Roadtrips are more about conversation than events.

I went to school in Maine, so I've driven to Maine several times, but usually with my parents. This trip was for my 10 year college reunion. I'd wanted to make the trip for awhile and there were always friends who volunteered, but this time my friend Mike committed to it.

Mike and I started the drive at night to avoid traffic. We drove straight through to Medfield, Massachusetts, arrving around 10:00 a.m. at a friends house. We were meant to nap, but instead went for Chinese food and ended up chatting with Linda all day. Then others arrived and we stayed up through dinner and beyond. Finally at 10 p.m. after being up for 2 days we felt a bit loopy and finally crashed. We drove up to Colby the following day. A group of us rented out a bed and breakfast 20 minutes from campus, so we'd go to reunion activities by day and have our own mini-reunion in the evening.

After a few days at reunion, we continued up the coast to Bar Harbor. Our plan had been to camp out but rain and mosquitoes gave us second thoughts so we got a cheap (very cheap) motel room. We then spent a few days traipsing about the woods in Acadia National Park, exploring the Fjords (yes we have them in Maine) and eating as much lobster as we could.

On the way back we spent a night in Boston with friends. There we met a fellow who spent the evening regaling us with stories of how he'd tried hair club for men and it made him feel like an animal had come to light on this skull and dug it's claws into his head. (More amusing the way he told it.)

None of this sounds particularly eventful, but at the time we weren't super close friends, just people who ran into each other once in awhile. The drive time between Boston and Cleveland is about 11 hours including stops for gas and a meal or two. So you either find yourselves talking about anything and everything or being bored out of your mind. A road trip will make or break a friendship. Mike and I talked about everything.

If we got tired we'd blast Henry Rollins on the stereo until we got energized again. We don't see each other that often, but the trip forged a lasting friendship. So many insights were shared that the connection lasts even if we only get in touch a few times per year.

The Galapagos was full of amazing flora and fauna. Seeing the finches, blue and red footed boobies, flightless cormorants's etc. made it clear how Darwin came up with his theories. But snorkeling and watching fish, only to have a penguin suddenly come whizzing by was probably the most surreal moment of them all. If you have a chance to go, it's truly uncanny. The plethora of animals is astounding, all the more so in that they don't run away but let you walk among them (keeping a polite distance) so that one can observe in a manner rarely possible elsewhere.