November 6
Peggy was back when I woke up, and I was really quiet so I didn't wake her up, since it was a Sunday. I took all my flight gear into the bathroom and filled up my camelback and got dressed, then I went down to the boardwalk and called the airplane directors.
It was someone that I didn't know who was directing airplanes this morning, but he gave me permission to fly, so I took off and went west.
Main Street was kind of empty this morning, which was odd. I didn't see very many cars on it until I got close to Drake Road, which is where there are always lots of cars. And I started to climb when I was over Maple Hill Mall, and I was at about eight hundred feet when I went over the 131 Highway.
I turned north, so that I could follow along the Kal-Haven trail, and pretty soon I went over the parking lot at the entrance, which was empty, and then I started to follow the trail along. I was gonna go to Gobles, and then turn around and come back, 'cause that was about thirty miles.
Most of the fields were empty now, but there was still some corn up which didn't make a lot of sense to me. I was pretty sure that it would go bad if you left it on the plant in the field, so I couldn't figure out why the farmers hadn't harvested it yet.
And they'd left out some of the big rolls of hay, too—I saw a few of those sitting in fields, too. Maybe they'd gotten them in late and were waiting for them to dry the rest of the way, but the hay in the center was never gonna dry, and they should have done that when it was in windrows.
There was an electrical wire path that cut across the trail before I got to Kendall, and I thought about following it to see where it went, but then decided that maybe I'd do that some other time and for now just stick with my plan of flying above the trail because then I knew how far I was going and when I would be back.
I kept looking back, 'cause it was getting near sunrise time, and since the sky was so clear, I didn't want to miss it if I could help it. I should have thought of that when I was making my plans and flown east instead of west, 'cause then there wouldn't be any chance to miss it.
I was about halfway between Kendall and Gobles when I thought that the sun had to be getting pretty close, so I started to circle, just gliding around in a big, slow spiral like hawks did when they were looking for prey. And I guess I kind of was, except that I couldn't catch the sun.
When it started to poke above the horizon, I just kinda hovered in place until it was all the way above the trees, and then I dropped down and landed so that I could watch it again because it had been so pretty the first time.
I wasn't on the path; I'd landed at the edge of a harvested blueberry field, and even though it was a really big field, the trees on the other side blocked my view a little bit so I didn't see the sun until it came up above them, and it wasn't as good as the first sunrise had been. But it was still really fun to be able to see it twice.
I took flight again and I hadn't gotten all that high before I was over Gobles and turned around to go back to Kalamazoo. And I had to kind of keep my eyes downwards, 'cause otherwise I was looking straight into the sun.
As soon as the trail made its big turn south, I started to lose altitude, and I started to angle towards the 131 Highway as I descended, until I was under a thousand feet, and then I turned towards downtown. I called the airplane directors on the radio, and instead of the man I'd talked to earlier, Dori was there and so I told her where I was and she said that I was flying earlier than usual, which I thought was odd 'cause it was about the same time that I usually flew. I thought maybe she was just confused 'cause I was headed back into town and I hadn't talked to her on the way out of town.
Usually when I landed on the boardwalk, there were a few students around on campus, but this time I didn't see any, which was odd, especially with the roads being kind of deserted, and I stood on the balcony for a few minutes looking over campus. There were lights on in some of the windows, but I didn't go inside until I saw a boy walk out of Hoben and to Academy Street.
And when I was back inside, I heard some noises of people waking up for the day. Yesterday had been Guy Fawkes Day, so maybe everyone had been celebrating that and had woke up late.
Nobody was in the bathroom when I went in, and the floor of the shower was dry so I guess I was taking the first shower of the day. And I didn't hear the door open at all while I was in there, so I took my time.
When I was back in my dorm room, I had to be really quiet because Peggy was still sleeping, and I didn't know how late she'd gotten in last night. I didn't want to wake her up by mistake.
I didn't think that she'd want me to wake her up for breakfast, so I went out of the room and back down to the boardwalk and glided down to the stairs in front of Hicks Center, and when I went inside, the dining hall was closed even though it was supposed to be open, which was really annoying since I was hungry, and I could smell the food inside.
I sat down outside the dining hall in frustration. It was like the whole town had decided to sleep late today, everyone except me, and that wasn't fair at all.
Sitting around and being frustrated wasn't doing me any good, so I went back outside and kicked some acorns across the grass, then took off and I thought about flying to a restaurant and getting breakfast there but probably they would be closed, too, and I'd have wasted a bunch of energy for nothing. Besides, it was the principle of the thing—the dining hall owed me breakfast, and I wanted it. So I flew around the building a couple of times and looked through the windows but I couldn't see much, 'cause they hadn't even turned on the lights yet.
It took them almost an hour before they finally opened up, and I'd resorted to nibbling on some of the grass on the quad even though it wasn't very good. And I was the first one in, and I was in a pretty grumpy mood by the time that I got my food and sat down at the table, and there wasn't any of my friends there so I didn't even have anybody to complain to.
