It's a Dry Heat (Part I)

I'll get back to rambling about the distant past in a bit, but I would like to take some time to ramble about the recent past while it is fresh in my mind. I'd like to tell myself all about my vacation in Arizona/Tennessee. I started with a plan. The plan was to take a friend. The friend lived, and still lives around 600 miles away, therefore the trip started with a very long drive. I started by heading west, crossing into West Virginia and Ohio along the way. This part of the drive was old hat to me, as it was the route towards Columbus and the home of the dread scourge Sterling Commerce. However, oh happy day, it was meant that I travel on past the wretched dead-lands in central Ohio and continue ever westward, my heart happy for what lay ahead. I crossed into plains lush with cornfields and cows and the scent of methane, and around this time for whatever reason I received a friendly wave from passers-by, which lifted my spirits and helped me buckle down for the long haul through Kentucky. I passed through Cincinnati and Louisville along the way, both of which featured many police cars along curbsides writing tickets to drivers likely writhing in rage and wallowing in their own stupidity and carelessness. I think, at least from a driver's viewpoint, that Cincinnati would be a habitable city. It looks clean and modern and is a place I may stop to visit one day. Louisville was much less charming. It felt like generic-city USA and is probably a place you have to explore a bit to get a real feel for it. Aside from these minor distractions, there was distressingly little to keep my interest while zooming down the highway. A smashed deer here, an orphaned tire tread there. I became complacent and ever bored with the road and longed for some sort of communication, even if it was that of an angry motorist. I persevered, however, and reached my friend's home in Tennessee where we spent some quality time in a hotel room and where we learned a little more about each other.

I am terrible at this... (Part II)

Now, I mentioned a vacation. Unfortunately, it ended up being book ended by the worst week in my life, so I almost hesitate to assign this moniker but seeing as it did not CAUSE the aforementioned event, I leave it as thus. The vacation started innocuously enough with my buddy Jared heading south to my place from his dorm in Slippery Rock. We had agreed this was for the best as it would have been insane to first go NORTH then retrace the path of our journey, so we loaded up my car with the essentials (tunes, foods that caused rot-gut, our navigation oracle Garmin, a wry sense of humor, etc.) and southbound we went. We trekked through quite a few states on the way down including West Virginia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina before reaching our destination. It was during this long and arduous journey that I learned of The Hold Steady and a little more about Jared and his life since high school. Our trip was frightfully uneventful and mostly carried out during the black of night/early morning and consisted of many encounters with construction barrels, workers and equipment, though all passed by my vehicle unscathed. We arrived in the Peach State at approximately 7AM, pestered Jason for his house key, and felt our way to his place through the early morning swamp haze. We busted in, bags in tow, dumped our stuff in his living room, and passed the fuck out.

The first day consisted of frolicking merrily in the warm Atlantic waters located about 10 miles from Jason's place, due east. It was here we spent the majority of the day, riding the cresting waves and catching up on lost time. We even busted out a frisbee, but, after Jared tossed it violently towards an old woman's leg in an attempt to dismember her (in her own words) and recovered it, it soon became lost in some turtle nesting grounds located nearby. Since only pregnant turtles are allowed in these areas, the frisbee was lost until future generations of turtles with thumbs and adequate manual dexterity are born on this beach and able to toss it out of their nests. Shortly afterwards, we headed back to Jason's place for a spell. We loaded up the Wii and played some Mario Kart (at which Jared and I kicked Jason ass soundly) and generally loafed about for a few hours until evening set in. At this point Jason decided we should go out and take in the Savannah night life, and Jared and I agreed that yes, this would be a fun thing to do. So off we went!