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They’re like, “I don’t want to run! I have wheels!”

And you’re like, “Listen, roller suitcase, I’m not good at running either, but I tell you what, when we get to the hotel, I’ll walk you in circles for a few hours.”

I get to the tram area. Fortunately, they have a nice little thing where a sign says how many minutes until the next tram arrives. The sign says, “0 minutes.” For a moment, I’m excited. I think, Zero minutes! That’s exactly how long I want to wait. But there’s no tram. It already drove away. Then the sign changes to “10 minutes.”

I eventually reach the gate. And I’m sitting at the gate, and I fall asleep. I wake up to the sound of the gate door closing.

I jump out of my chair, but there’s no one around.

They’ve closed the door, but I’m not on the fun side, with the airplanes and the pilot. On my side, it’s just me and the Cinnabon lady, and the Cinnabon lady is not very well connected in the airline community. I ask, “Do you know the people who can open the door?”

And she says, “I just know the white stuff goes on the Cinnabon.”

So here I am, I’m on the sad side of the door. I’m on the side with me and the Cinnabon lady, which normally I’d be very excited about. I’m a big fan of pastries the size of a baby that contain enough calories for a year. That seems like an effective use of time.

At that point I walk over and I start banging on the large window like in a romantic comedy. I think of yelling, “Stop the plane, Drew Barrymore’s character!”

I do not make that flight.

So I’m on standby for the 10:00 a.m., which gets me into Seattle by 4:00 p.m., and I drive two and a half hours upstate to Bellingham, to Whatcom Community College, which is 106 miles. (Or according to Mapquest, up to two hours and thirty minutes in traffic. Bingo, Mapquest!) By the time I arrive, it’s almost 7:00. The show starts at 7:30. I walk onto a recently built stage in the student center and pretend I’m not tired for about an hour. It’s a very small crowd. Crowd? Well, about thirty people. At community colleges, since most students commute, they often bring comedians to try to bring people together. That night, they stayed apart. I was no help.

The next day I’m supposed to do the nooner, but I’m technically booked for 11:00 a.m., and it’s about two hours away in Tacoma, so I think it’s wiser to drive there that night. I start driving at 10:00 p.m., though it feels about 5:00 a.m. in terms of my emotional stability. I have no energy, but I think about the six months of rent this trip will take care of. All I have to do is live through it, I think.

The nooner is worse than I could have imagined. I have actually been booked to perform during a study hall. I’m performing. They’re studying. Who thought of this? I wonder on stage, sometimes aloud, hoping there are no reviewers ready with their notebooks to crucify me with my own self-deprecating words. I don’t know who to feel sorrier for: me or the people trying to study. There are like fifteen people trying to study biology and I’m in their face shouting, “The thing about panda bears is they look like each other!” I try to think up material that might apply to the subjects they are studying. How many mitochondria does it take to power a cell? One. Because mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Not ready for prime time, that one. Afterward, I go to a local restaurant and drown my sorrows in an ice cream pie shaped like a baked potato. I know it’s not healthy, but at least it’s shaped like a vegetable.

I head for school three, Columbia Basin College. They have me hosting a lip-synch contest—which is not a format that I’m a fan of. And neither are the students. There are only two entries, and the director of student activities is furious. When she gets up to introduce me, she says, “In the past we’ve had fifteen or twenty entries and this year there were two. And we don’t have to have this contest if you don’t want to have it, because I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this for you. And now the comedian,