Spring break tomorrow, homework today. Wake up to MATLAB. Rain rain snow snow snow, programming weather. Coffee for breakfast. Sherpa for lunch. More procrastinating, more computing. Barely done in time. Again. Sigh. No time to go to Seismic. Rent a tent...rent-a-tent? Three girls and a dude at 5 Guys. Too many fries. Fries dipped in ice cream, yum. Driving driving. Packing packing. Downloading music for the road. Too little sleep.
At dawn we go. Ski bums and traffic. Hunger. Getting off schedule. Oh, well. Walkie-talkie battleship. The Utah sun beating down on my face like it did in my dream in January. So much deposition and erosion. Oh, the glorious erosion. Sitting in a car makes my muscles more sore than Corona Arch hike. More driving, and will we find a campsite? Old western-looking sunset with spires and purple sky. Darkness, and stars. How many engineers does it take to set up a tent at night? Amazing Grace under the Milky Way (as performed on top of a rock acoustically).
Time travel and confusion. Coldness of the desert does not bode well for sleep. No firewood equals no coffee. So much driving. Evading the law GTA style, but not really. Furthest destination: Grand Canyon. Status: reached. It looks like the pictures, and amazing in real life. Extensiveness blows the mind. Arizona sunshine. One point five miles into the heart of the canyon. Crossing layers, crossing time. Even more time travel in DST-less AZ. Professional camp-setting-uppers-at-night. Quick! Be loud before it's quiet hours! Sing! And the story of Henry the tree/boy/man. (Pretty sure we ran over Bob the tumbleweed).
This place has everything, including hot showers. Wat. I got to drive all the way from Grand Canyon to Four Corners. Passing cars...vroom. Sky. Silence, and mostly sleeping (not by me, the driver). When I stopped driving and got 3g, MIT Haystack REU emailed me an offer. Approaching Four Corners, the CO side is obvious: corner with mountains. Snow on ground after crossing state lines. Campground didn't work out...getting super hungry. Golden only six hours away! But actually seven. Operation Straight-Shot. "When I wake up, well, I know I'm gonna be..." plays in Wendy's right after having a conversation about it. Weird. And awesome. Near-elk encounter. Train encounter. THE longest train. I-25 is a boring road to drive. It's not an all-nighter if the sun doesn't rise before you go to sleep.
Solid six hours of sleep after waking up at noon. Then it started to snow. Packing again, then driving some more, but only twenty minutes. Sleep. Warmth.
Whilst jamming: "What am I thinking right now?" "We should go to Village Inn." Yes. Free pie Wednesday. A third-annual tradition, and the last with all three of us being students. Sadface-happyface.
Sleep. And good food. I probably gain so much weight when I go home. Good times with great friends. I don't want to go back to school.
