The Longest Day
When I decided to take a trip to U of I today, I didn't realize it would be such an event. Sure, I knew that Greg and I would look at his recent work on In Memory, and I knew that we would be moving some stuff of mine into the apartment, but I could have never guessed what would happen on the way home.
After I got on to Highway 72, the temperature alarm in my car started going off. I pulled over, popped the hood, and emptied the last of a gallon water jug into the coolant tank, talked to a very nice police officer that had stopped, and was on my way again.
But not for long. About two or three miles down the road, it was evident that all the water had boiled out. I had no water left, yet managed to force the car to limp off an exit ramp and into a neighborhood. A nice older guy gladly filled my gallon jug up, and I cautiously moved back to the highway.
A couple miles later, I was already overheating, so I pulled into the next gas station I could find. I bought three ice-cold gallons of water, filled my tank, and waited for about 15 minutes. Time to hit the road again.
Once again, another two or three miles down the road, I had to stop and fill up the tanks. By this time, Charma Charmeleon (the name of my car, just to spite Carl) was making a god-awful thumping sound. I decided to call it quits. If the engine hadn't been damaged yet, I sure as hell wasn't going to push it.
Eric had started his two and a half hour trip up to save me, but there was plenty of time to kill. I read a bit of the course material for a class of mine and chatted with another friendly cop, not to mention a little support from Christine. After a stop at Wendy's in Springfield (where we heard the discussion of the night; Worker: "Where's Lawrence?" Manager: "Lawrence quit." Worker: "Why?" Manager: "I don't know; he was never the same after he got out of prison."), Eric and I pulled into O'Fallon at 11:00- a full 7 hours after I had started my trip home, mile by mile.
This post also marks my first as a 21 year old. As of right now, I'm 21 years and 10 minutes old. And not one second wiser.