Transnaklaformglatization Express

I had a real self-esteem-builder of a Friday: first I was assigned to a second shift at work (read: already worked the overnight shift, then was forced to stay for the morning shift when someone else called in due to snowy roads) and whined and weaseled my way out of most of it because I was responsible for bringing my friends Joe, Cody and Tyler to our other friend Brian’s band’s performance (sorry for the confusing possessives) in St. Paul that night, and I did NOT want to have no sleep for 30 hours before doing so. So I got a smattering of fitful, broken sleep before driving out and immediately getting us all so lost that we not only missed the show, but took four hours getting home again, round trip. That’s twice what it should have been. Here is the illustrated story.
First, we went South on 65, and traveled about 40 miles before realizing that I was supposed to be on 35E.

So we swing around to County 8 to get over there,

And then simply follow… uh… some accidental exit along the way… into the, ah… black gate of chaos.

After driving for two more hours, the space-time continuum collapsed, and our dimension exploded.

There really aren’t words to describe just how lost we eventually became. It was more lost in Minnesota than I’ve ever been. At hour four, we finally arrived in Forest Lake and stopped at an oasis of joy (Sbarro’s Pizza), where we decided that there really NEEDS to be a word to describe just how lost we were, and that fresh new adjective is “transnaklaformglatized”. That’s TRAN-SNACK-LAH-FORM-GLA-TYE… uh.. ZD.  Being in the state of transnaklaformglatization. I felt a lot better after we’d established that. I think we actually decided that it means you’re so lost you’ve actually arrived at a place that doesn’t exist. Which is really what it felt like. And though we ended up having fun, I’m really sad we missed Brian’s concert.