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I promised myself I wouldn’t update until I finished writing about my fucking trip. So here, I started writing this three weeks ago and continued whenever I had a motivated minute or thirty seconds. K, I'm finished. Well, not finished. I'm sure I'll edited it a million times and add wonderful things that will pop into my head but so far, this is it.
Holy crap. So, AMAZING time. I feel like I've taken so much away from this trip, not just visit new places, see new things and meet new people, but have experiences and gain perspectives.
Day 1 -aka Friday
We left early Friday morning and headed to Brooklyn to pick up Karin. I'd say the trip was off to a bad start. I didn't get my check, Kay had to write me a check Thursday night at like 10:00. I didn't finish packing, I ended up staying up all fucking night. no. sleep. Deidre came to get me and her car was packed. Like, PACKED. I was kinda pissed. Like, how are you going to have two people coming on a road trip with you and not even have room for them, let alone their shit. Oh, and Deidre was like an hour late. Aaaaaaaaanyway. We made it to NY, picked up Karin and were off. I pretty much dozed off and on the entire ride that day. I had a wicked bad migraine.
We planned to make it to Chicago the first day but 80 conquered us. It took like 863453 hours to drive through Pennsylvania. I was dead by the time we got to Ohio. The girls wanted to trek on, so we did. I tried to sleep the best I could in the back seat, but it just wasn't cutting it. When we got to the Toledo area, we had to get gas and then the girls realized they were kinda tired as well. We tried to find accommodations locally. Oh, a Howard Johnson right down the road, AAA approved even. How convenient, if it wasn't the trashiest place on the planet. Deidre went in since she was "the whitest" of us. The fact that we even had to think of that should have tipped us off that we wouldn't be spending the night there. Anyway, apparently there were domestics taking place in the lobby... where the leather-clad 'concierge' seemed not to care. Needless to say, we pressed on. Ended up spending $80 at a fucking Holiday Inn. Oh fucking well, right?
Day 2 -aka- Saturday:
Left fucking shitty Ohio with a quickness. Got a stupid caffeine-withdrawal headache on the way to Chicago. Dunkin Donuts should be more prevalent. On the way to Chicago I spotted a sign for The Yellow Brick Road Museum! Uhm, had to fucking go there! It was brilliant!! It definitely brought up the trip like 8 notches. If you're ever in Chesterton IN I highly recommend stopping by.
Well, finally arrived in Chicago. Wow. I totally had a different impression of what that city would be like. It's Huge. And pretty. And clean. Lake Michigan is beautiful. We went to Karin's friend Cass's apartment. Hi, nicest apartment ever. Oh, rent in Chicago is pretty cheap. I'm actually thinking about moving out there for a while. (what? me? leave Boston? YES. Maybe.) We walked around in the 100 ° weather for a while before Cass & I decided that sweating was gross and went back to her central air-ed apartment. Chilled out there, literally, for a while until it was time for our night plans. I wanted to go see Okkervil River and Deidre decided to come with me. Soo good. I don't understand how they can be so energetic when they perform. It's Okkervil River. So yeah. They played at some street fest so we ended up hanging around that for a while. Chicago has some weeeird food. Deep fried Twinkies? Cheese curds? Ew?
OK, they did have some good food. Fucking fancy hummus.
We wondered the streets for a while afterward and then headed back to Cass's. Her & Karin we at some party with Karin's ex (drama) so we just crashed. Blah Blah Dunkin Donuts. Blah Blah off to Omaha. No, wait. The fucking field of dreams.
Day 3 -aka- Sunday:
We were supposed to leave early so we could get to Omaha fairly early so I could hang out with Chris! But... Deidre decided that she wanted to go see the field where the filmed the movie The Field Of Dreams. Hi, who the fuck cares? Seriously. I swear to god she just wanted to go there because she knew I wanted to get to Omaha early. That added 3+ hours to our travel time. We literally got to this field, that looked like every other field we passed for the previous 30 minutes, she walked around for five minutes, then was ready to go. RIGHT. Ugh. I think that was the point where I reeeally started disliking her. Oh wait, nope. That was in Chicago. We went into 7-11 and there was some money on the floor. I waited for the kid at the counter to leave to see if he took it/it was his. He left so then I picked it up and was like, "Oh, is this yours?" to Deidre and she’s was like "Yes.". Hi, no it's not. She knew it wasn't. I'm like, oh? Then she's like, "Wait, maybe it's not." And I'm like, "It's not. It was there when we walked in." And she kinda just was all... duuuh. So I'm like, let's use it to get drinks, considering it was 8,000 degrees out and she's like, "I'm gonna give it to a homeless person." No she's fucking not. I'm like, "I'm practically homeless. I make like $10 an hour." Ugh. She wicked pissed me off. I fucking bought my own drink and on the walk back to Cass's she kept trying to make small talk with me. Hi, don't bother, thanks.
