Waking up early is awful, awful, awful. Don�t ever do it � you will be sorry. Jon and I dragged ourselves from our beds at 6 a.m., packed and vacated Cait�s house. On the way to the train station Cait took us to her favorite bagel place for breakfast. Apparently the best thing to get was an egg bagel with butter � I�d never even heard of an egg bagel, but damn, it was pretty good. We drove to the train station, said our goodbyes to Cait and made our way in the direction we hoped led towards the correct train. The trip back was fairly uneventful except that Jon and I decided to start speaking like Long Islanders � hey, we�d been in New York for two days, how hard could it be? We did alright twocking like Luong Islandehs for the most part, I thought, though for some reason we got a lot of dirty looks as we walked through Manhattan, just babbling on as stereotypically as possible.

Did I mention that Jon Akers was now blind? He was. That morning he somehow lost one of his contacts while putting them on at Cait�s house. I have no idea how he did this, since I watched him put it in his eye myself. It probably just slid to the back of his eye where it still hides today, plotting the day of glorious revolution. Anyway, since the clever boy didn�t have any replacements and it�s supposed to hurt like hell when you only have one in, Jon could only see about as far as the hand in front of his face (which was my hand, about to slap him). This meant that he wouldn�t be able to drive at all on the way home, or even help navigate the streets of Manhattan (which would explain why we got lost twice on a supposed four-block journey). By the end of the day we�d declare Jon Akers a complete liability, now existing only for our own amusement. But I�m getting ahead of myself.

We reached Easton more or less without incident, and went inside the �bus station� to get hold of the others. While Jon was messing with the phones I picked up a newspaper � I hadn�t even seen one in, what, three months? � and found that, tragically, Wendy�s founder Dave Thomas had died the day before. That really sucked. I liked him a lot, and we ate at Wendy�s a bunch of times on our trip. So, rest in peace, Dave. Meanwhile, Jon Akers made zero progress calling Gil�s supposed cellphone number, so we decided to just walk the streets looking for them instead (yes, a bad idea, but when have we ever had a good idea?). And, because everything always turns out this way, we had gone about two blocks when Gil nearly ran us over at an intersection. Vic and Bob were with him, still alive and not appearing to be on any serious drugs. So we went back up to Lafayette, where we had planned to get the car and leave. That plan went out the window and died a horrible death on the street below, however, when Vic took it upon himself to introduce us to every single person on campus � school wasn�t even in session and he still somehow managed to find at least eight hundred people that he knew. It was cool to meet his friends, and all, but after four hours of this (no exaggeration this time) we began to grow a little weary of the whole thing � Bob began saying �generic greeting comment� to people � and we eventually got his ass out of there.

Next on our itinerary was the one place that Bob and I wanted to see more than anything else on our trip � Jay and Silent Bob�s Secret Stash in Red Bank, New Jersey. Never mind that this was four hours out of the way, at the end of a gauntlet of Jersey turnpikes and cutthroat hordes of rush hour commuters � this was fucking Jay and Silent Bob, man! If you don�t know who they are, go watch a Kevin Smith movie like Clerks or Dogma or whatever. The Secret Stash is a glorified comic book store that Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes actually work at every now and then � not only that, the store is filled with memorabilia from the View Askew films and has lots of cool shit to buy, too. The batteries on Jon�s camera had run out by this point but I forced the bastard to walk to the nearest gas station to buy more so that we could have our pictures taken with the Bluntmobile, Mooby the Cow and the original Buddy Christ. I got myself a dashboard Buddy Christ and that which I�d been salivating over for the last week: Jay�s snoogans hat. Awesome.

It was about dinner time, so we headed down the street to a Chinese Buffet. Remember when I said Jon prided himself on getting thrown out of buffets such as these? Well, we made it our goal to eat so much food that they stopped giving us clean plates. And after roughly six plates each, you�d think they would�ve done something like that. But they just let us keep going� and oh, did it start to hurt. Belts loosened, we were contemplating going back for sevenths (eighths? Who knows) when the stupidity of our situation dawned on us. We had to be in Columbia, Missouri, by the next evening to meet our friend Jack. It was 8 pm and we were in Red Bank, New Jersey. We were a stone�s throw from the Atlantic ocean and had to be in the middle of America within 24 hours. There was really only one solution: get in the car and fucking drive. And drive we did; in 15 hours we�d driven 1100 miles and gotten little to no sleep. I tried to doze off during Vic�s turn at the wheel, though it was pretty difficult to relax since whenever I opened my eyes I�d see us flying around icy curves while snow fell from above. I�d picked up some drinks along the way which I�d hoped would keep me awake for my 4 am section of the drive, though as luck would have it, Yoo-Hoo is 99% caffeine free and the iced tea just made me have to stop for restroom breaks every hour. So it�s a miracle we even made it to Columbia, Missouri by early afternoon the next day.

Jack lives in the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity house at the University of Missouri. It�s one of those places where there are about a million Greek houses all lumped together, I don�t see how anyone can keep all the alphas and the kappas and the fetas straight, but I guess if you take enough Ancient Greek courses it becomes a little easier. Jack said he was at home, but nobody answered when we rang the bell, knocked on the door, pounded on the frame and started kicking the door as loudly as we could. Had anyone else been pummeling the door, I would�ve worried it would break off; luckily it was only Jon Akers, who would�ve been more successful if he just screamed as loud as he could. Vic went around the back and, as I should�ve seen coming, climbed up the fire escape and in through a window. From there he managed to find Jack without the cops being called, and Jack came down and let us in through the back door. Carrying our stuff up the stairs, Jon Akers opened the door for us. I helped him by pushing the door open as we went through, and for some reason Jon decided to use this as an excuse to throw himself down the staircase, landing awkwardly at the bottom. Don�t get me wrong, it was hilarious, but I think Jon hurt himself in the process. (If you ask him about this incident, he will try to feed you some asinine story about how I somehow pushed him down the stairs. Don�t believe his lies.)

Vic went and played basketball with someone�s Mizzou ID while the rest of us watched endless Simpsons episodes (lazy bastards are we, yes). We had a dinner of pizza, cold from the day before, and later on at night we were treated to a sort of frat party. Now, school wouldn�t actually start for another couple of days so only a few people were around but we gathered up a respectable number of people and had ourselves some fun. Also involved were a lot of pool games, a lot of Jim Beam, me getting stabbed by a pool cue, and this big dude named Mike who told everyone he was going to finish a fifth of Tequila in one sitting. We only half believed him, but he made good on his promise finishing the entire damn thing that night, plus a little more. I knew he wasn�t doing well when he stumbled around the foyer, tripped and crushed an entire freaking Christmas tree underneath him. Jon Akers, meanwhile, blind, crippled and tired, played guitar from inside the crawl space (don�t ask) and Vic did his best not to hit on the sister of one of Jack�s fraternity brothers.