Honorable Mention

I was just re-reading a big drive oh five post and, since I don’t have much else to do right now I started answering the questions I’d posed…

Will I really need one thousand dollars for gas?
     Turns out, no. Gas was expensive, but not insanely expensive. I filled up three times on the way to Chicago, and three times on the way back. I paid about $2.01 in Ohio, but $2.40 in New York.

Will I have any trouble buying the Yuengling?
     The answer is a big YES. I pulled over in Eerie, Pennsylvania to buy some beer. I took a promising looking exit near Mercyhurst college, figuring a college town would have booze. I drove around for twenty minutes with no luck, so I pulled into a gas station to ask for some help.
     I walked up to the girl behind the counter, probably eighteen years old, and her dad. I said “I need some help, I’m looking for Yuengling, is there a place around here I can buy a case?” The dad looked at me, then looked at his daughter, tapped her on the shoulder and said “Go ahead, honey, you know better than me, how do you get to that liquor store?”
     She gave me directions to a plaza on exit further away. “Not the stores where Chuck E. Cheese is, the other stores across the road.” Sounded simple enough, I didn’t think rural PA would have more than one Chuck E. Cheese at a stretch.
     I go one exit down the highway, pull off, and discover not one, not two, but six plazas on either side of the road. I end up criss-crossing four times until I finally end up in the plaza with the Chuck E. Cheese, and there is the liquor store.
     So, I park the truck and wander in, gazing at rows upon rows of hard alcohol and wine. Not a beer to be seen. I walk over to the register and say “I’d like to buy a case of Yuengling, but you don’t appear to have any, could you direct me to someplace that carries it?” The clerk said “Sure, what you want to do is go back up the highway, one exit east and there’s a store right off the exit ramp.” I stopped him right there. I’d just come from one exit east. I was not about to backtrack. I got back on the highway and drove to Cleveland, sans Yuengling.

Can I really drive for sixteen hours in a row?
     Yes. On the way to Chicago I did about ninety, I only got stopped once, in Indiana, about thirty miles from the Chicago line, doing 88 mph in a 70 mph zone. I now hate Indiana. (side note: it wasn’t the speeding ticket that bothered me, it was the twenty minutes it took the statie to write the ticket. Without that delay I would have made the Chicago city limits at fourteen and a half hours, even with the delay in Pennsylvania. So yes, I really could drive for sixteen hours, but really, it was only about fourteen hours, because I drove fast.

     Coming back I took my sweet time. Also I didn’t want to get another speeding ticket from the stupid IN state police. I now hate Indiana. It is my least favorite state – that’s right, I like the forty-nine other states more than Indiana, and that’s saying something, because Arkansas is one of those states.
     I made the trip in just over nineteen hours, door-to-door, Donny’s apt. at 12 Milwaukee street, Milwaukee to 123 Main street, Boston non-stop. I think all told I was out of the car for approximately fifteen minutes, the combined total of the time it took to fill up the gas tank six times.


Those are some highlights. I’ll post the actual laptop-journal entry tonight when I get home. It is sickeningly honest, and probably inflamatory, and you know what? Tough. I’m tired of pretending to be everybody’s friend. If you’re offended let me know. (ps Adina, I’m going to preempt your “I was offended” comment: You can’t be offended by non-mention, so don’t bother.)

-tgme


recommended download:
Johnny Cash, I Walk The Line