Dawn Xiana Moon: Intelligent folk pop with influences from jazz and traditional Chinese music. From Chicago.

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Wednesday, November 20, 2002

One of the Craziest Things I've Ever Done

There are some times in life when you just have to do things on the spur of the moment, when you have to be a little crazy. Monday was one such day. I'd planned to see the meteor shower on Tues. morning (5:15am) with some friends--we thought we'd just drive out of town and into the country a few minutes away, so we wouldn't have to deal with city lights--but on Monday the weather reports weren't looking promising--they predicted rain and clouds for the entire night. So the excursion was canceled and we (Rachel, Tait, Derek, and myself) decided to get together for Colliders at Rod's (think Blizzards with frozen yogurt instead of ice cream) and study. Too bad, the meteor shower only happens once every 130 years. Between mouthfuls of frozen goodness, Derek jokingly suggested that we could always head out west of Chicago to see it, outrunning the clouds, and I took him seriously: "Why not? I'm in a crazy mood." Realize here that we're in southeast Michigan; this was absolute madness.

Somehow we all decided to go for it--a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, right?--and grabbed blankets, Alex, who'd gotten wind of our plans via cell phone, homework (yup, we're definitely U-Mers), and pillows. We hopped in my car at 11:30pm and drove to Derek's house on the western side of the state to whip up some homemade hot chocolate and get updated weather reports from the internet (ever feel like a storm chaser?) so we could plan the best route. Throughout the trip, there were sporatic attempts to do homework by flashlight--reading a novel for me and Latin for Alex and Tait--which added another touch of hilarity to the situation. Around 5am we ended up by Champaign, IL, incredibly flat land--the Great Plains, actually--and drove down a random road in the middle of what was probably a cornfield; it was hard to tell since all of the crops had been harvested already. We got out, bundled up in blankets, and sipped hot cocoa. It was freezing, so we used the car to block the wind and all five of us laid down on the gravel road. "Wouldn't it be funny if a car drove by right now?" For an hour, we watched shooting stars. They were absolutely gorgeous--Derek and Tait were the only ones counting, with Derek's total hitting 310 (Tait, wearing glasses, saw just over half that) in the short time we had.

Finally, we hopped back in the car so we could make it back to Ann Arbor in time for (most) of our classes (hey, we're college students, and reality calls). On the way back, we stopped at the Burger King where Derek's brother works to get some food; incidentally, we didn't have to pay for it since Derek had worked there in the summer and the manager, glad to see him, said our food would be on the house. Nice. We eventually made it back to A2 at 11am. Rachel was especially sleep-deprived, which turned out to be an interesting combination of grumpy and slap-happy:

Me: How many points if I run over the girl with the bike?
Tait: A hundred if you can get her to fall off without touching the bike.
Me: Hmm... how could I do that?
Rachel: Don't run over anyone!!
Me: (laughing) I'm joking, dear.
Rachel: Don't joke with me when I'm tired!

So what have you been up to lately? :-)

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