…it was them damned hippies
Critter Con 15
Day 2: In which find the Opposite of Giant Jesus, cool off in the middle of the desert, I throw down on eating tamales, and we visit the World of Giants.
We left Barstow at 8:00 AM, just as we were sitting down to breakfast. Having an autopilot is a very good thing. We were traveling along Old Route 66 on our way to the first stop of the day.
(Duke: I had a chicken and dog food burrito for breakfast!)
(Roxy: I had a salmon omelet. The kitchen staff really knows how to kook for cats.)
We reached that first stop at 9:30, just east of Chambless, California. We added some time to the day’s trip getting there, but it was worth it to see…
The World Famous Giant Satan!
Yes, folks, after seeing lots of versions of Giant Jesus over the years, we finally found a Giant Satan. Even better, it was just completed about 6 weeks ago and it looks great.
Built by a consortium of atheists, Satan worshipers, and general shit stirrers, Old Scratch stands 100 feet tall from his cloven hooves to the horns on his head. This is your goat headed Satan, not your red devil type. Also, he’s not wearing clothes and his johnson is highly visible. The sculpting of him is great and the paint job is even better.
For your $5.00 entry fee, you get to go inside the high security walls and ride up to the statues head 4 at a time. The view ain’t bad, if you like the desert. Sadly, it is a bit hot up there, despite air conditioning, because for security reasons, the statue is entirely made of 1 inch thick steel. Even with that, religious nuts still drive all the way out there to shoot it. Fortunately, every one of them has been caught on video, and a few have had their cars shot in return.
We bought bumper stickers and t-shirts. I chatted with one of the caretakers and asked, jokingly, when they would be building a 666 foot tall statue. He was serious when he said, “as soon as we get funding.”
Wow!
When we went back out to the Bus, about a dozen folks from some church in Needles were there praying and calling us sinners and Satan worshipers. Since I had a neuralizer in my pocket, I got their attention, zapped them, then suggested that they should have a wild orgy right there. They were getting naked as we drove away, with those security cameras recording everything.
On the D. Cross Giant Statue Rating Scale, this one rated as follows.
Size: 7 It is 100 feet tall!
Climbability: N/A because it has an elevator
Appearance: 10 Very well done.
Pose: 10 Arms outstretched, wings spread, smile on his goaty face.
Religiosity: 10 Gotta give him high status, cos without him Jesus would be picking his nose and scratching his ass.
Since we had all gotten pretty warm outside in the desert, once we were back on board Sweetie (our Bus) we all put on our swimming gear and headed for the Slide Room for Waterslide Racing.
Sweetie reconfigured the slides so we had 12 lanes (the cis cats were not into getting wet) so we could race. The track was 2 miles long and we had to make 10 laps. Normally, top sliding speed is 60 miles an hour, but for this race, it was raised to 90. There were steep drops, tight turns, a double S stretch, and a 500 foot straightaway.
While some of our racers had their doubts, we all got on our lanes and then Sweetie counted down from 5 and then a wall of water hit us from behind and we were off at 10 miles an hour.
For 50 feet, then we hit the steep drop that took us up to about 60 mph in 5 seconds. After that, it was just a matter of thinking that we wanted more speed and jets of water would speed us up.
Grace, Avis, Mary and Ginie all dropped to about 30 mph pretty quickly, but the rest of us went full speed. By lap 4, we had lost Duke and Omar to spinouts. By lap 7 Spike and Amy were out. That left me, Yoyo, Blue and Mara. Yoyo, a dedicated skate/snow boarder, was having the time of his life and was in second place behind Mara. She being an otteroid made her the odds on favorite. At the beginning of lap 9, I spun out on the double S. Blue was out a few minutes later.
Lap 10 was a neck in neck race between a 25 pound terrier and a 90 pound otter. In the end, Mara won by about a foot length, then both of them continued for another lap, doing jumps and lane switches and other tricks.
After all of that refreshing sliding, we went to the living room where Jeeves, Alfred and Jarvis served us a variety of cool and delicious drinks and some light snacks.
We arrived in Kingman, Arizona at 12:30 with the intention of eating lunch. Jarvis informed us that a local restaurant was having their annual tamale eating contest starting at 1:00. As longtime readers of these reports know, I am not one to shy away from eating food that I love in competition.
When we got to the place, it was on a sort of restaurant row, so Grace, Mara, Yoyo, and Lettie went to eat less spicy fare at a steakhouse. The rest of us went in and while most of our crew ordered from the menu, Omar and I sat down at the tamale contest table. When the contest was ready to start, there were 40 people sitting there. The MC told us the contest would last until the last contestant was left. The tamales would be beef, pork, chicken and vegetarian. We could choose what we wanted. The gravy to go with them was red or green chili gravy.
They set plates of three standard size tamales in front of us and we were off. The tamales were hella delicious and after the third plate, about half the diners had dropped out of the race. By the time we’d eaten 12, it was down to 6 of us. I got 14 down and had to drop out. In the end, Omar finished second with 17. The winner ate 21.
And then we waddled out to the Bus for the next and final leg of the day’s journey. Both Omar and I napped the entire way there.
It being 2:00 when we left Kingman, we arrived in Holbrook at 5:00. We would be spending the night here, but first, we were off to see The World Of Giants.
This place is incredibly cool, because it is set up to make you feel like you’ve shrunk down to 6 inches tall. It’s a huge building full of ordinary things you’d find in any house, but way scaled up. That includes ants, spiders, a hamster, a kitten, a cat, a chihuahua, and a golden retriever. That hamster was the size of a black bear and the goldie was a fucking kaiju!
We spent most of 90 minutes there and it was a lot of fun. The giant furniture was impressive. Of course, we hit the gift shop hard.
So now it’s 7:00 and dinner time. Oddly, Omar and I will be dining very lightly. After that, we’ll do gaming and chatting before bed.
Tomorrow, we’ll be driving all the way across New Mexico to Amarillo, Texas.
More bloggage later.
Starting Destination Sign: Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
Ending Destination Sign: The Last Place We Looked
Radio Station: WIKD, Music For Witches
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