Here's what I remember about the Indiana trip that Anna/Betsy, Seth, Josh, and I took a few weeks ago. The events within each paragraph are probably not in the proper order, but all the events in one paragraph followed those in the preceding paragraph and came before the ones in the next.
After we picked up Seth and Anna/Betsy, we left UC and got on the highway. The grass beside one of the earlier highways was strewn with garbage galore. It was depressing. I avoided looking at it. We passed one of those houses with horrible kitschy lawn ornaments covering the front yard. At one point, Seth spotted what appeared to be a real monkey sitting on a picnic table. Throughout the trip we played roadkill bingo. Or at least I did. I saw (and circled in red pen, incidentally) a squirrel, a rabbit, a tire, a groundhog, a dog, a raccoon, a cat, and several mysterious masses of mangled flesh in addition to smelling a dead skunk.
Once we got to downtown Anderson, the real adventures started. Downtown Anderson was a very shady place. It even has a Shadyside Memorial Park, which I will get to in a moment. The GPS led us astray, and told us to turn onto this ultra shady back street. It was mildly frightening. When we tried to get off of that street, we nearly had a nasty run-in with a huge pick-up truck. Apparently he didn't have a stop sign. We decided to stop to ask for directions, so we pulled into Shadyside Memorial Park. At the entrance there were these horrid little stone pillar things. They tried to look nice, but they failed miserably. It made me sad to look at them, so I turned away. Nobody was in the park... except for some guy sitting in his car in the parking lot near the playground. Drug dealer? Pedophile? Who knows. All I know is that he fit very well into the general mood of downtown Anderson. We were supposed to be going north, but evidently we were going south. I didn't know that. Normally, the GPS shows the car driving towards to top of the screen. At the top of the screen was North Anderson, so I assumed that we were going north. However, if I had looked at the little car, I would have realized that it was driving towards the bottom of the screen, meaning that we were going south. It took me a while to notice that, so I kept objecting every time Josh tried to turn around. I'm not sure how much time my confusion added to the trip. We didn't reset the GPS with the new directions, so it kept on telling us to make a u-turn.
The return trip provided even more excitement. We became lost again. The GPS's directions had us driving in the middle of nowhere for quite some time. Maybe it wanted revenge for all the times we refused to make a u-turn, despite its protests. Most of the time, we were on hilly roads barely wide enough for two cars to pass abreast. As we crested each hill, we feared that we would find another car about to collide with us. Fortunately, there were no accidents. In fact, we rarely saw any signs of real civilization whatsoever. It was kind of creepy. Due to excessive exhaustion combined with the most caffeine I've ever consumed in a day, I was slap-happy the entire time. It made the drive even more interesting for me. At one point, I burst out laughing and finally managed to communicate that I was amused by the fact that we hadn't driven on a lined road in a long time. Normally, that wouldn't have been that funny, but caffeine + fatigue = all sorts of interesting thoughts. Throughout the landscape dotted with lonely buildings and grotesque, leafless trees were little cement monoliths of mystery. They were all over the place, and we couldn't figure out what on earth they might be. There was also an old, mostly destroyed tower-ish structure. I don't remember what it was, or if we found out what it was at all. For part of the countryside ride, we listened to Captain Beefheart. I tried brainstorming for an essay while it was playing. That didn't go as well as it could have. Thank goodness Josh stopped it somewhere near track 13. I can only take so much Beefheart. We stopped for a bathroom break as soon as we saw signs of civilization. Raleigh, IN, was hardly civilization, but it was something. The greasy diner place we stopped at was interesting. They sold cans of beans. They sold other things too, but I only remember the cans of beans. There was a layer of grease on the countertop. Betsy/Anna was the only one brave enough to use the bathroom hidden away in the furnace room. As we left, we heard the locals chuckling. They were probably laughing at us city folk, and I don't blame them. We stopped again later in Metamora at the Hav-A-Bite, and that was a much nicer experience. Well, maybe not for Seth, but he said he felt much better after throwing up. Next to the bathrooms was a poster of the "little houses of Metamora." The distinguishing feature of the town was Mt. Metamora. Mt. Metamora was a large hill with a small building of mystery perching atop it. The building had a cross on the side, so maybe it was a church or a monastery of some sort. The hill was covered in dead grass with a few gnarled trees. Someone suggested that it may have been a landfill at one point. Relatively close to the time we finally made it back to the highway, there was a railroad along the road and a canal next to that. It made me smile. We were driving alongside the evolution of technology. After a while, we got on the highway. At some point during the trip back home, we saw a yard with live llamas in it. I have no idea where this fits in with the chronology of events. That's all.
1 comment:
I must undertake to draw up my own account of the things that occurred among us.
Remember, the important thing about Man Kwon is that his office is next to the men's room, both denoted by the sign that reads "Men."
I have traced our entire trip on Google Maps, and this exercise did not disappoint.
Also, my research of Mt. Metamora has indicated that the function of its structure is nothing more than to grab attention, but I find this suspicious.
I would probably comment more, but I shall save most of my thoughts for my own tale.
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