Our adventure began on a Sunday afternoon. After going to Divine Service that morning, we took a couple of hours to get lunch and gather all of the supplies we would be needing for the trip. We had to wait for Reverend Mathews to drive down anyway, since he had to lead service at his church that morning. I took the time to get the beds that I had been using over the summer and bring them to ULC. Circus Software was donating them to the rummage sale that ULC has every fall. Of course, my car is not designed to haul beds so driving was fun, but at least is was only about a six block drive and no cops pulled me over.
My car as a moving truck
People slowly started to trickle back to the church around one or so and began packing the vehicles. Just like every other trip I have been on, we left late. I do not remember exactly what time we were supposed to leave/actually did leave, but it was later than it should have been. It was actually important that we left on time too since we needed to arrive at a reasonable hour in Dickinson, N.D. to stay at someone's house. But after finally getting everyone and everything together, we left the church, heading west.
And like any good LCMS event, no women went along with us on the trip. Apparently, this was one of the first trips where it was entirely males (and I believe all of us were bachelors). And now while were are slightly on that topic, here is a rank. It seems like there are no young (20's) LCMS women. After catechesis, they are hidden and do not reemerge until they are thirty, married, and have children. Where they are between this time, no one knows. Or maybe I just scare them away. This theory, however, has been verified by several other college age bachelors I know. Then again, it is not like the church is overflowing with males in this demographic either.
After we actually got on the road though, things went smoothly. I rode with Brian Thorson. He was a student at Fort Wayne Seminary and actually on his way to begin his vicarage in California. It was a lot of fun and educational riding with him. For some strange reason, I (a layman) was able to learn a lot about the synod and theology from this person who was training to be a servant of the Word..who would have thought. He also knew the new vicar at my school church. Here I was meeting basically a random guy in Minnesota, and he had connections back to my school. "It's a small world..."
We traveled across Minnesota pretty quickly and started through North Dakota. This was actually my first time in this state. Traveling through it though, it did not appear that I had been missing much...except the countless bugs, half of which ended up on the front of our cars. North Dakota had just raised their speed limits to 75 m.p.h. about a month before our trip, which was really nice for traveling long distances on the interstate. Miles tick away quickly when you are going eighty the whole way. During our drive I also had a nice toy with which to play and keep myself entertained. Brian owned a pretty advanced GPS. He loaded all the maps along our route, so we could watch our route update in real time on the screen. It also displayed lots of other information, like elevation, speed, and distance to our destination. It was a really nice toy, and I may just have to get myself one later.
Driving across Minnesota and the eastern part of North Dakota was at the same time a different world from what I am used to, but also remnant of home (Indiana). First the similarities—flat. Just like good old Indiana, North Dakota was very flat and had many boring corn fields. At points I could have mistaken it for Indiana. But in the winter, this area was a whole different world. They receive large snowfalls so regularly that permanent gates were erected on the interstate to quickly close it when white-outs occur. Although I get snow and occasionally blizzards back home, it never compared to this.
We stopped in some random town in North Dakota for dinner at Burger King. Of course, about the only time I eat Burger King (or fast food in general for that matter) is when I am long trips like this. It is too expensive and unhealthy to eat when I have just about any other alternatives for food. If it was totally up to me though, we probably would have brought picnic style lunches with us for the trip out, saving me like four bucks. But of course, other people like fast food and are not as cheap as me, so Burger King it was.
After continuing through N.D., we finally arrived at our destination for that night—Bob and Janet Bauer's house. The Bauer's are a retired couple and the parents of a member of ULC. For the past 30,000 years, the backpackers have stayed at their house overnight on the way to and from Montana. They were an extremely nice couple and were glad to see us. Allan Wierschke also met us here, since it was too far out of his way to drive to Minneapolis first. We had evening devotions for that night and went to bed, with a full day of driving ahead of us.
