Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The harrowing tale of my wayward roommate

Recently my friend and room mate, Chad, decided to get himself in the paper. Those of you in Oregon may have heard about it. He was in the news a lot the last 2 days. Unfortunately he unwisely chose to be in the paper for getting lost while hiking and not for winning the lottery or saving a kitten from a burning building. It seems my roommate has a penchant for hiking. He has gone on several hikes, weather permitting, and continues to try new trails he finds in his little trail guide book. He always goes and comes back and has a grand time but last Sunday he decided to get lost. He spent the night shivering in 30 degree weather in a t-shirt, shorts and wet socks. In case you are not aware that would not be any fun what so ever and most people might even use the phrase "This sucks!" if they were in a similar situation. Now as a disclaimer the news has done the story and you can read about it on all kinds of Oregon news sites if you want to read the doctored version. Try the Oregonian, a newspaper up here. What I am about to tell you is for the benefit of my roommate as he is tired of telling the story. What I am about to tell you is nothing but the truth. You will only get the truth here. I write this story because the people that read this blog deserve the truth! I am dedicated to the truth!

First off my roommate does not hike. He doesn't even own shoes! You can't hike without shoes, it's a fact! So let's get rid of this pesky rumor that he was hiking. He wasn't. So how did he get 4,000 feet up on mountain? Well let me tell you. It starts Saturday night.

I was in class pretending to listen (Sorry Tony, but I am going for factual in this story). I was staring out the window at a few spots of sun and thinking about the weather forecast saying sun would come in on Sunday. I was looking outside wondering if they got it wrong again. At that very moment my roomie was calling to let me know he was going to visit a few friends that just awoke from hibernation. Yes I just said hibernation.... they are bears.

It is not weird that he has friends that are bears! He was born and raised in Oregon and everyone that was born and raised here are assigned a foster bear family. They get together in the summer and eat rabbits and berries. It is great fun. I tried to tag along last summer and one of them accidentally ate my arm off. Don't worry, it grew back but that was one heck of a week. Anyway he left the message while I stared away at the wall completely entranced. When I got home and he was not there I was not worried at all. When I got out of class he was already chomping on a rabbit and having a grand ol' time with the bears.

Knowing that bears don't wear watches I did not expect him to give me a time that he would be back. So when I awoke Sunday morning it was no big... I mean bears are awesome companions and you never want to leave them so he usually spends all weekend with them when he goes to visit. So I went about my business on Sunday which included trading in old video games so I could get new video games, spending money at the new pirate shop Captain Henry's and going for a bike ride. It was on this bike ride when I got the call.

Chad was on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere! He was wearing shorts and a tshirt and wet shoes (Shoes he doesn't even own!). He was surrounded by snow and it was starting to get dark. So how did he get from the comfort of the bears home to alone on top of a snow covered mountain? Here is what he told me:

The last thing he remembers he was going to Starbucks with Sir Chomps-A-Lot (the bear that ate my arm). Sir Chomps-A-Lot loves coffee! He is an addict! If you see him he will be shaking due to the constant caffeine buzz. Anyway there he was talking to Sir Chomps-A-Lot when a bright light appeared in the sky and sucked him toward a flying saucer! Yeah I said it, Chad was abducted by ALIENS!

So there he was inside the alien ship and the aliens were playing War's Lowrider at high volume. Suddenly he heard a voice in his head. It was an alien reciting the Gettysburg address. Then he was gassed and fell asleep. Hours later he woke up in the woods and he called me. I advised him he had to avoid telling the truth since telling the emergency people about aliens and bears is a sure fire way to go to the loony bin! So we concocted the hiking story. (No emergency person is invited to hang out with bears and due to that they deny their ability to talk and entertain. They are jealous!) Anyway after a night in the woods he was helicoptered out.

Poor Sir Chomps-A-Lot was nearly catatonic with fright! He kept calling me every hour checking to see if Chad had been rescued. When Chad was rescued Sir Chomps-A-Lot vowed revenge and has went on an interplanetary hunt for those aliens. He is going to completely open a can o'-whoop a-- on him!

(PS. I only write this because my roommate is fine and only suffers from a slight case of embarrassment)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

A link to the interview:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/rescued_hiker_says_he_recogniz.html

Unknown said...

A link to the interview:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/rescued_hiker_says_he_recogniz.html