This one began even earlier, if you want the whole story. It's the trip that never should have been. Patrick had his eye on a Bruce Springsteen concert in St. Louis, after hearing about some tickets a girl wanted to sell for the sold-out show. I agreed to go with him. Why? I'm not one of the tramps-like-us. At least not on the outside. But I wanted to do it. Emphasis on the "do it." I'm sure there will be plenty of last-minute jags to random cities with a van-load of friends when I'm 30, but I didn't want to chance it. Plus, I knew that that music is a part of Patrick. I wanted to at least understand it, even if it couldn't be a part of me too. So that's it. My lofty motivation for a weekend in a not-obviously-thrilling southern American city: I just wanna go.

Thus, the hunt began. So, Patrick, how're you gonna swing us a way to get to St. Louis? Someone in the Great Upstairs was sympathetic. A Society of Professional Journalists conference was scheduled for the same weekend, and we knew someone who was going: A guy named Art-- in the Polish club, interned at Money magazine, goes to church on Sundays and likes dance music.

Yes, Art was our ticket to ride. My fine, upstanding university rented us (cheaply) two vehicles to escort Art to the conference and (unbeknownst to them) transport Patrick and me to the height of Springsteen frenzy. Along for the ride, 10 of our friends who just wanted the roadtrip. Our mythical journey had a toe-hold in reality after a week of planning, organizing, bargaining and compromising.

Soon it had more than a toe-hold. By 1:30a.m., we were drowsily cruising route 55. Didn't know where we were sleeping in St. Louis yet, but hey. Figure that out later. Suddenly Morris, our R.A., who'd taken the noble task of leading us from Chicagoland, had a siren in his rear-view mirror. The wind and icy rain bounced our 8-seater around so much that the cops had noticed. Art woke up when the cop shined her flashlight at Morris: Have you been drinking? Everyone in the back was silent -- either dead asleep or frozen in the shock of irony and disbelief.

The episode ended with a stern warning to keep it between the white lines. But that wasn't the last of it. As the night threw ice and wind at us relentlessly, Morris drove on. Mark was a good radio bitch, pleasing the masses with alternative and classic rock. Everything seemed smooooooth, until a truck stop somewhere in the middle of the night.

Patrick took the wheel, and I took shotgun, ready to keep him awake for an hour or two of van-piloting. I only sat shotgun for three minutes. We started forward ok, but then... back end sliding out, front end sliding right, heads down, we spin, spin, stop with a hip-check by the side of the road. I felt, for some uknown reason, like I was the only one who'd ever encountered ice. I couldn't help but reel back to the time Paul and I ended up in a ditch with no way out but a tow-strap hooked to some guy's pick-up. I promised myself then that I'd be ok in an accident. I'd be like Paul. Get out, survey the scene, and draft a firm plan of action. Instead, I started spouting meaningless advice. Fortunately, Art got back in the van and steered it off the shoulder as everyone else stood around in the baffling dark. Art, maybe you should drive.

Patrick sat shotgun, and off we went. No one panicked, and Art had the wheel.

For a few glory hours, we watched the sun soak into the night sky as classic rock welcomed us to the morning. But pretty soon, Cleo signalled from the other car that we had a problem. Uh, thaaaaat's a flat tire.

No problem, right? We'll... we'll just pull off here... Farmersville. At least one big dog paced every front yard. Then someone pointed out a black painted pig on someone's lawn that said "Harley." Ah, rural America. Before we got too frightened by the scenery, a gas-station attendant directed us to Joe. Joe's Automotive Repair looked like the backlot of a cars-and-guns movie. You wonder what happened to *that* car. But Joe himself looked like the most typical rural American mechanic you could imagine. Imagine it. And now imagine it even more stereotypical. Dorothy's uncle in the Wizard of Oz.

Joe said the tire would hold us until St. Louis, and Joe's word was true. But once in St. Louis, we had to fix it. Remember, this wasn't even our car, so we weren't quite sure about the protocol. But screw protocol, we needed to continue the journey. We found our promised land behind a gas station and in an alley piled high with tires and dotted with hand-painted signs like : Used Tires. No guarente. And many, many "Beware of Dog" signs. The man we chatted with had gotten a two-by-four in the head a day earlier, so he apologized for not looking so good. I thought he looked like someone who had a real life: Not just dirt under his fingernails but dirt everywhere. Plaid shirt and a squinty-eyed way of talking to you. Leaned forward like how old barns slouch into their frames. For $10, they patched our tire and said it'd hold us. What was wrong with it? $10.

St. Louis itself felt like a movie set. Everything was clean, bright, and nearly empty when we rolled in at 7 in the morning. Unfortunately, we couldn't check in until noon-- house rules. Not that we were even sure they'd let 12 of us crash there. And anyway, Art had to run (literally) to the conference down the block.

Everyone wanted to see the symbol of our freedom from campus, the bastion of adventure that had heralded us to St. Louis and welcomed us to its nest. We wanted to see the Gateway Arch.

