//------------------------------// // May 7 [go-kart] // Story: Silver Glow's Journal // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// May 7  I woke up a little later than I normally would have and my head was pounding a bit because maybe I'd had one or two more beers than I should have but that was okay, I was super-excited that I would get to drive today. Even if it wasn't a real car it would be fun. Peggy and Christine and Sean were still asleep so I was quiet when I got out of bed and got my flight gear. It was another really nice day out, and I was going to get in a good flight to make up for my laziness yesterday. I called the airplane director when I was outside and it was the nice lady and I said that I should come out and visit her and she laughed, and then I got to thinking that I should, so I told myself right after I was done flying I would send a letter to Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn and we could arrange something because I knew I wasn't supposed to have long personal conversations on the airplane radio. I decided I'd fly into town and follow the river for a bit. The trees had finally decided that winter was over, so they were mostly leafy now, and I even saw some that had started to blossom on my flight. When I got to the river, I flew down low right above the surface and under bridges that crossed it. I saw a few fish darting around here and there but I didn't try to catch any, even though I probably could have. They were pretty small anyways. I went along the river until I saw a big dam and then I thought that was a good place to turn around, and just to be safe I stayed downstream from the rapids at the bottom of the dam because those were dangerous and could suck you under. I knew that I was pretty close to the railroad tracks and I could have followed them back into town but I went along the river again instead. Most places there were buildings on both sides but I flew past a couple of areas where it was all trees. One of them had a single building that was on a little island that a small channel of the river flowed around and it said that it had topless girls and karaoke music. I hadn't noticed it on my way out because the bend in the river had kind of hidden it from me. When I got back to the railroad bridge over the river, I flew up and then followed the tracks back to campus. Then I took my shower and by the time I was done and back in my room Sean and Christine were already gone, and Peggy was in her lounging clothes looking at her computer. I started mine and wrote a computer letter to Mister Salvatore and then I left it on and wrote a letter to Gusty, too, asking her how the play had been so far and asked her if she was going to the Stratford in Ontario or the one in England, and then I told her about Frelon and thought about adding in how everyone ran down the hill naked after it was over but then decided that might bother her. Peggy put it in the computer for me and I sent it off. I wrote a letter to my Mom but I didn't wrap it up in an envelope just yet because I wanted to send her a dreamcatcher too but that meant I had to make her one, so I spent the rest of the morning doing that and Peggy helped with the little knots that I couldn't tie. Then when that was done it wouldn't fit inside an envelope so Peggy said that I would have to get a bigger one at the post office, and since we still had some time before go-karting we drove to a real Post Office where they had an assortment of different-sized envelopes and some boxes and tubes and then went back to campus to pick up Christine and Sean. We drove to the Airway Fun Center, which was right across the street from the airport, and I waved at the tower but I doubt the nice airplane director saw me. There was a strange set of towers that looked kind of like a brightly-painted scaffolding which Peggy said was a ropes course, and in front of that was something called a mini-golf course. We all waited in the lobby until Aric showed up in Winston and he had Angela and David with him, and then not too long after Meghan and Becky and Lisa arrived, too. So we all went to get the go-karts, and the man at the counter had to talk to his manager and his manager asked if I had a driver's license and I told him I had a pilot's license and showed it to him and he said that he supposed if I could fly an airplane I could drive a go-kart, and he wasn’t trying to be mean but it was just that I was a pony. Then we had to sign a piece of paper saying that if we got hurt it wasn't their fault, and they gave us a little presentation on how to drive the cars and what the instructions meant and then we all got in one and they started a race. I didn't do very well in the first race. The pedals were hard to reach and the go-kart didn't behave at all like I thought it would so I didn't go very fast while I was figuring it out. Plus the belt on my chest was really uncomfortable and the helmet that they gave me pinned down my ears and mostly deafened me but that was for the best because the cars were even louder than Winston. It was a lot of fun, though, and by the time I'd finished the first race I sort of had an idea what I was doing, so I did better in the second race, and we wound up spending most of the afternoon racing. Then we split up into two groups of five and played a game of mini-golf which I was not good at at all. The golf-stick was awkward to use and swinging it like a glaive didn't work as well as I'd hoped it would. Hitting the ball wasn’t very hard but making it go where I wanted it to was. When we got done we broke up our group even more. Aric and David and Angela wanted to race go-karts again, and Meghan, Lisa, and Becky wanted to try the ropes course and they talked Peggy into doing it, too. Then Sean and Christine said that they would most like to drive the go-karts, too, and so I did that a couple more times. I don't think I would have particularly enjoyed the ropes course, since to do it like you were supposed to I would have had to balance on my hind hooves and what was the point since I could just fly to anywhere on it. I got good enough by the time we left to have come in fourth place once. We finished off our day at the Fun Center by driving the bumper cars, which were inside, and unlike the go-karts, you were supposed to run into each other. They were a little harder to steer, because they could turn so much more quickly than the go-karts, and they even went backwards if you turned them too far. Then we decided that since we were all together we ought to have dinner together so we went to a restaurant called Applebee's and got a big table and all ate together. After dinner I rode back with Aric and David and Angela. It was pretty crowded with all four of us in the front, and I offered to get in the back and Aric thought that would be kind of funny because he said a lot of guys drove around with dogs in the back of their trucks and it would freak people out if they saw me back there. But then Angela said it was fine for me to be in the front and it was probably safer anyway. When we got back home Aric said that we ought to watch a movie and that David wasn't allowed to make suggestions, so the four of us sat together on the couch and we watched a strange and funny movie called The Fifth Element which Aric said was a classic. After the movie was over and we were about to go to bed I remembered that I was going to meet with Doctor Thomas Thompson tomorrow and maybe bring him a cloud and I thought that might be the kind of thing Gates would want to get a movie of, so I asked Aric if I could use his computer to send a letter and he said that I could. I wouldn't have thought of it, but my ears still hurt from where they'd been folded under the go-kart helmet.