Here we go, the nearly full description of my weekend. Some of the more mundane details were omitted, but most of the really mundane details are all there in exacting detail. Enjoy.

I pulled into the parking lot on the residential side of the University of Saint Francis with some trepidation. Since graduation almost two years ago, I hadn't been back to the school much. Usually I only go back to the school whenever I have good reason, like an art show. It feels odd to go back, to have to look the students in the eye and pretend that their optimism for the future after graduation isn't in vain. Another problem is that I only know a handful of people on campus, and most of them will be graduating soon. The parking lot hadn't changed much in five years. The uneven black surface still collects water and a thin persistent layer of gasoline that never drains properly so much as it evaporates and clings to the nearby residence halls.

I parked my car in the same place I always did for three years, way out away from anybody else and away from the speeding meatheads who would be careening around drunkenly later that Friday night after I had left for the weekend. The path to the student center between two antique single classroom buildings and a clump of overgrown bushes was also unchanged, still uneven and slippery, still the perfect place to slip and fall and lay for hours where no one can see you. The exterior of the student center was cleaner than I remember it, the bushes and trees having been pruned and cleared at some point. Familiarity ended, however, when I gave an unsuccessful tug on the back door handle that I always used when I was a student. Instead of the familiar latch click squeaking door and rush of old building/ new paint musk I had grown accustomed to, I got the resistance of a locked door. Peering through the window, I saw the strange shapes of office furniture instead of a collection of waiting room style couches facing the temperamental big screen TV that my friends and I used to commandeer as out own personal movie theater. Sad, really, as I have many fond memories of that room.

So, nostalgia aside, I ventured up and around to the front entrance to the student center, formerly a horse stable to the Bass family a century ago. Students were already gathered in wait for the drawing of the destination. I felt a little old among them, out of place on a campus where everybody knows everybody else and nobody remembers me. Nobody but a select few who I've always liked. Brooke, who I've known since my first class my freshman year, who now teaches at the college. Rachel, who I know through forensics and art, making ours a friendship borne by educational masochism. Brady, brother of Brooke and former co-worker at Fort Fun. And Don, a great guy who I met very late in my college career. They would be my primary travel companions, the Samwise Gamgees and Neal Cassadys and the Virgils on the Ultimate Road Trip (tm).

I signed a release form and an emergency form, ate some pizza, and mingled with the few people I knew. At this point, I found out that the school had sprung for a charter bus, so I wouldn't be driving, but I was still welcome to come along. My weekend was clear, so I figured I would go. The Dean of Students drew the city from her coat pocket, and the verdict was Dallas, Texas.

Prior to this, my only experience with Dallas was the Dallas/ Fort Worth airport, DFW. The abbreviation is appropriate, as it covered my knowledge of the city pretty well. It's far and wide known as being a bit of a pit, a series of dirty food courts and magazine stands between overstuffed terminals. Our destination was outside of DFW, though.

There was a light rain as I boarded the bus alongside the fellow who normally dresses as Johnny Cougar, the USF mascot. I had already learned this much about a total stranger in the distance of a parking lot: I was traveling with a guy who dresses up as an endangered wildcat wearing a blue jersey.

The bus was the standard long-distance people hauler, complete with overhead bins and coach class seating all the way back. I sat next to Brady and near the rest of my aforementioned friends and resigned myself to sitting for the next several hours through several states. We ended up waiting in the parking lot for almost an hour for some late person rumored to have been in a minor car accident. She showed up looking no worse for the wear, and we departed.

The first two hours, marked as the distance from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, passed uneventfully for me. Everyone was excited, talking about school and other things. I plugged myself into my iPod and read a few chapters in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Around the time we passed the Indianapolis skyline I turned to talk to Brooke and Don, discussing music and movie soundtracks, and how good Wes Anderson is at picking music for his films. It's funny because those two are right out of a Wes Anderson movie.

The first rest stop we used (in the most impolite sense) was in southern Illinois. It set the standard for the following succession of roadside loos, each one oddly removed from society but yet in no way artsy or avant-garde. Roadside rest stops have always been very alien to me, as if each one sits on land that doesn't belong to America. The routine is always the same: exit the bus, locate the men's room logo door, take care of business, decipher the meth-addled drifter graffiti, wash hands, wipe hands on pants, and try not to touch anything on the way out to check the roadmap and board the bus.

Back on the road someone put on a movie on the bus's video system, Bowling for Columbine. Not the sort of movie you usually watch in this situation, but it passed the time through most of Illinois. It was maybe an hour after the movie ended that the bus stopped for gas and my friends and I purchased candy from the truck stop store. It was a full five minutes before I knew for a fact we were in southern Missouri, nearing some sort of a halfway point.

The time between stops and notable events on the road passed in a sort of hypnotic reverie. The large metal frame of the bus rattled with every divot in the road, and wavered from side to side on it's suspension as the wind buffeted it. Most people tried to sleep, while some talked or listened to music. I sat in my seat alternating my weight from side to side, trying in vain to find a comfortable and stable position. A cross section of the bus would reveal a passenger arrangement similar to Picasso's Guernica, each person differently contorted in sleep depending on body type and tolerance for pain. This is the sort of thing that finances home remodeling for chiropractors.

We rolled into Arkansas in the wee hours of the morning. Outside it was pitch black, with only a vague horizon line in the distance to prove we weren't in an infinite void. I tried to sleep for awhile, and almost succeeded in nodding off when the bus pulled off of the freeway and into a roadside parking lot motel. The lights came on, the driver got off, and a fresh driver got on. I was a little disappointed that they didn't exchange a secret handshake or a retinal scan. The only ID the new driver had was his uniform black tie, an item that could be purchased anywhere. Our only real security is that nobody would ever willingly hijack a bus full of bleary-eyed Catholics bound for Texas. It just isn't profitable.