Anyway, after fucking stupid field of dreams I try calling Chris and the number I have for him doesn't fucking work. AWESOME! He fucking IMed me the previous day talking about how we were going to hang out and all this shit. Why would he fucking make it a point to tell me the day before that we were hanging out definitely and then fucking not come through? Thanks. So I pretty much hate everyone I know across the country. Wow. We fucking finally found a Sonic. Yessssss. I guess the reason we don't have them over here if because they're an outdoor restaurant? Makes sense. But still, don't have the fucking commercials on in Massachusetts, if the closest one is in Des Moines, thanks. The people who worked there must have thought we were pretty much retarded. Who wanted "Sonic Souvenirs"? I do, dammit! I love my Catherine.
Uhm, anyway, continue to Omaha. Got to the hotel, got all gussied up, Deidre was "too tired" to go out and have fun with Karin and I. Better for us. We ended up at some bar. Sunday nights are not all that in Omaha, ladies and gentlemen. We kicked it in the bar for a few. A couple of guys came in and sat at the table behind us. Eh. Things we dead so we left. Boys behind us left too. I never talk to people, but this was the trip of doing things not usually done, right? Right. So I yelled to them. Asked them if they were from around here. No, they were from England. Foreign hotties! They came over to us and we ended up talking to them for like 45 mins. Then they said instead of just standing on the street, let's go to a different bar they had been to the night before. Matt bought us drinks. Turns out he lives in NYC and they were in Omaha for a friend's wedding. They were going to Chicago the following day so Karin hooked them up with some exciting things to do. We closed down the bar and ended up talking outside for another hour or so. We all exchanged numbers and emails and took retarded pictures. Definitely a highlight of the trip.
Day 4 -aka- Monday
We decided to actually spend some time in Omaha. We walked around this cute lil' tourist area and found this exceptional place for brunch. Amazing food. Yum. Since we were being all touristy we went to go see the world's largest ball or stamps. I mean, we couldn't be in Nebraska and NOT see it.
Not all that large. Kind of disappointing. Oh, and while we were there this old people christian tour group thing was there and, swear to god, at least two of them cut in front of me when I was buying postcards. Way to be christian. Awesome. Jerks.
Now this was actually the only time I got to drive. Nebraska to Colorado. We left The Good Life and drove and drove and drove. By the time we were almost in Colorado the sky turned pitch black except for the huge bursts of lightning. I was honestly scared. I had no idea how storms were out here and it was dark. and scary. Crossed the state line into fucking downpour. I had to practically stop the car. I told the girls I was pulling of at the welcome center because there was no way I felt comfortable driving in such conditions. But within 5 minutes the storm let up. (sigh of relief?) But that really didn't make the drive that much more bearable. It was still dark. It was still scary. I think I was pretty much delirious by that time and my contacts were dry. The only thing that was entertaining was the huge SPLAT of ginormous bugs against the windshield which for the first 5-10 creatures or so I thought was the start of another downpour. After thirty minutes of driving I could barely see through the layers of smooshed bug bodies. We had to get gas anyway. Bleh. So much death on our windshield.
Drivie drivie drive. Denver is fucking HUGE. Uhm. The car caused more death that night. I can barely bring myself to think about it. I'm a terrible person. Karin says she doesn't think I hit it, but I definitely think I did. I fucking started bawling my eyes out as soon as it happened. Not a good thing to do when one, you're driving and two, your contacts are already pretty dry. Hmm. It was fucking late and we needed to find somewhere to sleep. We called the place that Deirdre found and they were full. We drove around and found a bunch of hotels. Hi, like $100. Uhm, no? We ended up going back towards the more shady part and trying to find a place there. There was this motel that advertised rooms for $19.95 so we're like fiiiiiine, we'll check it out. Deirdre went in to see if they had non-smoking. The front desk was like, Nope, but... we have a SPRAY. WTF. For some reason this was hilarious. Gross.
Comfort Inn was full up. Holiday Inn was like $90. Weird things were going on in Denver that night. We ended up Motel 6'in it. BAD IDEA. There were hairs on my pillow... they weren't mine. We didn't have an AC, but I guess to make up for that there was a bottle opener attached to the bathroom sink. Ugh. I love having to wrap my pillow in my own dirty clothes so I can actually sleep on it. Definitely the worst night of the whole fucking trip.
Day 5 -aka- Tuesday
We got the fuck out of Denver. Driving through Colorado was so pretty. OMG mountains!
