Pete's Log: the victorious return home

Entry #771, (Travel)
(posted when I was 22 years old.)
I shall one day be described as master of the road trip. Until that day, I shall strive hard to earn that title. The final leg of my trip to south bend went well. A fun trip it was. Perk and I left his place at 10:25 am, central time. I gave Perk the official duties of navigator and recorder. So we have detailed notes of our trip. This was also the first trip that I've taken where someone warned me not to kill any Amish. So our first goal was to find Devil's Den. Perk gave me 40% odds that he would be able to find the place. I asked him how much time we would lose if he couldn't find it (I didn't care too much about lost time if we did find it). His estimate: 50 minutes. We go for it. As we drove in search of Devil's Den, I was told of Perk's shady past. Apparently he was once almost charged with resisting arrest. Impressive. So we find a place along KK that Perk finds promising, so we park the car, hop a fence, and hike around in the woods for a while, with no luck. So we give up, and begin heading east. Just as hope was at its lowest, at 11:28, Perk spots another spot that looks familiar. So again we park, hop a fence, ignore a few no trespassing signs, and find the Devil's Den. A very cool place. Most excellent. So finaly at 11:40 or so we're back on the road again, passing landmarks such as the Free Will Baptist Church, Butterflies Unlimites, and Amish. By noon we've realized we need some supplies: A compass, a map of Indiana, whores, duct tape, and floss. At 1:19 pm, we find the engineering museum at some army base in missouri, we spend a good 50 minutes there, it was awesome. All about the army corps of engineers and such. On our way off the base we got lost, but found our way again. 2:25 pm, we order a medium pepperoni lovers and a medium supreme (both thick crust) at the St. Robert, MO pizza hut. Finally, by 3:37 we leave the St. Robert walmart with 3 of the 5 items we were looking for. We failed to find a map of IN or whores. At 4 pm we witnessed Ameritech invading Rolla, MO from the southwest. 4:14 pm, we resolutely decide that we will mail perk's libertarian party membership at the first chance we get outside St. Louis. At 4:20 pm: it's 4:20!! At 6:04 pm we made it out of St. Louis, but not quite unscathed: we missed I70 (and thus a chance to visit Urbana-Champaign) and instead decided to take I55 and go through Springfield, IL, home of Abe Lincoln. Perk also realized around exposure #50 on his camera that he didn't have any film properly loaded in his camera. We exit I55 briefly at Hamel, IL 62046 for gas, and Perk dropped off his libertarian letter at the post office. Perk and I independently noticed that the bathroom in the gas station had an oddly large amount of hay on the floor. 7:30 we arrived in Springfield, right on schedule. The plan was to find a microbrewery. I had had microbrews in Manhattan, and Sprinfield, MO, on the first two legs of the trip, had to continue that trend. So we stop at a gas station and ask if they know of any such place in town. They don't, but start calling people for us to figure out if there is one. Finally they suggest we go to this place called the Barrelhead and ask there. At about this time some girl had come into the place to pay for gas and offered to lead us to the barrelhead, so we got in the car and followed her across town. At the barrelhead we inquire into microbreweries and are given directions to another place called The Spot. This turned out to have a microbrewery that went out of business six years ago. So we just had some Killians Red there and began heading out of town. But we were amazed at how friendly the people of Springfield, IL, were. It was amazing. But Springfield, IL had no microbreweries, which gives Springfield, MO a distinct advantage in coolness. So 9 pm we leave Springfield and continue north on I55. At 10:29 pm, on mile 187 on I55 north, K2 hit 3000 miles. Woohoo! Perk celebrated by sticking his head out the window and screaming like a window. Stopped at a rest area shortly thereafter to call home and let parents know we'd not be in SB before late and thus wouldn't call them till morning. Made it to Castle Point at about 2:45 am (eastern time, we went through a time change). Nobody home at 2217, so we head to LSC, find Arun, and I reclaim my key from him. Go home, hang out a bit ("and it means one of two things: either he has a low sperm count... or he missed"), go to sleep. Wake up about noon, go shopping with Barrett. Then go get oil changed on K2 (Gates Chevy world is amazing, it was very quick and only cost $24, which seems fair to me), get ND parking sticker for car. Waste rest of afternoon.

So, Linkin Park became my theme CD for the drive. Between CB and Perk's place I played it probably about every third or fourth CD. And Perk and I played it a good five or six times as well. In Springfield, IL, we put the CD in just as we passed Lincoln Park. We were amused. Our motto for the trip was "We never go back! ... well, not unless the whore is really cheap. Mileages: K2's total mileage is now about 3200. I put on about 1700 miles between CB and SB. Drove 690 miles from CB to Manhattan, 310 miles from Manhattan to Perk's, and 620 miles from Perk's to SB. Drove various other amounts at the two places I stopped. A very fun trip. More on that later.

Tonight's fun was a trip to Mishawaka Brew Co with Brian, Arun, Perk, and Frick, followed by Brian, Arun, and I going to Vertical Limit. Still tons o' fun the second time around.