One of the benefits of tagging along on this trip with Gabe was meeting some of his best friends from high school and their justly ballyhooed science teacher, Senson. Another was meeting Kelzie, a more recent Senson student and Lucky Guess teammate. At 4:30, after almost 24 hours of manic devotion to trivia, I needed a change of scenery, and she and I walked down the partly snowy street (I in my rugged slippers) to Burger King. The purportedly chicken-based fried item I ate actually constituted an improvement on the junk I'd been popping from the library fridge (not to mention the junk that didn't require refrigeration!).
According to the lady at the counter, we didn't have to buy a Kids Meal or even be small children to climb around in Kids Land. Yahoo! Sadly, the supply of colored plastic balls was too low for me to test the characteristics of the structure under sudden load. Also, I think the counter lady may have been wrong about the small child requirement. It was a bit tight for me. When exiting, I had to pull myself down the twisty slide because friction was defeating gravity. Kelzie didn't have nearly as much difficulty. I suspect they make the tubes just big enough for small adults to get in there and regulate in times of need. I would appreciate something in the nature of a Big Kids Land, but my dream will probably never come true.
At the end of the contest, as is traditional, the trivia masters hit us with ridiculously impossible questions called “garrudas”. Late on a Sunday night, we had to:
- find all mayors of the francophone town of Roquemaure, Québec
- figure out what was written on the interior of the baseball cap worn by the person in the photo in the back office of a Brookstone shop in the Galleria Mall in St. Louis
- name the modern sculpture that figured large in the opening chase sequence in the most recent Bond film
We actually had a lead on the last one, because one of my fraternity brothers had a version of the movie available to him. But we couldn't get the answer in time.
In the end, we missed third place by one question. Everyone thought of a question he could and should have gotten. Our foes were quite worthy. At times it seemed that “Touched by an Uncle” got every question right. But “Lucky Guess…” has been competing for 19 years. At the risk of sounding like a Cubs fan, we'll get 'em next year. I will sure as hell try to be back.
Senson's van overheated soon after starting for Madison. We stopped at the nearest gas station and hung around in the convenience store while Senson went to borrow his sister's van. During this time, Gabe was even funnier than I could have conceived possible. (Some of the credit for this was due to our exhaustion.) Kelzie and I cut out of the store and sat in Senson's overheated yet strangely unwarm van, halfway attempting to sleep, and failing due to the genesis of an interesting conversation. She made me think. A rarity for someone I've just met.
When we got to Gabe's mom's house, I'd been awake for 36 hours straight. It was time to sleep.