The Broken Radio Paradigm Part 1

-NOTE: This was only part 1 of this post. I will hopefully be posting part 2 either tomorrow or the next day. Depending on how my writing process goes there might even be part 3 but we will see. I would have just written this all in one piece but this post is a lot bigger than just my road trip and just the sheer length of such a post seemed to ginormous to be climbed in one sitting. Also the story takes a rather drastic shift in tone and writing style and I figured it would be easier on both me and my readers (I like to pretend they are numerous) if I split it up into parts.  

Road Trip

Ah. Summertime... The time of heat, trees, bees, and large outdoor music festivals. At least that's what the last few month have consisted of for me.

Although I have been out of the "youth group" age for some time now I still accompany my church's youth on many a journey. Part of this is under the guise of being a "helper" but the truth is that I genuinely enjoy going on most of these trips. We had already been to "Night Vision Festival" earlier in the summer and that was all good fun. So even though "Heavenfest" was only two weeks later I was determined to get the days off work to go. 

The plan was set and I was to drive half of the boys in my car while my youth pastor would take the other half in his, with my mother driving the girls. Then all of the sudden one of the youth canceled so I would be driving myself. Once my father stumbled upon this knowledge he decided I should take a bicycle up to my brother in Fort Collins since I had an empty car. Almost all of these changes happened the day before I was to leave so it was nice to try and rearrange my entire travel plan last minute. However, I was determined to still make this an awesome trip regardless of how sporadic these changes had been. So I contacted a childhood friend who lived in the Denver Metro area to see if I could possibly meet up with her and her family on my way up. She said it would be fine, so once again my plans were slightly altered. Everything was set and packed so I left early Friday morning full of anticipation for the upcoming weekend. Little did I know it would be quite a bit different than expected. (that last sentence sounds much more dramatic than it should, but doesn't the world need more drama?)

I was driving in a 90's Buick LeSaber that had no AC, no radio, and no CD player. Also my iPod had recently passed away so I was forced to used a small SD card to listen to music through my phone. Even though I had put 8 GB worth of music on this card, only one album was actually playing and it was Dance or Die by Family Force 5. Now I am not one to be hating on the Family but I can't sanely take 6 hours of them repeating over and over, but I had no other option so I killed brain cells one by one for the 348 miles. Not to worry though as the trip was about to take a change for the better. 

When I got to my old childhood friends house I was quite nervous for multiple reasons. Firstly I wasn't entirely certain on the address as there are about three streets in the surrounding area with almost identical names and I didn't fancy having to knock on an incorrect door as that leads to awkward social interactions and unnecessary hot beverages. Nevertheless once I pulled up to what I thought was the right address I summoned my courage and walked towards the door. 

It was the second I first rang the door bell that I encountered my second fear that I hadn't even thought about until that instant. What if this family can't stand me? I had only reconnected with members of this family less than a year ago and even that was just through facebook. I have found over the years that getting along with people over facebook and getting along in real life can be two different thing. Shortly after entering the house it was clear that the reasoning for this fear had absolutely no basis. It was like slipping through the space-time wormhole encountered in Enterprise season 2. It was as though no time had passed and I was back at their house with my childhood best friend.This family was leaps and bounds more awesome than any group of people I had met in a long time and it was refreshing to be around people than were equally as nerdy as I am. Seconds turned to minutes, which in turn became hours and soon I found my phone bursting with angry text messages from my brother wondering why I hadn't been at his house hours ago, but I honestly didn't care. Eventually a great night of catching up, and singing about how we hate the homeless...... ness problem had to come to an end as my mother was convinced that I was hours behind the rest of my youth group (which were now in Fort Collins even though they left about 6 hours after I did).

I caught up to the rest of my group within only a few minutes and all was good. Thus ended a great day and perfect prelude of the awesomeness to come....