Chris had arranged for a bed-like piece of furniture for each of Mike, John, and myself and after an extended nap, the fourth such time that proper sleep had been skipped, the party made palaver before getting lunch at TGI Friday’s and then returned to Chris’s to talk.  This may sound reductive saying “we just talked” but it isn’t.  Chris, Mike, John, and I have all chosen to do life retoolings and at least Chris, Mike, and I have maintained contact as we go through our quarterlife crises.  I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek as it’s often difficult to tease out whether one is answering questions late for one’s youth or early for one’s adulthood and none of us are arrogant enough to say we’re “ahead of the curve”.  Chris and Christine are comfortable sharing their questions and answers with strangers and I see this as a type of intimacy that’s new to modernity.  Thanks for the iPhone 4 dev book, Chris and my apologies for having no pictures for this day.

The unwinding continued as we drove across Maryland to drop off John.  West Virginia and Maryland can be annoyingly long states but winding through the Allegheny Mountains seemed nicer than usual.  We were hit by short bouts of rain that were annoying but creating a beautiful fog as evapotranspiration met the setting sun.  This view and morning in Oklahoma were probably the two most beautiful natural sights from trip and I should have asked the car to pull over so I could take pictures.  I’ll lie to myself and say there’s more aesthetics in the ephemeral.

John was home before midnight and Mike and I started looking for a gas station that was still open.  Salvation was found at a Wawa, the great harbinger of the expanding power of the mid-Atlantic.  Mike and I made it back to my house a little after 2 AM, around 210 hours from when we left with a net displacement of 0 mi.  In those terms, it doesn’t seem like we were gone that long at all.

The target departure time was 6 AM.  We left at 6 AM.  I punch our target address into the GPS and found that our departure time could have been 7 AM.  Oops.  Suzie proposed we got IHOP.  I checked for an IHOP.  There are apparently no IHOPs east of Oklahoma City in Oklahoma but a thick band of them west of that city.  I don’t know why.  We stopped at McDonalds.  We stopped for gas.  We stopped at several points on the Oklahoma Turnpike to pay tolls that were refunded if you got off at either of the two exits past the toll plaza.  I think they should have just put the plazas elsewhere.  We drove through Tulsa at rush hour without incident.  We got gas again.  We arrived in Jefferson City, MO.  We stretched.  I called.  We walked.  We met people.

Brent. Tall. Likes Asian stuff. Looks good with a beard.

John. Tall. Works at Subway. Going to college soon.

Zane. Tall. Professional Piano Tuner. Ignited the great space debate of 2009.

Lunch was had at the Madison Cafe where I somehow managed to anger the server by requesting a diet cola.  While I do not wish to say we in any way vandalized the state capital, I did notice that in our passing, TI stickers appeared on some things.  We also saw a lot of drawings of ducks submitted to make a stamp.  Then we stood outside.

The convergence on Suzie and the Ostricization of Zane, beautimus.

We walked again.  Then tried on hats at a book store.

Princess Cowgirl

It's funny because his name in game is Frosted Flakes.

A hat so garish it produces chromatic abberations around itself.

We walked around more and the group allowed Mike and I the opportunity to mock the capital building’s “Liberty Bell”.  Theirs didn’t even have a crack in it, it was just painted on.   Seeing John, Zane, and Brent was a pleasure even if I don’t have any remarkable anecdotes or quips except to note the bathrooms in the Missouri capital building are regal.

Our next stop was with a friend of Suzie’s who we met at a Steak n’ Shake.

There was discussion that the Marvin the Martian shirt’s depiction of Marvin’s centurion helm looked like a bow tie.  I don’t really see it.

It had been a long day in the sun and I was feeling it.  I spilled things and continued eating a spicy salad that rendered my mouth numb.  Mike helped a server recover from a platter drop and received a free Red Bull out of the incident.  Go Mike.  He later drove the rest of the way to Chicago.  That was nice of him.

For some reason, I didn’t take any pictures of Mike driving, so I’ll use this instead.

We stopped for gas and Mike acquired a Four Loko, a talisman against boredom.  We arrived in Chicago.  I did laundry.

One day short of not having to do a second load on the trip.

Sometime later, I went to sleep.

The day of short declarative sentences ended.