Driving to Utah is the new awesome

There are not many things that make spending the equivalent of a day of your life crammed in a car terribly appealing, but since this weekend one of my favorite san francisco friends, paul ferney, was having his 30th birthday party in Salt Lake City, and since the road tripping companions promised to be interesting, I agreed to make the drive to Utah.

We strategically chose to leave in the middle of the night, when the weather was the absolute worst. We hit snow in all the expected mountain passes, and even had to put on chains at one point. Mostly Paul put the chains on the car, Jordan looked cute and gave moral support, Cameron text messaged a girl, and i took pictures. But we all stood in the snow.



It worked out pretty well for me, since the second that I saw that our car was a stick shift, I was automatically relegated to the back seat for the entire journey. It is a good thing that I like Cameron because this is how much room we had the whole way:


Eventually we made it, and Jordan threw Paul's party that night at a swank little place downtown called Martine. It was a lovely 3 course affair where you had to choose between soups and salads and appetizers and entrees made of things like "toasted orzo with caramelized escarole" and "Watercress-Leek Cream." I am still not totally sure what all the food was that I ate, but it was pretty tasty.

And we all got presents on our plates, even though it was Paul's birthday. It was maybe the cutest thing that I have ever seen.



There were fun prizes like eggs that grow into plants, and moleskins, and sushi dishes for everyone! Alisha shows us how much fun it is to get presents when it is not even your birthday:

Some of Paul's family and friends told some awkward/heartwarming stories about how paul used to punch people in the crotch when he was younger, and how glad everyone is that he decided to pursue art. Then we all popped poppers when he blew out all the candles on his cake!


Afterwords we headed to a comedy club, and since it was Paul's birthday, he got to go onstage and do a little improv with the comedian with the funny mouth.


What a night! Happy birthday, paul.

After that, I pretty much just had one day left in SLC. I spent it wisely in the company of Utah's finest - first breakfast at the Original Pancake House in the morning.


Damien was moving around too much to take a non-blurry photo, but he was there too and I blame my choice of delicious banana pancakes with 'tropical' sauce on him. Yum.

I don't know who these people were, but the matching bluetooth ear pieces was just too much. They wore them all through breakfast. I hope I find my perfect true love match like that some day.


Then there were Utah thrift stores, and furniture places and industrial salvage yards to scour. I even almost gauged my eye out because that is how hardcore i am when I am looking for industrial salvage. (I don't think this picture does the wound above my eye justice, by the way. You should all be feeling a lot more sorry for me right now than I think you are.)


And to top off the day, Suzanne and Kristen threw a party with brownies and fun people in their cute apartment. I only took one photo at the party, but luckily it was with two hot girls i know.


And then, we were back in the car again. The weather was much better on the way home, so by the time we got to Reno, we felt like we had made such good time that we could stop for a little dinner. We thought about some fast food - but then we asked ourselves, wwtnad? and we decided to go eat a Circus Circus Buffet!

It turns out that people in Reno are not very camera-handy, because we had to stop 3 different people to take a proper group photo of us. We kept standing in front of some casino landmark - big growling tigers or glowing signs or something - and they would just take the picture of the four of us, and cut all the identifying features around us totally out of the photo.

Finally we got someone to take the photo of use the way that we asked - standing triumphantly under a glowing sign, each of us showing how many courses we successfully put away in the Buffet. (The number had a direct correlation with how many times each of us had to use the restroom immediately afterwords too, i think.)


Just in case you don't really think that the buffet sounds all that great, i would like you to look a little bit closer at exactly how much fun we are having, and how much we are enjoying our food:




The buffet had the standard fare - we all took our photos at our favorite themed stations, but Cameron was the only one that wanted to dance about it:


And then we made it back alive. It was pretty much the best weekend ever !!