Breakfast . . . Not from a gas station
For the first time on the trip we awoke to a home cooked breakfast, and other than the fear that we would be making emergency bathroom stops on the next leg, we truly enjoyed it. A little behind schedule, as always, we loaded up the car and said our goodbyes. After prying Rob off of Barbara, we headed down the road with big smiles. Rob’s smile was especially big, so big that we grew suspicious. After a bit of interrogation, he reached under his shirt and presented the “souvenir” he had taken from the Powers’ home. We quickly turned the car around to return the picture of Sara’s sister, Kelly.

CPK in CHI
To say that Trent likes music is like saying Gary likes being French , or Rob likes making jokes about his “prison wallet” so when DJTront realized that Lalapalooza would be rocking Chicago on the day we were set to roll through town, he sort of started to vibrate. But after nine days of being in the car, the thought of the traffic that Lalapalooza causes in Chicago was enough to make him reconsider. We decided it would be best to avoid the city and headed towards a place that made Trent’s “excitement vibrations” turn into full fledged celebratory shaking. We were in Chicago, a city famous for its pizza, and we ate the best they had to offer, a mountain of CPK.

I hope that someone gets my [x3]
Our drive to the land of a thousand lakes included a stop at a river where we took in the sunset in our usual fashion — a race against time to find a suitable location, a scramble to find our corkscrew, a near death experience opening a wine bottle with a rock or a shoe, and a few moments of peace and reflection. On this occasion we decided to end our sunset tradition with another tradition carried over from the sailboat. We took one of our PanAmerica cards, wrote a little message on it and hurled it into the river. We then made jokes about how Gary throws like a French guy, picked up the bottle from where it lay in the bushes about 15 feet (3 meters) away , and let someone else try. This time it went farther and got a strange look from the fisherman that it landed near. We quickly left while the bottle most likely floated back to where we threw it from.

Shell Gas > Rodeo Drive
As we made our way to our friend Eric’s house in Minneapolis we stopped for gas. Eric was nice enough to welcome us to his place that he literally moved into one day before we arrived, so we thought it would be nice to bring him a little housewarming gift. Our options were seemingly limitless as long as we were open to leather apparel. Trent and Matt put their best shopping skills to work and came up with a single serving bottle of white wine and a holographic picture of some dogs (Maltese) in a lovely plastic frame. Upon arrival, we promptly deposited the wine in his empty fridge and hung the picture on the empty dining room wall. Eric was pleased.

Gary quickly became less pleased when Trent passed gas in his direction . . .from about an inch away from his face.