Our Journey to the Mecca of Retail Shopping

It was twilight of my 4th year of college. I was sitting around the common area of DU, my fraternity, with two of my close friends. They were all fourth years as well and would be leaving the city shortly after graduation. Brian would be leaving for Vanderbuilt to attend law school. Sang would be heading back home to Indiana to serve and obey his parents. Me, well, I would be still be in Chicago seeing as I wasn't graduating, but hey, that's another story.

This Friday evening was like a lot of other Spring evenings in Chicago - pleasant, with a cool breeze blowing through the city. We were reminicing about all the crazy things we had done together, the places we had been, the things we'd seen. Brian was talking about how nice it would have been for him to have had his car, a convertable, with him on some of those trips. During his years in school he had left it with his folks in Utah, but seeing as he would be leaving for Tennesse in a few weeks, he had driven it out to Chicago.

What happened next, who knows? This is the part of conversations where tangent goes from tangent to tangent. I know I had pushed hard to see The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, and mentioned that the Mall of America was along the way. Somehow my journey to pay homage to this American icon was corrupted & it became a roadtrip to the Mall. But when to do it? The only time convient to all was this weekend, and heck, it was already midnight on Friday. And we need a forth to fill to fill the car properly.

Time be damned, we decided we would go. One final road rally. We went down to the Pub, where another good friend of ours, Dan Casey, worked as Bartender/Manager. The good news: He thought it was great and really wanted to come. Bad news: he wouldn't get off work until 3am. Being good friends, we waited for him.

So, finally, at the hour of 3:27am we depart on our trip. Brian drove, I road shotgun, and Sang and Dan sat in the back.

[ Left to Right: Sang Yi, Dan Casey, Brian Shiker, Me]

At this point we should probably mention that Brian is a dork and inisted on wearing a red beret that broadcast it to the entire world. We would have left him behind, but it was his car. We considered just grabing his keys and taking his car without him, but none of us were that good at driving stick.