Day 1

Me, pulling out of the driveway

Hey Gram, 

Yesterday’s drive was awesome! Since I have no CD player and no air conditioning, you might think otherwise – but the weather was beautiful, there was no traffic, and I made the most of FM and AM radio. Sean Hannity and other personalities from The Answer: Conservative Talk Radio had me riled up about ISIS and border protection all afternoon. It’s always easy to find a conservative talk radio station but never so for liberal channels. Probably because much less people are listening to talk radio, but conservatives are trying to, conserve it. Otherwise, I chased Ryan Seacrest around the FM dial and listened to All About that Bass by Meghan Trainor over 20 times.

In an attempt to do some real thinking, I also spent a couple hours in complete silence. It was an interesting experiment and my brain went to interesting places. One example was an extended internal debate over whether plants and animals have free will and what the true definition of free will is.

Do trees have souls?

I stopped once for McDonald’s and twice for gas. My bird seemed pretty happy the whole time.

Due to the aforementioned lack of A/C, I had to make the majority of the trip with the windows down. This is an issue because 75 mph winds are loud, and when my ears are exposed to their sound for hours on end, they feel the same way they do when I get home from an unnecessarily loud rock music concert.  

But I had some ear plugs made from wax that helped a ton! The only problem was that then I couldn’t hear the radio. I consequently turned it up so loud that I almost blew out the car’s speakers. When I realized this mistake, I decided to settle for duller music.

Phone calls are interesting. I’ve encouraged all of my friends and family to call me while I’m on the road. I love phone calls on road trips – they make time fly. However, the loud winds can’t be blaring during a conversation, so I need to roll up the windows. Then I start to sweat. My car does this awesome cool trick where, as soon as I roll the windows up, it immediately transforms into a sauna.

I bought a miniature, battery-powered fan from Sports Authority and it kind of works.

It wasn’t the fastest I had ever made the drive (almost 12 hours door to door, 10:30 am to 10:15 pm), but it’s the fastest the trip ever felt. Probably because I know this is just a stop and not my final destination.

Just me and some trucks, chillin' all day!!

As soon as I got in, I drove to Tim’s apartment. He longboarded and I rode my bike to Bond Hall (the architecture building, which I had never been in). He picked up some paint supplies for a project, and we went back to his apartment. I rode my bike around for about 45 minutes, and then we watched Breaking Bad until 2:00 am.

Right now, I’m sitting on campus at an all new Au Bon Pain in the Hesburgh Library. I got a free refill for my coffee but I’m not sure if I was really allowed to. I wish this place was here when I was a student! They have 99 cent any-sized coffees and the breakfast sandwich was rather yummy. All of my friends will be showing up between now and 5pm tonight, which is when Tim gets out of class. I’m excited to chill for a few days before another long drive. That will be next Tuesday from Springfield, Il. to Kansas City, MO. If I stick to the plan I currently have laid out. I might make some changes, though.

Talk to you soon!

Mike