, but this time there was a tow truck parked immediately in front of it, and its driver was looking my engine over. He pulled out the dipstick and examined it, which led to the following conversation:

"Well, shit."
"What's wrong?"
"It's your transmission."
"Well, yes, I had guessed as much. What's wrong with it?"
"No, this"—he held up the dipstick and indicated the shards of metal clinging to it—"is your transmission."
"Oh."

When we arrived back at the mechanic's shop, I was more than a little surprised to find that the bus driver was there waiting for me. He offered me the use of his cell phone to call my girlfriend and ask her to pick me up in Worthington, which was about two hours of awkward silence in a car with a complete stranger and his teenage daughter on their way to her high school volleyball game farther down the road. I was something less than completely comfortable leaving a number of my possessions behind, given that they were guarded by nothing more than a few locked doors and the integrity of a group of strangers who made a living by dismantling automobiles, but by this point, I had resigned myself to the fact that whatever was going to happen had very little regard for my feelings on the matter, and that it was a waste of time and energy to put up any sort of a fight. When I returned to retrieve the rest of my things, I discovered that, in addition to the bit about picking up strangers while driving unconventional vehicles, "Minnesota Nice" also meant that no one in town even thought of breaking into the out-of-town vehicle sitting unguarded outside for a week. As for the borrowed colossus, it was towed back home and summarily sold for parts, which had apparently been the plan for it all along, until it had been offered to me.

The next time I went home, I bought my first cell phone. It cost twenty dollars and did nothing but send and receive calls and text messages, which everyone I knew was reluctant to use. I understand if this is the one bit of the story you simply cannot bring yourself to believe. I agree; it's completely ridiculous.

Librarians are probably the most polite paparazzi ever. Or the politest. I don't know, I'm not Merriam-Fucking-Webster.

So, I had this whole post ready to go about how I broke my ankle at roller derby practice a few weeks ago where I was going to complain about how I always have to have people carry stuff for me and how I can't skate again until probably June, or how fucking exhausting it is to have to do a thousand miniature pole-vaults just to get anywhere, but then something happened on Saturday that made it totally worth it, so I had to rewrite the whole fucking post. Thanks a lot, one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.

In an effort to make being stuck in a cast for weeks suck less, I got a blue one, and I painted a TARDIS on it (which I'll admit was a bit of a challenge to do upside-down at 2AM):

Yes, it is bigger on the inside. Y'know, to allow for the swelling.

Then I went to the Texas Library Association Annual Conference, where Neil Gaiman happened to be speaking on Saturday. At first, they told me he was just going to be speaking, since he's coming back on a book tour in a couple of months, but then he apparently decided to do an incredibly limited signing that you had to have a ticket to get into. There were 100 tickets—total—for like 7000 librarians, but I totally got the second-to-last one. WHICH LED TO THIS:

Neil Fucking Gaiman signed my cast. Also, yes, I'm pretty sure he took his wife's middle name.

After he signed it, he pulled out his phone and took a picture of it...which he then tweeted and posted on his Facebook page. Then he retweeted my reply to him (about a minute before he came on stage to speak). I posted a couple pictures of it to snark the tumblr. I also tweeted the pictures at The Bloggess and she told me I win the internets AND THEN SHE FOLLOWED ME!

So, for the rest of the afternoon, I'm having some kind of aneurysm of awesome, which is still going on when I go to watch my wife destroy everyone on the track and win Best Blocker in her roller derby bout. While I'm there, she skates over to me and tells me that another girl on her team follows the Doctor Who Official tumblr. Who fucking reblogged my post. And then so did Neil, who added "I was impressed." And Amanda Fucking Palmer. And about 7000 other people. And then I passed out because I couldn't fucking handle the amount of awesome that was happening all in one day.

Also, pretty much the entire conference knew who I was in the span of about 2 hours, and suddenly everybody wanted a picture. It was like the politest paparazzi ever. "Can I take a picture? Do you mind? Is it OK? Oh, thank you SO much! I/my daughter/son/coworker/friend/neighbor is SUCH a fan." Of Doctor Who, that is. Or Neil Gaiman. Probably not of me. Yet.

Hello, Sexy.

This is pretty much how the American Dream works, too.

You know how everybody always says that if you just work hard enough, eventually...you'll burn yourself out? Well, that's true. Wait, no, it's "if you work just hard enough every once in a while, something good will happen, probably. If the right people happen to be looking." And that's true, too. Which brings me to my point:

I WON SOMETHING!!!

It's a major award.

The Cat Lady, who does write about cats sometimes, but also lots of other awesome and hilarious things, and who also spells "über" correctly (which is pretty much an automatic win) has been gracious enough to grant me the Liebster Award. I'll tell you the details in a minute, but first LOOK HOW PRETTY!

