BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The past 48 hours, including my departure from Illinois to Indiana, have been a whirlwind, and I’ve barely had the time I’ve wanted to chronicle my adventures here on Ye Olde WordPress.

Alas, I’ve been making incredible memories on the road, with best friends and strangers alike, and I hope to spend some time today on my birthday getting the words out.

Oh yeah. I’m 31 now. That’s something, I guess.

Here’s a quick rundown of everything else I’ve been up to, as I chill out in the top floor of my hometown Graduate Bloomington and recap the last few days:

Charles in Charge

There’s a fancy little bar/restaurant called “The Trophy Room” just inside the front doors of the Graduate Evanston. It looks like an old sportsman’s lounge (billiards, hunting, old-school football) with brass draft handles, green leather seats, and fine wooden tabletops.

Among all these treasures, though, is a larger legend: Charles Campbell, a lifelong bartender and kind soul who oversaw my beer pleasures on Thursday and Friday night.

When I say he’s a lifelong bartender, I’m serious. He’s proud to tell you that he’s been muddling cocktail ingredients and serving his parents Manhattans and Old Fashioneds since he was 3 years old. (A concerned school administrator showed up to the family house one day after Charles made his habits known in school, and ultimately left convinced and impressed that his parents were simply teaching him hospitality and a meaningful service craft at a developmental age — Charles merely served the drinks, and his own lips did not touch them until later in life.)

And now, a father of four aged somewhere between age 50 and 60, Charles holds down the fort at The Trophy Room, slinging out neon-bright cocktails and immaculate pours of beer.

Charles is a sophisticate. He’s classy. The cheerful server with a little salt and pepper in his hair wears a white dress shirt and a bowtie, and completes the look with leather suspenders. He wears round, mid-century glasses, and addresses everyone by their last name — a gesture which caught me totally stunned, until I realized he had purloined my surname from the credit card I used to guarantee my tab.

As such, I was “Mr. La-FAH-Vay” during my visits to the Trophy Room. It’s not how my last name is actually pronounced, but it sounds fancier than the real thing, so I embraced the upper-crust vibes.

On Friday in particular, Charles had a beaming smile on his face. He proudly told the bar patrons that one of his daughters had just gone into labor, and he was about to be a grandparent. He said, patiently, that his phone was off, he was focusing on work, and that he would turn his phone back on when closing time had come — he didn’t want to alarm anyone with his joy.

With an early departure set for Saturday morning, I bid Charles (“Mr. Campbell”) ado and wished him the best. I paid my tab and went back to my hotel room. I never saw him again, but if you’re out there Charles, I’m raising my glass to you and your family — may that kid know how to mix a hell of a Negroni.

The Friendly City

I met up with more friends in Evanston (and Chicago proper) than in any other city on the trip thus far.

On Wednesday, I had the privilege of watching AEW with Matt Tepperman, a friend I made through the IU improv comedy scene, as well as his husband Aaron and their cat Lailah (pronounced LIE-luh, after the Jewish word for “night”). We also got dinner at a grilled-cheese themed restaurant named “Cheesie’s.”

On Friday, I crossed paths with two longtime best friends — Nash and Hannah — who recently welcomed their daughter into this world. Nash and Hannah were the folks I Zoomed with most during the pandemic, and seeing them in person again for the first time in two years (with precious cargo in tow) may very well have been the most important evening of my planned 31-day itinerary. For dinner, we got deep-dish Chicago-style pizza from Lou Malnati’s, which was a delicious treat in itself.

I also spontaneously ran into high school buddy and perpetual laugh-haver Jim Banta, after I took a wrong turn from Nash and Hannah’s apartment and got lost en route to the Metra trains (life is weird like that).

And on Saturday morning, I got brunch with Anthony and Bea Sbelgio, two Twitter/gaming pals who drove an hour from the Joliet area to spend time with me during my last morning in Evanston. They even helped me pack up my truck, which was an incredible friendship maneuver.

I’m glad to have crossed paths with so many people in such a short period of time. It made me appreciative of the potential of creating new memories again in a post-vaccinated world, and I’m grateful their decisions to get the jab allowed me to pop and and write the newest chapter in our respective storybooks.

‘No entry. No third-rail contact.’

I was also privy to some absurd, briefly horrifying people-watching on Wednesday night, when a dangerous situation presented itself on the northbound Purple Line.

A group of teenagers — they were talking about their upcoming plans for college — were heading home from the Cubs game at Wrigley Field, when one male in the group slapped his buddy Danny’s iPhone out of his hands, as a goof.

The phone bounced off the platform and down into the dark railway pit.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Danny asked.

“I thought it was funny.”

“It’s not fucking funny bud. Not one bit.”

Danny paused and contemplated his options for retrieving his phone. He felt jilted that no security guards were on hand to help him.

“There’s no one awake!” he said. “I’m gonna go wake their ass up.”

“Danny, stop!” a tired girl called out.

Danny laid down on the grimy platform in his clean and sporty Cubs jersey, leaning over into the gap to try and reach his phone.

“It’s in the fucking tracks, Danny. Don’t go do that.”

“Somebody’s gotta!”

“Did you ask them?”

“Ain’t nobody here.”

The frustrated girl is becoming more and more impatient with Danny and his phone-slapping friend.

“You two need to sit down,” she said.

“YOU TOO,” Danny barked back. The girl walked away with her hands on her head.

“Do you see it, bro?”

“Nah.”

The group realizes they’re on the wrong side of the tracks, and need to go southbound instead of northbound.

“Now we’re not going in the right direction, AND my fucking phone is gone,” Danny said.

A female security guard begins to approach the group. She’s carrying a walkie-talkie in her hand.

The group begins to clap. She’s less than amused.

“Where is it? You fucking threw it,” Danny barks at his friend.

“It’s right there.”

“She’s gonna get it,” Danny said.

“I sure am not,” the woman said.

A third guy chimes in: “To be fair, I should have caught it.” The group shushes him and he pulls back.

A bright light comes racing down the tunnel. The train is coming.

Danny jumps into the tracks, complete with an electrified third rail.

“Oh my god,” the manager pleaded with them. “Why would you come down there?! You did NOT.”

Danny grabs his phone and his friends pull him back onto the platform. They applaud his bravery, and the manager sighs into her walkie-talkie.

“They got the train backed up now,” she said. “Guy in an 18 jersey, short, baseball. They’re drunk and dropped their phone on the track.”

The manager turns around and chastises Danny: “NO ENTRY. NO ENTRY. NO ENTRY. No third rail contact.”

The fellas once again applaud Danny for his bravery. The manager leaves to talk on the phone in private, and the train arrives to scoop me and the Cubbie-loyal teenagers to our next stop.

I get on the train heading the right way. They get on the train heading the wrong way, but they are too excited by the phone recovery to realize it right now.

“Danny, why the fuck did you do that?”

“Well, why the fuck did you throw his phone?”

“I dunno. Why didn’t you catch it?”

The frustrated girl again stands up and pleads for them to stop.

Danny turns and asks the phone-slapper: “Hey bro, still got your ball?”

The friend produces a baseball from his front pocket — “I can’t believe I finally caught one.”

Danny slaps it out of his hand, and it rolls down the train car.

###

-moose

PS: Here’s a few other notebook statistics, to give you some context on how the journey is going at large.

• Distance traveled so far: 960 miles
• Two wrong-way buses, 1 missed bus, 1 missed train
• ~$11: Approximate cost of leaving Chicago via toll roads
• Clean T-shirts left: 1