10-6-06 Friday Night Lights

It was Friday night after a long hard week at work. I had a huge project going live that Monday and I had just learned I would have to work all weekend. I had a high school game to attend that night. My wife and I take turns going to away games. We had tried on several occasions to get some pictures of my daughters in the band to no avail. Our latest attempt floundered when the camera was set to movie mode instead of picture mode. I had told Shawnette I would get it done. After work I mounted up on the trusty Goldwing still filthy from my Blue Ridge adventure and headed up toward Cullman. I used the GPS to locate the school and sure enough found the sprawling Cullman High School campus. I parked in between some buildings and walked toward the well lit stadium. I saw plenty of purple and white clad folks and followed the purple and white team as they entered the stadium. That’s when I noticed the big paper sign the team was supposed to run through. “HAYDEN HIGH SCHOOL”. At this point my deductive reasoning began to stir from under millions of lines of code still circling my head and I thought, “Well if this is Hayden, and I’m in Cullman, I’m probably not going to see Springville”

I got on the phone and called the only internet capable people I knew who would actually be home on a Friday night, My Parents. I got them to look on the internet and discover that we were playing Walker County. My Dad says Walker County must be in Jasper so I plug Jasper in the GPS and off I went. The GPS took me down hwy 69 which cuts a Southwestern path around the base of Smith Lake. It was a nicely paved road through the absolute nothingness between 65 and 78 highway, Its good that there was a lot of nothingness because I think I approached light speed a few times. You can tell your driving fast on a goldwing when the air pressure on your front faring is so high it starts pushing bugs away before you hit them. 69 came out near Walker medical center. I stopped at the first gas station and walked in, helmet still on and asked where the high school was. Now Jasper isn’t a big metropolis so I was quite surprised when neither the woman gassing up her car nor anyone inside had any idea where the high school was. I could excuse them if they were from India, but these were all Alabama pure bred. I guess none of them made it as far as High School. Finally the store manager came out of the back and directed me to the High School which was only a mile or so away. I pulled into the parking lot in time to see Springville High School marching off the field. I looked solemnly on and walked back out to the parking lot and mounted the bike and headed home.

Fortunately it was a nice night, the temp was in the 70’s and the moon was full. The traffic wasn’t too bad and when I pulled into my driveway I had managed to shoot off an entire tank of gas and 175 miles and accomplish absolutely nothing except confirming that Jasper is NOT a hotbed of navigational expertise. As it stands my wife’s X husband and the biological father of my daughters was there and it would have probably resulted in a scene. I could spout an entire chapter on this individual but I long ago got past the need to trash someone who abandoned everything I hold dear. However my failure to once again get pictures would not go over well when I got home and further up the pressure to pull it off in subsequent weeks.