It comes from Germany, so you know it's high-quality. It's aimed at up-and-coming bloggers, which mostly just means that you have fewer than 200 subscribers; it's probably the case that millions of people read your blog, but just don't want to publicly admit or commit to it by subscribing. Assholes. It also includes a number of tasks that you have to complete, or you'll have bad luck for TEN MILLION YEARS, and the opposite of whatever you wished for will come true. But it's totally not like a chain-letter, because of reasons.

Anyway, here's all the stuff you have to do:

1. Thank the person that nominated you. Thanks, The Cat Lady!
2. Display the Liebster Heart on your blog. Done and done.
3. Nominate 3 to 5 more different bloggers (who may potentially have millions of readers, but fewer than 200 subscribers)
4. Post 11 things about yourself.
5. Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
6. Answer the 11 questions you've been asked in your nomination.
7. Ignore the fact that you're now being asked to nominate 11 people to award, and just stick with the original 3 to 5.
8. (Optional, as I've just invented it) Wonder why this award suddenly became obsessed with the number 11.
9. (Also optional, as it stems from the recently-invented 8th task) Blame Matt Smith.
10. (Also just invented; only applies to non-Whovians) Wonder why the hell you were just asked to blame Matt Smith.
11. (For ambitious non-Whovians who will be glad they did, and also because it brings the number of tasks to 11, creating some kind of self-referential circle of completeness) Watch all of Doctor Who to find out.

And here's me completing the aforementioned tasks:

11 Answers (With Questions!)

1. Did you ever have a teacher who yelled at/embarrassed/totally ruined you for life? If so, tell the story.
Not exactly, but during my senior year of high school, all but about 3 teachers at my school got caught up in a panic that my best friend and I ran a local mafia and were going to shoot up the school. Not even joking. (I will so write about this in a separate post.)

2. What is your dream career?
Librarian. And also writer. Technically, I am both of those, but only one probably counts as a career at this point. I'll let you guess which one.

3. Unicorn or Sasquatch for president?
I'd totally vote Unicorn, but I'm not sure they're native to the U.S., so they're probably not eligible to run. We'll have to ask Donald Trump for verification on this one.

4. What is your most embarrassing habit?
I'm kind of a hoarder. Not like A&E-class, this-building-should-be-condemned, but I'm very not good at throwing things away.

5. If you could have one talent that you do not currently have, what would it be?
Regeneration? Although, I've never actually died, so I can't say with absolute certainty that it's a talent I don't already have.

6. Last meal on earth: describe in detail. I'm hungry.
Pizza. Actually, 6 million pizzas. That should buy me some time.

7. If you could bring only three things on a deserted island, what would they be?
I'm going to assume it's not in the spirit of this question to say "my wife and our cats" or "a raft/TARDIS." In that case: 1) Some kind of awesome multi-tool with choppy things and whittly things and probably a magnifying glass for starting fires 2) A really well-stocked first aid kit 3) The Library of Congress

8. Favorite guilty pleasure?
INTERNET. FOREVER.

9. What kind of car do you drive, and what do you think that says about you?
It's a Focus, which probably says that I have a wonderful sense of irony because sometimes I'm not very good at seeing things through to HEY, do you want to go swimming? Once, I went to Scotland. Do you like tigers? I want some enchiladas. Baseball is fun.

10. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I can has confidence?

11. Favorite Disney movie?
The Empire Strikes Back totally counts. So does The Avengers.

11 Things About Me

1. I play roller derby; my derby name is Albus Rumbledore (Number: The Only 1 He Ever Feared).
2. I cross-stitch. Someday, I'll post pictures of some of the awesome stuff I've made. Probably.
3. I'm a vegetarian.
4. I've been on anxiety/depression meds for almost a year now. I've been trying to write about it for that same amount of time, minus about five minutes.
5. I have hitchhiked exactly once in my life. I got picked up by the short bus. Not even joking. There was a kid on there. He was in a wheelchair and wearing a helmet. (Still not joking.)
6. My superpowers are retcon and snakes.
7. I totally own a Sonic Screwdriver (10th Doctor's model). Once, I used it to fix a screaming child in the library.
8. I have 5 parents: Mother, Father-I-Grew-Up-With, Biological Father, Stepfather (married to Mother), and Stepmother (married to Biological Father). Hallmark does not make cards for this shit.
9. There is an Odin in my family tree. Given my unique family situation, I figure that, at worst, that makes me Loki.
10. I have tattoos of several things that are awesome and which have been important in my life for various reasons. Someday I will have full sleeves.
11. At least once in my life, I want to do stand-up comedy.

