This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

On Fumes

Posted by ehren

The wind has left our sails. Miro woke up Sunday morning, pushed his door open, and basically oozed down his stairs on a trail of coagulated sweat (it was about 90 degrees outside, probably above boiling in his room) and said "Ok, I give. I'm ready to go home." I had been mumbling the same quitter's mantra under my breath for a few days, having said that if it were up to me I'd skip RAGBRAI and drive straight on through to Milwaukee, land of box springs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and the first days of the rest of my life. It's been a great, long trip and I'm tired.

We have decided to skip the two days of RAGBRAI, proceeding directly to Casa del Padre in Madison on Wednesday. From there, we'll catch a ride with him as planned to Chicago (I've convinced Miro that an evening or two with the Foss tribe will explain A LOT, and he has other people to see in Chicago), then back to Madison, few more days, then Milwaukee. Even though it's supposed to be cooler this week I hear it's hot enough in Iowa to melt aluminum, and my bike is made of aluminum, so perhaps RAGBRAI is unwise, lack of energy notwithstanding.

Still, I'm a bit ashamed to be semi-squandering the last few days of the greatest adventure I've ever had in sloth. I'd like to rationalize that mentally, I'm in a period of adjustment between bus life and the future, and that it's ok to sit around inert and waste time. Today is Monday, and I worked and booked tickets to the East Coast, but mostly sent and received nonproductive TCP/IP packets.

The party at Jason & Doug's on Saturday night was genuinely great fun, well worth the Cannnonball Run along I-94. I hadn't really talked to Jason in at least a few years, and their guests were all interesting and super nice (I'm so very glad to be back in the midwest). Remus, their miniature greyhound, spent the first hour in a hyperactive tizzy and then ran out of energy, collapsed, and hid. One of the guests (Bill?) came into the party, demanded to know why the same bus he passed twice on the highway earlier in the day had somehow landed in his neighborhood. I stayed up until at least 3, probably 4.

Sunday I decided to write off:

E: "What day is it today?"
M: "Sunday."
E: "Sweet, the weekend. We don't have to do anything."
M: "Since whe-"
E: "I pay attention to the day of the week only when it suits my purposes."

Also on Sunday: Miro and I ate the remainder of Doug's delicious party food (sorry!), we went Uptown to see "Happy Endings" with Jason, Michelle, and Amy (also from Saturday's party). After the film we went to... started with an F... a bar with $2 happy hour and $2 food specials. Apparently Minneapolis requires that to keep a liquor license your establishment must sell more food than alcohol, hence the rock-bottom prices. Hooray for arbitrary blue laws!

Sunday night we took advantage of Jason & Doug's HDTV... so mesmerizing. Or mezmerizing. The new Family Guy does not disappoint, and then we watched the 3rd to last episode of "Queer as Folk", and after that I went to bed early.