Grab Life

I know the Hellions all woke up at 6:30, but waking up at 10 was tough stuff for us this morning…

After Anna got out of work a bit earlier than expected yesterday, we hit the road for Columbus, Ohio, leaving Durham, NC around 5 p.m. I forced her to keep the travel log going (just for you, Bubs and Jesus!), but I know it probably won’t be as detailed as it was when either of you were keeping it— after all, it’s tough to keep a log and keep conversation alive at the same time. Again, I spent some of the time commenting on the geography of everything, but most of our ride was taken up with conversation. Anna noted how creepy unlit highways are at night (I suppose especially in rural West Virginia…), but I had never really considered it before. Now that she mentions it, though…

We arrived at our hotel a little after midnight, but spent the next five hours awake working on… a project. This project will soon be revealed, but until it is fully completed must be kept under-wraps. Anyways, we plan on working on it more tonight, but hopefully not quite as late into the wee hours…! Actually, definitely not. I think I set my alarm three different times before I finally decided it was time to get out of bed and shower. Good thing all we have on deck for today is chilling by the sides of the Frisbee fields and cheering on the Hellions! 

I’m really excited to watch them play, but I’m worried it will make me miss Ultimate a lot. Although, I’m not sure. I was talking to Jesus (and maybe Bubs?) about this at one point along our road trip, but I don’t think I liked the competetiveness of Frisbee— it had always been something I did for fun, just tossing a disc around, and for some reason running drills with it and keeping score (all things I don’t mind with lacrosse or ice hockey) kind of got to me. And from what I hear the competition got dialed up this year, so I suppose it’s probably for the best I didn’t continue, although I do miss the camaraderie and running around a few nights a week! Anyways, we’ve got posters and all that jazz, so I’m excited to go watch and cheer them on! Hopefully they’ll fare well today (yesterday sounded a little like a bummer— two losses— but the fact that they’ve even made it this far is AMAZING considering what a young program they are, and since they’re in such a competitive region)!

It took me ages to finally decide that I would leave Fort Wayne on Monday (I considered staying until Tuesday and leaving then). I think it would’ve taken even longer to leave every destination if I weren’t going to see all the Hellions at Nationals this weekend! But, I finally decided that I wanted to just get the solo drive over with.

After downloading David Sedaris’ “Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim” to listen to in the car, I set off Durham-ward. After living with four other people and traveling the country with at least one other, it’s odd to suddenly have ten hours all to oneself. But I think I managed surprisingly well! Most of my time was spent observing landscape changes and listening to the hilarity that is Sedaris. Having heard him speak at USC made listening to him read his own book even more fun and somehow personal. Nothing will be able to rival to the Harry Potter books-on-tape in terms of pure entertainment value, but this is a great road-trip “read.” It kept me occupied as I cruised Eastward over beautiful, rolling hills. At one point about an hour outside Durham I was driving along the cliff-edge of a hill and could look to my left and see for miles a flat, populated area stretching to the horizon (I tried to take a picture, but it was challenging while driving, so it came out extremely blurry and un-majestic)! One of my favorite parts about the road trip would be whenever we would come over a hill and look down into a valley to see an entire city lit up at night, just a bunch of orange spots on a dark blue background floating ahead of us. So many incredible sights!

I got to Duke a little after 11 and crashed on Anna’s futon after meeting her roommate (who had just flown back from Colorado College’s graduation! Coincidence, wow!). 

Yesterday I got to hang out all day then cook a yummy stir-fry dinner for Anna and her friends, and afterwards we took a walk through the Duke gardens, where hopefully I will camp out to do some reading tomorrow! I felt like such a housewife when Anna walked in from work to find me making dinner and watching the nightly news! We always joke that I’m the husband in our relationship (and she’s my loving wifey), which prompted a discussion on gender-role reversals, especially in light of the recession. I also got to meet her friend Nihaal, who reminds me a bit of my friend Bobby from USC (although he’s in Duke’s SigEp, not ‘SC’s SigNu. He did go to high school with Evan Jochims, and he knows a ton of people at USC). Everyone at Duke is extremely friendly, though— it’s very refreshing!

