The case in which The Devious Duo journey to East Lansing.

First: my apologies to my little sister for taking so long to write this post.

So, I went back to Michigan a couple weeks ago. I arrived at my mom's house at 2am. I had previously given Reina the head's up to not be alarmed if someone crawled through her window in the night, but it's like she doesn't take me seriously or something. No, I didn't crawl through her window - it was way too high. But I did find her basement door unlocked and did turn on her bedroom light at 3:45am to say hello. It sure was a swell start to the week.

The main reason I went to Michigan was for a wedding. Which was outside and cooooooold but it's a good thing it's normal to find a quilt to be wrapped up in during weddings, because that's what happened:

It was also super duper great, because Lauren and Steve are great, and when you put two great things together, you get super duper great.

On Thursday night, Reina and I decided to take a mini road trip to MSU to visit our pal, Alexa. It was only an hour and a half car ride, so we thought it would be simple. Too bad nothing is ever simple for The Devious Duo.

First of all, it was raining. Hard. Really, really hard. And not to say Reina isn't the world's most cautious driver or anything, but... well, I said a few legitimate prayers.
Then we missed our exit to switch onto the different highway. So, we got off on the next exit and, rather than wasting all that time turning around, we decided to be much more efficient. We spotted some signs directing us to the interstate we had missed. Granted, they were marked "Emergency vehicle route" in bright orange, but a highway entrance is a highway entrance, right? Eh. Sort of.

By "emergency vehicle route" I really think they meant "zombie horror route." By this time the rain had let up a bit but instead there was thick fog everywhere. And when you're driving down country roads lined with woods and cornfields and scary barns late at night in the fog, all you can wonder is when you're going to get a mysterious flat tire and be axed. And this wasn't something we were wondering briefly. On the contrary, I think the "emergency vehicle route" is for vehicles that aren't really in an emergency, because I'm pretty sure by the time any vehicle finally got to the highway, whatever person they were rushing to get to would be long dead - even if they weren't necessarily dying when they called the ambulance in the first place. Nevertheless, we did eventually find the highway entrance before our teeth fell out or we were murdered, and were back on route to MSU.

An hour or so later, we arrived in East Lansing. You think it'd all be smooth sailing from here, right? Ha. We drove a couple miles down the busy city street before we realized we had passed our turn. So, we did a quick U-turn and began re-tracing our tire tracks in search of "Kalamazoo St." After doing so, we began to notice a few oddities. The first of which was a stop light we came to that did not have any lights on our side of it. Reina began to stop anyway but I said, "What are you doing, you don't have a red light. Hey, you don't have any lights...(you might think we would have picked up on the red flag right here...nope)..... cool! Go!" And so, she went. Without a second thought. I guess we just figured that having no traffic lights was the equivalent to an eternal green light. Not really sure. Although it really was a miracle that no other cars were crossing the intersection at the time.
We continued on down the street when we noticed that the traffic seemed to be parting for us like the red sea. At this point things still just seemed very convenient. "Look, they're all pulling over for us... go down the middle! Weeeee!" But then, cars began flashing their brights at us. Reina checked to see if her brights were on, but nope. They were just all on crack, apparently. These things continued for about a mile until we were confronted with a car straight ahead who had stopped, facing us, and was flashing their brights as well. And then suddenly it hit us. How was that car in our lane and facing us at the same time?
The world suddenly made more sense.
The traffic laws and fellow drivers were not, in fact, catering to our every desire for no reason. We had been driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Shoot.

We pulled into the nearest driveway, laughing hysterically, to turn around once again. Although now we had no idea how we were supposed to get back to Kalamazoo Street. Fortunately, the driveway we had pulled into was an Arby's. Unfortunately, it was still raining and it was 11:15pm in the inner city of East Lansing and there was a street gang standing armed outside the restaurant.
Well, they weren't armed, and chances are they weren't a street gang either, but they were scary and we didn't want to take any chances. And so, we got in line for the drive-thru. I can now check "wait in line for ten minutes to ask directions through a drive-thru window" off my list of things I never thought I'd do.

We followed Arby's-drive-thru-window-girl's direction and finally found Kalamazoo Street. We never really saw a sign for Michigan State, but once we stopped at a stop sign and heard the heart-pounding bass, I cleared the fog off my window and was met with the sight of several dozen drunk kids partying on the street corner about two feet from the car, and we knew we had arrived.

But still, our journey had not yet come to an end.
There was still the matter of finding Alexa's dorm building.
We followed googlemaps' directions right to the administration building parking lot, which is when I texted Alexa. She told us we were on the opposite side of campus as her dorm, and to just drive towards something-er-other street. Okay, sure. Except that we had no clue where we were in relation to something-er-other street. So, I tried to call her, and as soon as it appeared that she had answered, the line went dead. Perfect. The only thing to do now was to get out of the car and flag someone down to ask for directions again. By this point, the rain had severely picked back up, but that wasn't going to stop us. We got out of the car and stopped the Asian passerby. She told us she didn't know where this something-er-other street was, but there was a library in the Administration building right there in which we could look it up. Seemed like a good idea, but before we could cross the parking lot and enter the building, we needed to lock the car. Well, this proved to be a problem when Reina began to panic because she couldn't find her keys. It seemed like one of those things that would go something like, "Hey, where's my key- oh, haha, found it." Um, that's not what happened. Somewhere between the moment when Reina opened her car door and the moment when she stood up, her car keys had disappeared. Like, abducted into space kind of disappeared. We frantically searched under the car, on top of the car, around the car - nothing. That was when we pretty much started spinning in circles, laughing in exasperation and shouting "HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!?" very loudly. And then Reina found the keys dangling around her stick shift inside the car. Sigh.

Now that we could lock her car, we were free to dash up to the Administration building. Which was locked. Obviously, since it was 11:30pm. That's what we get for taking Asian passerby's advice without taking common sense into the account. So, we dashed back out and flagged down a car. More Asians. They didn't know where something-er-other street was located, either.

By this point, life was looking pretty bleak. We got back in Reina's car, soaked to the bone and at a loss for how we were ever going to find Alexa's dorm building, and now really having to pee... when my phone rang. On the other line came the voice of hope and promise! Aka, Alexa calling us from a friend's phone since hers had apparently died right as she tried to answer my call.

Then she told us how to get to her dorm, and the three of us had one of the top greatest sleepovers ever, and all was well. The end.

I got back to Colorado and failed two tests. Then it snowed. Then I rear-ended a student driver car. Mmm. Here's to hoping I'm a bigger fan of life next week.