The Day of Driving (Garrett)

We left this morning at the ungodly hour of seven o'clock. I Know some of you have real jobs and get up at five and six, but i sleep till nine. Everyone was on time...ish except Colter and Prof. Blakely. Colter was entirely to peppy as we all noticed when he practically pranced out of his car. But we left around seven thirty and began the ten hour drive to Chicago, culture, and Gino's Pizza. As we got on the highway and headed north everyone promptly went to sleep. Or at least that's what i think happened because that's what i did. They could have all been awake and making fun of me and i would never have known.

We arrived in St. Louis around noon and proceeded to find a place to get our grub on. When we pulled into an old warehouse district Colter promptly pointed out the Mississippi and brought up Mark Twain. This put ideas in my head of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and building a raft to sail the river on. Which would probably have been a bad idea because i would have been run over by a barge. Anyway the streets were made of cobblestones which really interested me for some reason. In our search for food we did find Big Daddy's "The Best Bar in the Whole Wide World". Which must mean that it is the best bar because it is in writing...right? We did not eat at Big Daddy's though. We ended up in front a place called Show-Me's, ironically this restaurant is located in the show me state, a kind of bar and grill from the looks of it. It looked innocent enough and as we walked in i was going to make the comment it was like Hooter's without the girls, then i saw the waitress's and realized it was basically Hooter's except the girls were in hot pink shorts. Well we had gone that far so we stayed and ate. I ordered what i thought would be a decent sized chili dog but instead got the Hogzilla of hot dogs. this thing had to be a foot long. After i proceeded to devour the monster dog we noticed the ceiling was covered in dollar bills signed by different groups. We left one from RSU for the Show-Me girls to put on the ceiling.

After the great Show-Me's experience we headed over to the Arch. The park on the way that you walk through is beautiful. The Arch is pretty amazing itself. It is entirely stainless steel and is amazing to see on a sunny day. we took a lot of pictures and i even got to climb the steps on the river side that made me feel like i was in Rocky.

After the Arch we continued on the road and i proceded to sleep most of the way to Chicago. We ordered Gino's while we were still in the suburbs of Chicago so that it would be ready when we got to the hotel. Prof. Blakely and I went inside Gino's to get the pies and the pizzeria did not disappoint. Every inch of the inside of the restaurant is covered in signatures and writing. Even the Asteroids machine was written on. As we waited for the heavenly aroma that was or two pies we gawked at the sheer magnitude of scribbles on the wall. Sadly i had forgotten my Sharpies in the van so we had to go without leaving our mark on Gino's. We took a few pictures of the pizzas and then waited with watering mouths for the chance to taste the steaming morsels in the Gino's boxes. The hotel was nice and as we unloaded out of the van everyone eyed the Pizzas as if they might be stolen. when we finally got to dig in we were not disappointed they were delicious. It was like a slice of heaven covered in a single sausage patty with a corn bread crust had fallen into my mouth.

We then decided to have a look around Chicago before turning in. We went and saw the Picasso which had a hockey helmet with the numbers "09 on it to stand for the city wanting their hockey team to win the Stanley Cup this year. The Red Wings are going to win so this gesture is futile. We also walked through the theatre district and tried to get rail cards, key word there is tried. We saw our reflection in the cityscape lit Cloud Gate or as it is locally known as the Bean. There was a place were they had taken out a building from in between two other buildings. The silhouette left on the two standing buildings looked like the outline left from a burn victim. We all looked and tried to absorb as much as possible. The the lord we are here for more than tonight because the little taste was not enough.