Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

On my way home the other night, I was on the train and I noticed a man trying to wake up a guy riding the train.  The unresponsive guy just sat there as his phone rang 3-4 times.  They shook him over and over again, but the guy wouldn’t respond.  Another concerned guy came over and started checking for his pulse.  They took someone’s glasses and placed them under the man’s nose to see if he was breathing.  So they pretty much determined that he wasn’t breathing or that he was in serious trouble.  So people picked him up and put him on the floor and I couldn’t see what they were doing to him, but they may have been giving him CPR.   At this point, everyone on the train was quite concerned and for the first once, people actually used the emergency phone/intercom at the end of the train.  The conductor was asking stupid questions like "which train are you on?" and not surprisingly, nobody knew what the number of the train was.  People started calling out "8" and "1" cause the doors were numbered 8 and 1.  Around this time and to everyone’s relief, the troubled guy started to respond.  One lady started to ask "what drugs did you take?".  I’m not sure if she wanted to know because doctors/paramedics might want to know later on or because she wanted to know what drugs or concoction she needed to avoid.  I cannot imagine what the guy was thinking though; one moment he was sitting on the train, the next moment he was waking up on the floor with 5 or 6 people over him.  The person speaking to the train conductor on the intercom reported that the man had started to respond and the conductor closed the door at the station and just kept on going.  No paramedics or nothing.  Sweet!  No more delays cause I was one stop away.

Earlier in the week, I was heading home again and this crazy Texan army dude started talking to a bunch of us that were (unfortunately) in proximity.  He was loud and talking in tongues  mostly.  But I believed him when he was telling us that he was heading towards the Bethesda hospital to pick up some medication.  Meds for being unstable I reckon.   It seemed like it was the longest train ride ever cause the guy just wouldn’t stop talking.  What was normally a 20 min ride turned into an eternity.  As we got closer to Bethesda, the people started to get off and eventually, I was the only one standing there with him.  Fuck!  Luckily it was only one stop away again, but it was also the most awkward ride ever.  I had thought about getting off along the way or switching trains, but I knew he was getting off in Bethesda eventually, and since I thought he was crazy, there was a good chance he’d be lingering around the station if I had gotten in one or two trains later.  And besides, I didn’t wanna waste time trying to avoid him.  Maybe I should have though.  Cause we both got off at my station and he followed me, and he kept talking, and he started asking me questions about where I worked.  I answered him vaguely and then he threw me for a loop when he said "Well, looks like you’re my guide now.  Where are we going?"  Fuck!  Are you serious dude??  I laughed it off and as we neared the turnstiles, I finally shook off the nutbag cause he had to show the station manager a pass or something.  I picked up the pace and b-lined it to the escalators hoping he wouldn’t catch up.  Lucky for me, I didn’t see him again.  Score one for moi!

Last night was the DC101 Chili Cook-Off.   It’s an annual event pairing a chili making competition with a rock concert, all to raise money for the National Kidney Foundation.  A few of us set up a team.  Awesome Town consisted of Ben, Brad, Brant, Aaron and me.  We had a bunch of other people that said they were interested in participating, but ultimately, they didn’t show up or bailed.  The plan was to serve up some chili, enter it in the competition, and drink lots of beer.  This was the first time any of us had entered or even attended the event so we didn’t know what to expect.  It was drizzling and a tad cold and when we got to the event, we quickly noticed that we were total amateurs.  Everyone had a tent/canopy.  We did not.  Everyone had huge tables.  We had a 3′x3′ table pulled from a Honda CRV.  We were relatively unprepared.  So here’s a picture of us amongst everyone else.
We’re the tent-less little pile to the left of the Extoic sign.  But we made the most of it.  We obviously didn’t have much to set up so we made breakfast and then 4 of the 5 of us went for a beer run.  Yes, we wanted beers for breakfast!  It turns out that the beer lines weren’t opened yet and when we got back, we found Aaron sitting in the chair enjoying his punch, not noticing that our chili was burning smoking like crazy.  We had burned our chili!  It was pretty good too.  Well, we tried to save it by putting in Hershey Kisses and to some degree, it helped a little bit.  It still tasted burnt though.  So we made up some bullshit story that we had used smoked bacon in our recipe and we marketed as Smoked Bacon Chocolate Chili.  And some people actually believed our story, which goes to show, that people will believe anything you tell them.  Some of my favourites quotes from the day:

"I really like the smokiness!" - that’s burnt chili you’re tasting!

"You guys need to expand! Cause you guys got the best shit in the house but nobody knows you!" - in reference to our tiny stand and lousy signage.

"It tastes like cigarettes."  - one we couldn’t fool…

Surprisingly, some people actually liked the chili.  Even some of the judges liked the ’smokines’.  Hahaha.  Suckers!  Well, we managed to use it all up so I say that we were quite successful overall. How the event works, is that you hand out samples in little taster cups.  If people like it, they are supposed to donate to the Kidney Foundation.  We were pretty focused on getting rid of the chili, our donations suffered.  I think we ended up with about $4 in donations; not that that is a good reflection of our chili.  We just didn’t push for donations.  The event itself was pretty crazy.  The line-up to get in wrapped around the entire block.  And this isn’t a normal small city block.  This is a huge giant enormous block.  Think of a line up wrapped around Costco for 4-5 hours.  I have more pictures on Picasa and Facebook.  All in all though, we had a great time and we met a lot of interesting and cool people.