When I first got wind of the Colossal Colon Tour (sorry, couldn't resist), I informally proposed to fellow PoopReporter and Northern Californian Pooperscooper that she and I hook up for the San Francisco leg of the tour. She agreed, and thus began a weeks-long process of hammering out the where's and when's of our rendezvous -- and for me, a process of anxiously counting the days until I would actually meet a PoopReporter in the flesh, and then crawl through a giant plastic colon.

The day arrived soon enough. On a sunny Friday morning in downtown San Francisco, my partner Miguel and I met up with Pooperscooper and Dave's sister for some old-fashioned ass education. I wore my 10 Stages of Pooping shirt to facilitate easy recognition, but we were able to find Poopescooper and Dave's sister without much trouble. Pooperscooper looked pretty much as she had described herself -- thin, glasses, pageboy haircut; and I was delighted to discover that Dave's sister looked quite a bit like the pictures of her brother I've seen on PoopReport.

After some introductory chitchat (shitchat?), we walked down to Justin Herman Plaza where the Colon awaited our arrival. The first thing we noticed as we approached the Plaza was that the Colon was not alone that day -- the canvas tent that enclosed it shared space with what appeared to be a Christian youth choir, as evinced by the rows of teenagers standing shoulder-to-shoulder on collapsible risers and a banner stretched out behind them that read "Give Your Heart to Jesus". But Jesus would unfortunately have to wait, for we had made prior arrangements with the section of bowel waiting just inside the tent; and intent upon our goal, we parted the tent flaps and stepped inside.

Conceived and designed by a 27-year-old colon cancer survivor, the Colossal Colon is a 40-ft intestinal segment whose eight-month tour of the country is intended to promote awareness of colon health. As far as colons go, it is indeed colossal; once inside the tent, however, I was a bit disappointed to see that the Colon didn't take up the entire exhibit floor, snaking around the room as in the Colon Tour of my heady imaginings. Instead, the Colon was confined to one of about ten information points that had been set up all around the perimeter of the room -- a kind of gastroenterological stations of the cross, in keeping with the Life Metal wafting in from next door.

The thought of a camera up the butt doesn't phaze Miguel. Pooperscooper up for air. Poopshipdestroyer and a giant polyp.

The first stop along the self-guided tour was a large interactive diagram tracing the passage of food through the body, beginning with the mouth and ending with the ass. Adjacent to each step of the alimentary process was a button you could push -- hence "interactive" -- which caused the relevant length of tubing to light up. I pushed the first buttons to no great fanfare; but being a systematic sort of person, I kept pushing at those remaining. Finally I got to the ass. Expecting nothing, I pressed the button marked "anus", and several low, deep foghorn blasts ripped through the air. I burst out laughing, thinking the designers had saved the truly special effects for the end, literally. Only after hearing the sound again later did I realize it was some sort of amplified feedback coming from the choir's backup band outside.

When I read originally of the Colon's scope -- "40 feet long and 4 feet tall" -- I pictured a structure large enough to walk through comfortably, or at least to slide through on my belly covered in chocolate pudding. Upon reaching the crowning station of the exhibit, though, I had to concede that however modest the model's actual scale, it clearly scored deserved points for scientific accuracy. According to one of the informative plaques mounted outside the Colon's entrance, designers used X-rays of real human intestines to create the Colossal version, which Pooperscooper (expert in human intestines from her days at the hospital) verified as authentic.

But despite (or maybe because of) this life-like accuracy, the Colossal Colon was not a healthy organ. Relief models of diverticulitis, ulcerative colitis, polyps, and cancer lined the inner walls of the Colon at intervals, educating crawlers-through about the broad spectrum of conditions that can inflict our hapless bowels. As we squeezed through the Colon on our hands and knees like so much compacted stool, Pooperscooper astutely pointed out that the model seemed to progress according to a logic of increasing pathology -- an observation that held true until we reached the hemorrhoids at the asshole end of our 40-foot journey. Indeed, it was the hemorrhoids themselves that originally suggested which hole to enter and which to exit, as both ends of the Colon otherwise looked remarkably similar. Which just goes to show that so far as the anus and rectum are concerned, you can't fool a PoopReporter.

After evacuating the inflamed and swollen Colossal Asshole and completing the remaining stations, Pooperscooper, Miguel and I sat outside and talked. We also ate -- Pooperscooper had some yogurt with psyllium fiber for added kick, and I had an undoubtedly-very-constipating cheese sandwich. But as parking is expensive in San Francisco, Miguel and I couldn't stay for long. Thus we said our goodbyes -- until the next time a giant colon makes its way through Northern California.

(Editor's note: Poopshipdestroyer didn't know how prophetic she was. Two weeks later I came to visit my sister in San Francisco and met up with the ladies; another giant colon, indeed.)

But the best part of the trip -- for me, anyway -- took place on the drive home. For some reason traffic always seems to get backed up midway between Sacramento and SF, regardless of the time of day; and for nearly an hour we crept along in the mid-afternoon heat. Add to this the greenhouse effect created by my heavy clothing in our un-air-conditioned vehicle, and you can imagine my discomfort. By the time we hit Davis, I felt like I would pass out or puke, so I pulled over into an In-n-Out Burger to recuperate before switching drivers. Once inside, Miguel got me some water, but I found myself too miserable to drink.

After ten minutes, unable to cool down, I decided to go to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. Never one to waste an opportunity, I also sat down on the pot to see if peeing would induce any relief. To my astonishment, I realized shortly after taking a seat that my bowels were in the steely grip of a guerilla shit. Digging in for the fight, I bent my head, hunkered down over my thighs, and began to wrestle with the surprise attacker. But my ass-ailant craved freedom over victory, and after a couple of seconds gave up the fight and ran -- a hard, compact, and vicious little turd shot out of me, sharp against my asshole walls. It almost felt like my aggressor was carving its initials in my rectum upon departure so I wouldn't forget its name. And even though it was my ass doing the spitting, I couldn't help but feel that this turd was spitting on me as it barged out the door, marking the site of its former imprisonment with hocking derision.

But despite the nasty attitude of my escapee, I could not deny that it had been an utterly complete, utterly skidless evacuation, and that I felt better almost instantly after. My heart slowed down and I could feel my body temperature start to drop; and when I returned to the table I could finally drink some water. All this time, then, what I had thought to be heat stroke was really a punk-ass turd slicing up my insides!

Just a few hours before, I had bemusedly crawled through the Colossal Colon with the arrogance of a tourist, finding photo-worthy pleasure in its state of ill-health -- its colitis-pocked contours; its gory eruptions of malignant tissue; and yes, its raging hemorrhoids. But after releasing such a wicked shit, I was suddenly filled with a sense of both the mystery and the glory of the organ that suffers for our earthly sins, as well as with the profound humility and peace to be had in pinching off a good one. Though I had chosen earlier not to give my heart to Jesus, Jesus got my ass in the end. For in the fly-infested bathroom of the In-n-Out Burger, I heard at last the Word that the Colon had come to town to spread: that yea, though I might walk through the valley of the shadow of death, truly would I be fucked without healthy and functioning bowels.

-- Poopshipdestroyer