the road trip

i know that this post is long over due, but what can i say? im lazy. and being lazy, i will have forgotten a lot of details, hence will be writing a lot less about it, saving you time. aint i thoughtful?

so as most of you should know, early last month i flew to arizona and met up w/m to drive a car he purchased there back to the east coast. although i didnt know how to drive stick, the idea was to learn on the trip back. that was the initial idea. well, here's what really went down:

day 0: fly out to phoenix thursday night. m and i get picked up by our old college friend soph and her bf, who are kind enough to let us crash at their place for the night. m and i are amazed at how together and well kept and coordinated their house is. very home-y. very adult. weird.

day 1: we get up at early to go to office max to get a fax of m's temporary insurance for the drive back. while m annoys the office max staff, soph scott and i test out the office furniture. quite comfortable. definitely more comfortable than the chair in my cube at work. an hour later - huzzah! mission accomplished. now to check out the car. soph says the guy selling the car was in a shadier part of town, but i couldnt tell. we pull up to the house and see the Z that m's buying... or is it the one behind it? or is it the one under the cover? the guy, jamal, comes out in full Z printed hawaii-type shirt. nah, none of these are the car youre buying, he says, and opens the side doors to his property to show us m's new baby, plus another behind it, and a skeleton of one that jamal uses for parts. m lets out a sigh of relief. this guy definitely knows a lot about Zs. our friends leave us wehn m gives them the ok signal, and m spends the next hour or so checking out the car, test driving it, and then we head off to the bank and third party dmv-thingy to square away the business and get temporary plates and we're off! we make it past flagstaff when a cop pulls us over. shit. i know we were speeding, but we were speeding behind someone else who was speeding, so should they have gotten pulled over instead? so apparently the person who we were tailing was the wife of a cop. not just any cop, but the partner of the guy who pulled us over. she apparently had called him saying some guy was on her ass, and she was worried. anyway, license, registration, and insurance please. no problem officer. heres the license. registration. and... the insurance is here somewhere. while we are searching for the insurace, the cop also tells us that having two sets of license plates is illegal (we hadnt taken off the old ones when we put the temp one in the window). bullet-sweating. still searching for insurance. shit shit shit. then the cop sees m's deer-in-headlights expression and decides to lighten up and just give us a warning. whew! and again, we're off! but wheres the insurance? that would definitely be a good thing to have... did m forget it somewhere? at jamal's house? in soph's car? in soph's car. its in soph's car. dammit. so we make it to new mexico at 630 that night and stop for gas. m finds out that the stick is kind of funky when trying to get to first gear. we stall. right in the middle of an intersection. shit. at least no one else was around. ok, maybe i shouldnt learn how to drive stick on this trip. we end up in albuquerque a few hours later. and end up crashing w/the family i stayed with while on coop with intel. same house. same family. very home-y. very adult. weird. (although the kids werent around, which wouldve definitely made things weirder)


day 2: you know what is interesting about driving through arizona, new mexico, and the panhandle of texas? nothing. its all dirt, sun, and heat. all which suck when you're in a car that doesnt have air conditioning. although NM had a bunch of dinosaur statues lining the highway, which entertained us for about 15 minutes. and texas had the largest cross in the western hemisphere. kind of creepy. we hit oklahoma at 530pm. we're making great time. lets aim for tulsa. sweet. darkness. rain. fog. holy shit we're going to die. whew! we've hit tulsa. but are adrenaline is going since we almost died earlier, so we push forward! we hit springfield, mo at around 11pm find the closest hotel and collapse.

day 3: holy crap, we were planning on getting to st louis by tonight, but we'll be there in 3 hours. ok reschedule plans w/st louis friend for just lunch. wow, jenny has a nice place. very home-y. very adult. weird. and once again, we're off! illinois was a breeze, although it had its own giant scary cross. we make plans to meet up w/another friend, kate, near indianapolis. wow. that cliche about indiana is no joke. nothing but cornfields. hello bloomington. kate greets us and shows us her apartment. very home-y. very adult. weird. and again, we continue our trek. m wants to go as far as he can tonight. ok, sounds good. we hit pennsylvania at 3am. im twitching, my body is shutting down. m decides to take a break at a rest stop at 5am. sweet sweet sleep. not really. 7am - we're off again and we make it to m's apt by noon. i make it back to the city by 130 in the afternoon.

and amazingly, i think we're still friends. for more details, check m's blog or check out his pictures from the trip.