Well-wired on Rosa's coffee, Jesse was chatty as we hit I-94 back to Detroit. Forever vigilant for the wheel, Terry drove the entire way...about four and a half hours. There wasn't any rush, since we couldn't get to the Red Roof too early, or there wouldn't be any rooms ready. At the same time, we couldn't be going 50 MPH all the way either.

I snoozed here and there as Jesse told road stories from his checkered past of boos, women, and rock & roll ambition framed by the excesses of the mid-80's. Whadda trip. By around 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, we had rolled into the Red Rood parking lot back in Warren. Upon checking room availability Terry announced that no ground-floor rooms would be ready until 11 a.m. So we opted to have breakfast across the lot at the IHOP. When we pulled into the lot after dropping off Kenny, I was so ready for bed, that it was literally painful to hear about the delay. But then when I thought about it, I was actually really hungry. So we trooped into IHOP without Jesse who had taken off for the 7-11, since pancakes didn't sound good to him right then.

I was already figuring my $10/day food budget, when Jeff spotted the IHOP "Skillet" for $3.99. For institutional food, it was a good idea. Potatoes, coupla eggs, cheese, veggies. I'll take it. With a beverage, it was under five bucks. That's the ticket. I spied a copy of The Chicago Reader Terry had brought with him with the preview writeup from the "music critic" for the paper. I read the piece, but my editor's/writer's eye wouldn't let me enjoy it. The piece was way wordy with such terms as "gospel mellitada" (sic) or some such nonsense, jacking the reading level up into graduate school level. I'd be surprised if ANYONE actually read the entire thing. Geez. At least I'm pretty sure it was complimentary, although the bizarre comparison of Terry to Dave Dudley escaped me completely...I don't think Rosa's got their thousand-dollar's worth with that overblown, pretentious crap.

I guess I was kinda grumpy with road rattle. Jesse came in and announced that he had checked with the front desk and they told him ground-floor rooms wouldn't be available now until NOON. Argh. But, second-floor rooms were available. We said, "Fuck it, let's go." We'd only be loading in and out once, so a few stairs seemed a small price to pay for not having to wait another hour to sleep in a bed.

Jeff was awarded the single room, as he really seemed to need it. So Jesse and I were mates, horfed our stuff up out of the van and collapsed for a few hours. We had originally thought we were scheduled for a dinner at Kenny's house again, but that was postponed until Tuesday--Devil's Night in Detroit. After waking up at 4 p.m., I took a shower and went over to Bob Evans to call Dede. We had a great chat for over an hour (thank god for her calling card), and I returned to Room 217 in good spirits to do a little work online interspersed among the various television inanities. Jesse was down for the count, but I was wide awake and stayed that way until about 2 a.m. when I finally called it quits.