13 Pounds of Flesh : 11 Bottles of Booze at Toots and Sally Ride Again

Yes, I’m still processing this experience. But here’s my recap. You’ll have to click below to read it, as I’m expecting it to be a touch lengthy. Oh yes, click. You know you want to…

13 Pounds of Flesh

My earlier post explained the problems of the Paris Marathon ‘07. Mainly that there was NO FRACKIN’ WATER. So I ended up dehydrated, depressed, enraged, and enjoying the sweet sweet glow of utter hatred. I felt pretty good the day after…but something started to go wrong later in the day. You see, something was growing inside me.

We ended up going to visit the Eiffel Tower the night after. I wasn’t feeling well. Lunch ended up deposited in the bushes at the base of the Tower. I hope some tourist got a good picture of that. Some more lunch ended up in a drain at one of the Metro stations on our way back to the apartment. Oh, then there’s the alley just outside our St. Paul stop, near the apartment where yet more lunch ended up deposited. (Yeah, there will be photos shortly.)

The evening after the Marathon I ordered some steak, rare. I usually order it rare, but this was way rare. Nearly mooing. (Yeah, Sally thinks it was the two little itsy bitsy tastes of wine I had toward the end of the marathon, but I’m sticking with the steak.) I was sick. Really sick. I spent nearly 36 hours going between the bed and the bathroom. I couldn’t keep down even water. Enter my theory: Mr. E.Coli. Yeah, I think I had an e.coli. This infection either came from the rare steak I ordered OR it came from the two handfuls of water I manged to get from a park fountain at about mile 10 of the marathon. Whatever the source or cause, I was really sick. (Many thanks to Sally for cleaning the mess I made in the bathroom, twice. And for putting on my socks for me.)

So during the second day, Sally went to the pharmacy for me to get something–otherwise I was headed to the hospital. Fortunately, in France at least, the pharmacist is able to provide medications that would normally require a stupid doctor’s prescription in the US. Sally got me some good drugs. New drugs. Ones that don’t make me sleep. I hesitated taking some of them at first, because they made me vomit more, but finally I kept them down. And I almost immediately felt better. Woo Hoo! Go Sally!

I felt much better by our time to leave Paris and head to our second family in France. I was weak, but at least I could start to keep down water AND food, finally. Two days later, when we finally reached Angers, I weighed myself. Between the marathon and the sickness, I has lost 13 pounds. Yep, 13 pounds of flesh.

11 Bottles of Booze

We traveled back to the states with 12 bottles of wine in two boxes of six. We had to check this, due to the current “security requirements”. Fine. The boxes of wine were fine in Detroit when we went thru Customs and then re-checked our luggage.

Short story, one of the boxes went missing by the time we arrived in Minneapolis. I ended up talking with a Northwest Baggage Supervisor who claimed the box was destroyed in transit. Because it was a “fragile” item, they would not cover the damage. Except, the Supervisor refused to produce the damaged goods, so I was insisting that it was to be treated as “lost luggage” which they will cover. More on all this another time. I was furious because there was a disturbance in the force and something wasn’t right. He refused to produce the damaged goods, claiming they were in the garbage and he wasn’t going to dig through the garbage. Eventually he produced the luggage tag, which was undamaged and had no wine stains. At my wits end, we left with the hopes of following up with customer service the day after. I expressed to him (Westley) as I departed to “Enjoy the bottles of wine you have back there that you are stealing from us.”

As we were driving out of the parking area at the airport my cell phone rang. You see, I had given it initially as we reported the “lost baggage”. An honest and anonymous Northwest employee said that she went in the back and found FIVE–YES FIVE–undamaged bottles of wine. She would meet us at one of the doors with them. Frack! That twit Westley really was trying to STEAL OUR WINE!!! We drove around and there was the woman. With a box. With five undamaged bottles of wine. OUR WINE. I have yet to follow up with NWA on this issue, but rest assured I will.