Yeah. Fabulous. drive drive... My memory is starting to fail me. We get to New Mexico. Finally Deirdre wants to stop at the tourist center... only because she saw a sign for Las Vegas that was like 132 miles away or something like that so she wanted to change the whole route and skip the Grand Canyon and get to CA a day early. Did I mention that I suggested a stop at the visitor center of every state. I thought it would be a cool thing to check out and see if they had any tips or info that we didn't already know of. Oh, the Las Vegas that was mentioned was Las Vegas, New Mexico and totally not of any relevance to our trip. Anyway, while Karin & Deirdre were talking to the hosts I found some discount hotel coupon books. YEAH. We could have had these things the entire trip. Ugh. ANYWAY. we figured we might as well get some food since we were stopped. We went to some place called K-Bob's, like kabobs, but Karin kept saying it KAY-BOB's. haha. It was cute.
We got back on the road and drove a hot eternity to Albuquerque. I had to make a lil sun barricade on my window cause that shit was hooooooot. fuck. We were supposed to hang out with one of Karin’s friend's brothers but he was like 20 or 21 and hanging out in his friend's basement getting drunk... soooooo we decided to hit up the town ourselves. Nothing much at all happening. There was this one bar/club called The Library and we definitely went to a library bar in Omaha so we figure we might as well make it a trend. The bouncer told us it was like the hottest spot in the whole city and it would def get bumping later. ...like 2 hours later. But shit, we fucking had so much fun. I actually drank. Karin was so drunk. We hung out with these chicks from Las Cruces and we fucking DANCED our asses off. It really was fabulous. It actually made me miss going to hip hop clubs. Having fun is fun. Weird.
Eventually we went back to the hotel after getting Karin's drunk ass some food. Sleep was good.
Day 6 -aka- Wednesday
Peace out Albuquerque. God, it's so fucking pretty out there. I bet everyone takes it for granted too. Or maybe they're just used to it so they don't care. Regardless, fucking breathtaking. We stopped for gas and food and ended up shopping and this native american store. Incredible things. Incredibly expensive things. I bought my mom and aunt some Kuni fetishes and ogled tons of turquoise jewelry. We were back on the road and got into Flagstaff. It's like the cutest town ever. We went to the info center and found out it would be better to get a place to stay in Flagstaff for the night and head out to the Grand Canyon the following day as opposed to just heading straight there. Everyone agreed so we found a hotel and dropped our shit off. I wanted to go see these Indian ruins which I thought we were going to see on the way to the Grand Canyon anyway, but apparently we weren't. And apparently no one else wanted to. Yeah, that kinda pissed me off. When the fuck are we going to get to go there again? Thanks. Rad. Normally I would have been a douche bag about it, but I had to suck it up and have fun. So I did. Bitches. Our first stop had to be this lil coffee shop called Macy's due to Jeff's (captain_grim) recommendation. It was cute. I had to tell the girl who worked there our little story and turned out that she was actually from Massachusetts. She used to live one city over from me. small world.
We stepped out of the coffee shop and it started raining. There was some debate about continuing our lil tour of Flagstaff... Uhm, it's just water? We trekked on, it rained on. After one more stop it was down pouring. I gave Karin my Canon since she was the only one with an umbrella and decided to enjoy the rain. The city is so clean I felt it would be a waste if I didn't take off my sandals. I rolled up my jeans and took off my sweatshirt. Splashing around the streets barefoot like a kid while everyone else tried to hide from the water. Ha. I got completely soaked. My hair got curly! I loved it. It was one of the more memorable events on the trip. I'm gay.
The rain slowed up a little and we continued shopping around. There were a ton of cute stores. We figured we might as well eat while we were out so we went to this Korean place. I won't say anything negative. All I will say is that my dinner that night was white rice. Uhm, Arizona gets pretty cold at night and still being wet was not a good thing. I was freezing. Since my belly was still basically empty I wanted to fill it with hot chocolate. Mmm. A lot better. Went back to the hotel, took a shower, went to sleep.
Day 7 -aka- Thursday
Grand Canyon Day. For everyone who has never been to the Grand Canyon let me just tell you that it's not just like one spot. You can go around the whole... rim? I guess? So it's not just like you go there, you see the freakin canyon, you leave. It's an event. Anyway, just the drive to the Grand Canyon is pretty enough. I really didn't even need the "grand-ness". OK, I mean, It's like nothing else you'll ever see in your life but still. We were tourists and took a million pictures. It was reeeeally hot. We sent a lot of postcards. I'm done with my Grand Canyon Part.