11 Questions for victims recipients of this award

1. Do you have any semi-useless superpowers (e.g., "I always know exactly what time it is," or "I can pay attention to two TV shows at once")? If so, what are they?
2. What is the worst book you have ever read? What was so terrible about it?
3. If you use some kind of analytics tool, what's the weirdest search that's led someone to your blog?
4. Which Hogwarts house would the Sorting Hat place you in?
5. How many roads must a man walk down?
6. What's your favorite alcoholic drink? (If it's somewhat obscure, what's in it?)
7. What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? Please specify African or European.
8. What's the coolest thing you've ever gotten paid to do?
9. What's in your Zombie Apocalypse survival kit?
10. What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
11. Cake or death?

Tag, you're it!

Jen, the Geek Fabulous geekiness from places like Firefly and The Walking Dead. Also, spoilers, so be careful if you're not caught up (or if you don't want to be nagged by River Song).

Gabi Books It Contender for next companion of The Doctor, wearer of high heels, and reviewer of books. Quite possibly involved with Sherlock Holmes. She's also joining roller derby soon (Ha! Now you have to do it!).

Desperate for Something Life. Love. Politics. Recently, quite a number of political posts, which were equal parts awesome and glorious snark that amounted to a bitchslap of, well, Mitt Romney, mainly. But other kinds of stupid in the election process as well.

And then I high-fived The Bloggess.

First of all, if you don't know who The Bloggess is, none of this will make any sense to you, so you should probably go over there and check her out before you read any further. Actually, first of all, if you don't know who The Bloggess is, how the hell have you even heard of me? Go and check her out. Faster! Done? Good. OK, second of all—actually, you know what? I just made my original "first of all" irrelevant since now you already know who she is, so everything I say will totally make sense to you, by which I mostly mean you have the background to understand things that happened yesterday and references that were made. I can't really make any guarantees regarding your reading comprehension. Or my ability to express anything coherently, especially given the fact that I don't even know what this paragraph is about anymore. Let's just start over.

So, yesterday I went to the Let's Pretend This Never Happened World Tour Of Mostly Texas So Far, even though they say you're not supposed to meet your heroes. Or your heroines. Or do heroin. Apparently it can "ruin the mystery" or something. Meeting your heroes/heroines does, not doing heroin. Maybe doing heroin does, too. I don't know. I've never done heroin. After this paragraph, you probably don't believe that.

Don't do heroin. It ruins the mystery.

Anyway, those people are full of shit, and possibly heroin, so you really shouldn't listen to them. Meet your heroes. And if one of those heroes happens to be Nathan Fillion, bring some twine and a friend with a camera so you can throw the twine at Nater Tater in a "think fast!" sort of way and your friend can take a picture of him just as he catches it. Send it to Jenny@thebloggess.com. It was her idea, anyway. If you had been there yesterday, you would have known that already. If you want to recreate the experience, you can try listening to the audiobook while looking at a picture of her. Then imagine she's also adding extra commentary that makes it even funnier. See? It's like you were totally there!

Of course, I forgot my twine at home because I'm terrible at planning ahead, so then I had to ask around at work, but nobody had any because who the fuck brings twine to the library? So then I just had to make this sign out of a Star Wars fruit snacks box like I was some kind of twine beggar.

I tried taking some pictures while she was reading, but the camera on my phone is lazy or needs glasses or something, so they could all just as well have been of Bigfoot or Nessie or maybe a unicorn. Apparently the strain of all the mythological creatures was so great that my phone died of exhaustion.

I swear, she's totally in this picture. Probably.

AND THEN I HIGH-FIVED THE BLOGGESS! But I don't have any pictures of it because it's almost impossible to take a picture of yourself spontaneously high-fiving someone as they're walking by. Also, my phone was still dead from exhaustion, so really I would have been randomly waving it around with one hand while high-fiving a moving target with the other. Awkward. Even for me, who saw David Sedaris in Austin and told him this story about...I don't even fucking know, but it was like 5 minutes long and didn't even make any sense because it was like 2 in the morning and I'd been standing in line for like 7 hours. He actually signed my book "OK, then."

I only had to stand in line for like 2 hours this time, which didn't make me completely incoherent, but did give me time to read a chapter of Mockingjay and also to try to figure out what the fuck these events were even about.

Also, we didn't so much follow the rules of Story Time. It was still fun for everyone.

And then I actually met her (as well as Juanita and Copernicus). The whole thing was seriously awesome. Also, it's been noted that I'm almost Nathan Fillion.

And then we got photobombed by a weasel.