Today was spent cruising around downtown Durham, collecting materials to make Hellions posters to cheer them on at Nationals, stopping into fun little shops, and biding time (after sleeping in until 1:30 p.m.) ‘til Anna came home again! We went out to dinner (Anna’s roommate Lauren had never had Indian food!) and then to a great place called the Cook Out, which apparently has amazing milkshakes (true dat!), and now we’re sitting around working and watching the Cavs/Magic game. 

I told Anna about my roommate, Traci, rhinestone-ing and entire Pau Gasol jersey. “At least she picked a respectable Laker,” was Anna’s first response (to which I responded: “He looks like a caveman!” Anna: “He does look like llama…”). Her next response was, “Isn’t that a little fourth-grade? I mean, rhinestones?” I tried to explain to her that no, in L.A. lots of things are rhinestoned… Like tee shirts by Ed Hardy. She had never heard of Ed Hardy (I hadn’t either until coming to Los Angeles), so I spent a while, with some help from her Florida friend, Amanda, attempting to justify full-grown men wearing rhinestoned tee shirts… Which is harder than you might imagine. Usually this type of guy is wearing True Religion jeans and is accompanied by a girl wearing a Juicy tracksuit, massive gold jewelry, and oversized designer sunglasses. It’s quite the sight, I must say. Suddenly an entire Lakers jersey covered in purple and white rhinestones doesn’t seem quite so outlandish…

Sunday morning we attempted to hijack Bubbles and take her with Jesus and me to Indiana, but she was having none of it. So, Jesus and I took off on our own for the long, long trek from Omaha to Fort Wayne… (But first we stopped for gas at Hy-Vee, which Bubbles thought was a national chain when she was little. I thought Shaw’s was nationwide, too— I guess everyone assumes those misconceptions until they see other parts of the country where the familiar things don’t exist.)

We made quick progress taking some fun photos along the way, and Jesus was great company (no surprise— although she was surprisingly chatty, which was really fun)! We crossed the Mississippi River (for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that we would), and it completely caught me by surprise! Luckily, Jesus was able to snap a few photos. It’s a little bit sad we weren’t able to spend more time seeing national sites like the Grand Canyon or the Mississippi River, but at least we got to glimpse them…!

On the way to Fort Wayne I decided it would be fun to try to either see Jaji (my cousin) or Tyra (my friend from Exeter). Jaji was busy (GETTING ENGAGED TO SEAN! CONGRATS!!!), but we were able to catch up with Tyra in Evanston. It was so great getting to visit her— I’m horrible at calling people back, but I love being able to catch up in person! She showed us around downtown Evanston a little bit (apparently “down town” generally refers to Chicago, so there was some confusion every time Tyra mentioned “downtown” meaning ChiTown and I mentioned “downtown” meaning commercial Evanston…). Evanston was still chillier than I thought, even though Tyra enlightened me that temperatures above 60° qualify as “warm.” 

We continued on in darkness towards Fort Wayne, and a few hours later I got to meet Jesus’ pets: Windsor (their old, old doggy), Big Kitty, and Little Kitty (who apparently was a Birthday present meant to lure Jesus to a college closer to home. Sadly, the bribery plan failed). Jesus’ neighborhood was very nice, kind of quaint, and seeing her room and getting the tour of the house was so much fun! I always love seeing my friends’ rooms, because they tend to explain so much! We started watching “Rushmore” (which I think I added to her Netflix queue a few months ago, because it’s not so much her type of movie, I don’t think!), but because we were tired and Wes Anderson movies tend to just be boring and not make any logical sense when you’re the least bit sleepy, we turned it off and just went to bed at some point after Jason Schwartzman gets attacked outside of his school by a band of little wizardy-looking kids…