epic adventure

It was a Saturday afternoon early in October, the weather still ridiculously warm for the season. I'd just finished my allotment of studying for my World Music midterm the coming Tuesday, and Sara, Dan, and I were melting in a heat-induced stupor, trying to decide what we should do with the rest of our day.

"We should have an adventure," Dan posited.

I raised my eyebrows and replied, "What kind of adventure, Dan?"

"I dunno. An epic adventure."

There was a brief silence while we considered this statement, and then someone, maybe it was Sara, said, "We should go to Lake Michigan."

So we did.

We went to dinner early, woke up Tasha, grabbed some snacks from the c-store, and started out of town. There was a bit of a hitch in the beginning, as there always is with this sort of thing: Sara's car was making a strange rattling noise, and we, being calm and reasonable teenagers, were worried it might to explode, fall apart, or otherwise cause us serious bodily harm or death. So I called my mother, saint that she is, and described the noise to her, and she, being a genius as well as a saint, correctly diagnosed a loose muffler, which ailment we verified and then, deciding it was not a life-threatening condition, opted to continue on our quest to put our feet in Lake Michigan.

We arrived in downtown Chicago shortly after 10:00 PM and managed to find a free parking place quite close to the lake shore. We then played in the sand, waded in the lake, looked at the few stars we could see (being in the middle of Chicago and all), and contemplated the immense black void of lake and sky before us.

Then we drove through a pretty sketchy area, a not-too-sketchy area, and into the western suburbs, which are very large and suburban and odd.* There, we met Dan's friend and her friend, and we went to a Denny's at something like 1:00 AM, and found that Denny's has exactly no entrées that do not include meat. So I got a Western burger, sans burger, which ended up being absolutely delicious, in a Denny's-at-one-in-the-morning kind of way (which, let's be honest, is often the best kind of way).

Then we parted ways with our new friends and piled back into Sara's car to go home. Sara drove the whole way, and the rest of us slept or dozed or looked at the stars. Once we got away from civilization, we could see quite a few of them, as well as the moon (a lovely crescent, with the dark part visible—so cool) and a really bright planet (we think it was Venus). It really was a gorgeous night.

Meanwhile back in the car, Dan was curled up in the front seat with Sara's teddy bear, and it was both hilarious and adorable. I think Tasha was asleep for a good portion of the trip also, but it was dark, and I couldn't tell for sure. I dozed in almost exact 15-minute spurts, as is generally my habit when I'm comfortable, and stayed up to make sure Sara stayed awake the last half hour. And I have to say, props to her for the driving; there aren't many drivers in whose cars I can sleep half that well.

We rolled back into Galesburg sometime around 5:30 AM, having completed our epic adventure and achieved our quest. It was probably the best time I've had so far this year. I love these people.


_{*I'm sure there's nothing really all that odd about West Chicago, as suburbs go. I'm just not used to suburbs in general, and therefore they all seem immensely sprawling and empty and odd to me.}