‘Twas a couple of weeks ago, as the above title implies, and I and my usual band of veteran band of ne’er do wells and Waffle House voyagers had gathered for our usual journey to the Big Yellow (Waffle House, that is, not Chairman Mao).  We were strong in numbers that night, with Jason the Orc-Render, Jess, Daughter of Wolfgar, and Brandon, The Guy I Haven’t Made Up a Funny Legendary Title For Yet.

            Anyhow, we were all of us gathered at Waffle House, rockin’ out stale Christmas songs and the greatest hits of Brittany Spears, whilst enjoying a midnight repast of the finest of viands.  Though someone woefully derelict in their waffular duties had failed to apply that strawberry goop that reminds me of Vigo the Carpathian to my particular waffle, this was more than made up for by the helpful delivery of a liberal supply of those little coffee creamer thingies, of which I have never been a fan (I like my coffee like I like my women, cheap and available at four in the morning) (sorry, I couldn’t pass that one up), but which we obligingly hurled merrily at one another until the waitress started looking at us funny.  Okay, that was a lie, the waitress always looks at us funny there, but this was more than funny, like the waitress was looking at us hilarious, which doesn’t make sense at all.  At any rate, after about two hours of such behavior as young folks liberated from the bonds of good manners by caffeine and an excess of chortling as wont to engage in, we struck out on the road once more, with nary a thought to where we might next be bound.

            It just so happens, you may already be aware, that Chester sits almost at the very nexus of the Richmond beltway, completed just this past year, and since after careful calculation we decided we didn’t have enough time to drive all the way to Jamestown and back, a brilliantly ill-conceived plan was hatched to, like Christopher Columbus before us, circumnavigate Richmond on the briny asphalt deep that is Route 295/288 (perhaps you doubt that Columbus was the first to circumnavigate Richmond, but the trendy fountain statue at the end of the Boulevard would prove you wrong).  So off we went, over the suspension bridge, northward and eastward, doing our little part to drive up gas prices and keep the highway from curling up overnight for want of cars to hold it down.  Indeed, the only thing that could have made our situation better was if we had broken down outside of Don Knotts’ and the Harlem Globetrotter’s Haunted Taffy Factory (Just 15 minutes from downtown!) and had to solve a wacky mystery.  But oh well, maybe next time.

            One among our party, one who shall not be named for this act shall ever live in infamy, had with her a flashlight.  A blue flashlight.  A blue flashlight which managed to attract the attention of a police officer somewhere around the northern 95 interchange.  And so it came to pass, as it does in any adventure worthy of song and remembrance, that we found ourselves pulled over by a police woman who was, objectively speaking, decidedly more hot than any other officer of the law whom I have ever had the pleasure of having to explain myself to.  So there we were, Jason and I both dressed about 60% Mnogolian, Brandon wearing the Canadian Bacon Hat, and even though Jess wasn’t really dressed funny, I’m just going to say that she was wearing a mink astronaut suit, just to make the whole mental picture a bit richer.  Also, as usual, my van contained at least half a dozen things which, while not being outright illegal, were at least objects of dubious purpose, including half a dozen chainmail shirts, a quiver full of crossbow bolts, numerous potato gun accoutrements, and a melted Skeletor record.  Also, I had a taillight out.

            As is often the case, nothing demonstrates a man’s innocence like being a ridiculous spectacle does, and we either talked our way out of things or someone somewhere else in town was kind enough to rob a bank at that exact moment, prompting Officer Hotness to rush off to save the city from some new peril, thus allowing us to arrive back in Chester no richer, but a great deal wiser, or at least really, really, tired, which is kind of the same thing, but not really.  Also, I think we crossed Hull Street Road like, five times, so VDOT might want to check the beltway for rifts in the space-time continuum or something.