The incredible story of the second tattoo.

As promised last Friday, I shall recant the story of the second tattoo, again using those beloved time travelling effects from last week:

[insert time-travelling effects here]

Way back when I was 22, my girlfriend and I decided to take a weekend off and go camping. We packed up her tent and sleeping bags in my car, loaded up a couple coolers with food, and headed north towards Duluth(I was living in St. Paul at the time). We left relatively late, probably about 6 or 7 o'clock on a Friday, and hit I-35 in a hurry. We drove all the way up to Duluth, stopping at three campgrounds on the way, all of which were full. We decided to cut our losses and just head into town and get a hotel for the night and try to camp again the next day. Little did we know, but our luck would be soured by a Harley-Davidson convention and a hot rod convention. We turned around, hoping to find a casino or a hotel somewhere on the way back that would accomodate us, which, as it turns out, didn't exist. There wasn't a single room available along I-35. I was amazed. So, we drove all the way back to St. Paul, got back to my apartment around 2 or so, and went to bed.

In the morning, we realized that we had all this food that needed to be eaten, so we decided to have a nice picnic along the shores of the St. Croix River in Stillwater. It was a lovely day, and we had so much fun we decided to walk around downtown to shop, or find a bar, or both. We didn't expect to find a tattoo shop, though. We walked in, we browsed, looked at their books, and realized they were really, really good. I took a card and we left, each secretly planning our own return sometime in the future.

We found a bar, and settled in to playing a few games of pool and pinball. We got to talking about it, and each had ideas about what we would get done if we were to get tattoos that day. Finally she said "it's a bummer we don't have cash enough on us to get work done.

Then, the all-fateful words came out of my mouth "it says on the card that they take plastic."

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the tattoo parlor, ten minutes after that I was on my way to having my second tattoo. It's my favorite, for now, and I love it. I'd rather post a picture than describe it, so you'll just have to wait for the picture.