16.5 hours ...

The original setting : Chicago, IL.
The plan : drive until the rain (which has just started) stops, and we can set up dry camp.
The drivers : me.
The time : 4:24 pm

I had driven into Chicago in the first place, and to be more than fair, the ladies drove most of the way from Pittsburgh. so I don't count that in the overall timing.

It began simply enough. find somewhere dry. but lurking in the back of everyone's minds was that no matter where we stopped for night' the next day would be spent almost exclusively driving the remainder of the 14+ hour stretch from Chicago to the Badlands. ... and a small demon said to me ... what if you just did it all tonight while it's dark? it can't really be that bad ... you stay up all night plenty ... just kick it up a notch and play 'born to be wild' as much as possible. think of the time saved. and the small angel said ... yeah - why not - who wants to set up camp in the dark anyway!

Because by the time we made it far enough out of the rain for everyone to feel happy about it not raining us out during the night, it was well into night. John was ready to start drinking, Meg was tired, and Erin can't see at night ... so when we stopped at a convenience/liquor/gas station the only possible scenario played out.

So at 2:36 in the morning I was the official sober spotter for the game 'drink when you see a speed limit sign' ... turns out that the highways in Minnesota post them in pairs on both sides of the road ... it got to the point that we needed another game if I was going to have company for much longer. 20 questions turned out to provide over 2 hours of puzzling pleasure ... everyone somehow picked really good ones ... shirt button, asparagus, griffin, bat, tire, clothespin, window .... tons more ... we went two cycles through the car without anyone hitting the object ... these were the ones that I still somehow remember, so I figure we got a few of these.

5:05 a.m. crashed the early-bird special regulars at the Blue Diner somewhere in South Dakota. I'm not usre if they were upset or not. we were loud. and possibly obnoxious. and less than sober. and looking very strung out. so they were nice to us - except for selling me an m&ms cookie that must have been sitting on the counter since the cold war, because I could barely break it in half to attempt to eat it.

I had two 32 ounce Vitamin drinks. They ate food. bad idea. food = sleep at 5a.m., and they really should have known better ... or maybe that's why an enormous blue can called the Blue Demon, easily as tall as John's head (because we took a picture of the comparison) was also purchased.

by 5:26 they were all so far into food comas that we resorted to telling the worst jokes that we knew as fast as possible to stay awake.

5:34 they took shots of the energy drink to regain consciousness, and for a fleeting few minutes were wide awake and unsettlingly full of energy. same singing may even have spontaneously occurred ... I'm not really sure, as I started to find it hard to understand why the world was still black.

5:42 they all passed out. cold. logs to the world.

6:34 ........the thing about staying up all night and driving that is different from staying up writing a paper, or playing video games, or hanging with friends is that you can't really look away. ever. you are stuck, in a seat, holding a wheel pretty much straight for hundreds of miles, driving through the dark of Minnesota, and there is really nothing else that you can do to occupy your mind elsewhere ... and really ... if you did manage to ... you are supposed to be driving. snap out of it. It's the not leeking away that eventually does it I think. you can use your mirrors, glance out the window, but some part of your eye is constantly assessing the road. So, when I saw an Indian run into the road and fall under my wheels without making a sound, and then thought that the lines on the exit ramp were a car stopping in front of me ... I pulled off the road and curled up in a little ball in the front seat. 20 minute power nap, and a jog back and forth, up and down the isles of the gas station, and I was set to keep going!

8:46 a.m. Erin wakes up. like a crazed Tasmanian devil. Apparently, the caffeine and sugar had not actually reached through the food layer the first time round. Somehow, looking back and seeing her literally bouncing off of the car walls caused a wave to pass through my optical processing plant. I started to only hear her in little squeaking noises ... possibly this was actually the sounds that she was making ... but no one else was awake to verify. On the off chance that the chirping and waving lines on the road were fictions of my delusion, and not real, I pulled off at a rest stop somewhere in the western half of South Dakota and promptly fell out of the car and collapsed by the side of the road.

9:12 still awake. why? do I want breakfast? where are we going? was that just the South Dakota Hall of Fame ... a one story library sized structure, haphazardly tossed by the side of the national highway? weird. South Dakota looks much different when there's light on it.

The final setting : Information center, South Dakota.
The plan : drive until someone lucid finds a campsite.
The drivers : anyone not named Eli.
The time : 9:24 ... and still not at the Badlands.