the adventure

man, working by yourself is hard! i told adam yesterday that i was so bored i was ready to take a drill to my head. i was mostly joking. thank GOD pablo's coming back this afternoon.

last week i was talking on aim to my good friend and study buddy jon. i told him i was really bored and i wished i had a plane. the next weekend jon was in town from burkey and hung out with josh, but i didn't get to see him because i was at the wedding (see yesterday's post :) ). well, jon left a present for me at josh's house. i was super excited because i love getting and giving presents, but josh wouldn't tell me what it was. he did tell me he was jealous though. then i knew... it was a plane.

sure enough, josh handed me a little box with a tiny motorized plane inside. it was yellow! it was pretty! and styrofoam! i named him benny. i loved it! now jon's automatically on my top ten list of favorite people in the world, because i love airplanes. he found the key to my heart.

josh and i put the plane together, but stupid me put the wings on backwards so the plane tilts down instead of up. the adhesive was really strong and i couldn't get the wings off, but josh told me it would probably work anyway. we jumped josh's back fence, which was difficult, since there was a big drop on the other side. josh has a little park behind his backyard, and it was the perfect place for benny's maiden voyage. having the wings on backward worked okaaaay... he was just flying low instead of high. but being the engineers we are, we wanted to fix it.

we went back to josh's house (by way of the fence) and sawed the wings in half and turned them around and glued them back together and added some toothpicks for reinforcement. when we were done poor benny looked ghetto, and i was terrified that his flying days were over. we'd already broken one of his propellers. we jumped the fence again and crossed all our fingers and blew on the plane for good luck. i tossed him up.... and he flew! he kept going higher and higher, and josh and i were so excited, we were like little ten-year-olds, jumping up and down and cheering. it was lovely.

that lasted about twelve seconds.

benny stopped flying in circles and flew clear across the park and over someone else's wall and straight into a tree. a pissed-off bird flew out of the tree and gave us a dark look, but that was the least of our worries. the people at the house weren't home. their back wall was about eight feet tall, and unlike josh's fence, impossible to climb. we could see that benny had lodged himself about twenty-five feet off the ground in a locust tree, right over a really tall shed. josh gave me a boost and i got on top of the eight foot wall. i was hitting the tree branch with a stick, hoping benny would fall out. that wasn't working, and even if it had, we would have to get him out of the yard, and i couldn't climb the fence by myself.

josh told me to jump to the shed. i told him to get real. he handed me a board, thinking that it would reach from the fence to the shed, which it certainly didn't. however, it did reach from the fence to a grape vine lattice, the top of which was about seven feet off the ground. i shuffled to the lattice, which kinda freaked josh out, because as far as he knew i was walking on thin air. from the lattice i could reach the shed. josh told me where to look and i found poor benny, with another broken propeller and a beat-up nose. i tossed the plane to josh, who missed it, the oaf, and they both disappeared behind the wall. i called, "is it okay?" josh answered, "ummmm...... yeah....." i knew he was lying.

getting off the shed was a lot harder than getting on. i had to stretch to reach the board with my foot, and josh had to hang onto the other side so it wouldn't flip and dump me into the yard. finally though, i was back on the fence again, and josh helped me down. benny's tail fin and back wing had broken when josh dropped him. ever the optimist, josh promised it would still fly. we charged the plane and let it go and it went straight into the ground. it reminded me of one of rachel's gutterballs. poor benny!

well, if jon's goal was to get rid of boredom, he certainly did that. big adventure, daring rescue, heights, and i actually didn't mention the dogs, but there were dogs. poor little benny is on the desk in our front hall now, waiting for the day when we fix him up so he can relive his twelve seconds of soaring glory.

well, hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work i go. may your adventures be sweet.