Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 21:29:02 -0600 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 9 How To Win Second Prize In a One Prize Contest "Somebody said, 'Sioux, We think maybe you've won.' Sioux said, 'You must Be puttin' me on.' They said, 'No, we think The prizes we're givin'll surely help you run.' Sioux said, 'So Where was all these winnins won?' They said, 'At the start, not finish, Off Highway 61.'" --Kitschme Siouxme (With apologies, for the umpteenth time, to Bob Dylan) I'm staring down at Schultz's two full Tupperware tubs on the campground ground at ten after four in the morning. It's Saturday. It is totally and completely pitch dark. We have exactly fifty minutes to make it to the starting line of the 1999 Superior Trail 100 Mile Endurance Run before the gun goes off, and HE suddenly wants to do the laundry. "WHAT?" I holler. "You want ME to do WHAT with these huge luggin' tubs?" [Author's note: "luggin'" is not the word I originally used here. I changed it on account of the lawyers.] "Shhhhsh!" whispers Schultzie in a very loud voice. "We just need to haul 'em to the laundry room!" "YOU WANNA WASH YOUR TENT NOW???" Apparently I wasn't whispering any too softly. Because, honest to goodness, here comes another unhappy camper--at ten after four in the morning--carrying a flashlight and walking his dog. His BIG dog. His BIG ugly nasty huge growling leash-straining fang-baring dog. Maybe, I think, it's his wolf. Medium-Sized-Running-Little-Bare thinks it's his moose. (She told me this later. There wasn't time to tell it to me then.) "You people are disturbing..." the unhappy camper started. "You ain't a-kiddin'," said Butch. The unhappy camper continued without missing a beat, "...the entire campground. You are waking us up from the dead..." "You got that right!" interrupted Butch. "...sleep in which we were all peacefully enjoying ourselves. Will you people puhleeze keep it quiet over here?" "Yes-sss-ssss-sir," stammered Schultz. "We're sorry," said Little, saying, and exposing, very little. "We're leaving anyway," said Butch. "Nice wolfie!" (Guess who said that.) Thankfully the guy took his light and his leash and his wolf with his teeth back with him, disappearing back into the shadows from whence they came. Back into those deep, dark, and mysterious shadows by the shore of Gitche Gumee. Back where the ghosts of crabby old Injuns have haunted settlers since Hiawatha's time. Back where the old cook on the Edmund Fitzgerald used to stock his galley with wolf meat. Back where, in just a few seconds more, he could've stocked it with Schultz. "Jeezesiss, Schultzie!" I whispered again, a little less loudly this time. "You have to be kidding me! Where the hell do you see any LAUNDRY room around here?" "It's just over there!" "Where?" "There!!" "That building?" "Yes!" "That's the office!" "It's also the camp laundry!" "It is?" "Yes! It is!" "But it's a half a mile away!" "No, it's not!" "Yes! It is!" "Aw c'mon." "It's a quarter-after-four-in-the-mother-luggin'-morning, Schultzie," I whispered--loudly again. "You want us to lug these two stupid tubs fulla junk ALL THE WAY OVER THERE? And you still plan to show up on time for the race?" [Author's note: "mother-luggin'" is not the word I originally used here. I changed it on account of the lawyers.] "Open up your trunk," says the Schultz-man. Ordinarily, I would've praised his genius. Unfortunately, at AFTER a quarter-after-four on raceday morning and AFTER opening the trunk to reveal all the junk *I* needed to bring to the start of the race and AFTER realizing that those two HUGE tubs of his weren't going to fit inside my tiny rented--and sticky--sports car sized trunk, I found it much more therapeutic to question it instead. "NOW whuddaya wanna do, Schultzie. Call for a chopper?" "Air lift!" he brightens. "We'll put 'em both on the roof!" "OF THE BUILDING???" "No! Of the CAR!!!!!!" Genius! A stroke of sheer brilliance! Whattaman! I should tell you that by this time the entire campground is awake and has begun rather unmercifully to curse, and rather loudly too, I might add. Next thing you know we're all piled inside the car, thirty-one degrees with all the windows wide open, arms outside and bent up, holding onto two huge Tupperware tubs precariously balanced on the roof of a stickily rented virgin white, heretofore unscratched, rather expensively rented Pontiac Grand Am. It's quarter after four in the morning. The entire campground is on its feet throwing things at us, and we're bumping along a pot-holed gravel road speeding as fast as we can toward Ranger Rick's main office. And, naturally, Schultzie starts... "Ya know," he laughs, "if you put everything you own inside plastic tubs on the top of your car and don't bother to tie any of it down, you COULD be a redneck!" "Say it again, Schultzie," I say. "A little louder this time. And tell it to that happy camper over there with the shoe in his hand." Meanwhile, of course, our Ironman chronometers were ticking swiftly toward the next millennium, so we decided to cut the