BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It was a weird 31st birthday. But what else could I expect from a bizarre trip like this?

You know, thirty-one is a prime number, and I’d like to think I’m having a pretty prime birthday!

(No? Okay. Sorry.)

Here’s the rundown of what I’ve been up to since I arrived back home again in Indiana on Saturday morning:

Saturday

After departing Evanston, Ill. at 11 a.m. local, I rolled into my Hoosier hometown on Saturday evening, absolutely exhausted. I wolfed down two gas station roller bites (“carne queso” and “breakfast scrambler”) during the 5-hour drive to Bloomington, Ind., as well as a 12-ounce Red Bull and two 20-ounce Pepsi Zero Sugars (again: they have double caffeine).

That, along with not having showered in the 3 days prior, made me feel like the scummiest person alive.

I was jittery. Nervous. The drive down I-65 took years off my life. Then the stoplight-heavy path through Mooresville came and reminded me what fresh hell I had subscribed to. Then came rainstorms and the detour through Martinsville. Felt like I was gonna pitch forward dead in my car during the final 20 minutes. Finally, I arrived in Bloomington, walking like a guy who just got back from the moon. I poked in to Room 602 and fell face-first on one of the two white/pink queen beds.

And when I saw that the local hotel team had left me a cold 6-pack of various IPAs to celebrate my arrival, I downed one and immediately became one with the air conditioning. Sweat. Caked skin. Stinky T-shirts. Pitters. The whole shebang.

But you can’t rest for too long. Not on your birthday weekend.

Jenna and Samuel, two long-time friends here in B-Town, met me in my room less than an hour after my arrival to help me ring in Year 31 (technically, the start of Year 32). We finished the rest of my 6-pack and enjoyed the panoramic view of Kirkwood Avenue in downtown Bloomington. Together, we stumbled down to the “Jack and Diane Terrace” and brought in the evening with a sense of fleeing joy and unfamiliarity in the place we’ve called home for a collective 30 years at this point.

Once our appetites came around, Jenna and Sam took me across the street to Fat Dan’s Chicago-Style Deli. I started off with a high-gravity IPA, and Sam and I committed to share some cheese fries.

We came back to the hotel room and sipped a few Miller Lites before calling it. I had planned on making a big ado of an arrival at my favorite watering hole, The Atlas Ballroom, at midnight, like I had done 10 years to the hour prior for my first legal adult beverages. But the best thing about maturing is knowing when to call an evening for your own limitations, and going to bed around 11 p.m. and sleeping for 12 hours was a divine birthday treat that I should consider more often in future installments of my reproductive holiday.

Sunday

I crawled my ass out of bed around 12:30 p.m. to meet up with an old college friend, Kate, and her recently wedded husband Jeff. The two are moving to Indiana from Washington, D.C., and are eager to get back to a more relatable, more human pace of living than the sort of big-city rush they had managed for the past few years.

We agreed to grab lunch together at Taste of India, a longtime favorite of Bloomington’s ethnic Fourth Street destination dining strip. They weren’t operating the beloved lunch buffet (returns next month, I was told), so we ordered our food ala carte. Jeff and I each got our orders served medium-spicy, but his meal arrived far more nuclear-active than mine. We collectively sweat through about 12 glasses of water before we ultimately cashed out, and it was fun to have a meal challenge me like it did. I love Indian food — a lot. I’m highly picky about what I end up ordering, but it was a real treat to have a dish take me to my Midwest white person limits yet again.

After lunch, I retreated to my hotel room to pound on Sunday’s wrap-up post from Evanston, then Kate and Jeff popped into my room to kill a few Miller Lites and take in the hotel room view. Jeff went to school at Purdue, and lots of his upbringing is rooted around West Lafayette, but it was a privilege to share such an optimal vista of the downtown area with him on his first visit to Bloomington. We also delved into real talk about anxiety, peer pressure, familial culture, and feeling out of place in big cities.

After the three of us had our fill of 96-calorie lagers, I dropped by home (as in: the place I live and pay taxes) for about 30 minutes to check in with the housemates and remind the pets (Sitka, dog aged 15; and Summie, cat aged 10) that I was still alive and well. The bunkies were having a chill Disney movie marathon day, and while I only saw them for a half-hour, it was a testament to our endearing and powerful friendship that I could check in for the length of a B-list sitcom and know they still had my back.

I checked my mail, grabbed my updated driver’s registration, threw away some junk mail, and laughed at a hideous complimentary duffle bag with the consistency of rubber that I got for subscribing to GQ, and finally made it over to The Atlas for some birthday drinks.

By the grace of God, some former B-Town folks who happened to be in town were able to meet up with me to commemorate the evening: There was Freddie, Jeremy, Kris, Liz, Julia, Bryce (a mutual Twitter follow I met for the first time), Tommy, Skirvin and a few other recognizable locals who waved me down.

Aside from sharing the night with great company, my favorite part of the evening was that I was finally able to show off the surprise birthday gift Alice installed in my truck early on the morning of July 1 — my meta-referential and aesthetic-heavy “vaporwave” pickup truck was adorned with neon lighting, as a special little favor. I played around with the secondary A/V remote and cycled through green, to blue, to pink, to red, to white, and rainbow, and even pulsing acid-like color schemes as we clinked beers and laughed our way through the evening.

Monday

Now, it’s Monday morning, and I’m doing the usual work-remote thing again. At this juncture, I’m fully caught up (and thank God) on my travels, both in terms of the places I’m writing about and any calendar date gaps that might have arisen because I was living the journey and coming back to report it later.

I took advantage of a complimentary breakfast card to finally try the food and brew at Poindexter Coffee, the Graduate’s affiliated café chain. (The Poindexter Coffee in Iowa City was still closed, and I hadn’t popped in to try the local hotel restaurant — I usually don’t do that unless I’m staying there.) It’s good stuff! I had a breakfast burrito with eggs, cheese, bacon, actual hash brown potatoes, and green onions. Definitely “the cure” for the sort of weekend I had.

I still have a few local errands to take care of while I’m here in town: I promised to mow the lawn, weather permitting, and I badly need to do laundry. (I felt kinda guilty rocking the “GRADUATE HOTELS” pennant tee at the bar last night, but it’s my last clean shirt. I want to go back and see the pets one more time, but I don’t want to step foot in my room — I’m afraid that would feel like cheating, in a way.

I leave for Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday morning. It’s a 4-hour drive, which should be pretty manageable — especially because the first 90 minutes are roads I’ve frequently taken to Evansville, Ind. Then it’s smooth-sailing through Kentucky and into Rocky Top.

I’ll only be in Music City for 43 hours, so I’m hoping to make the best of it with my limited schedule. In fact, the majority of cities I visit for the rest of the trip will see me there for 3 days or fewer. But they’re largely places I’ve never been, so I’ll just be excited to bear witness to more sights and sounds (and sips).

Thanks for staying tuned. We’re getting close to the midpoint of this whole adventure. I’ll keep you posted on what comes next.

###

-moose

PS: Here are a few more pictures of the Graduate Bloomington, including my room and some Indiana-themed common areas.