We drove on to California. I think I passed out once we crossed the border. I was really fucking sick of being in the car by then. People get annoying. UGH. I think I woke up when we were semi-near LA. The girls called their friend who we were staying with. She basically couldn't give us directions to her house. I don't even know. We somehow made it there. Everyone was talking about college and catching up on old times so I was basically out of place. I figured I'd get some sleep. Karin said she'd be down soon anyway. Not. She ended up sleeping in Amity's room too with her & Deirdre. Thanks for fucking leaving me sleeping alone in some stranger's living room with her roommates randomly passing by. I just felt awkward and it kinda pissed me off that she left me there. Grr.
Day 8 -aka- Friday
Woke up. Got awesome coffee. Went to the beach. I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean. It made me strangely happy. I'm so lame. There was a ton of jellyfish. Some of them were dead? Little kids were playing with them. Gross. We hung out on the beach even though it was mostly hazy. It only got sunny right before we had to leave. We did, after all, have to make our plane. We stopped and got In-N_Out before we went back to Amity's. I'm so west coast. Back to Amity's, took showers, got ready super fast, STILL were running late. Good thing the airport was only like five minutes away. Oh man, Long Beach airport is soooooo ghetto. We like had to security check ourselves basically. And climb stairs to get to the plane... which we built ourselves.
Jet Blue really IS nice. I thought I was going to sleep the entire flight, but I didn't. I ended up watching SVU for like 3 hours, and then some Monk. Pretty badass. I hardly noticed all the turbulence. Uh huh.
We got into JFK and Karin's lovely friend picked us up. He drove really fast. But shit, we didn't die and he got us there. Thumbs up. Back on the fucking east coast. word. sleep.
Day 9 -aka- Saturday
Woke up kinda late. Oops. Oh well. Took showers, got ready, headed out. Karin took me to Tom's Diner. It's famous? It was good, anyway. Then we went to get mani-pedis! See, I don't do things like that enough. OMG. We had to go meet Catherine! in her favoritest of places so it was train time. I bought a FUNPASS! It was fun! I'm gay and write about gay things. God.
We got to Chinatown and met up with Catherine. I bought some fancy earrings. Mmhmmm. We found a bubble tea place and took advantage of their bathroom. Their tea was pretty good. Wow, remember bubble tea? We walked around some more before Karin had to leave. It was her sister's birthday. They were all going out to a fancy restaurant and then a bunch of expensive bars and clubs. Uhm, I kinda couldn't afford that and I guess even if I could I didn't really bring clothes for it. Oh well. Catherine and I trekked on. We went shoe shopping. Yes, Catherine tried on shoes. Maybe for the first time in her life. I honestly couldn't believe it. Kinda freaked me out. She didn't end up buying them and I couldn't find anything I even liked. Then she had to leave me. She was going to see her lifetime love in fake-Jersey. I could have went with her, but I had already made other plans for the night. Remember the British boys from Omaha? Yeah, well Matt, the one who lives in NY and I had been texting the whole week so I told him how I couldn't afford to go out with Karin and he said we could go "ballin on a budget". I thought it was the cutest thing (cause I'm lame) so I agreed.
After shopping some more, I took the trains back to Karin’s BY MYSELF. I'm so accomplished. I didn't get lost on NYC subway. Go me. I took a shower and got all ready for my night on the town with my foreign boy. I met up with Matt and we went to some random bar. We started getting along pretty well right off the bat. We had a drink and I had to fess up and tell him I'm not a good drinker. He admitted that he wasn't all about drinking so we figured there must be some other fun stuff to do in that city. We walked around a bunch and ended up going to play some pool. We both seriously suck. A lot. The first game took us like 20 minutes. OK, I think the second one did too. I won both. He felt pretty bad about it. haha. Oh wellllll. We stayed out pretty late and he was a gentleman and took the subway back to Karin's with me. I was staying there alone that night since she was out with her sister & co and all her roommates were away. We ended up watching a movie and somehow got cuddlie and made out. British make outs. Word. It was so fucking late, the sun was coming up and we both kept dozing off. I thought it was cute. I think I gave him directions to the train at some point but everything is kind of a blur.
Day 10 -aka- Sunday
I remember texting Matt to make sure he made it home ok. He had. This was supposed to be M.I.A. day in Central Park. For one reason or another, everyone else couldn't make it. It wasn't fun to go by myself. I got ready, packed all my shit up and called Karin. She was going to meet me at the bus station. Ugh. I had to carry all my heavy crap. It was heavy. Made it to the bus station, eventually found Karin, lucked out and got an express bus to Boston WITH no one sitting next to me. It was good times.
Chris picked me up from South Station. I don't even think I unpacked anything that night. I was completely exhausted and I had work the next day.
I'm so glad I did this. I went out of my comfort zone and I so fucking needed it. I want to go somewhere at least once a month. Even if it's somewhere close by. I just want to get out of Boston at least for a weekend. I don't ever want to get that feeling of being stuck in my city again. I want to want to do things. and 'explore'. and have new experiences. I can't wait.
