As Varun has lain down his pen and retired to a life of quiet contemplation in Tyler, TX, so shall I raise it up again! Our continuing adventures shall not be lost forever to the shifting sands of time, but scribed immortally onto these digital reams, providing you our gracious reader with the end and epilogue you so desperately crave.
The 17th day was the beginning of the end for our little troupe as one of us drove his last leg of the trip (Hint: It's Varun). Arriving in Tyler, TX we were treated to a typical small city environ in east Texas - brick roads, heat, strip malls and the best gastronomical experience of the entire trip.
It all began at Stanley’s Famous Pit Bar-B-Que where I had the distinct pleasure of ingesting The Brother-In-Law "a sand-wiched smorgasbord of chopped beef, butterflied hot links, and cheese". Varun allegedly experienced 'distinct pleasure' in relation to his Pescado Tacos, though I'm deeply skeptical of any sentence which plays host to both "pleasure" and "fish" (Confused? No habla español? Fish = Pescado my linguistically challenged amigos). I can only assume Alex enjoyed his meal in spite of his midwestern sensibilities. I lacked confirmation however, as he was rendered incoherent, repeating "My eyes, my eyes!", as our hot sauce evaporated and did its level best to emulate pepper spray. Tears ran down our faces by the end of the meal, but they could have just as easily have stemmed from joy as from errant airborne capsicum.
After a brief interlude at a used games and movies store which apparently featured prominently in Varun's past, (where Alex took his sweet time while I estimated the approximate pressure at which my entrails would rupture if I didn't gain access to facilities soon) we arrived at our destination - Varun's house.
That night as debated politics and enjoyed the company of Varun's parents while we were treated to a scrumptious Indian meal ('scruptious' really is an underutilised adjective). By the end of it we were so stuffed we had to put off eating real pecan pie until several hours had passed. (What constitutes real pecan pie? Pecans all the way through apparently. Varun was rather insistent on this point. To be fair the pie was delicious.)
Oh, and we watched Get Smart. You should as well. It was funny.
After saying our goodbyes and replenishing our larder at the insistence of Mrs. Lella (never let it be said one could leave the Lella house hungry or unsatisfied), Alex and I were off to St. Louis - crime capital of the USA and home to Drew and Annie (spurious correlation? I'll let you be the judge). While I'm (relatively) sure they're upstanding young citizens, our GPS led us to what appeared to be a dilapidated industrial district complete with barbed wire lots, gutted factories and six story industrial silos.
Luckily the next day showed us the error of our ways. They don't live in a dilapidated industrial park - they live in a shut down dilapidated industrial park. Of course this particular relic of the rust belt is being converted into condos. Their building is an old gutted model T factory which makes it a) pleasantly spacious and b) awesome.
Anyways I'm jumping ahead of myself a little bit, by neglecting to tell you about yet another meal courtesy of our hosts (and great Italian take out). We got a bit of everything, including the famous St. Louis fried ravioli as we caught up with our friends.
The next day we did all the usual St. Louis stuff - food, marvel at the arch (and the flooding), drop into a casino and generally explore the city. It was all very nice but I don't care about any of it except as a prelude to the City Museum. The City Museum. I'm saying it twice to add gravity and emphasis to it. The City Museum. If I was 13 or one of those people who derive their kicks from conducting flame wars in 133t speak on message boards I'd have written the name in caps with somewhere between three and five exclamation marks. As it stands I'll trust you to give it the proper mental intonation.
What can I say about the City Museum? Well, it's basically modern art meets sculpture garden meets potential lawsuit meets LSD meets giant playground jungle gym. As far as I can tell there's no museum within the gutted industrial building that now plays host to a labyrinth of cages, tunnels, caverns, wrought iron bars, hollowed tree trunks, gutted planes sitting atop six story spires, fantastical dragons and slides that make up this behemoth of fun and that's just fine with me.
We spent two or three hours climbing, squeezing, crawling and otherwise getting about within the structure. There were times I was inside trees, pitch black and so narrow my arms could only be straight ahead, there were times I climbed in metal walls only to emerge into crawl spaces no more than a foot tall, and at one point I accidentally found myself in a ventilation shaft. As in, inside the ceiling. I came out of it scratched, cut, battered and bruised and it was possibly the most fun I've had in my entire life.
Please - if you're relatively young, have four functioning limbs and any spirit of adventure I implore you to go there. Go before it gets shut down or dumbed down because its a deathtrap waiting to happen. Just go.
Leaving our host that afternoon to his new home and another 14 years of schooling, we traveled the last few hours to Alex's home, arriving an hour late courtesy of a 1am bike race that managed to encircle us in a suburb of Indianapolis.
After a brunch the next day (tired of hearing about food yet?) I hit the road all by my lonesome. And now it's a one man road show which leaves little to report as I head to the great north except a contented heart.
The Last Road Trip? Not bad at all.
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