comedy. When we got to the building, Schultzie and I leaped out and--never mind each taking one end--we each took one entire tub apiece and, with loud savage grunts as befitting the inner burdened beasts of our otherwise gentle natures, HAULED THEM SONS O' BITCHES OFF THAT CAR ROOF AND INSIDE THE BACK DOOR OF THAT BUILDING. Boom. And stacked 'em both right next to the washer with the red-crayoned "out of order" sign. Done. Screen door slammed and we're otta there. We RIPPED up Highway 61. We ROARED all the way along the inside lane of the Outer Drive. We CAREENED around three corners and SCREECHED to a skidding halt inside the last remaining parking space in the lot outside the Mary McDonald Elementary School, just a few minutes shy of four-thirty in the morning on Saturday, September the 11th, in the Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-nine. And not one kindergarten kid did we hit on his way to the playground either. Immediately the car doors flew open and my Easy Riders were gone! So, I popped open the trunk and made my preparations as though I was all alone, the only one left in the parking lot, the only man left on the earth. I did what they do in those adidas ads. I stripped naked. Then, I splattered my legs with fake mud and looked around for the photographer. And then, well, since I didn't find one, I put on my running shorts and finished getting ready. Inside the building the buzz was all abuzz. Everyone was scurrying around performing strange rituals and invoking the Great Spirit. Someone had a drum. We put on war bonnets and began the dance. "Hey-ya-ya-ya-hey-ya, hey-ya, hey-ya-ya-uh-hey-ya-ya!" [Author's note: Nah, Ah'm jus' a-kiddin' you. Truth is, everything was happening at this point just like it happens at every other race you've ever shown up almost-late for, so why should I burden you with any more details? I'll just move on and, oh, by the way, "Ah ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more" neither.] Oh, but there was just this one more thing: THE GRAND PRIZE RAFFLE you qualified for just by showing up and checking in and picking up any safety pins they shorted you in your pre-race packet. "Here," said the sweet lovely volunteer while I counted out two more pins. "Put your name and bib number on this slip of paper." "Oh yeah? What, didja think I was Eric Clifton and want my autograph?" "No, silly. It's for the raffle." "WHAT 'RAFFLE'?" "You could win a new pair of Montrail shoes." "Right. I'll win 'em fer shure. Where do I sign?" So I filled out the slip and slid the slip in the slot on the lid of the shoebox (I guess it was) and it slipped my mind. I walked out of that otherwise too-early-for-lunchtime lunchroom and back into the fracas to find my friends. Schultzie was peeing at the first little boy's urinal and somebody else was at the second. And, he was missing the target. So I, uh, tiptoed down to number four. Butch, I thunk, was reading the junk in the pre-race packet in one of the little boy stalls. I took two sniffs and got the funk out of there. Little was standing around nervously invoking the Great Spirit herself. She looked to be deep in thought, or sleep, so I left her alone. She was, however, finally wearing shorts, and so she was, finally and at last, a Little--more--Bare. (Hmmm, I thought. Good lookin' Injun!) When the guy with the bullhorn shouted two inches from my eardrum that "THE RACE WILL BE STARTING IN FIVE MINUTES," I decided to stroll back outside and take my position among the thirty-eight thousand other runners corralled along Edison Boulevard--NOT--all the while looking for the sign that said "18:00 minute/mile pace group." And, of course, I didn't find any such sign. There were, what, about one whole hundred runners? And, maybe, a half a one? (That would be yours truly.) "TWO MINUTES TO RACE START!" the bullhorn said. Maybe it said this all by itself. I dunno. I never saw the guy again. Suddenly, there was this woman out in front of the front line, and she was hollering something. Something about... uh...the drawing. Oh, did she mean the Montrails raffle? "NUMBER 1044," she hollers. Nothing happens. "THE WINNING NUMBER IS NUMBER 1-0-4-4!" she yells again. Suddenly, here comes Little. "That's YOUR number, Kitsch! You won!!" Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll... Whutdalug duz diskindasheet do fer arr heroe's iggo? Could this be some kinda mistake? Our hero has never won a decent pair of running--or any other kind of either--shoes in his life. Did she call out the right number? Was "the fix" in? Was anybody in Vegas betting on the underdog? Is THIS how the "Black Sox" scandal of the 1919 World Series got started? Somebody ELSE won Shoeless Joe's shoes??? Stay tuned next time, radio fans! Don't touch that dial! And be sure to patronize our sponsors, won't you? Schick Straightedge Razors, Redman Chewing Tobacco, and, of course, Tupperware. "The Continuing Saga of Our Chicago Rookie Leftout Longstop at the Minnesota Humpdome" will be back shortly with Part 10. Kitsch Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net