QUOTE (Malok @ Aug 3 2004, 11:35 AM)
Perhaps Aaron can look into that now that he is here and has free time. :)
Don't count on that, Malok. Aaron's vacation continues to be packed with adventure. It seems that after the debacle with the trash can and the less than stellar moment on the rock wall, Aaron wanted a positive experience to assuage his feeling of ill-usage (whether justified or not.) Nothing suitably rewarding came to mind, so he started to ponder what his friends at rmnpfourms would advise him to do. After discarding the idea of going down the list of members alphabetically as unfair (he might accidentally leave someone out that way) he decided to just close his eyes, let his mind wander and see whose words of wisdom might come to him. Unfortunately, the van started to wander as well, since he was driving at the time, so the words of wisdom actually came from Jenny; and they were rather emphatic. Happily, as soon as the words, “All right, all right, don’t scream again!” came out of his mouth, an idea hit him with the force of the SUV out of whose path he had just jerked the van. Scream - for ice cream! Grand Lake ice cream! That would work - it would get him out of Estes Park and away from all those gawkers who were still pointing & giggling; he could offer it to the family as atonement for his driving lapse; it might earn him some brownie points with ProfHall, who would then let him in on the secret of what he teaches. Perfect!
So focused on the goal that he was almost blinded to all else, Aaron had no clear memory of the drive to Grand Lake (though Jenny and the kids claim they will never forget that ride as long as they live.) Wasting no time, Aaron made a beeline to the store with the large ice cream cone sign hanging in front, headed for the door and then halted in his tracks. There was another sign on the door - “Gone On Vacation, Reopen August 9.” The mental image of a calendar came into his mind (since it was a “Bare-It-All Babes In the Wild” calendar, it’s fortunate it was only in his mind and not visible to Jenny.) Written largely in red on August 9 were the words
BACK AT HOME. By this point, Jenny and the kids were so glad to be out of the van, they really didn’t care; they just shrugged and headed off up the street. Aaron stood there, bereft. What would ProfHall say to him? How could he explain his failure? What about his ice cream? He gave the door a little kick in disgust.
If he had just gone on with his family, the day might have been salvaged. That one, tiny kick was his downfall, though. It seemed to him that the door gave way just a bit on contact. A glimmer of hope sprang into his eyes. What if they weren’t really closed yet? What if they were leaving that night & had just put the sign out a little early? He couldn’t possibly know unless he tried the door, so he gave it another kick, a bit harder this time. Sure enough, the lock didn’t seem nearly as secure as it ought to be. They were probably in there right now. He rattled the handle, but apparently there was a problem with it. “It must be stuck,” he said to himself as he threw all of his weight against the door. Other than really, really hurting, that didn’t have much effect, so he decided to go back to kicking. Just a few more well placed blows and the door flew open with a crash. Aaron’s momentum carried him right on inside the store.
As it happens, the owners had left the previous Sunday. They had discovered the problem with the lock but hadn’t had time to get it fixed before they left, so they had done the best they could to secure the store. They were correct in thinking that the large bag of garbage they had hung just inside and rigged to rip if the door was opened would halt any would-be burglar in his tracks. They were equally correct in the notion that the drink cans they had planned to recycle would make a sufficiently loud racket as they came crashing down to stand in for an alarm. Before Aaron could even blink, he was surrounded by the kind of attention he really wasn’t interested in attracting again, wearing a smell that, before this trip, he had never dreamed he would sport not once but twice.
The story has a happy ending, though. Several people in the crowd had also driven over from Estes Park and knew of Aaron’s celebrity status from the newspaper. The officer of the law who was watching the whole thing as it happened from across the street had recognized him, too, since his brother-in-law was one of the firemen involved and had regaled him with the story and a thorough description. By the time Jenny and the kids returned, Aaron was actually signing a few autographs (albeit one was on the bottom of a check large enough to cover the damage to the door.) The crowd dispersed, and Aaron was left alone to face Jenny. She agreed to let him in the van this time, but only after they had walked over to the lake. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t intend for Aaron to leave without getting a look at the lake. A close look. A very, VERY close look. She might even tell him afterwards about the change of clothes she had thrown in the van for him, just in case it was needed. And it was going to be needed.
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