Whatever posessed me to believe that making booksigning appearances was glamorous?

I went to the Northwest Indiana Pagan Pride day last weekend. Frankly, I am still recoverying from the ordeal. Now don’t get me wrong, the event itself was wonderful, the hosts gracious and the public attentive and flattering. It was the 5 hour drive that became a 12 hour nightmare that was the problem.

Portage is a smallish Indiana town outside of Gary, which as it happens is south east of Chicago by about an hour’s drive. According to map quest the trip wuld take me 4 hours and 45 minutes. Completely doable even by my drive-a-phobic standards. Things were going just fine until I hit just outside of Gary. Then EVERYTHING came to a screeching halt. And stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon and on into the evening. We are talking about a stretch of about 5-6 miles of highway. No one was going anywhere. 4:00 dragged into 7:00 and inch by inch I went from exit 1 to exit 2 where all traffic was exiting the 4 lane, rush hour Friday evening, clogged highway. And I had to pee. BAD. Really, really bad. My poor bladder is still sore!

I finally crawled off the highway with all the hundreds of other cars, trucks and trailers and inched my way to the first service station hoping to relieve myself. Not happening. There had been so many other people with the same desparate need the place’s sole toilet had broken. I took in the situation with as much grace as I could muster given the circumatances, but the woman behind me was not so understanding.

She was certain it was all an evi plot against her personally. She berated the woman behind the counter for not having a separate facility for women. Then she berated her for not having a working facility. All the while the shop keep apologized for the unfortunate breaking fo said facilities. Finally the irrate woman came to the realization she was NOT going to get to go to the toilet at this place. In a huf she proclaimed loudy for all to here. “Well, if I can’t use your bathroom, I’m not buying your gas!” I had to laugh.

By the time I got past all that mess and into my hotel room it was half past 9 already. Luckily there was a resturant right in front of the hotel. I had a yummy catfish dinner and had the place to myself because the bar side had live music happening and it seems like the band’s entire compliment of friends and family had turned out to cheer them on.

By the time I had finished my meal I was so loopy that I subtracted the tip from my bill instead of adding it. The poor waitress had to chase me out of the resturant to get me to fix my math error.

So who thinks life of a traveling author is still glamorous?