We realized that Matt had to get his car back to Seattle after graduation. Shipping it would have been way too boring, so we started dreaming about driving cross-country after graduation. We started selling the idea to Turner. He was officially sold when our route was re-directed through Vegas and he got his new Droid phone so he can browse the Internet and read books anywhere. Since certain friends of ours restrict how many minutes we can talk about basketball at meals, the roadtrip was our new conversation topic. We got a lot of people excited about it, but didn’t have space in Matt’s car. Late April, Matt offered to drive a high school friend’s car back to Seattle and Gina and Bruno got in through Nashville, TN. It was officially ON.I’m not sure when I would say the road trip officially began. It could have been:
- When I turned in my take-home final to Prof. Reeves on Thursday. At that point, all stresses were officially gone and I could start the journey with Senior Week.
- Saturday night at 1a.m. as I was running behind Fabian’s car to make sure my mattress stayed on as we drove it down 320 to the Barn. It hit me that Junior year was officially over as I packed my room in three directions: Vermont, the Barn and the car for the roadtrip.
- Sunday night at 8p.m. when we picked up Muff. 2 hours late. I lost my bet with Dean. He gave me some great odds, but my 6p.m. ETD was slightly off. Too much stuff, not enough hands.
Either way, we’re finally officially on the road. Gina and Bruno are clearly much more efficient packers and were a few hours ahead of us, taking Gina’s overpacked car to her house. Danny and I were in the Volvo, both Matts were in the Audi. The Volvo got a head start because Qdoba didn’t give Turner his sauce and he had to go back. Danny and I passed the time serenading the windshield with Usher and Lil’ Wayne.
Greeny was among the most excited about the trip, even offering to rent a U-Haul trailer and deck it out with furniture. We spurned that idea because we had seen that episode before and knew it ended with us not leaving Philadelphia (link to Always Sunny.) Before we got the 2nd car, Greeny had accepted a pretty sick twitternship at IMG Academies in Florida. He considered coming once we had the space, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I told him to keep an eye out for Marqus Blakely, the University of Vermont superstar. Blakely was working out at IMG, pushing to get selected in June’s NBA Draft. I didn’t realize how closely he was working with the players until he called me sometime between Philly and Pittsburgh and passed the phone to Marqus.
Sam
