//------------------------------// // November 5 [Fort Custer] // Story: Silver Glow's Journal // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// November 5 We all got out of bed kinda late because even though I'd forgotten to bring the Kama Sutra we still had a lot of fun, and then the three of us took a shower together even though it wasn't all that comfortable in Aric's shower. And then they got dressed and we walked to Nina's for breakfast together, and Meghan said that she had to leave after breakfast, 'cause she had a big homework assignment that she needed to work on. I didn't have any homework to do, 'cause I was a good pony and had done it all yesterday, so when he got to Trowbridge both of us kissed Meghan goodbye and then I stayed in Winston and he said that we should figure out what we wanted to do for the day. I'd thought he'd told me earlier that he had a project to do, and so I asked him, and he said that it was too nice a day to do homework and he'd rather have fun. And I said that he should do it first and then we could have fun, and he said that it really wasn't all that much, and besides it was a really nice day and it would be a shame to be indoors. Well, I thought so, too, and I said it might be fun to go to the beach, and then he said that we could go to Fort Custer, which was closer and had lots of trails in the woods. I'd flown over it but never been in it, so that sounded like a good place to go. He didn't have any food for lunch, except for the beer that he hadn't drank last night, so he said that we would have to stop and get some, and he thought that the Meijer on Westnedge Road would be the best place, even though I think it was farther away than the one on Main Street. But he didn't like going the wrong way when he was going somewhere, which was kind of silly. So he put the icebox in the back of Winston and put the leftover beer inside, even though there wasn't any ice to keep it cold. There were little trays in the electric icebox that had ice in them, but it wasn't enough. We drove through town and all the way to Meijer, and it was pretty crowded and we had to park a little ways away from the door. He got a shopping cart even though we weren't going to be getting that much, I didn't think. And then we went through and got bread and cheese and slices of meat for him, and I got two cans of anchovies for me, and he also bought some water and Gatorade which had nothing to do with alligators. He said that it had electrolytes in it and plants loved electrolytes and if plants liked it people would too and I said that I didn't think that was true. I told him that plants liked eating manure, and he didn't have a good reply to that. He thought that we also needed some cookies, and instead of getting them from the cookie aisle, where they had lots and lots of packages of cookies, he got them from the bakery, because they were bigger and better than the other cookies. He said that they made them right in the store, unlike the others which were made in big cookie factories somewhere. I was kind of curious about what a big cookie factory would look like. I thought that it would just be lots and lots of ovens and bakers all working under one roof, but Aric said that it was all automated and there were machines that did it all, and it was a continuous moving belt where raw cookies started on one and and full boxes came out on the other. That was kind of hard to believe, and I don't think I would have if I hadn't seen the factory where Dreamliners were made. If they made an airplane from rolls of tape and glue, I guess that a cookie conveyor belt wasn't impossible, either. I wonder if there are tourists who just visit factories to see how things are made? He paid for all our food and put the shopping cart back where it belonged, and then when he went and put things in the cooler he realized that he had forgotten to get any ice, and I said that we could go back and get some but he said that he didn't want to turn around and he'd get some at a gas station on the way out. That was kind of silly—we were right here, so why not go back? But he said that a real man never turned back, and got in Winston, and I got in and said maybe real men were dumb sometimes, and that Meghan would have gone back. When he got to the top of Park Street, he said that we should have some fun, and he turned off Winston's engine to let it coast down the big hill. He said that that was called Georgian Overdrive, and it was illegal in big trucks because it was dangerous, but it was okay in little trucks like Winston. And when we got to the bottom of the hill, he turned the key back on and all the lights on the dashboard came on, and when he let his foot off the clutch Winston started itself with a little bit of a jerk. Aric told me that he'd used to do it in a lower gear, because he could get the tires to screech a little bit, but after he'd had to put a clutch in Winston he hadn't wanted to try that again. And then as we were going through town he told me about his first truck, which was older and he didn't have any more because it had caught on fire. One time late at night he was driving down Academy Street by campus, and he had thought that it would be much simpler to just turn the key off and not push down on the clutch, because when he got to the bottom all he would have to do is turn the key on again. And he said that he hadn't thought about the mechanical fuel pump, which was still filling