Blood Money

Well it looks like the predicted winter weather is about as serious and memorable as a Viking superbowl run. There's about an inch of crust on the ground here. It'll be a bear to drive on in the morning but not even worth shoveling. It will be gone by Saturday.

It's true that I love the snow and the cold weather even more so than the average Minnesotan. This never fails to mystify my Filipino friends and relatives, who left their island paradise to come here and brave the Minnesota winters for the purpose of sharing in this great prosperity that we Americans take for granted. Wearing your clothes in layers, warming up your car in the morning, keeping a survival kit in your trunk, all these things are alien concepts to my compatriots. Winter to them seems to be something to be endured, rather than enjoyed.

But not me. I have always loved winter, always embraced the cold. The fact of the matter is that in the winter of 1994 I actually donated plasma to raise up the $50 I needed to purchase a snowshoe kit. I was terribly broke in those days and I was desperate to get my hands on a pair of snowshoes. Every other day for a few weeks I would go to the plasma center on the East bank of the U of M campus, Near the Arbys and the Oriental garden resteraunt, and wait with the drunks and the other poor students to sell my plasma.

How it works is that they run a needle into a big vein on your arm and they hook you up to a machine. The machine takes your blood, seperates the blood cells from the plasma, sticks the cells into some solution and pumps it back into your arm. It hurts like a bitch when they reverse that flow, let me tell you. My original plan was to earn enough money to buy a set of snowshoes and fish flasher. To this day I have still to realize the dream of winter lake trout fishing & camping in the BWCA. I was really hot for the idea at the time but my enthusiasm for this money making scheme waned after an incident where they couldn't hit my vein straight on with the needle but instead nicked it and I ended up with a large & nasty-looking splotch of blood under my skin from my bicep t about midway down my forearm. I had enough bread to buy the "Build your own" snowshoe kit so I stopped my visits to the plasma clinic and tabled the idea of getting the fish flasher.

It takes several cycles to get the plasma out of you. The blood comes out, the cells and the saline go back in. Repeat. I would guess that you are on the table for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. Your options are pretty much to read, strike up a conversation with the transient on the table next to you, or watch the movies that they so graciously provide on televisions suspended from the ceiling.

The second to last time I was in there (The last time they got a good harvest from me) They showed "The Bodyguard." I remember that I was reading Love in the time of Cholera and did not pay attention to the video at all, yet somehow the movie must have permeated my brain, because that night when I slept I dreamt that Whitney Houston and I were working together as prison guards. She was guarding the chicks, I was guarding the dudes. (It must have been some sort of Co-ed prison) While I was watching my group out in the yard one of them shivved me. Whitney stayed with me until the ambulance arrived and we fell in love as a result of this simple act of devotion. We went on to get married, buy a house, raise kids, etc. It was pretty messed up. It was one of those dreams where it seems like a really long time has passed, and when you finally wake up you are disoriented because only a night has gone by. The dream has never recurred, and Whitney has never crossed over into my dreams again since. I was never much of a Whitney Houston fan to begin with so why I picked her for the dream never really made sense to me, but I will tell you this: Even though we were only together for a few hours, we loved a lifetime's worth. Dude! Isn't that a quote from the Terminator?

That winter I ended up spending a weekend at my sister's cabin instead of going to the BWCA. Although I did not winter camp or fish for lake trout I did have the chance to put my snowshoes to work. I remember resting by the warmth of the woodstove and following to the Olympics at Lillehammer. It was a good dry run for the winter trip to Eagle Mountain that I took in 2000.

I wish for one more warm day so that I can get a coat of varnish on those snowshoes. I plan on getting some miles out of them again this year. It would be a shame to let them go unused, seeing how I paid for them with blood money.