♥,
Holy crap. So, AMAZING time. I feel like I've taken so much away from this trip, not just visit new places, see new things and meet new people, but have experiences and gain perspectives.
Day 1 -aka Friday
We left early Friday morning and headed to Brooklyn to pick up Karin. I'd say the trip was off to a bad start. I didn't get my check, Kay had to write me a check Thursday night at like 10:00. I didn't finish packing, I ended up staying up all fucking night. no. sleep. Deidre came to get me and her car was packed. Like, PACKED. I was kinda pissed. Like, how are you going to have two people coming on a road trip with you and not even have room for them, let alone their shit. Oh, and Deidre was like an hour late. Aaaaaaaaanyway. We made it to NY, picked up Karin and were off. I pretty much dozed off and on the entire ride that day. I had a wicked bad migraine.
We planned to make it to Chicago the first day but 80 conquered us. It took like 863453 hours to drive through Pennsylvania. I was dead by the time we got to Ohio. The girls wanted to trek on, so we did. I tried to sleep the best I could in the back seat, but it just wasn't cutting it. When we got to the Toledo area, we had to get gas and then the girls realized they were kinda tired as well. We tried to find accommodations locally. Oh, a Howard Johnson right down the road, AAA approved even. How convenient, if it wasn't the trashiest place on the planet. Deidre went in since she was "the whitest" of us. The fact that we even had to think of that should have tipped us off that we wouldn't be spending the night there. Anyway, apparently there were domestics taking place in the lobby... where the leather-clad 'concierge' seemed not to care. Needless to say, we pressed on. Ended up spending $80 at a fucking Holiday Inn. Oh fucking well, right?
Day 2 -aka- Saturday:
Left fucking shitty Ohio with a quickness. Got a stupid caffeine-withdrawal headache on the way to Chicago. Dunkin Donuts should be more prevalent. On the way to Chicago I spotted a sign for The Yellow Brick Road Museum! Uhm, had to fucking go there! It was brilliant!! It definitely brought up the trip like 8 notches. If you're ever in Chesterton IN I highly recommend stopping by.
Well, finally arrived in Chicago. Wow. I totally had a different impression of what that city would be like. It's Huge. And pretty. And clean. Lake Michigan is beautiful. We went to Karin's friend Cass's apartment. Hi, nicest apartment ever. Oh, rent in Chicago is pretty cheap. I'm actually thinking about moving out there for a while. (what? me? leave Boston? YES. Maybe.) We walked around in the 100 ° weather for a while before Cass & I decided that sweating was gross and went back to her central air-ed apartment. Chilled out there, literally, for a while until it was time for our night plans. I wanted to go see Okkervil River and Deidre decided to come with me. Soo good. I don't understand how they can be so energetic when they perform. It's Okkervil River. So yeah. They played at some street fest so we ended up hanging around that for a while. Chicago has some weeeird food. Deep fried Twinkies? Cheese curds? Ew?
OK, they did have some good food. Fucking fancy hummus.
We wondered the streets for a while afterward and then headed back to Cass's. Her & Karin we at some party with Karin's ex (drama) so we just crashed. Blah Blah Dunkin Donuts. Blah Blah off to Omaha. No, wait. The fucking field of dreams.
Day 3 -aka- Sunday:
We were supposed to leave early so we could get to Omaha fairly early so I could hang out with Chris! But... Deidre decided that she wanted to go see the field where the filmed the movie The Field Of Dreams. Hi, who the fuck cares? Seriously. I swear to god she just wanted to go there because she knew I wanted to get to Omaha early. That added 3+ hours to our travel time. We literally got to this field, that looked like every other field we passed for the previous 30 minutes, she walked around for five minutes, then was ready to go. RIGHT. Ugh. I think that was the point where I reeeally started disliking her. Oh wait, nope. That was in Chicago. We went into 7-11 and there was some money on the floor. I waited for the kid at the counter to leave to see if he took it/it was his. He left so then I picked it up and was like, "Oh, is this yours?" to Deidre and she’s was like "Yes.". Hi, no it's not. She knew it wasn't. I'm like, oh? Then she's like, "Wait, maybe it's not." And I'm like, "It's not. It was there when we walked in." And she kinda just was all... duuuh. So I'm like, let's use it to get drinks, considering it was 8,000 degrees out and she's like, "I'm gonna give it to a homeless person." No she's fucking not. I'm like, "I'm practically homeless. I make like $10 an hour." Ugh. She wicked pissed me off. I fucking bought my own drink and on the walk back to Cass's she kept trying to make small talk with me. Hi, don't bother, thanks.