the engine with gasoline even though it wasn't actually running. He said that when he got to the bottom of the hill, he'd turned the key on and he had never even heard the engine start, because there was a huge explosion from under the truck as all the gas that it had pumped through the engine, which had collected in the muffler, had ignited and blown the muffler completely apart. He said that it had sounded like a shotgun went off underneath the truck, and heard it echoing off the buildings, and he'd hoped that no one had called the police, thinking that there was someone shooting a gun on campus. We stopped at the gas station in Comstock, right where the 96 Road and Michigan Avenue came together, and he got a bag of ice and put it in the icebox with the rest of the food. Then while we were driving along the railroad tracks, I told him about how in the wintertime lots of earth ponies who didn't have to farm because all their fields were fallow would go out on the lakes every few days and cut ice and bring it back on stone-boats, and that there was a big ice-house that was mostly buried and had big, thick walls that were lined with straw and sawdust, and a nice thick sod roof to keep the sun off, and that was where most of the ice for our village came from. Some of the big cities just made ice out of hail and had pegasus specialists who did it but that was a lot of work and I thought it would be boring after a while. When we'd passed through Galesburg, I told Aric about the building I'd seen over the railroad tracks and he said that it was a coaling tower, because back when human trains had all run on steam, they'd used coal as fuel and they put big towers over the tracks so that freight trains could stop and put more in. He said that he didn't think that they used them for passenger trains, because they had to stop at stations anyways and that was a good place to add more, but he wasn't sure. After we went through Augusta, he turned into the park, and we drove around for a little bit until he found where the trails were. I didn't see any forts and asked him about it and he said that there weren't any, and never had been, and it used to be called Camp Custer but then when they'd made it into a park they'd changed the name. He said that when he was a Boy Scout, they'd camped there a couple of times, in the summer and the winter. He said that winter camping was fun when he was younger and he'd even gotten a special badge for spending a full day outside in the winter, but now that he was older and wiser he thought it was better to stay inside in the wintertime. We had to drive a ways through the park before we got to a parking lot, and it was near the Equestrian trailhead, and he said that we should use those trails just because it would be funny. There were lots of trucks with big trailers that horses rode around in, and most of them weren't as nice as the one that me and Aquamarine had seen at the draft horse show. I couldn't help going up to them and sniffing them to see who was around, even though I didn't know any of the horses who were here, I didn't think. None of them smelled like anyone that I knew, although I thought it would be neat to see Deanne and Henry out here. We went along the trail and pretty soon we came across a pair of horses and riders and I knew that they had come in the blue trailer that was behind the silver truck, and we stayed off to the side to be out of their way. The stallion kind of slowed down when he got close to me and he lowered his head and we sniffed at each other and made friends, and then his rider encouraged him to go on. And the second horse was more interested in following the stallion than coming over and being friends, so she just passed by me but her rider waved at both of us. I wound up meeting a dozen horses, and it was kind of strange how some people didn't want their horse to sniff at me and other ones thought it was okay. One woman yelled at us for being on the horse trail, and Aric said that I was an Equestrian and therefore I should be on this trail, and she said that it wasn't the same thing because I wasn't being ridden, and stuck up her nose and rode off. Her horse was nice, though, and I felt bad that he had to put up with her. Aric asked what truck she'd brought, and I told him, and he said that maybe when we were on our way out we should key her truck. I didn't know what that was, but it didn't sound like it was a nice thing to do. I bet Aquamarine could have told her horse to buck her off, though. When we'd gone around the whole trail, we got back in Winston and drove over to another parking lot, and then sat on the tailgate of the truck and ate lunch. I made an anchovy sandwich and I wanted to have one of the beers that was left over, but there had been a sign which said that we weren't supposed to drink alcohol in the park. Aric said that just meant that we had to be sure that nobody noticed that we were doing it, and he said that he'd take the beer with us on the next trail. So we went around the trail that surrounded the antenna farm. The name was kind of misleading, because the antennas had been built there at full size; they didn't grow out of the ground. And there were lots of signs that told us not to go inside, and a fence, too. I thought that was kind of a strange thing to put in a park, but I guess they had to put them somewhere. Aric thought that they'd probably been built back when this was still an Army training ground, and