Once More, With Feeling

Yes, slacker. That's me.

The Christmas Carriage season went well, with the exception of a couple of nights with a lot of snow. If people paying for a totally frivolous form of entertainment can be used as an economic indicator, then things are picking up.

It's a strange occupation I have; some nights I'm so bored, cold, sore or crabby it's all I can do to not growl at the people in my carriage. Other nights we have front row seats to "Weird Shit Window On The World."

For example: I was on a ride passing North Gate and I noticed two guys unloading one of the ugliest loveseats I've ever seen out of the back of a pickup. This caught my attention only because the North Gate of Temple Square is not a typical place to unload furniture. Then they unloaded what looked to be the base of a motorized scooter. Now, being that we travel at a whopping four miles per hour, we get to see a lot of stuff, and much of it, I don’t give a second thought to. This was one of those instances, until Carriage driver Kar later mentioned the motorized loveseat zipping down the road at warp speed.




(Photos courtesy of Carriage Driver Kar)

Ok, it was warp speed for a couch. They usually don’t go from 0-7 in two minutes. They usually go from 0 to 0. At least all the ones I've ever owned.

Then, of course, there was the Barking Dog From Hell experience. A bunch of us were stopped at the light on North Temple and Main street, with traffic stack up like pre-teens waiting for the doors to open at a general admission seating Justin Bieber concert. A little dog in a car two lanes over noticed the horses and started barking, barking, barking. The owners, as usual with annoying dogs that bark continuously, thought it was cute, so they rolled down their windows. enabling the rest of us captured in traffic to enjoy the festive sounds of Sir Barksalot.

"Bark, bark, bark."
Rest.
"Bark, bark, bark."
Rest.
"Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark."
Rest; repeat.

This continued forever.

The stoplight, by the way, for whatever reason, was not functioning properly, so we sat there for a while, and finally I yelled to the barking dog people, "Doesn’t he know any other songs?"

They looked confused.

So I demonstrated for them by barking "Jingle Bells." Behind me, Crazy Shelley joined in. We sang one chorus, then we changed to a Salsa beat. Shelley sang the words this time, and I barked in appropriate places.

At long last the light changed. But not before we taught that dog a new song.