Ok…odd side note here…

I’m on the phone with Robin (my girlfriend) when Karen (my roommate) comes on the back porch and asks me if I remember Ed. The guy with E=MC2 tattooed on him. I tell her I do. She then asks if I remember his girlfriend Robin – who she is on the phone with.

Yeah.

The Robin and Ed I wrote about in my journal just today.

Then I talk to Spud later.

Life is fucking weird.

My buddy Sam linked to my site today, and referred to this story as Fear and Loathing in Philadelphia.

I like!

Think I might wrap this bitch up this time.

I have had to do several things in my life that were difficult. I’ve had to give several eulogies. I’ve had to get a divorce. I’ve had tell people that a friend of theirs was gunned down by the California Highway Patrol.

But one of the most difficult things I have ever done is call my Mother to bail me out of this Pennsylvania mess.

It meant admitting that I had been wrong. That my little stab at freedom was nothing more than an infantile gesture. It meant that I had to ask her to help me out of a situation she specifically told me not to get in to.

I honestly didn’t think she was going to do it.

I have to give my Mother credit, though.

She didn’t say a word.

She asked how much I needed to get home. I told her. She asked where she should wire it to. I told her. She said she would send it, and that she was looking forward to seeing me when I got home.

She could have lectured me. She could have rubbed it in. She could have “taught me a lesson.”

I think she heard it in my voice, though. I had learned my lesson. I just wanted to come home.

So she wired me the money. Spud’s Mother wired some to him. We had it the next morning, and we struck out for home.

You’d think the story would end there.

But it didn’t.

You see, we weren’t done doing stupid things. We had some money in our pocket, and we were on top again. We thought we could do something silly like, oh, eat fast food. Several times.

Needless to say, we ran out of money right around the Florida border.

We actually managed to make it to Ocala before the fuel gauge hit empty (again). We pulled over at a gas station and tried to find someone who was willing to drive to Ocala and bring us some gas money.

Nope.

We had used up all of our good karma. Nobody was having our shit anymore. We were on our own.

So we did the only thing we could do. We got back on the road and hoped for the best. Turned the air conditioner off, rolled up the windows. and drove behind as many tractor trailers as we could to reduce wind shear. Anything we could to save gas. It was a Thursday night, and we knew that if we could just make it to Ybor we would know SOMEBODY in the crowd at Tracks and we could bum a few dollars off them to make it the rest of the way.

And we actually made it.

Sure enough, there were three people we knew right outside of the club when we got there. Of course, turns out these people were full of our shit too. We managed to beg two dollars off of them.

But it was enough.

We put the gas in the car at the B.P. on the 21st street exit in Ybor, and drove across the bridge to make it home.

It had been a long, exhausting trip. There were parts that were truly fun, but all in all it was a total nightmare. All I wanted to do was curl up in a bed for a long time and forget the trip ever happened.

But before we could do that, we went and saw Bill and got some more hot dogs.