Jared and Kenneth’s Excellent Adventure

Theme Song: “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”

It all began at 2 p.m. on a Thursday in early December, at Kenneth’s apartment. He had just gotten back from getting pictures developed, although they messed up his camera so we couldn’t take it. But, Ricky was gracious enough to lend us his video camera. The battery was practically dead, but that’s ok. We decided we would just film in 10 to 20 second spurts until we could charge it. It took us an hour to get to I-85, driving all they way across Rock Hill on 161. It only took me about 45 seconds to cut someone off; “Always check your blind spots.” Once on 85, it took us about 2:40 to drive the 200 miles to exit 84 in “Hotlanta.” For you non-Math majors, that’s an average of 75 mph. It’s all about the music on this trip. Kenneth was doing homework most of the way down, but we listened to Jimmy Fallon and Weird Al, along with some of my stuff. Hilarity. We stopped at a rest stop south of Greenville, and it was freezing cold outside. Now, Kenneth and I are alike in many ways, as I discovered throughout this trip, and being of the ilk to wear t-shirts and shorts in any weather, be both agreed it was cold, friggin cold. –Insert video clip here- Cold I can handle; cold, windy, and, most importantly, raining, no way.

            We pressed onward, although the windows kept fogging up, so I had to keep some cold air blowing. But we all know it was just that Kenneth is so hot he fogs up the windows. In Atlanta, we ducked in and out of the HOV lane, we were a carpool, we qualified, there were two of us. Six lanes of traffic, six. And Kenneth is such a bad influence. “Look, you could cut all the way across if you wanted to.” “Why would I want to Kenneth?” So yeah, I was being egged on to do some of that aggressive driving stuff, it was funny. We got to our exit about 5:40, and had not encountered any heavy traffic, although there was so really bad stuff leaving the city. We wound our way to the arena, and finally found a place to park. Then, we accidentally snuck in without paying. We were good boys about it, though, we went out and paid. We then went in and sat with the Winthrop parents, next to Sarah Mae’s father. He was decked out with his Winthrop flag and his homemade Eagle hat. –Insert still from video here- That thing rocked, we could sell those to everyone on campus. Anyways, the first game, while we were charging the camera battery, was the closest and the best. We battled back for practically the entire game and tied it up 29-29, but lost 31-29. The second game, they played bad. It wasn’t even close, 30-16. Enter Chandler at 7:00 pm; they must have hit hella traffic on the way down. The third game got off to a good start, we led for a while. Then, FAMU came back, and the score went back and forth, each side getting one point, for a long time. FAMU finally decided they had enough and finished it off 30-27. I would like to point out that on that team, there were maybe 2 or 3 girls from the states, the rest were from Peru or Bulgaria. We left dejectedly, happy that we had made the trip and showed our support. And hey, we got shirts. Now comes the fun part. I drove around downtown Atlanta for a while trying to get back to the highway. The problem is that by the time you get to the point where you could read the signs, you were way out of position to turn. So, we finally figured it out and got on I-75 after I-85 split off, whoops. So, I said we should take the beltway over to 85. This is where we encountered an accident and traffic stopped. I called my dad, since every time I call my dad while in traffic, it almost instantaneously clears up. This time, it took about 5 minutes after I hung up. Kenneth called his dad too, and then Mere and Jen, twice, I think. “Why don’t we call everyone we know, especially while you’re ‘Roaming’, Kenneth?” We finally got out of the city; we stopped to eat at Pizza Hut and get gas somewhere in Georgia.

            Enter some of the scariest conversations that I’ve had in a while. So yeah, Kenneth and me are very similar. We both only had one relationship, and both of our relationships were immensely physical ones. We both had long relationships that had some manipulative, mind-game playing, control-freak involved, although we were on opposite sides of that control-freak/unwitting-slave coin. We both have a thing for liking girls who play a certain sport, which one should be obvious, but I’m not really supposed to say anything, that dated all the way back to high school for the both of us. Then, we got into whom we were currently interested in, and the girl we both were most interested in was the same person. And it looked for a while that the second person that we were most interested in was the same person, until I divulged enough information for Kenneth to laugh and breathe a sigh of relief. The fact that we’re both interested in a couple people at the same time is scary enough. I would like to point out that, for the entire conversation about relationships, which lasted like 3 hours, we never named the names of whom we were interested in; it was understood whom we were talking about. It was just funny to me that that’s how we did it, like we were being secretly taped or something. Not that anyone we taped wouldn’t be able to figure out who we were talking about, since we had to give each other enough clues to ensure our deepest fears. Kenneth and I, interested in the same girls, let the fighting begin.

            The rest of the video basically covers the rest of the trip. A few comments: 1) While dancing to the techno, we hit extraordinarily high speeds. 2) You can see a semi out the back window for a little bit, we were in the left lane, he was in the right lane, but the high way went down to three lanes. Right as we’re about to merge over, the truck changes lanes to the middle, so we were occupying the same lane, the left one, for a while until I could complete the pass. 3) Jared and Kenneth’s love ballad at the end of the tape took place in Charlotte, another convenient location to be performing for the camera while driving. We didn’t come close to hitting anyone during this one though. And I kept it below 80, learning from prior experience.

            We got back around 1, and had a good time watching our footage. I finally got to bed around 2. All in all, I would say that our trip was a most excellent adventure.

Thank you San Dimas High!