Anyway, after fucking stupid field of dreams I try calling Chris and the number I have for him doesn't fucking work. AWESOME! He fucking IMed me the previous day talking about how we were going to hang out and all this shit. Why would he fucking make it a point to tell me the day before that we were hanging out definitely and then fucking not come through? Thanks. So I pretty much hate everyone I know across the country. Wow. We fucking finally found a Sonic. Yessssss. I guess the reason we don't have them over here if because they're an outdoor restaurant? Makes sense. But still, don't have the fucking commercials on in Massachusetts, if the closest one is in Des Moines, thanks. The people who worked there must have thought we were pretty much retarded. Who wanted "Sonic Souvenirs"? I do, dammit! I love my Catherine.
Uhm, anyway, continue to Omaha. Got to the hotel, got all gussied up, Deidre was "too tired" to go out and have fun with Karin and I. Better for us. We ended up at some bar. Sunday nights are not all that in Omaha, ladies and gentlemen. We kicked it in the bar for a few. A couple of guys came in and sat at the table behind us. Eh. Things we dead so we left. Boys behind us left too. I never talk to people, but this was the trip of doing things not usually done, right? Right. So I yelled to them. Asked them if they were from around here. No, they were from England. Foreign hotties! They came over to us and we ended up talking to them for like 45 mins. Then they said instead of just standing on the street, let's go to a different bar they had been to the night before. Matt bought us drinks. Turns out he lives in NYC and they were in Omaha for a friend's wedding. They were going to Chicago the following day so Karin hooked them up with some exciting things to do. We closed down the bar and ended up talking outside for another hour or so. We all exchanged numbers and emails and took retarded pictures. Definitely a highlight of the trip.
Day 4 -aka- Monday
We decided to actually spend some time in Omaha. We walked around this cute lil' tourist area and found this exceptional place for brunch. Amazing food. Yum. Since we were being all touristy we went to go see the world's largest ball or stamps. I mean, we couldn't be in Nebraska and NOT see it.
Not all that large. Kind of disappointing. Oh, and while we were there this old people christian tour group thing was there and, swear to god, at least two of them cut in front of me when I was buying postcards. Way to be christian. Awesome. Jerks.
Now this was actually the only time I got to drive. Nebraska to Colorado. We left The Good Life and drove and drove and drove. By the time we were almost in Colorado the sky turned pitch black except for the huge bursts of lightning. I was honestly scared. I had no idea how storms were out here and it was dark. and scary. Crossed the state line into fucking downpour. I had to practically stop the car. I told the girls I was pulling of at the welcome center because there was no way I felt comfortable driving in such conditions. But within 5 minutes the storm let up. (sigh of relief?) But that really didn't make the drive that much more bearable. It was still dark. It was still scary. I think I was pretty much delirious by that time and my contacts were dry. The only thing that was entertaining was the huge SPLAT of ginormous bugs against the windshield which for the first 5-10 creatures or so I thought was the start of another downpour. After thirty minutes of driving I could barely see through the layers of smooshed bug bodies. We had to get gas anyway. Bleh. So much death on our windshield.
Drivie drivie drive. Denver is fucking HUGE. Uhm. The car caused more death that night. I can barely bring myself to think about it. I'm a terrible person. Karin says she doesn't think I hit it, but I definitely think I did. I fucking started bawling my eyes out as soon as it happened. Not a good thing to do when one, you're driving and two, your contacts are already pretty dry. Hmm. It was fucking late and we needed to find somewhere to sleep. We called the place that Deirdre found and they were full. We drove around and found a bunch of hotels. Hi, like $100. Uhm, no? We ended up going back towards the more shady part and trying to find a place there. There was this motel that advertised rooms for $19.95 so we're like fiiiiiine, we'll check it out. Deirdre went in to see if they had non-smoking. The front desk was like, Nope, but... we have a SPRAY. WTF. For some reason this was hilarious. Gross.
Comfort Inn was full up. Holiday Inn was like $90. Weird things were going on in Denver that night. We ended up Motel 6'in it. BAD IDEA. There were hairs on my pillow... they weren't mine. We didn't have an AC, but I guess to make up for that there was a bottle opener attached to the bathroom sink. Ugh. I love having to wrap my pillow in my own dirty clothes so I can actually sleep on it. Definitely the worst night of the whole fucking trip.
Day 5 -aka- Tuesday
We got the fuck out of Denver. Driving through Colorado was so pretty. OMG mountains!