In the middle of Arkansas we passed through Little Rock. Even with nobody in the city at that hour, it still looks impressive. The city looks to have grown and revitalized in the last decade, and I wouldn't mind having to go there on business some day. Little Rock is home to the TCBY headquarters, which probably has an impressive array of candy in the executive lounge parfait bar. After passing the city and entering the southwestern part of the state I tried to sleep again, but the roads turned bumpy, dashing any hope of quality REM sleep. Instead, I stared out the window on the road between Little Rock and Hope, Clinton's home town, imagining the state, campaign, and national decisions that had been discussed on that stretch of road in the last twenty years.

The sun rose in the east, gradually lighting the lax faces around me with pale blue light. The rural landscape still stretched out for miles in every direction, populated by roadside trees and signs to places with foreign and meaningless names. I watched and waited for a green highway sign that would feature the white Rorschach outline that would tell me what state we were in. Aside from idle curiosity, I wanted to know what highway numbers we would be passing in order to gauge our distance. As I understand, the state highway numbers increased as we moved away from the capitol in the center of the state, so the higher the numbers the closer to Texas. It was still Arkansas, so I plugged into my iPod and sat quietly, the music filling the vision of the wasteland outside.

I think I slept at some point. I remember opening my eyes later and seeing more variation in the land. There were buildings and cars around us. The Texas border was near and people were waking up groaning, massaging sore necks and shoulders and applying deodorant. We pulled into a truckstop gas station for breakfast, where someone spotted the first mullet of the trip walking past the starboard side of the bus. The diner was the harsh side of Americana, a thick mixture of smoke and bacon fat air contained in circa 1982 wood paneled walls. The wizened customers had the collective age of the fossil fuel in the tanks under their feet. They eyed us with suspicion as we passed through to the bathrooms and back again. I kept moving and didn't make eye contact. Outside, I brushed my teeth with a travel toothbrush and a bottle of water, spitting in the grass. It felt good to have a clean mouth, though the rest of me needed some hygiene that wouldn't be available for quite some time. I was able to shave, though, so I felt good from the neck up.

Two hours later the city of Dallas loomed on the horizon. The road into the city was lined with churches and rib joints, bolstering a series of stereotypes. The actual city, however, was gleaming. The first street we tried was lined with all kinds of clubs, bars, and entertainment venues ranging from expensive to seedy. Nothing was open at that time of day, though, so we moved on to the downtown area. Rachel moved to the front of the bus to give the driver directions, relying on a preternatural knowledge of all things Texas.

The bus stopped in the middle of the city and the group set out to see the nearby shops and restaurants. I ate with my friends at a touristy steakhouse, then we all went down the street to a little shopping center full of the usual tourist-trap items, Texas t-shirts and the like, almost identical to every similar store I've ever seen in from Arizona to Italy. In truth, I usually avoid these types of stores after seeing what one or two of them have to offer. The local merchants always hide better merchandise off the beaten path.

After walking a few blocks we came upon the infamous plaza where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I think I got the complete tour, in a way. The whole plaza is filled with signs and plaques signifying everything, recreating the whole ordeal in detail. We walked down the path of the motorcade, where the window in the former book depository is visible from the ground. Around a bend in the road there are two X marks in the road about 25 feet apart where the two shots hit the president, one from the window and one from elsewhere, ostensibly the fence nearby. Standing by the fence, I got to see a presentation-cum-sales-pitch from a guy selling picture books about the shooting and conspiracy. Several street vendors were also selling photobooks. There were even kids and families standing in the street on the unceremonious faded X marks for vacation photos. Crass American bloodlust meets selective historical fascination.

A short time later we all gathered to pose for a group picture as required by law, and then boarded the bus to go to the Dallas Galleria mall. The Galleria is a colossal place, but very few of the stores are worthwhile to me. I can say that I've been into a Versace store now, and all of the lights in the store are powered by cables connected to Sam Houston spinning in his grave at the prospect of a Versace on Texas soil. I followed my friends amiably from store to store, perusing things I don't need and fighting sleep deprivation. In the window display at the Gucci store there were large signs that said "ever get the feeling you're being lied to?" My stomach turned when I saw this, and for good reason. These were the last words Johnny Rotten said to the crowd at the last Sex Pistols concert ever. To see this as marketing for effing Gucci is a travesty.

Elsewhere in the mall, things were better for me. I split from the group before dinner to go to Macy's where I had seen racks of men's clothes on sale. I'm not all that fashion conscious, but I do like to look good for art shows and social events. This is accomplished by scouring clearance racks for cheap clothes that fit me. The best place to do this is in major cities, where the clearance items are much more stylish than the full priced items in Fort Wayne. After foraging through racks of pants sized for circus freaks and shirts that not even the designer's mother would wear, I came upon a jacket that I liked. Right size, easy cleaning, good color, and marked down from $85.00 to $20.00, give or take. For some reason, I only find good things on vacation when I'm alone.

At 9:00, about the time I was ready to collapse, we all boarded the bus to return home. The return trip was much less eventful, as I could sleep comfortably. Brady gave up trying to sleep sitting up and laid down in the center aisle for the night. I took advantage of my newfound space and slept soundly on both seats as we made our way out of Texas.

I woke up to a chilly Missouri morning, dimly aware of where I was. A few other people were awake, and those who were were treated to a beautiful sunrise as we crossed the Mississippi river. It made the whole ride worthwhile, it was amazing. The rest of the time was passed talking to my friends until we rolled into Fort Wayne in the middle of the afternoon.

It was a long weekend, and obviously I didn't recover for a while, as this post has taken a long time. There it is, though, my magnum opus blog post in all of it's glory. Now blink your eyes and refocus them on something further away. I don't want you going blind.