Going to the Loo: Cards camper makes first appearance at Busch

"Do you want to see my toilet?"

It was an invitation to both possibility and peril, a chance to gaze on human innovation at its most impressive and its most depraved, a query I'd never faced before and immediately knew the answer to.

"C'mon, you really gotta see it."

Bonnie Nichols was still asking at this point, although no longer in the form of a question, her words friendly but sawed off in a way common to the exact middle of America. The eyes above those words, set high in a face as smooth and oval as an egg, implied that the third time would not be a request. The mullet, grey and untamed, said that this had not been a matter of choice since the moment I first approached her Cardinals-themed camper.

"It's right inside. Follow me."

I'd already seen the outside of the old Ford. It was a fixer-upper turned full-blown salvage job for Bonnie and her brother, originally slated to make its maiden voyage from St. Charles to Busch Stadium in April but delayed six months for various racing-stripe applications, camping trips and Cardinals-decalings. Now it would play host to 20-odd family and friends before Game 4, a mobile team-branded backdrop for hot dogs roasted over charcoal and beers pulled from a well-worn plastic cooler.

So follow I did, charging behind Bonnie up three flimsy steps into the unknown. Space was tight, especially among strangers, as she wheeled and pointed. Of course the shower had an interlocking S-T-L curtain and the trash can featured a redbird preening on a branch. But the real Carp de grace, maybe Bonnie's entire reason for this vehicular undertaking, sat smack in the middle of the tiny water closet.

Lifting the plush Cardinals cover off the commode, she cackled and pointed at a Cubs logo sticker fixed just above the water line.

"Right where it should be."

-- Ian Kay/MLB.com