daddy's little friend...and the millenium falcon

The man formerly known as Youth Minister came to the fair mother city for a few nights via Cuba. This is the room mate of my first ever internet friend, the construction worker, and hails from Santa Cruz, CA.

I picked him up at the Greyhound station early Monday morning. We spent much of that afternoon at the Jedi Counsel Room, as well as touring our neighborhood and a smattering of spots in town that represent various juxtapositions, such as extreme wealth and extreme poverty separated by a single street, a creek, or a patch of trees.

While I was on the pruning boy gig Tuesday, my 2 year old son went looking for our latest house guest, asking “where’s daddy’s little friend?”. Congrats on the new nickname, little friend.

And perhaps one of the greatest stories of my summer: the Millenium Falcon lives up to it’s name.

Today, we arrived at the Greyhound station 15 minutes before LF’s departure. Nobody was at the front desk. But the bus was waiting outside. LF rings the “ring bell for service” button. Nothing. A minute later, rings again. Nothing. And again a third time.

This time we can see two guys working behind a desk way in the back. LF starts ringing the bell in annoying, one-second intervals.

One of the desk jockeys screams, “HEY WE’RE BUSY. WE’LL BE THERE IN A MINUTE”.

“OK. But my bus leaves at 12:40”

It’s like 12:38. Then one of the desk jockeys comes out and helps him with tags for his bag, etc. Then the desk guy gets this frantic look on his face as he looks up above our heads. Then he bolts out the back door that lead to the busses.

Busy Desk Guy comes back all nervous. He looks at me. “Are you the driver? Did you drive him here”

“Uhh, yes.”

“Man the bus already left. If you go down S. 1st toward Sweetwater you can catch it!”

We didn’t stop to think or slap the guy around. We grabbed the bags and did our best Starsky and Hutch impersonation and jumped in the Falcon.

The Millenium Falcon: my one and only beloved ride. A 1993 Lincoln Towncar with 242,000 miles.

I jump to lightspeed an exceeded speeds of 92 mph through town while LF is calling the Busy Desk Guy with his cell phone and chewing him out. We caught up with the bus on I-20 outside of Tye: me honking and LF waving his bus ticket at the driver through our window. The bus driver was cool and pulled over like this happens all the time.

The Millenium Falcon. She may be a hunk of Junk. But she can still outrun the empire.