The waiting

Cleveland was so good to me that I had a hard time leaving. Like not until midnight on Tuesday, March 11. (Yeah, I know what time the stamp says I'm writing this. It's called backdating.)

That's right, I stuck around for another day of the festival. I called back to the office and didn't have any trouble getting approval to hang around northeast Ohio a little longer. I didn't intend to stay for five more films--the plan was three--but I was feeling pretty good . My stamina was up enough that I thought I could make it through all of the movies and a two hour drive home beginning around 11:30 p.m. Chances are that my internal clock is still on the pre-Saturday "spring forward" time change. At least that's how I justified it to myself.

I was running on a good night's sleep, which I didn't get the previous evening thanks to some louts in the hotel who thought no one would mind if they yelled and ran around in the hallway at four in the morning. The day started well when I discovered that the hotel parking charge was just $15 for the entire stay, not the $15 per day that I thought it was. Everything from this point on was a comedy of testing one's patience.

I had to press the button repeatedly to get someone to buzz me out of the hotel's lot. I got to Tower City Center parking and sat in line waiting for a semi truck driver to stop blocking all outgoing traffic. (The garage was full, so I had to go to overflow parking.) The attendants were getting impatient, so one waved me through to search for a spot underneath the building. Knowing that a free space was unlikely to be found, I asked if there were any. It didn't really matter. They just wanted some cars to move.

After a quick drive through the packed garage I got back in line to exit and head to overflow parking. I picked a lane where the driver was holding up everyone, so I switched to the one next to me. The cashier vacated the stall, extending my wait even more. Finally I got through only to drive to the rear of overflow parking and finding one of the few spots remaining.

Almost every seat was taken, but one guy waved down the driver to wait for him to get to the bus. His buddy then proceeded to take forever to leave their vehicle, holding us up in the process. Eventually they decided not to get on.

Finally I made it to the theaters and flitted from one to another in the mad dash of watching and refueling. It was fitting that the last film of the day was a deadpan Swedish comedy about rolling with life's punches. Adding to the significance was the fact that I saw an hour of the film the day before. The print had been stuck in Pittsburgh, so they tried showing the screener DVD on Sunday. After sixty minutes it froze up and was unwatchable. This was high on my must-see list, so the arrival of a print was a mitigating factor in my decision to stick it out until the 10:00 p.m. session.

But the waiting wasn't done. We were promised that the shuttle ran until midnight, so a few of us festival attendees waited and waited and waited for it to come to take us to our vehicles. None of us wanted to walk because of the distance and the safety. I joked about the possibility for getting murdered down there, something which is probably unlikely but not entirely out of the question.

It took nearly a half hour to go the mile or two to my car, but I was still feeling fine for the drive ahead of me. I followed the signs to the interstate on this twisty back route, and then I saw before me something that had me wondering if perhaps I shouldn't have joked about getting killed in the area. In my lane was a stopped car with the driver's door open. In the other lane was a guy on a cell phone. Welcome to Carjack City? It certainly looked like the place where something bad would happen. He waved me by, and I was more than happy to speed off.

Fortunately the rest of the drive home was uneventful. I didn't even turn on the radio but instead listened to the sound of the wind blowing by and tires propelling me down the road. I'll regret not getting enough sleep when I'm at work on Tuesday, but the experience has been worth it.