Don't Leave Drinks in the Car at 10:22 PM

[Note: I'm in my hotel in Florida right now. Despite being a very nice hotel, they don't have very good wireless Internet here. In fact, I'll be lucky to stay connected long enough to post this. It's kind of like living in the Stone Age, only with HBO. But anyway, my point is that if you don't hear from me at any point this week, I'm more than likely still writing, but unable to post.]

It’s 6:05am, and I’m currently on my way to the airport in a big white limousine. This shuttle company kills me. I’ve used them a couple of times before, and I always request a sedan. Every time, they pick me up in a limo. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s comfortable and it’s pretty cool to rolling around Kokomo in style. It just feels a bit excessive to be the only one in the car. But anyway, I’ve got a story to tell.

Yesterday morning was like most Sundays. I got up and got ready for church as usual, then walked out in the zero-degree cold to my car. The car was in the driveway instead of the garage, because as I’ve mentioned before my garage door is sometimes loathe to operate correctly in the cold. As such, the car had frosted over in the night. I figured it wasn’t a big deal, and I’d just start it up for a few minutes before I left and get the heat going, so I wouldn’t have to scrape it. So as I opened my car door, I noticed something on the inside of the window. I thought it was odd that something would be there, and the mystery of its origins would soon be solved when I looked inside.

A bit of back story: Whenever I work Saturdays, it’s a pretty long shift. Usually about 5am-4pm or so. So during that shift, I usually get pretty hungry, but in particular I get thirsty. So this past Saturday I decided to bring a soda with me for when I would get thirsty. I left it in the car, since I figured the car would keep it cold, and I’d come and get it when I wanted it. As luck would have it, on this particular Saturday I wasn’t thirsty at all. So the soda remained in the car and I forgot about it. Combine that with the fact that the car spent Saturday night in the freezing cold driveway, and you have a perfect storm of coincidence which brought about the disaster I’m about to speak of.

You’ll remember that earlier in the month, I talked about a phenomenon known as the exploding soda can. This is what took place in my car some time on Saturday night or Sunday morning. So when I opened my door yesterday and looked at what lay before me I was, shall we say, distressed. There was frozen soda everywhere. On the seats, on the steering wheel, the glove compartment, the back seat, the cargo space. It had gotten the front and the back of the Explorer in equal parts. Needless to say, I was going to be late for church.

I set about the task of cleaning up with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As you may or may not know, frozen soda is much easier to clean up than liquid soda. So in order to keep the soda frozen while I cleaned, I had to leave the car off and clean it in the zero-degree cold. With no gloves. Oh, did I not mention that? On the Friday before, Zimm gave me a ride back from the regional meeting, and I left my jacket (with my gloves in the pockets) in his car. So I had no gloves, and I was cleaning the soda with a wet paper towel. As you may guess, it was cold as frick. Whenever I made a trip into the house, I would run my hands under the hot water so that I could feel them again before I went back out.

So to summarize, I used the paper towel on the seats (thank goodness they’re vinyl and not fabric), and the ice scraper on the inside of the windows, because all of the windows had been sprayed. After all this was done, I got ready to get back in the car, thinking to myself, “Well, that could have been worse.” No sooner than the thought had entered my mind did I look up at the ceiling of the car and see that the situation could indeed not have been worse. For covering the ceiling was a layer of soda-ice that would be impenetrable by paper towel. I’m not exaggerating either. I couldn’t see parts of the ceiling because the ice was covering it completely. So while my fury ran white-hot, I knew I had to take action before starting the car, because I couldn’t clean it effectively, and if I just left it there, it would surely be raining soda in a short while.

So with that in mind, I grabbed a garbage bag and some duct tape. I proceeded to tape the garbage bag to the ceiling in order to catch the soda as it melted. You see, I had no desire to have soda rain down on my car’s interior.

So that’s where we are right now. The bag is still taped to the ceiling, and I’m not going to be home until Friday. Convenient, right? I’ll be taking it in for some upholstery cleaning as soon as is permissible when I get back. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m sleepy and I’ve still got about 45 minutes till we get to the airport. Till tomorrow.