The Groomsman Chronicles, TopGun Ed., pt.1: A Best Man's Work is Never Done

As I mentioned in my last post, last weekend I drove up to CO with Cap'n Shack-Fu and his fiance to be a part of TopGun's wedding. But in order for me to meet up with Shack-Fu without either of us having to take an enormous detour to get to our respective home-towns, we instead planned on taking a minor detour to meet up at his parents' house in Pampa, TX, which was kinda-sorta on the way. My plan was to sleep in a little bit on Thursday, drive up to Pampa before it got too late, and wait for Shack and his honey to get there after he got off work and she got out of class.  Then we'd all catch a few Zs before getting up bright and early to start out on the approximately 10 hour drive up to the wedding site.

My plan received a minor hitch when I got a message from TopGun the previous evening asking if I could give him a ride to the airport because the one he'd set up had fallen through.  I accused him of making that up because he was obviously too lazy to make the drive up to Denton on Wednesday night to drop off his and Li'l Champ's tuxedos with me as previously planned; as usual, he side-stepped the accusation without officially denying it.  He's a wily one, that TopGun.

But despite my suspicions of chicanery, I responded as I had to pretty much every request TopGun had made of me for the past six months, whether it was wedding related or not:  "Of course I will, Champ.  Boy, a Best Man's work is never done, is it?"

So, instead of sleeping in as previously planned, I was up bright and early to make sure I'd gotten everything packed and ready to go, and headed over to Frisco to pick TopGun up and drive him over to Love Field, where he'd catch a plane to meet his mom, and would then ride up to CO with her.    After dropping him off, I headed back towards Denton, eventually sending the following text to TopGun after I passed by my apartment complex at precisely noon:  "On the road since 9AM and just now leaving Denton to head to Pampa.  The things I do for you, Champ"  He replied with "Lol . . . sorry man. Thanks for the ride . . ."  I told him no need to apologize, I was happy to do it, just knew that if I didn't bitch about it a little he'd start to think something was wrong with me.  His response: "I was getting worried . . ." Despite my needling him about the extra drive time, I was glad to get that last bit of one-on-one time before all of the wedding craziness began.

On the whole my drive to Pampa was uneventful; the only thing worth mentioning is that I made the mistake of trusting in my GPS to point me to the fastest route instead of doing any research myself beforehand, the end result of which was my drive taking an hour longer than it should have -- a fact I wouldn't confirm for myself until my drive home a few days later.  Thankfully, even with the extra hour's drive-time, I managed to make it to Pampa and find Shack-fu's parents' house with no problem around 5:30 -- which just left another 5-6 hours before Shack-fu was scheduled to arrive.  I spent most of that time visiting with Shack's mom -- his dad's out of the country for work right now -- and playing with their chihuahuas, Molly and Buster. 

When Shack-fu and The Future Mrs. Shack-Fu got there we visited briefly, but quickly headed off to get some sleep before our all-too-early departure time.  I was being put up in the office with a nice air mattress, and had just collapsed onto it when I heard something unexpected:  a music-box like rendition of "Greensleeves."  Thinking it was coming from the hallway outside, I ignored it -- big mistake.  Because it turned out to not only be coming from inside my room, it was music provided by a Christmas clock which was set to play the song every hour on the hour.  Needless to say, my sleep that evening was not exactly restful; the song would wake me up hourly, but I was always too groggy to get up and find the source of the music in the dark before it stopped playing. 

Not the worst start I've ever had to a road trip, but not exactly the best either.

So ends day one of my trek to TopGun's wedding.  Come back soon to find out about the long drive on day two; some serious synchronicity on the road; and how I ended up in handcuffs before the day was over.