that they had some military purpose, but he didn't know what. He said a lot of times the government tried to keep things like that secret, so that our enemies wouldn't know what they were for, but probably they did anyway. And I thought that having antennas sticking up with blinking lights on them wasn't all that much of a secret. They would have been smarter to disguise them as really tall trees or something. When we were on a section of the path that nobody else was on, we drank our beer, and Aric kept looking around to make sure that nobody was coming. I just flew up and sat in a tree, 'cause I didn't think anybody would look up there. He put the empty bottles in his pocket and we went the rest of the way around that trail, and then he said that he wanted to go on one of the trails through the oak barrens before we had to leave. So we drove back to the other end of the park and since there weren't any parking lots Aric left Winston on the side of the road with its turn signals blinking. When we'd gotten a little ways back on the trail, Aric thought it would be fun to have sex in the woods, and I thought so, too, so we kept going until we'd found a little path that went off the trail and into the woods, and we went a ways back there until we'd gone far enough that nobody would see us or hear us. And he found a nice cluster of bushes and scrubby trees and a fallen-down tree that made for even better cover, and so we went behind that, and it was a little bit hard to find a good position because he didn't want to lie down on the ground and I didn't, either. So he had to crouch down a little bit and rest his hands on my back, to help balance himself, and I didn't think it was too comfortable a position for him but I couldn't think of anything better. On the way back, we couldn't find the path that we'd taken to get in, 'cause it all looked kind of the same, so I flew up above the trees and it wasn't too hard to find the road from the sky. I could have flown right to Winston, but I wouldn't have been able to find Aric again and I didn't want us to be lost in the woods apart again, so I went back down in the trees and then led him out. We weren't actually that far off the trail, it turned out, although I hadn't been able to see it through the canopy of trees. So when we ran into it, we just followed it back to Winston rather than make our way through the woods. Aric had to go back to get ready for the play, but I didn't have to be back so soon, and I said that I wanted to fly back if he didn't mind. I had my flight gear in Winston, so he helped me get dressed and filled up my camelback with water out of the water bottles he'd bought. Then he said that I should have a Gatorade for the electrolytes, and it tasted kind of funny and mineraly, but it wasn't bad. I kissed him and then called the airplane directors and told them that I was flying from Fort Custer to Kalamazoo and that I was gonna follow the railroad tracks most of the way. I took off and flew due west, 'cause that would intersect the railroad tracks, and Aric went the other way 'cause that's how Winston was pointed. And I flew over a couple of lakes and then the Kalamazoo River, and right after that I turned to follow the tracks—I'd come over them a little ways past the coaling tower. I was only a couple of hundred feet up, and I had been following the tracks for a few minutes when I heard a horn honking behind me and I looked down just in time to see Winston pass by on the 96 Road—I guess that I had taken a much shorter route than he had. We'd gone on a lot of roads in the park, so it made sense that my direct route was quicker. I was able to keep an eye on Winston until it crossed the tracks outside of Galesburg, and I kept my eye on the 96 Road on the other side of Galesburg, but the buildings blocked a lot of my view and I couldn't see clearly that far anyway. It took me almost an hour to get back to campus, 'cause I wasn’t particularly hurrying, and when I got to campus, instead of landing on the boardwalk like I usually did, I flew low over the quad and zoomed around some trees and then stopped in front of Trowbridge and went in the normal way. I felt a little more energetic than I usually did after a flight, and I wondered if it was the sex in the woods or the electrolytes in the Gatorade that had given me more energy. I went up to my room and took off my flight gear, and then took a quick shower just to rinse off. And since it was still a nice day out, I didn't bother to dry off, just shook off what water I could in the shower, and then I went back outside to the quad to sit in the sun. There were a lot of people out because the weather was so nice. I didn't think it was supposed to be this warm in November. And when I went to dinner, they had the windows in the dining hall open, to let in fresh air. When I first sat down, Sean said to 'remember remember the fifth of November,' and then Christine said 'gunpowder treason and plot.' And I looked between the two of them in confusion, and then Anna said that she 'could think of no reason that gunpowder treason should ever be forgot,' and then they explained that November fifth was Guy Fawkes Day, which was when a man had tried to blow up Parliament in England. And I asked when that had happened, and Reese said that it was in 1605, which was over four hundred years ago, so I guess people really weren't forgetting. Sean said that there had been a movie made about it kind of