Your flight out of Philly International Airport will be delayed in both directions. Also you'll be delayed by the clever system they've set up in the center of the airport where half the terminals are through a security checkpoint with only two metal detectors. It's such an obvious bottleneck, such a blatant problem, that it's clear the government played a role in creating it.
The movie The Dukes Of Hazzard is quite watchable. It was the in-flight movie in one direction. I watched it and found it was quite tolerable. Mind you, I didn't put in the headphones and listen to it at all. It would have been horrible that way. I just watched it.
The ideal place to have a deep, meaningful, heart-to-heart conversation (read: emotional argument) is when you're locked in a room with 150 other people for five hours. The people in the seat in front of us on the non-Dukes Of Hazzard flight broke up in the first hour of the flight and argued for most of the next two to three hours. She was a drama queen; everything about him screamed worthless bum. Best line: "Just because I'm dramatic, does that give you any right to hate me?" Best gesture: When she gave a harsh statement to wrap things up, then turned away from him, clearly signalling the argument was over, then turning back fifteen seconds later to start on him again for the fourth or fifth time, he made a show out of blocking his ear so he couldn't hear her. With his middle finger. They were going on vacation for the weekend. I'm sure they'll file that one under "Best Vacation Ever."
Whataburger food is strangely addictive. Mara may have to move permanently to Arizona.
Karioke bars aren't all bad, and it is possible to have a good time at them. The only other one I was ever to, the person we went with insisted on sitting right by the speakers so we couldn't talk with each other, and they had an Elvis impersonator. He had to read the lyrics off the screen because he didn't know them. I left early.
Eddie Izzard is funny.
Josh is a good guy. Steve needs to go jump in the Potomac River.
Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, Phoenix's road system is not as bad as Pittsburgh's. Phoenix, however, is very flat and much larger and every part of it I saw looked just like every other part, which isn't a problem in Pittsburgh. Phoenix was described to me while there as all suburban with no city, and it's true. All the suburbs have sprawled out into each other, and so the area is 700,000 square miles of strip malls. In one location, near the Whataburger, there is a strip mall, followed by an open lot for sale for commercial development, followed by a strip mall under construction. Really.
You cannot swing a dead cat anywhere in Phoenix without hitting a Circle K. Sometimes, you'll hit two.
If Jess is driving, you really need to take care to trace your exact route so you can have a good laugh later, because sometimes she will circle around a bit. In fifteen minutes, we went through the same intersection by a mall in three different directions. To be fair, we were circling around on purpose, but still...
The speed limit at that mall, according to signs placed roughly every 200 feet, is 17 MPH. I suppose they just felt that 15 MPH was way too slow.
Apparently, leaving your trash sitting next to a locked dumpster does not qualify as littering. Who knew?
If you don't know what's in the drink you've just been handed, you can ask, and you may or may not get an answer, but either way you will definitely lose major style points.
Driver's licenses in Arizona do not expire until you turn 65. My Pennsylvania license expires in 2008. Jess's Arizona license expires in 2049. I still can't get over that.
Best insult ever: "She's a cunt waffle." A gold star for Jess for that one. I sure as hell would never have thought of that.
If you forget to bring your camera anywhere you go, you will get home and discover that you have 1.8 trillion pictures of scenery and only three decent pictures of the people you traveled all the way across the damn country to see, and you will feel like a total idiot. Trust me on this.