Okay, it was only about 35 minutes, not a whole weekend, but I had my role as navigator revoked as a result. I'm still not certain if the revocation is permanent or not.

Anyway. My buddies and I drove down to Raleigh recently for the World Beer Festival. The weather was pretty much perfect for an outdoor festival: it was sunny and the temperature was in the low 70s. And there were lots of breweries, most of which had beers which ranged from good to great. Abita, Sierra Nevada, Chimay and lots of others besides. Also, there was a lot of good food, which proved useful in washing down the beer.

So we sipped and supped for a few hours, being careful to not become drunk because we had to drive back home to Richmond, and then we hiked back to the car and got started on our return journey. And this is where the... fun began.

I remember getting into the front seat and relaxing, closing my eyes a bit while the three of us started some chit chat about Highlander cards and-

I DID mention that they were friends of mine, right? You shouldn't be surprised at nerd games being discussed. Probably none of you are.

- then everything kind of blanked out for a while. For me. To me, I was asleep. Oddly, and unfortunately for my friends in the car with me, I continued to speak. According to them -and I have no reason to doubt- I even waved my hand in front of the driver's face a couple of times to see if he was awake.

I know what you're thinking: this sounds like something that I could be mocked about, but no real harm done. That's where you'd be wrong. In my somnolent, yet conversant, state, I apparently replied a couple of times to, well, here's a sample of what was said:

Driver: Are you sure that we're going the right way?

Me: Sure, you're fine.

Well, the statement was true as a point of fact. Jeff was fine and dandy. Physically. However, we were NOT going the right way. In fact, we were going in what would best be described as the opposite of the right way. We wanted to go north and we were seeing signs for US-1, south, which sort of tipped us off. And by us, I include myself because I finally woke up. Despite assertions to the contrary, my higher brain functions were not working during that period. You could make the argument that they never work, but that's a different argument. In any event, we stopped at a Quickie Mart or something and asked the guy how to get to I-95. He wasn't sure, but he did laugh out loud when we told him where we wanted to go.

To the backseat I went. Being fully awake now, I made some comments about which exit to take, which lane to be in; my sister lives in Raleigh and I'm more than little familiar with the area. To each comment, Jeff asked, "So other guy not named Physics Geek, which way do we go? Or is the cause of our 1-1/2 hour delay in getting home actually correct this time?"

The mocking is certain to follow me to my grave, but it's well deserved. I'm still curious as to how I managed to give the appearance of being awake while not actually being so. It would allow me to catch up on my sleep at work. Then again, sleeping next to the Big Red Button would get me fired, so maybe I'll think on it a little more.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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