TRIUMPHANT MUSIC... When you first see the Gateway Arch, you stop. There's really nothing else you can do. Suddenly this sky-high piece of metal arcs in a ballet above you, casting a shadow that wraps around you like a welcoming hug. We kissed the Arch. We smacked it. We banged on it. We embraced the muscle of its metal like toddlers embrace their mothers' legs.

After we all bought tickets for a ride to the top, at a time slot convenient for Art so he could come too, we learned that St. Louis had more for us to love. It had a McDonald's on a river boat. We had to see it... but we also had to meet Art at noon to check in. This called for a mad dash. Morris, Eliina, Emily and I started sprinting towards McDonalds.

As we ran, the Mississippi river laid a placid strip of water behind the Gateway, and cherry trees waved their pink blossoms over its banks. We lept down the concrete stairs to the dock, and behold: A floating McDonald's. Look out the window, and instead of a parking lot, it's the Mississippi River. Sadly, they did not serve milkshakes. But we forgave them, because they were on a boat, and that was just damn cool.

Unfortunately, we made everyone else late for check-in with Art. After zipping through traffic, we pulled up to Art, sitting alone on the chilly curb, reading the hotel magazine. But, sunny guy that he is, he didn't seem to mind our 20-minute delay.

Next challenge: We had one hotel room. Our mission impossible: pretend not to be an entourage of college students crashing in a two-person room.

We accomplished this without much difficulty, because the entire hotel staff seemed oblivious. The roomy double held all of our gear, we scored a second key so we could split up, and the bedspreads were that nice generic polyester. But we couldn't bask in our victory. We had beer, baseball and sleep on our minds. Some of us went to a tour of the Busch brewery, some of us napped through a Cardinal's game, and Patrick, Cleo and I just napped on the polyester bedspreads.

Morris, Emily and Eliina came back from the brewery tour and napped too. We woke up to the frenzied announcement that we were late for our trip to the top of the Arch. Bleary-eyed, we made our way to the lobby to meet Art, who supposedly had picked up two more NU students at the conference and wanted them to come along. But they were M.I.A. so Morris, our fearless van-driver, piloted the whale and Patrick, Art and I jumped in. We weren't going to make it. No way. Traffic stood at a dumbfounded halt around the Arch. Patrick leapt out of the van and dashed for the Arch to announce: "Hold the tram!" It was the last one of the day, and hell if we were gonna miss our journey to the Holy Grail of monuments.

Morris, in his second disaster-aversion of the trip, found an interesting method of parking. He got as close to the Arch as possible, until he realized that all the parking spots ahead were already full. Then he backed up. Art, taking control of a tough situation again, directed the manuever as the rush-hour traffic flow adjusted.

More running, and my legs just about buckled from lack of sleep and food. We sprinted down the tunnel leading inside the Arch. A nice-sounding woman asked us to take her picture, but we had no time! The last tram awaited us! As revenge for denying her, she called out after us: "The last tram already left!!!!"

But it hadn't. No, Patrick had single-handedly halted the motion of thirty people waiting to get to the top of the Gateway Arch. We skidded to a halt in front of the metal detectors, where the amused guards heralded us in.

The trip up was enough to traumatize anyone with mild claustrophobia. Each little transport, all white inside, has five seats in a circle. It feels like you're riding in a very squeaky egg as it cranks through the structure to the top. But at the top, we knew it was all worthwhile. We'd conquered our mountain of steel, and now we could survey our kingdom, a soundstage called St. Louis.

After that, the group splintered. Patrick and I went to Springsteen, and others found their way to Washington University to visit a former outcast of our dorm who transferred there in the winter. I hear that she's still an outcast, even though she tried to offer them beer.

Springsteen, in my humble opinion, was like meeting the Wizard himself. Our mythical journey wound down with a man who sang about the gritty stuff in life -- the love, the pain, and the Thunder Road. That's what it's all about.

After the concert, six were already asleep in the room, so Patrick and I each slept on the floor and added to the fire code violations. The stragglers stumbled in at 3a.m., and finally, peace.

The next morning, we all needed to get rolling quickly so Morris could make it home for a 2pm psychology lab. Everyone got cranked into gear fast, considering the five hours of sleep everyone had. But after the open road was ours again, we had to make another stop in Farmersville. We had to see the place with the pig named Harley and the dogs named Butch and the mechanics named Joe.

Sadly, we couldn't stay long enough to get that shot of Emily straddling the pig. But a Subway/TCBY combination restaurant placated her long enough to get us out of town and back on the road. And halfway there, Art took the wheel.

*DRAMATIC MUSIC* Thus our mythical journey ended: A hero named Art and his whale-like chariot delivered the brave Morris to his psychology lab with two minutes to spare. The journey ended, but the tale lives on, a quest marred by tragedy and marked by triumph, sweeter with every re-telling.

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