Last Thursday was perhaps the first time in my life that I’ve started a driving trip on time, let alone early. Nonetheless, the car was packed, bikes strapped on the hatch, and we were on our way to Grayslake to acquire our third party by 10:30 in the morning. Shortly after noon, we were on our way to Lawrence, Kansas, almost an hour before our estimated time of departure of 1:00.
Our leisurely pace put us in Lawrence around 10:00 pm, where we were put up by our friends Amanda and Rustin, who we’d just seen in Chicago the week before. A night of cheap drinks, not-so-good live music, and delicious pizza was followed by breakfast at Milton’s (the second best breakfast spot in the United States) and some record shopping on Mass Ave. The sunny 65 degree weather was a nice change from the 20’s and snow that we had left in Chicago the day before. Our last stop in Lawrence was a visit to Luke Bender’s liquor store, as well as the dotdotdot art collective that shares the space next to the liquor store. The portrait show at the gallery is quite impressive.
Upon departure of Lawrence, we decided that the best way to remain on schedule would be to make dinner reservations somewhere along our route. That being said, at 3:30 in Lawrence, Kansas, we made 8:30 dinner reservations at the Outback Steakhouse (for some reason I had gift cards) in Oklahoma City. With steaks and lobsters on the horizon, we kept up the early streak, and checked in for our reservations at 8:15. In hindsight, it was probably a bad call to order crab-stuffed-shrimp in a farm town 1500 miles from the nearest saltwater, but we were on a roll. We also managed to acquire groupies in the waitstaff.
At our dinner, we decided it was imperative to make it to Long Beach for a house party on Saturday night. We figured that by driving straight through, our eta would be 4-6 pm Saturday evening. I kept up driving until Tucumcari, New Mexico, at which point Brendan took over. Until this stop, I had driven the entire trip. I fell asleep immediately after retiring my post, but woke up soon to see Brendan, white-knuckled, fishtailing at 90 mph along 3 inches of snowpack on Interstate 40. After not crashing, we traveled the remaining 60 miles to Albuquerque at speeds between 20 and 50 mph, depending on snow conditions.
Somewhere between almost dying and arriving in the southwest’s most unpleasant city, I realized that I had fallen violently ill. The bathroom floor at the Albuquerque Flying J Truckstop was left with a puddle of bloody steak vomit. The rest of the drive was interrupted by frequent emergency pullovers for roadside vomiting from the backseat. We arrived in Long Beach at 5:15 PM, on time. Dan and Brendan went to the party. I slept for 18 hours.
This entry was written by , posted on January 13, 2009 at 8:05 pm, filed under Long Beach, Travel and tagged lawrence, long beach. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.