I was at a convention in Las Vegas for a bunch of internet nerds. About a thousand of us congregated at the Imperial Palace, which was a shitheap of the first degree. Imagine roving herds of neckbeards, stumbling from watering hole to watering hole, beers in hand, stripper cards as currency, goatse references abounding. Mating calls of "INTERNET!" rang out across the desert at every chance encounter. They always know their own.

Grandiose plans were bandied about every which way. "Let's go to the shooting range!" "There's a strip club that's only four miles away!" "I want to elbow my way through three hundred children in a crappy arcade with a scarily ancient roller coaster!"

There was vision to spare, but, alas, no action.

I wanted to go to an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. I like sushi. I like eating. I sure like eating sushi. All I want? Hell, yeah! I set a meeting time/place, made the reservation, collected the address of the place and numbers for cabs, and herded about 25 of these elusive (and easily spooked) animals into this haven of sweet, sweet sushi action. And the feasting began! And it was good.

My one failing was not taking in to account how long it would take to get a cab to get BACK to the strip. When I called, the wait was 45-90 minutes. Huh. How 'bout that? Some people took off walking, but a number of us decided to wait. Having the attention span of fleas, we soon got bored and decided to walk the 2 miles. In Las Vegas. In July. At 3pm. We are dumb.

At the first hotel (perhaps .75 miles?) we fled to the shade and lined up for a cab. There were still so many of us we would need three cabs. Hmm. That's getting kinda expensive. The guy at the head of the cab line suggested we get a limo. You can fit 13 people in a limo, it would end up being cheaper, and we'd still be in a group. Sounds like a great idea! If only we'd known what a sick, sadistic bastard that guy really was.

The 13 of us pile in to the limo. Keep in mind, this is a bunch of internet nerds who came all the way to Vegas for a conference for INTERNET NERDS. I've got one and a half people in my lap. Somehow the biggest guy in the group ended up getting in last and being on top. There is no room to move and every strangled breath carries with it the barest hint of Doritos and Mountain Dew.

The first part of the drive wasn't so bad. We were all joking and laughing about how packed we were, but we knew it would be over soon. It had to be, right? It was only a mile or so. What we forgot about was that we were in Las Vegas. In July. At 3pm. We are DUMB.

Very quickly it become sweltering. The jokes died down to the occasional wry remark, soon morphing in to full-on bitching. It being a limo, there were two small, very dark windows all the way in the back. When opened they did absolutely nothing to increase airflow among thirteen stacked bodies. The big guy was uncomfortable on top of people, and we were ALL uncomfortable with him on top of us, sweating, swearing, and squirming.

Then we got to the strip. Oh, thank god. We're almost there. You know how traffic is unbelievably horrible and it's impossible to get anywhere on the strip? We didn't. We do now. The worst of it was when we just missed the left-turn light a block away from our hotel. The end was in sight, so near, so close, and we still had just that much longer in Hell. By this point, the windows were starting to fog up and naught was heard but grunting, swearing, and shifting, but in the least erotic way ever imaginable in the entire universe. Ever.

At last, we reached freedom! With clown-car-like hilarity, thirteen moist and miserable nerds burst forth from the limo. It had been a bonding experience like none other. I'm still friends with some of the people in that limo. Hell, I've slept with one of them.

In commemoration of that being one of the only plans to actually happen as planned (well, at least mostly) and my 6' of blond-haired, blue-eyed vikinglikeness, I was given this avatar with the accompanying text.