Starting to write journals. Mostly going to use them to record stuff like trips. Won't all be totally furry but there should be at least something furry related going down.

Trip to Arkansas

tl dr: Flew to Arkansas and drove car I bought back to North Dakota.

So I like to buy cars. I've owned 12 and generally buy older ones, fix them up and then sell them (usually breaking even but that's it) for 2012 I decided to make a new years resolution not to buy cars, and it was good.

2013 I made the mistake of telling a furiend what I'd buy next and in 5 minutes he sends me a link to an eBay listing for a Jeep that was for sale for a low price and with low mileage down in Arkansas. Being weak minded, I went for it and a day later the car is mine and I had a one way ticket to Little Rock.

Fast forward to travel day, my roommate Tilerin was kind enough to give me a lift to the airport. Being irresponsible, I was up until about 2 am Thursday night and had to get up at 4:15 am for my 5:54 am flight. So I was tired but figured I'd sleep on the plane. I got to the airport with barely enough time to get to the gate before boarding. The boarding start time comes and goes... and a half hour passes by with nobody telling us anything (all of the other flights there are leaving on time). Finally, after 40 minutes they finally board us, once that is done and it feels like we're about to leave they move us back up toward the terminal to de-ice the jet. So we arrive in Chicago an hour late and I miss my connecting flight by a good twenty minutes. It's only 8:30 in the morning so I go to their customer service desk and ask about the next flight out. The best they could get me was a 12:30 departure, a whole four hours after my original flight. So naturally I'm pissed, but at least they gave me a ten dollar lunch voucher for my trouble.

So now I have 4 hours to kill at the airport. I text, I tweet I explore Chicago's lovely O'Hare airport. The exhibit about Buck O'Hare was pretty cool, but mostly I was looking for a quieter area to sneak in some sleep, since I'm still running on about 2 hours of it. The place is just crazy busy and loud, it's snowing outside so there's a lot of delayed flights and people sitting around. I eventually give up on sleep and decide to grab some lunch, luckily enough they have a Johnny Rocket's and hey, I have my free lunch ticket. I wait in line, order... voucher doesn't work, register says it was already used. *rages inside* I go back to customer service desk and they are genuinely embarrassed by it not working and give me two more. Go back to the same place, same cashier and make the same order. No dice. I'm at the idegaf point but since I have nothing but time to kill, I go back to the customer service desk one more time. I get an actual supervisor this time, because as far as their system is concerned they've given me 30 bucks in free lunches already. Apparently they're having all kinds of system issues and yeah. their solution was to print new vouchers on a different printer. Off I go to Johnny Rockets and luckily one of them works, I get my free burger and shake thinking "it sure would be nice to tell them that one finally worked, but I have to catch my flight." Luckily, fate intervened and my flight was delayed two hours, allowing me plenty of time to go chat up their front desk. They were pretty mortified and appreciated me coming back and not flipping out on them, so they gave me a $50 voucher for a future United flight. Didn't give me the six hours of my life back that I lost but was still a nice gesture.

So my actual flight to Arkansas was packed, since I don't think I was the only one who missed a connecting flight that day. They also changed the departure gate for the flight *5* times. When I finally got settled at the final gate, I had a few minutes to people watch. There was an alarming number of cowboy hats, but honestly there one person who stood out. It was an obese woman with an extremely large booty and biiiiig legs. Her choice of clothing? Spongebob squarepants skin tight pajama pants, like the stretchy kind. I could easily see her pink underwear through it >.< She had her baby with her who was wearing Elmo themed pajama pants. It was beautiful and horrifying in a way. So anyway, soon we were boarding and since I had been re-booked I knew I wasn't getting a window seat which the inner child in me still prefers. I walk down the aisle to my seat and to my horror I see my neighbor is that extremely large woman from the gate. Her child is small enough for her to hold on her lap rather than have its own seat.. >.< Thankfully she left her armrest down which kept most of her rolls on her side but I had still had a leg in the aisle for the entire flight. Also, at some point her child soiled itself, and rather than trying to stuff herself into the bathroom she changed the baby on her on lap. Right next to me. When the stewardess came to take anybody's trash before landing, the lady neatly dropped the dirty diaper in her empty soda cup and passed it over me into the trash. Yeah, I couldn't get off that plane fast enough >.<

Little Rock has a nice little airport, for some reason there are pictures of their city council all over the place, kinda reminded me of countries where dictators like their portraits on every wall, but whatever. My ride was twenty minutes late, but after losing six hours already I just didn't care. I was a little apprehensive about meeting the guy, he had a hilarious redneck accent on the phone and his name was Noel. I really thought (and maybe hoped a little) that I might be getting picked up in a lifted redneck truck. But he shows up in a brand new Tahoe and is dressed like he just came from a board meeting. Thanks to traffic I had an hour to chat with the guy, learned he used to be a police chief and now is mayor of his little town. Was a very pleasant chat. The car was as good as he had represented, so I gave him a check for all of my money and hit the road.

Since I was leaving six hours late, I didn't get as far as I planned. I had a furiend in a small town north of Little Rock I had wanted to meet (never met irl before so that was really fun), so I got that far Friday night and grabbed pizza with him. Ended up staying at a hotel and taking off the next morning. Won't lie, small town Arkansas is gorgeous but I've never been anywhere in the country where I felt like I stood out so much as being "not from around here". Was a weird, somewhat disconcerting feeling.

Saturday I drove about ten hours, got to see lovely Missouri, Kansas (Kansas City looked sweet), Nebraska and South Dakota. Was a beautiful day and easy drive. Got to Sioux Falls, SD at around 10pm, crashed at my parents place and had a lazy night. Sunday I got on the road a bit late, the last 240 miles to Fargo really sucked. Freezing rain, blowing snow and black ice. Felt the back of my car start coming around twice going at highway speeds >.< definitely was some white knuckle driving. But I made it back to Fargo and as I crossed into the city limits, my trip meter rolled over 1000 and the orchestral version of Final Countdown started playing on the radio. It was pretty badass.

Despite the weirdness it was a fun trip, the memories from stuff going wrong are usually the best and this trip was no exception. Also, gold star if you read this entire thing. I might need to learn to be more succinct in future journals X3