Thursday, 22 June

Out of work at 5:29:59 like a shot.
I meet Stace at the house just as she was pulling up. She had stopped at the store beforehand, and we load up my car with la Croix for Stace and diet Coke for me... the real fuel. We add sandwiches and some other miscellaneous nutrition (the last we’d see for days) and suitcases — from there we head ceremoniously to the filling station.

1994 Saturn or a coooool daddy car with fins? Hey, we’re on route to Memphis forcryinoutloud — but the driver at the other pump wasn’t going to trade. My stereo probably works better anyway. Precisely at 6:45 pm the road is hit!

“Exotica” screaming out the windows, we hit toll after toll after toll. Small price —# for we are on An Adventure. It’s fun to try to beat the AAA Triptik time counts on each page. Well, fun-ish. We’re around Chicago before dark — goal one acheived. For the first hundred miles, we honor our fathers and meticulously record the details of every penny we spend and every road we take.

We’re past Madonna, through Dylan and on to Etta James. It is past 9pm and past Peotene, Illinois. Somewhere around Kanakee we see Bambi. On the highway. I swerve, I miss, I am now so high on adrenaline that we push on to Onarga for more gas. The truck stop has a Subway and we spilt a sandwich. We see a most amazing thing an nearly take a souvenir — a mud flap from the Amazon Trucking line, emblazoned with a 100 foot tall, buxom blonde holding puny semitrailer aloft in her massive fists! Damn! If only I had packed my allen wrenches.

Champaign! In the not-very-urbane strip-malled suburb that’s Urbana, we stay at a surprisingly cheap la Quinta since there is no room at the Country Inn. Seeking ice for the now warm la Croix, I lose myself among the rooms — Stace had checked in, and as a “safety feature,” the room keys aren’t numbered. The desk clerk promises me that I’m not really an idiot and this happens all the time — really —

Friday, 23 June
It’ 8:30 and we’re on the road again. We’ve just demolished eggs benedict and lots of coffee at Perkin’s. Driving south, I need rock & roll to supplement the caffeine. We can’t find to cool Champaign/Urbana college rock station that escorted us into town last night so it’s AC/DC for a few miles to jolt us into Friday.