Yeah. Fabulous. drive drive... My memory is starting to fail me. We get to New Mexico. Finally Deirdre wants to stop at the tourist center... only because she saw a sign for Las Vegas that was like 132 miles away or something like that so she wanted to change the whole route and skip the Grand Canyon and get to CA a day early. Did I mention that I suggested a stop at the visitor center of every state. I thought it would be a cool thing to check out and see if they had any tips or info that we didn't already know of. Oh, the Las Vegas that was mentioned was Las Vegas, New Mexico and totally not of any relevance to our trip. Anyway, while Karin & Deirdre were talking to the hosts I found some discount hotel coupon books. YEAH. We could have had these things the entire trip. Ugh. ANYWAY. we figured we might as well get some food since we were stopped. We went to some place called K-Bob's, like kabobs, but Karin kept saying it KAY-BOB's. haha. It was cute.
We got back on the road and drove a hot eternity to Albuquerque. I had to make a lil sun barricade on my window cause that shit was hooooooot. fuck. We were supposed to hang out with one of Karin’s friend's brothers but he was like 20 or 21 and hanging out in his friend's basement getting drunk... soooooo we decided to hit up the town ourselves. Nothing much at all happening. There was this one bar/club called The Library and we definitely went to a library bar in Omaha so we figure we might as well make it a trend. The bouncer told us it was like the hottest spot in the whole city and it would def get bumping later. ...like 2 hours later. But shit, we fucking had so much fun. I actually drank. Karin was so drunk. We hung out with these chicks from Las Cruces and we fucking DANCED our asses off. It really was fabulous. It actually made me miss going to hip hop clubs. Having fun is fun. Weird.
Eventually we went back to the hotel after getting Karin's drunk ass some food. Sleep was good.
Day 6 -aka- Wednesday
Peace out Albuquerque. God, it's so fucking pretty out there. I bet everyone takes it for granted too. Or maybe they're just used to it so they don't care. Regardless, fucking breathtaking. We stopped for gas and food and ended up shopping and this native american store. Incredible things. Incredibly expensive things. I bought my mom and aunt some Kuni fetishes and ogled tons of turquoise jewelry. We were back on the road and got into Flagstaff. It's like the cutest town ever. We went to the info center and found out it would be better to get a place to stay in Flagstaff for the night and head out to the Grand Canyon the following day as opposed to just heading straight there. Everyone agreed so we found a hotel and dropped our shit off. I wanted to go see these Indian ruins which I thought we were going to see on the way to the Grand Canyon anyway, but apparently we weren't. And apparently no one else wanted to. Yeah, that kinda pissed me off. When the fuck are we going to get to go there again? Thanks. Rad. Normally I would have been a douche bag about it, but I had to suck it up and have fun. So I did. Bitches. Our first stop had to be this lil coffee shop called Macy's due to Jeff's (captain_grim) recommendation. It was cute. I had to tell the girl who worked there our little story and turned out that she was actually from Massachusetts. She used to live one city over from me. small world.
We stepped out of the coffee shop and it started raining. There was some debate about continuing our lil tour of Flagstaff... Uhm, it's just water? We trekked on, it rained on. After one more stop it was down pouring. I gave Karin my Canon since she was the only one with an umbrella and decided to enjoy the rain. The city is so clean I felt it would be a waste if I didn't take off my sandals. I rolled up my jeans and took off my sweatshirt. Splashing around the streets barefoot like a kid while everyone else tried to hide from the water. Ha. I got completely soaked. My hair got curly! I loved it. It was one of the more memorable events on the trip. I'm gay.
The rain slowed up a little and we continued shopping around. There were a ton of cute stores. We figured we might as well eat while we were out so we went to this Korean place. I won't say anything negative. All I will say is that my dinner that night was white rice. Uhm, Arizona gets pretty cold at night and still being wet was not a good thing. I was freezing. Since my belly was still basically empty I wanted to fill it with hot chocolate. Mmm. A lot better. Went back to the hotel, took a shower, went to sleep.
Day 7 -aka- Thursday
Grand Canyon Day. For everyone who has never been to the Grand Canyon let me just tell you that it's not just like one spot. You can go around the whole... rim? I guess? So it's not just like you go there, you see the freakin canyon, you leave. It's an event. Anyway, just the drive to the Grand Canyon is pretty enough. I really didn't even need the "grand-ness". OK, I mean, It's like nothing else you'll ever see in your life but still. We were tourists and took a million pictures. It was reeeeally hot. We sent a lot of postcards. I'm done with my Grand Canyon Part.
We drove on to California. I think I passed out once we crossed the border. I was really fucking sick of being in the car by then. People get annoying. UGH. I think I woke up when we were semi-near LA. The girls called their friend who we were staying with. She basically couldn't give us directions to her house. I don't even know. We somehow made it there. Everyone was talking about college and catching up on old times so I was basically out of place. I figured I'd get some sleep. Karin said she'd be down soon anyway. Not. She ended up sleeping in Amity's room too with her & Deirdre. Thanks for fucking leaving me sleeping alone in some stranger's living room with her roommates randomly passing by. I just felt awkward and it kinda pissed me off that she left me there. Grr.
