Well, I’ve been to Iowa City. Weekend roadtrips are fun, but if they’re only two nights away, you don’t really get to see much of where you’ve gone, and even though it was great to get away for the weekend, both of us wanted to stay a little while longer—see the Iowa campus, visit the big sports store, that kind of thing.
Weekend roadtrips are also fun when you have a decent car. Seeing that we don’t own a car, we had to rent. Because of the Boy’s height, we’re always in the full size classification, and we usually luck out and get a Chevy Malibu (which, during the rental period, the Boy will wax poetic about umpteen times. I can’t blame him—he fits into the car, the blind spots aren’t horrible, and it’s a nice ride). This time we got the Mercury Grand Marquis, aka “the Boat.” [note: that 2008 model looks so much nicer than ours]
This was a totally inappropriate car for us. Not only did we feel about 50 years older, as the Boy put it, we each needed to be at least 50 pounds heavier to really fit in the thing. I never could reach the door arm rest the entire time, which was pretty uncomfortable. Anytime we went to the Boat (like to drive to Perkins for a blue plate special), we ended up calling each other “Ed” and “Mabel,” because they would be in the Mercury Grand Marquis, not us. They’d probably call it a “Grand Mar-kwee” too, but I just thought of that now, too late to actually use.
Thanks to a crappy lumbar support system that I didn’t figure out until we actually got back to Chicago, the Boy drove most of the time. I think I owe him one.
You can read Beerdorks later this week to get a rundown of the Iowa City Brew Fest, which was a really good time. The weather was perfect, the beer was flowing, and we tried some really good beer. The Boy and I brought Beerdorks swag with us—it’s amazing how people get so excited about a free thong.
Other than that, we were in a college town, and a football game was on TV. We were walking down a street to a bookstore (because there’s really nothing better than drinking beer, then shopping for books), and two different bars were filled with football watchers. Hearing loud cheers come out of random storefronts all around you was pretty bizarre.
Our bookstore experience was not what we’d hoped. We actually didn’t buy any books, just the latest issue of Wholphin, a DVD magazine, partly because we felt extremely guilty about buying more books when we already had so many to read, and partly because we just didn’t see anything good. Prairie Lights was one of those crowded independent bookstores, with a bad layout and bad merchandising that I had a hard time even perusing what they had. It all felt a bit pretentious, so I was kind of glad we didn’t end up spending money there.
We had a couple of meals at the Old Capitol Brew Works, which isn’t a horrible place, but with a lot of college kids around, they had to have more than just their home brew on tap. We actually saw a kid in there drinking a Coors. A Coors! At a brewpub? I’m not joking.
The brewpub had one of those internet juke boxes, and even though we tried to influence the song list, we were drowned out by the storm of hip hop and rap songs, a storm which I named Tropical Storm Coolio. Honestly, I don’t mind a couple of hip hop and rap songs, but seven songs in, I get tired of the same beats and lyrics and just don’t care. They start sounding the same, and that’s when it’s time to shake things up a little bit.
On the way home we stopped in Walcott, home of the world’s largest truck stop. This place was big—we didn’t even see all of it—with truck parts, a food court, a sit-down restaurant, showers, laundry, a movie theater, a library, a barber shop, and a dentist. You could get just about anything here, from leather pants to fancy dolls and jewelry. We had some breakfast and headed out on the road.
It was nice to be out of the city, so thanks, Iowa, for the hospitality!
