Nebraska has closed all of it's rest areas

Me, Laura and Julia went to the Bongo Room for breakfast. The waitress spilled coffee on Laura. Julia gave me a car sculpture. I went back to Village Thrift and bought a boom-box for $8.00, said boom-box takes eight D batteries. The gas station didn't have enough batteries so I had to stop at a corner store.

I drove through the Illinois countryside, this was for the most part uneventful. Stopped at a truck stop in Des Moines, Iowa and had a "spicy" chicken sandwich. Called Rachel to let her know I would be getting to Denver later than expected. All of the rest areas in Iowa are clean, well lit, offer free wireless internet access and provide machines for vending coffee with lightener (I had the hot chocolate), what I'm trying to say here is that Iowa's many, many rest areas are great and other states should really take a rest area lesson from Iowa.

At some point I enter Nebraska. I will note that Nebraska's rest areas, witch there are NOT many, don't hold a candle to Iowas rest areas and most of them are closed for some reason. My plan had been to drive until I could drive no more and then sleep at a rest area. After passing many closed rest areas I finally decided to stop and find a place to sleep. I pulled off the highway and wondered why there were giant piles of sand everywhere. I guess I hadn't realized that there was snow in this part of the world. I slept in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

My kind of town

Me and Julia had breakfast at some mediocre breakfast place across from D&D, mostly because Leo's had closed and the other place that was supposed to be good had a line (actually two lines, one to order your food and one to wait for a seat, I will ressist the urge to mention how stupid a system I think this is). Julia went to work as the prop person for a play, she was slightly disappointed to find that her "props" would not be the main focus of said play. I met up with Laura and we walked to Village Thrift. Laura had just broken up with Jim (the guy who's place I had dropped her at yesterday). I pointed out various things along our tour. Village Thrift was still great, although they didn't have that many cassette tapes, the ones they did have were $0.25. Laura got new clothes for her new job. Julia met us at Village Thrift, because she needed to get some props.

That evening we went to Arazu, witch was still quite tasty but, I thought I remembered there being carrots in the burritos. We all went to the Gold Star which hadn't really changed. Kumar and his lady friend showed up. We also went to a place called the Happy Farmer or something like that, it was Julia's local bar.

My awesome road trip or I hate Indiana

Short version: After much trial and error we get a new car. The new car runs out of gas somewhere in Indiana. We arrive in Chicago very late at night.

Long version: We call Sean in the morning, he is waiting to hear back from the notary. I mentioned that I would be fine with just switching the plates off of the old car, but no, we have to do things legally. Blah, Blah, Blah, trial and error with the bank, borrow money, check out of hotel again, hide cat, wait around at the gas station for several hours, play cards. Eventually Sean picks us up, we check out the car, a 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity with 60,000 miles on it, the car runs considerably better than the 1990 Volvo 240 with 150,000 miles on it. We drive several counties over to the notary to get a temporary registration. Again we run into issues regarding what address to put on various legal documents. In the end we list the address on my drivers license and decide that if I am pulled over I will just tell the officer I was confused about how to get to Oregon.

Me And Laura move everything from the old car into the new one. During this, Sean is on eBay looking for more cars to buy. Up until today we have had mixed feelings about Sean, today however, another side came through... It was a snug fit but we got everything into the new car. Sean seems overly excited to crush the Volvo.

Finally, we start toward Chicago. It is raining out. A truck without mud flaps blinds us. The tape player doesn't work. The fuel gage also doesn't work. Despite these minor issues the new car runs and handles considerably better than the Volvo. We try and fill up the tank somewhere in Ohio or Indiana, the car only takes a few gallons and then automatically shuts off. We decide the car might be magical, but, we attempt to fill it at the next gas station anyway, it only takes 30 cents worth of gas. We run out of gas a half hour later on the Indiana turnpike. Just moments prior to running out of gas I had been saying to Laura how crappy a state Indiana was and we remembered that just prior to the other car breaking down I had been saying how all the towns in Pennsylvania had stupid names, a valuable lesson was learned, and I will try and remember to never travel to Montana or Virginia. We called the number on the the toll card, I told the operator that we had just passed a rest stop that was trucks only, to which she said "So, you could be anywhere." A woman who worked for the highway stopped and told us where we were, a truck came and gave us gas, the truck escorted us to the gas station, we filled up, had some(more) of the worlds worst coffee, and we were back on our way.

We arrived in Chicago around 3 am. I dropped Laura off at Tim's house, up in who-knows-where, I think he might live in Wisconsin. I got to Julia's and managed to misplace her address, I tried calling her but I think she was asleep. eventually I found the address, found the keys, and made it inside.