Day 8 -aka- Friday
Woke up. Got awesome coffee. Went to the beach. I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean. It made me strangely happy. I'm so lame. There was a ton of jellyfish. Some of them were dead? Little kids were playing with them. Gross. We hung out on the beach even though it was mostly hazy. It only got sunny right before we had to leave. We did, after all, have to make our plane. We stopped and got In-N_Out before we went back to Amity's. I'm so west coast. Back to Amity's, took showers, got ready super fast, STILL were running late. Good thing the airport was only like five minutes away. Oh man, Long Beach airport is soooooo ghetto. We like had to security check ourselves basically. And climb stairs to get to the plane... which we built ourselves.
Jet Blue really IS nice. I thought I was going to sleep the entire flight, but I didn't. I ended up watching SVU for like 3 hours, and then some Monk. Pretty badass. I hardly noticed all the turbulence. Uh huh.
We got into JFK and Karin's lovely friend picked us up. He drove really fast. But shit, we didn't die and he got us there. Thumbs up. Back on the fucking east coast. word. sleep.
Day 9 -aka- Saturday
Woke up kinda late. Oops. Oh well. Took showers, got ready, headed out. Karin took me to Tom's Diner. It's famous? It was good, anyway. Then we went to get mani-pedis! See, I don't do things like that enough. OMG. We had to go meet Catherine! in her favoritest of places so it was train time. I bought a FUNPASS! It was fun! I'm gay and write about gay things. God.
We got to Chinatown and met up with Catherine. I bought some fancy earrings. Mmhmmm. We found a bubble tea place and took advantage of their bathroom. Their tea was pretty good. Wow, remember bubble tea? We walked around some more before Karin had to leave. It was her sister's birthday. They were all going out to a fancy restaurant and then a bunch of expensive bars and clubs. Uhm, I kinda couldn't afford that and I guess even if I could I didn't really bring clothes for it. Oh well. Catherine and I trekked on. We went shoe shopping. Yes, Catherine tried on shoes. Maybe for the first time in her life. I honestly couldn't believe it. Kinda freaked me out. She didn't end up buying them and I couldn't find anything I even liked. Then she had to leave me. She was going to see her lifetime love in fake-Jersey. I could have went with her, but I had already made other plans for the night. Remember the British boys from Omaha? Yeah, well Matt, the one who lives in NY and I had been texting the whole week so I told him how I couldn't afford to go out with Karin and he said we could go "ballin on a budget". I thought it was the cutest thing (cause I'm lame) so I agreed.
After shopping some more, I took the trains back to Karin’s BY MYSELF. I'm so accomplished. I didn't get lost on NYC subway. Go me. I took a shower and got all ready for my night on the town with my foreign boy. I met up with Matt and we went to some random bar. We started getting along pretty well right off the bat. We had a drink and I had to fess up and tell him I'm not a good drinker. He admitted that he wasn't all about drinking so we figured there must be some other fun stuff to do in that city. We walked around a bunch and ended up going to play some pool. We both seriously suck. A lot. The first game took us like 20 minutes. OK, I think the second one did too. I won both. He felt pretty bad about it. haha. Oh wellllll. We stayed out pretty late and he was a gentleman and took the subway back to Karin's with me. I was staying there alone that night since she was out with her sister & co and all her roommates were away. We ended up watching a movie and somehow got cuddlie and made out. British make outs. Word. It was so fucking late, the sun was coming up and we both kept dozing off. I thought it was cute. I think I gave him directions to the train at some point but everything is kind of a blur.
Day 10 -aka- Sunday
I remember texting Matt to make sure he made it home ok. He had. This was supposed to be M.I.A. day in Central Park. For one reason or another, everyone else couldn't make it. It wasn't fun to go by myself. I got ready, packed all my shit up and called Karin. She was going to meet me at the bus station. Ugh. I had to carry all my heavy crap. It was heavy. Made it to the bus station, eventually found Karin, lucked out and got an express bus to Boston WITH no one sitting next to me. It was good times.
Chris picked me up from South Station. I don't even think I unpacked anything that night. I was completely exhausted and I had work the next day.
I'm so glad I did this. I went out of my comfort zone and I so fucking needed it. I want to go somewhere at least once a month. Even if it's somewhere close by. I just want to get out of Boston at least for a weekend. I don't ever want to get that feeling of being stuck in my city again. I want to want to do things. and 'explore'. and have new experiences. I can't wait.
♥,