Danny ChaiDave’s entire family thought I was Chinese.
I think I’m going to write about he road trip day by day. I don’t know, I think I have too many thoughts about it to do it all at once.
But first a digression. Henry wrote once how he feels “jealousy” toward people he was friends with first. I don’t know, it fascinated me, and I can understand. But I tend towards a different feeling – I’m really really uncomfortable when I feel like I’m infringing upon someone else’s friend. I don’t know if that makes any sense. But it’s like, a lot of times, I’m really hesitant to be friends with someone that’s friends with a friend of mine, like I feel like I’m impinging upon someone else’s territory or something.
I don’t know, I think it’s just my problem, but it’s kept me from trying to be better friends with people a lot of times. A lot of times. I’m just weird that way.
I had a great time on the road trip, and I pretty much agree with everything Dave said in his entry. I don’t know, I have a lot of thoughts about the entire trip, so it’s gonna take a while to talk about. Maybe It will be boring for some people, but whatever.
First off, Dave hit it on the head. The great thing about the entire trip for me is how comfortable I felt the entire time. You may not believe it, but Dave, Henry and John are all pretty chill people, and I just think it’s that much more of a pleasure when you’re travelling with people that are chill. Like, a lot of unfortunate things happened on the trip, and we had to do some things to take care of it, but I don’t think any of us were really really bothered by it. I mean, we didn’t complain, and I don’t think any of us were really annoyed by it. I mean, it was just very chill and very comfortable, even when we had to do unplanned things, and that was nice.
And I don’t know, everything we did, I think we enjoyed, and no one was really pushy about having to do anything, except for me and the Coors Brewery. It’s just a lot more fun travelling when you’re with chill people who don’t get upset at little things and are pretty much fine doing anything. It just makes the trip a lot better. That’s how I felt, at least.
I can’t express how much of a good feeling it is being so comfortable. I guess it means more to Dave since he’s in a perpetual state of uncomfortability, but even for me, it was a good feeling. I don’t know. In some part, I think I judge how close I am to a person by how comfortable I feel with them.
I think now, and especially after you get married and have kids, and your own family and stuff, you can’t judge being close by how much you see each other anymore, or how much you know what’s going on in each other’s lives on a daily basis. I don’t know if you agree with me and this, but this is my take. I just don’t think that’s a fair measure. I think a big part of it is just comfortability. I feel this way now – I consider myself close to some old friends, even if we don’t see each other that often, or keep in touch regularly, because when we do see each other, we’re completely comfortable and can talk about non-trivial things. So in my mind, we’re pretty close friends.
Anyway, I had that feeling on the trip, just being with close friends. Both with the Ganja Road quartet and the LEDD reunion. I don’t know, it was just a good feeling for me, like I was with close friends, and I valued that. Especially in Urbana, we had not gotten together like that in a couple years, but I felt like immediately at ease, and had a good time the entire time we were together. I don’t know, it was special to me. Close friends.
By the way, the day we left was just insanely hot. Insane. I had nothing I needed to do, so I closed all the windows (the air coming in was hotter than the air inside. The circulation was not worth the heat influx) and blinds, turned off all the appliances I could, and sat in only my shorts trying to minimize movement.
Dave was hilarious. He had to pack and ship boxes, as well as load his car, but he didn’t want to go through all the trouble of bringing all the stuff in and doing it in our apartment, so he did it all outside in the insane heat by his car.
Anyway, we had planned to leave at like 7, but didn’t end up going until much later. I did the first stretch. But then it turned out we had to turn back, so after about an hour of driving, we turned back. I drove 2 hours total, and I believe parked closer to the apartment than before, so had a negative net distance. I didn’t drive again until after Salt Lake City.
So after that we went to Reno. I can’t remember what time we got there. But it was pretty late. We stayed at the Circus Circus. When I was younger, in junior high, and in jazz band, the pinnacle of the year would be going to the Reno Jazz Festival. Just because it was a long, far away (relatively) trip. And we always stayed at Circus Circus. So it brought back some memories.
By the way, the first time I used hairspray was at Circus Circus in Reno in 7th grade. So to this day, when I smell a particular brand of hairspray, my brain is flooded with memories. It’s really weird how that works.
An interesting thing about the hotel was that the TV had a Nintendo controller hooked up to it. But it was way too late for that. We just went to bed almost as soon as we got there. There was evening, and there was morning. The first day.