recently, and that I should see it someday, but only after I'd watched Star Trek. And I told him that I hadn't forgotten, I'd just been busy, and I promised that I would. I asked Meghan if she'd gotten done with her homework, and she said that she hadn't. She said that she was probably going to have to work on it tomorrow, too, which was kinda disappointing. Then I asked if she was going to come to the play tonight and she said that she would. Everyone else decided that they wanted to go see it tonight, too, and Christine asked if it was audience participation and I didn't know. I wasn't sure what that was, and she said that there were things that you were supposed to say and do during the movie, and maybe also in the play but she'd never seen it as a play before. Aric hadn't told me anything about that, so I said that maybe it would be best to ask someone when we got there. So we all agreed to meet up a half hour before the play started, and we took our time at dinner but there was still some free time left after that. I ought to have read my Bible or done something else productive, but I didn't—people were playing on the quad and I wanted to play, too. I got to watch a game of Red Rover, and I also stole someone's frisbee just for fun: Christine had told me to fly by and grab it, and so I did and then I flew up in a tree with it, and he was kind of mad but all of his friends were laughing, and I offered to give it back to him, but he wanted me to hit a tree with it before I dropped it, and then they argued about whether that counted as a point or not. He said that it did, because he hadn't touched the frisbee after the throw, and his friends said it didn't because I'd helped it hit the tree and it wouldn't have otherwise, and he said that he hadn't expected me to catch it and in real golf that would have counted. So they finally agreed to let him have the point, and he gave me a hoof-bump. Christine had to leave a little bit before we went to see the play so that she could put on a different shirt, and she said that she'd meet us at the theatre and told Sean to get her a seat. So we all went over there and got a bunch of seats all together, and there was a sign saying that they were doing the audience participation version tomorrow. Well, Christine was kind of disappointed but then she said that she would just have to come back tomorrow and it was probably just as well because she didn't have any of the things she needed. It was a little bit strange to be sitting down in the seats instead of up in the booth, and I wondered if Aric had seen me come in, and I thought that he probably had. Then I wondered who was running the spotlight if Lisa was sick. Maybe they had someone else who did it. This play was a musical play, too, and it wasn't bad like Sweeny Todd had been, but it was kind of strange. People were dancing in their underwear, and Frank N. Furter wore a bra even though he didn't have any boobs. And Trevor was right; they killed and ate Eddie, and at the end they killed Doctor Furter and Columbia and Rocky, but they didn't eat them. It was a very strange play, and a little bit harder to follow than Sweeny Todd had been, but the songs were really catchy, and Christine leaned over and said that when they did the audience participation version everybody got to dance the Time Warp, which sounded like it would be a lot of fun. Just like in Madison, we got to greet the actors out in the lobby, and Doctor Furter looked a little bit cold in just his underwear, so Columbia gave him her sparkly gold coat to wear. Me and Meghan waited in the lobby until Aric came down, and by then the whole lobby had emptied out and so we were sitting on the benches by ourselves. The one side of the building was built on the edge of a hill and had really big windows and it was kind of like being up in the sky when you looked out it, and we were just watching the traffic go down the hill, and so Aric kind of sneaked up on us. Aric said that he was going to stay up all night and work on his project that he hadn't worked on all day because it had been nice and he had gone out to Fort Custer with me. And Meghan laughed and said that she was going to say the same thing, because she had to finish up her project tomorrow and if she was with us she wouldn't want to. I told Aric that he should have done his work today if he had that much to do, and he said that sometimes it was best to put off homework when you had a really nice day, and I guess that was true. Then I asked him how long he'd had the project, and he said for three weeks, and I asked how much of it he'd done, and he shrugged and then admitted that he hadn't even started yet but said that he worked really well under pressure. And so I hit him in the shoulder, 'cause that was dumb. He could have been done with it a week ago and made sure that it was the best work that he could do and instead he was going to turn in something that he had just cobbled together in a couple of hours. Meghan said boys were irresponsible, and I agreed. So we kissed goodbye, and he got into Winston and drove off to his house, and me and Meghan walked back to Trowbridge together, and then she kissed me goodnight in the hallway, and I went up one more floor to my room. Peggy wasn't there, but she'd left a note for me saying that she'd gone off to the bar and might not be back until really late. So I wrote in my journal and then I went to bed, and I hoped that she'd be back in the morning.