Put SnakeBytes on TV Blog episode 3
Blog episode 3
NARBC Arlington has passed and its insanity fades away while reality merges into routine. It is February 16, 2011, 1:05 PM. Today is Wednesday, and I'm writing the weekly Monday blog. The reason for this was my family and I were not yet home from the Texas show. When the show was winding down, I had a choice to either ride with Brian in the van, or go with my family in the RV. I let my stomach make the decision, and I went with my family to Pappadeaux. Brian made the trip back in record time! Maybe I should have gone with him.
Oh, well. I am finally home. This weekend seemed like far longer than a weekend. Looking back on it, things got pretty crazy. It all started with Brian's personal dispute between himself and the roads in Arkansas. Brian left about the same time as we did on Thursday morning, but he's a few hours north of us, so we had a head start. Somehow, Brian ended up two hours ahead of us! I'm beginning to believe he has some sort of ancient Polish teleporting technology that allows him to skip ahead on road trips. There is really no other explanation. Oh, wait. There is. He drives fast.
As Brian was driving on I-40 in Arkansas, he was stopped in his tracks by miles and miles of barely-moving traffic. He called me a few times, left a voicemail, and texted me. However, I was too busy playing Call of Duty: Black Ops in the back of our RV to notice my phone ringing on the charger. Luckily, Brian got a hold of my dad, and they started to work things out. First off, we didn't know why the roads were that backed up. Brian did say there was really bad ice buildup on the surface of the road, but that didn't seem to add up to the massive back up. So, my father and I turned to our iPhones.
Sitting in the front captain's chairs, using our Apple devices, we both tried to find out what was causing the back up. I turned to the massive media forum that is FaceBook. I found an article saying that several trucks were blocking the road, and no rescue or clean up crews could get to them any time soon. The report from the police was that the roads could be held up for up to twelve hours. It would take Brian up to twelve hours to go eighty miles to Little Rock, his destination for the night.
Now that the cause was settled, we needed to decide on a remedy. We pulled up our maps and diligently searched for alternate routes. The problem should have been an easy one to solve. However, all the main detour routes were closed or backed up as well. We had to find the detour to the detour. We found a route for Brian. He needed to get to 79 to go around the blockage. Just as we informed him that he needed to get across to the oncoming lane, there was an opening in the median. Brian gunned it across the grass, until he got stuck. Lots of panic thoughts surely raced through Brian's mind. He was gonna be stuck here all night and day, run out of gas, and 150 thousand dollars worth of snakes were gonna freeze to death. As I'm sure he was panicking, his tires jolted and caught on the ground, pulling him through the median and on to the other side of the road, which surprisingly, had little to no traffic on it.
Brian made it on to 79 and started making his roundabout way to a town called Pine Bluff. We decided we would stay there since it was easy to get to and about the same distance as Little Rock. We broke off of the main route to hopefully gain some ground towards Brian. Brian was about twenty minutes away from Pine Bluff and the hotel. There a police officer told him the road was closed. Now when Brian told us the bad news, we had to consult our iPhone map apps again, and find another, even more roundabout route around the blockage, which spread farther than we initially thought.
Brian had to back track and we met up with him on these little tiny roads. I use the term 'roads' very loosely, as they could hardly be classified as such. Sometimes, we were forced to drive extremely slowly. Moving slowly is better than not moving at all. The roads did have a bad surface, but to top things off, there were patches of EXTREME fog. It looked like a movie effect, and really, was like nothing I'd seen before. We pulled through the fog and ice and made it to the hotel around two am. We loaded the animals inside, cranked up the heat, and prepared to sleep for a few hours. Brian, myself, and Dakota stayed in the hotel room, and the rest of the crew stayed in the RV.
We woke around eight in the morning, a solid six hours of sleep, and quickly packed things into the van. Brian and I would set off ahead of the rest of the LaFaive family and book it to the show. Brian and I had good conversation on the way, and since Brian, the Road Warrior, was driving, we made pretty good time. We arrived at the convention center, which was adjacent to the Rangers stadium, as well as the gigantic Dallas Stadium. We went inside to scope out where our tables would go, talked to a few of the other venders, and then started loading stuff in for set up.
We finished set up before my family even made it to the convention center. That's right. Brian and I set up an NARBC show all by ourselves. We had no help from Lori at all! As we ventured to our hotel room, Brian and I noticed some odd talk from a few hundred teens that were walking around carrying hundreds of Yu-Gi-Oh cards in neat little photo-album like cases. Apparently, the room next door to us at the convention center was holding a massive 'Tournament of Champions' card game. This made for some hilarious eaves dropping. Which led me to think about something. Sure, they sounded retarded talking to each other like, "No. I was gonna go big! I had the Ninja Cyber Wizards Dragon Castle that was Titanium against his Sunflower Dried Princess Pansy Sleeper and I was gonna one up the Dragon so he couldn't book me with his Electronic Rock." But do we sound just as ridiculous when we talk to each other like, "Yep, I got a Super Chocolate, a Lemon Blast, some Candy Cane corns, an Inferno, and a Bumblebelly."? Let me know which you think is nerdier, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Snake Breeding.
The show itself went well. People were buying snakes. A few Sand Boas had somehow escaped. We found the case empty when we came in Saturday morning, but luckily, we found all but one of them. Apart from that, there were really no major difficulties that I can remember. I sold snakes, and also got to talk with some of my favorite snake breeder friends like Sean Bradley from Exotics By Nature, and Tim Bailey from Bailey and Bailey. I just love listening to those guys talk. I only got to chat with Donald Schultz for less than a minute, which is a shame, but I had the privilege of meeting Erik Zeidler, whose accent is way cooler in person. I felt a strange connection between Erik and me. We both did something to result in an appearance on Urban Jungles Radio. He did something amazing, and I did something, well, stupid, but it's still a similarity!
Basically, it's just good to be at an NARBC show again. Good to see all the faces that are becoming very familiar to me. Marc Bailey had some crazy Desert ball morphs, John Mack gave me free Hatrchrite, Bob Clark's retics made me drool, Mike Novy's fiance showed us some funny little 'pop corn' frogs, Amir Soleymani had a Banana Ball, and Tracy Barker had some kind of Calico Ball morph that made me walk backwards after I walked passed it and did a double take.
I also got to meet some hardcore SnakeBytes fans. These kids, who must have been eleven or twelve, were CRAZY about SnakeBytes. I thought they were going to feint when they saw Brian. One kid seemingly memorized every word that Brian has ever said on SnakeBytes, and wasted no time repeating them to him. It was pretty cool to see these kids, who could be the big breeder names of the next generation, so inspired by SnakeBytes. These kids found SnakeBytes on the internet. Imagine how many more kids would be so inspired if they could find SnakeBytes on their favorite animal television program. In the shouting, pre-puberty voices of the three little SnakeBytes nuts, "PUT SNAKEBYTES ON TV!!!"
Here is a link to my FB profile. Feel free to add me, I accept all requests. Write on my wall, or message me if you have any questions or thoughts.
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574-933-1773
Thank you for reading and for all you've already done to help put SnakeBytes on TV!
Mr. Put SnakeBytes on TV,
Kaleb LaFaive