Phew. It’s been a busy holiday, though hardly in the conventional sense. On Wednesday they sent me home early from work, partly because I was sick, but mostly because I was being a regular old sourpuss on account of being sick. I went home and took a three hour nap, and then loaded up the Subaru and started on my way down to Bend for Thanksgiving. The plan was to celebrate with my friends Shane and Brandee again, and perchance do some mountain biking or snowboarding or whatever, as dictated by the weather.
When driving to Bend in the winter I typically like to drive out to The Dalles and turn south on 197, so I can avoid going up and over the saddle of Mount Hood. The route barely adds fifteen minutes to my drive, and it lets me avoid the Cascades and do the bulk of my driving through the dry high desert landscape. Despite my careful planning for this trip, I never made it to Bend. I barely even reached the first exit for The Dalles.
I swerved to avoid the first deer.
And that’s when I hit the second deer.
He was a huge feller, much bigger than the doe that I didn’t hit. For one thing I am a gentleman, and I would never hit a lady. For another, I live by the conviction that if anything is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right. If you’re going to hit a deer, hit a huge fucking deer. That said, I have nothing on my uncle, who suffers from Parkinson’s and just recently shot an eight-point buck from his freaking wheelchair.
The buck did an incredible amount of damage to my car, smashing in the headlight, mangling the fender and the hood, shattering the windshield, snapping off the side mirror, and denting in the passenger doors. Fixing it is going to be ridiculously expensive. While I’m kinda pissed about the whole thing, I do realize that I still have my life and liberty, which is more than I can say for the deer.
Meanwhile, my hobbies lately have included sneezing, coughing violently, and talking to my insurance company. I’ve been doing my best to fight off this virulent plague I’m hosting, and so long as it’s not the Killing Cold I think I’ll be able to come out on the other side of this one. I’ve been pulling down hard on the Western Family Orange Juice, a from-concentrate concoction that’s so delicious you can actually taste the municipal water source.
