Road Trip in the USA

Road Trip, Y'all

This past week, the wife, kids and I took a road trip up to my moms' house in Big Rapids, Michigan.  It was a very nice trip full of relaxation, day beers and food, sleeping and showering and lazing around.  So it was a lot like home, just a few hundred miles north of normal.  The drive up there and back is a decent one, better than going to Wisconsin, that's for sure.  I've decided that Indiana isn't the worst state to drive through anymore.  Illinois is much worse, having now driven through each a few times.  Illinois is very flat and boring. Indiana has a few hills, a few more towns, but is still pretty boring.  The ride home was a bit more shitty because my data from AT&T got throttled sometime this week so I couldn't stream music from my phone.  Not the biggest deal in the world, but not making things easier.

The best thing I found on our drives was our stops.  On the way up, we stopped at a McDonald's in the South Bend area and on the way home we stopped at a Hardee's in the (Oh I don't know) middle of Indiana area.  At both places I saw an interesting phenomena.  Breakfast Clubs.  Does every fast food restaurant in America have these people?  These folks that turn up at the crack of dawn every day to shoot the shit about the boringness of their lives and their towns?  It happens everywhere!  All these old-timers get together and eat fatty food and drink mediocre coffee.  I suppose it's an easy and cheap way to stay social, so I guess I can't knock them for having friends.  Meeting at a fast food place seems convenient, I suppose.  I don't know, it just seems like they all got a memo or something.

In particular, I want to talk about our amazing stop at the Hardee's in god-knows-where Indiana Friday morning.  My phone wouldn't connect to any network for no goddamn good reason, so I wasn't able to actually look at a map so see where we were, but it really didn't matter.  This could have been anywhere in the USA.  It was so perfect.

We sat at an empty table near the front of the restaurant.  I went up and ordered, and I was tempted to ask the local next to me where exactly we were.  I assumed he was local by the work clothes and beard.  After careful consideration, I decided I didn't want to have a conversation with this man, and like I said, it didn't matter where we were, it all looked familiar anyway.  I got food for me and the daughter and sat down and started to eat.  That's when one old man, two old man, three old man four old man start to sit in the tables near us, progressively filling in the area closer and closer to where we sit.  Next around the corner comes fifth old man, and he realizes he doesn't have a place to sit in what I can assume is their regular spot because there's me and my family.  None of the old men seemed to bothered by our presence, but you could also feel that we were in their spot.  No harm done there, but I just found it fun that these old men had routine and we were messing with it.

There were two other patrons in this Hardee's that caught my attention.  A younger looking man and woman, perhaps in their thirties.  They looked like every man and woman who is either a regular or an employee of every dive bar in every small town in America.  The dude had on a leather coat, had big gold hoops in his ears, military buzzcut hair-do, jeans.  He looked like he was in shape at one point in his life, and still was not bad, physique-wise.  He probably plays guitar in an "alt-metal" cover band.  The girl he was with had on the tight, low-waisted jeans with the jewels on her ass pockets, tight white tank top that showed the cleavage.  Short girl, a-line bob haircut that was dyed an unnaturally consistent dark color that I'm 99% sure was done in her bathroom sink.  Beer gut.  Not unattractive, yet certainly no model.  I felt sort of at home around these two, even though I was no where near them and even though none of my friends or even acquaintances looked particularly like them.  They looked like they belonged at Rookies in Negaunee.  I feel like I've seen them before.  I sort of found it odd that these bar patrons were out getting breakfast at 6:30 am on a Friday, but hey, maybe it was a long night of But Light drinkin'?

The whole thing, the breakfast club old guys and the party time thirtysomethings, it all reminded me that no matter where you are, no matter what time of day it is, people are the same everywhere you go.  I find something comforting in that fact.

Other random observations from the road, we noticed that there are a lot of towns in Indiana named after places you'd rather be other than in Indiana.  Places like Nashville, Kokomo, Plymoth, Warsaw, Peru, Austin, Underwood, Columbus.  Anywhere but Indiana.

I also saw an amazing mullet in Kentucky.  Shocker, I know.

But overall, the drives were okay.  They sucked, but they were okay.  The kids handled it like champs.  The wife, who couldn't sleep because of the position of her seat because of car seats, handled it like a champ.  It was a wonderful trip, and I can't wait to do it again.  And you better believe I'll be stopping for breakfast.