I'll bring the hot sauce

Since everybody I know who blogs tends to be writing about "the past" or "memories", I thought I'd follow the trend and write about some things I like to remember.

Quite a few years ago my friend Tim and his family (the Hixenbaugh tribe) invited me to go camping with them in Erie for the fourth of July. This had to be during the summer of 2000 or so, and I was still a spry, young Crock. I remember thinking that the trip was grueling, over 200 miles to Erie? BAH! We spent the better part of a week in a pop-up camper, which was awesome because I then had a bad snoring problem. I think my fondest memory about the whole trip was when I gave total disregard to the campground's policy on clothing. In those days, I was sporting some sweet tighty-whities as my undergarb of choice. The story begins when I find my pair of magic underwear with a big hole in the right cheek one morning. I purposely set these aside. As afternoon wanes into evening, I take advantage of the beautiful sunset. I haul ass to the showers and lather, rinse and repeat. I dry myself. Then, I do something not short of a miracle: I don my hole-laden underwear and walk the hell outa there with a MANLY strut. The camper was parked a good 150-200 yards away so as I walked back, I made sure to greet onlookers with a "hey, howyadoin?" or "enjoyin' the day?". As I arrived back to the camper to dress, I don't think I heard Tim's mom laugh so hard before in my life. I dressed in the camper just to ensure everybody had something to scratch their heads about.

Another moment I'll never forget as long as I walk this earth happened on this same camping trip. As we approached our midweek dinner, we were tired of cooking out so we decided to hit the road and find some yums. We ended up at a chinese restaurant that served some KILLER crab legs. This was my first experience at a chinese restaurant. I credit this experience alone as having created my love/hate relationship with the oriental foodstuff. In fact, this food was so important to me at one point in high school that we would frequent the China Wok Buffet in Uniontown so often, that the waitresses would have our table and drinks set up for us (Jake, Chuck, Hix) as they'd see us walk in the doors. Those were some fun times. Unfortunately, after many conflict-riddled years of fighting incredible urges for chinese food, I've finally sworn the stuff off. I haven't eaten it in three or four months now and I don't plan on returning to it any time soon.

So there you have it. Two "spicy" memories. My fine ass + chinese food = the hot sauce. And I've brought both.