Mr Smiths Plastic Hideaway: League Assignment: Cool Story Bro

Our Tale Opens....

on a middle aged man, somewhat thick about the midsection but trying to lose weight and get back in shape...

A man with a single desire on the night our tale unfolds- a desire to put carbon arrows into paper targets, pull them out, and put them in again. I slung my battered old compound bow into the trunk of my civic and started the car.

Seems easy enough, I suppose. But to be interesting, the story has to have conflict, and this is a story of MAN Vs. THE ELEMENTS

You see, this night was a night of late season snow in Colorado, and late season snow on Colorado doesn't mess around. and my Civic, while very reliable, tends to turn into a sled once snow gets above the bottom of the car. The bottom of the civic isn't that high off the ground, either.

I made it three blocks before I started getting hung up badly. This was a heavy, wet snow, like trying to drive through Jell-O. No wimpy powder snow here, this was snow with a vengeance. so I turned the car around and started back up my street. I live on a cul-de-sac, on a hill, and winter weather and gravity and grade are not friends to my car. I got about 25 feet up the hill before the car started to hang and slide. I backed back down and retried, to no avail. So I parked on the avenue and decided to hoof it back home. Abandon the car, abandon the bow, abandon the journey.

We take an aside here, to cover how I'm dressed. I'm wearing:

a wool pea coat- good choice
a hat- good choice
khakis-indifferent choice
no socks-pretty rare I wear socks anyway
moccasin-style loafers-not a good choice

So I start hiking up my street, seeing people out doing things with their cars through my badly snowed up glasses, seeing people I don't really recognize, but I don't often see my neighbors anyway. But I slog through the slush and snow to see...the other avenue, not the houses at the end of the cul-de-sac.

What this means to the layman, (someone not familiar with the topography of my neighborhood) is that I have just spent somewhere between 10 minutes and an eternity walking up

THE

WRONG

DAMN

STREET

I parked the car further along the avenue than I thought, and went up the wrong block

I toyed with some choices at this point. stay here, build a snow shelter, raise sled dogs...or start walking. I walked, because I'm not sure where you even get blubber from. I walked down the hill, down the avenue, and back up the next hill. I found my house almost at the summit, I shed my snow-matted coat and hat, peeled off my snow-crusted shoes and went and put my feet in a warm bath. And when I could feel them...they hurt.

I walked down and recovered my car the next day-no one had hit it in the snow, the bow was OK for having been in the trunk overnight. It took a little work to drive it up my hill, but I made it.