In addition to being Lowell’s birthday, Saturday, January 10, 2009 was Symposium. It was also the Ames Jaycees Year End Banquet, where I apparently got an award that involved batteries, but I was not there. I had to make a choice. I chose Symposium.

Well the truth is that I was hoping to make a late night appearance at the Year End Banquet, but fate would have other ideas for me on this night.

For those who don’t know about Symposium, it is Jay’s annual bash. He put out a spread that would feast kings and invites several of his closest chums over to feast and enjoy the company of one another. It is always on the second Saturday of January.

This Symposium was going along brilliantly, when we heard coming from the street below the sound of a truck backing up.

Jay lives in a second story apartment in downtown Boone. He rushed to the window and said, “Does anybody drive a SUV? It is getting towed.”

I went to the window. Sure enough, Jen’s Cherokee was getting towed.

Jay next reported the absence of all cars on the street.

Sara asked if her car was there.

I reiterated, all the cars were gone, except for Jen’s jeep that was in the process of being towed.

Jen ran down the stairs, to try and stop her car from being towed.

Sara went down to find out about her car.

The short version of the story is that the Great Town of Boone had put their Snow Ordinance into effect. This meant that every car in town that was parked on any street in town was getting towed.

Jesse went down to harass the tow truck driver.

Then he harassed the shift commander for a bit.

Then he harassed the guy writing the tickets a little bit.

He used a string of profanity that would have made Jay’s stalker more than a bit proud.

I was following Jesse around to make sure he didn’t do anything too over the edge and end up in jail.

The ticket writer eventually had enough of Jesse and said into his little CB, “118”.

Next thing you know, Jesse and I are surrounded by the Shift Commander, two sheriff deputies and two more police cars.

On the bright side, we didn’t go to jail. By we, I mean Jesse in jail and me visiting him. On the negative side, it cost Sara 150 bucks to get her car back. It cost Jen over 100 bucks to have her Jeep lowered 3 inches.

But let met tell you something else, the white chocolate hot chocolate that Jay made more than compensated for me the anguish I went through when I was surrounded by cops and watching two other friends get extorted. That was some tasty hot chocolate.