Last weekend I went on a spontaneous road trip to St Louis. I was sitting in the Prayer Room last Friday minding my own business when Matthias and James (Jesse's brother - Jesse is my administrative assistant and fiancee to my roommate Char, who also works with me)came prancing down the aisle, as they came back up the aisle James petted my head and Matthias leaned down and asked me if I wanted to go to St Louis.
I instinctively said, "uh no." But then I thought, what am I doing in the next 18 hours? Why couldn't I go? I couldn't think of any reasonable excuse. So I quickly changed my mind and an hour later (12AM) we were headed to St Louis. James and I were the primary drivers on the trip, as Amanda had class the next day and Matthias swears he will never ever drive in his lifetime (we did teach him how to pump gas at the 7eleven).
Upon arriving in St Louis we snuck in James' house like the true ninjas we are (in reality I giggled the whole time because I'm bad at sneaking things, my automatic fear response is laughter, I can't help it) to surprise James' brother John B. Amanda had the video camera all ready, she turned to his bed with the green night vision light only to discover John B was on a church retreat. That was much ado about nothing. We snuck back out of the house without ever being noticed. From here we went on to pick up James' girlfriend, and then on to the arch.
It is at this point at about 4:30 AM we become a bit lost trying to find a parking spot, somehow we ended up on a highway heading into Illinois (all hail). We flipped a U-turn and James comes to screeching halt and runs out of the car and lays himself flat on the pavement right on the white dotted line, we all laugh and proceed to follow him. Just as my head lays down, James yells headlights and we all scream and jump up and soar back to car, I screamed twice more in the car just for dramatic effect.
There was no parking anywhere near the arch at 4:30 in the morning, so in yet another daring move, James parks the car right in the middle of the street right next the Arch. So out we run up a very steep hill and to the arch, where once again we lay flat on the ground staring up at the arch. It was way cooler then I thought it was going to be. It sort of shimmered in the spotlights and it was huge.
We had only a few minutes as we were illegally parked, so we ran back to the car climbed in and set off to find a steak and shake.
Two steak and shakes later we were back on the road by 7AM, it was at this point that the two boys bet me that I couldn't stay awake the whole ride back. I bet them I could and that neither one of them would make it. They were bold in their trash talk. But what they didn't know is that I have been on roadtrips with both of their brothers. Experience has taught me that neither the brysons nor the wells' do very well on low sleep in cars.
So about 15 minutes in Matthias dropped out and slept the whole way with his mouth open. Two and half hours in James pulled his cap over his eyes and drifted off. Admittedly I was starting to drop off, so in went the Killers and down went the windows and we made it back without incident; I, obviously, winning over the two boys who clearly needed their beauty rest.
