Highlights From My Vacation.

It was 90 degrees in Ohio as I left the delightfully cool San Francisco bay, yet I voluntarily hurled towards the inferno in a metal tube at 600 miles an hour. Like I was in a hurry. Like I really wanted to be there. This makes me question my sanity, as well as the sanity of the first covered-wagon driving pioneer who reached Ohio and decided this would be a good place to stop.

"Well, let's see, it's so hot here that not only have I sweated through my shirt, I'm actually a little dizzy and disoriented. One of my horses looks like it's about ready to die and the Indians tell me that in six months it will be so cold that the snot in my nose will freeze. On the other hand, it makes me feel good that I can be a food source for so many mosquitoes. Yup, this is the place! I'm home!!"

Shortly thereafter I imagine that pioneer started talking about football and making babies, and the people of Ohio have excelled at doing both ever since. I was 16 years old the first time someone in Ohio asked me if I had a kid, and if I know my Ohioans, Jim Tressel's troubles will lead every resident of the state to have major self-esteem issues this fall.

I escaped all this, and I was now headed back.

But not before going through Denver International Airport, which from what I could tell, is nowhere near the actual city of Denver. As we started our descent, I looked out the window and saw absolutely no sign of civilization. This continued all the way to touchdown. I was kinda glad I was just passing through, because I'm pretty sure if I lived in Denver, I would have had to catch another plane from the Denver airport to get home.

By the way, there are splotches on the carpet of the Denver airport that are totally the color of poo. I actually saw one out of the corner of my eye and instinctively avoided stepping in it.

I boarded the plane to Ohio and halfway there I had to pee. There was a lady in the bathroom changing a baby and it honest to God took her more than 10 minutes. The captain of the plane was in line behind me and got very, very, angry. Obviously he didn't realize in Ohio the babies are in charge. We landed and I saw lots of fat people wearing Ohio State t-shirts. I was home. The use of the word "epidemic" to describe the fattening of the country is not an exaggeration. At one point during my vacation I found myself in a gift shop in Ohio's Amish country. The place had two stories and an elevator. I looked around and realized that that elevator was a business necessity, as there was a significant portion of that store's customers that would not have been able to climb one set of stairs. I am not kidding you.

I didn't buy anything.

Gotta hand it to those Amish people though. Balls. Of. Steel. No way in hell you'd ever catch me trying to drive a horse and buggy along a friggin highway. And not one of them is fat, which is probably good news for their horses.

So yeah, I spent the week hot, bored, lonely and miserable. I made fun of the locals in my head and wrote a column for Drug Topics to keep me from going insane. And when I left my Mom cried. Flat out cried. Her tears were disorienting. A reminder that at one time I was one of those babies that run this state, and in her eyes I still am. I boarded another metal tube and headed back to a land of miserable, self-centered, lonely, narcissistic, truly awful people. I went back to California, where I fit in just fine.