I'd finished with my food and I felt a little bit better when Meghan finally came in and sat down next to me and I started complaining which wasn't very nice of me at all, and then she started to laugh until she saw that I had my ears down, and she hugged me and told me that Daylight Saving Time had ended last night, and the clocks moved back an hour, so it was an hour earlier than I thought. And that was why there hadn't been too many cars on the road and Dori hadn't been directing airplanes and I felt kind of dumb but I was still mad that nobody had told me. And she said she was sorry and she thought that I'd already known.
It was going to be confusing while I got used to it.
So I sat at the table while Meghan ate, and I guess I was glad that I hadn't woken up Peggy, 'cause she'd probably expected to sleep in another hour and she would have been really mad if I'd woken her for when I thought breakfast time was.
Nobody else showed up while we were eating, so me and Meghan walked back to the dorm together, and she said that she was still working on her project and she didn't know if she'd be done by the evening, but she hoped so. And then she said that she hoped that Aric had gotten done with his project, and I did, too.
I got my Bible and went outside, 'cause it was a really nice day. And at first I sat in a tree, but it was kind of hard to read there and after a while the branches began to dig at my belly so I flew down and landed on the quad.
There were a bunch more letters from Paul, to other churches and also to Timothy, and he mostly told them good, encouraging things, and gave them advice on how they should conduct themselves and what they shouldn't do.
Hebrews was kind of long, and it said a lot about what Jesus had done for people, and after I'd read it, it made a lot more sense about why God hadn't saved Him from the cross, and how He had changed the covenant by His sacrifice.
And then there was a letter from James, who was one of the disciples. It didn't say which James, and there had been two of them. And he gave some advice to the twelve tribes, and then Peter also had two letters. The first was to the exiles, and I guess the second one was, too, although he didn't say specifically. And he had lots of advice, as well, about how to live good lives and do what God wanted.
There were three letters from John, and the last one was to Gaius. And John said what everyone else had said, that God wanted people to love each other as brother and sister, and to do good deeds for each other. And Jude only had one short letter, and then it was Revelation, which was the last book of the Bible.
It was written by John, and God had showed him a vision like he had showed the Old Testament prophets, and there were a lot of letters he was supposed to write in the beginning, telling them that they had been bad, and then he started to describe the things God had showed him. It was a strange vision and I had trouble making sense of all of it. There were horses who rode out and there were monsters and plagues and a war in heaven and angels blowing trumpets and it was all very confusing. An angel took the dragon and threw him in Tartarus (which John called the Abyss) for a thousand years, and then John saw how God was going to create a new Earth and a new heaven and a new Jerusalem, and He was also going to open Eden again. Then at the very end there was a benediction, and that was the end of the Bible.
I went back to my room and set the Bible on my desk. It was really strange to be done reading it, 'cause it had kind of seemed like I'd never finish. But I guess no matter how big a book is, if you slowly work your way through it you'll get to the end eventually.
I was still kind of confused by the clocks and so I finally asked Peggy, 'cause my portable telephone said it was one time and my body said it was another and I wasn't sure which was right. How did my portable telephone know that it was a different time than it had been? And she looked at hers and said that it was almost time for lunch, and that she should get dressed, then she decided that since it was a nice day outside she'd change out of her sleeping clothes after lunch.
She wasn't the only one who thought so, because Christine was also still wearing her sleeping clothes. I guess when people got the opportunity to sleep in one hour late they slept four or five hours longer.
Peggy and Christine decided that they needed to go shopping to get props for the play, and Sean went and got a bunch of toast and wrapped it up in a napkin and Christine put it in her purse because that was one thing that they needed. And when they were done eating, Christine and Peggy left so that they would have time to get what they needed, but Sean stayed and he and Meghan helped teach me the Time Warp so that I could dance it with everyone else.
Meghan said that she wasn't going to be able to go to the play, 'cause of her homework, but told me to have fun, and she said that if she was lucky she'd be done with her work early enough that we could play tonight.
So I walked back to the dorm with her, and since I didn't have anything else to do before the play started, I went to her room and sat on her bed while she worked at her desk and sometimes petted my mane or scratched my ears.
When it was time to go to the play, I nuzzled her and then kissed her and asked her if she was sure she wanted to miss it, and she said she'd rather work now and spend time with me later, so I kissed her again and then went off to see the audience participation version.
I had to wait around a little bit for Peggy and Christine, and they must have spent more time shopping than they'd planned to, 'cause instead of walking, Peggy drove Cobalt to the theatre and they had a couple of plastic sacks full of things.
We got our tickets and sat down in our seats and right before the play started, the director came out to announce it and to remind us that we were expected to participate.
And it was really neat to do it that way. Since I'd seen it last night, I kind of had an idea what was going to happen, so I didn't have to pay as much attention to the actors as I would have if I'd been seeing it for the first time.
There was a lot of times when the audience said things and I didn't always know what to say, but when it was something that got repeated I figured it out. And Peggy and Christine told me when I had to hold up the toast and throw rice and toilet paper, and we all got to get up and dance the Time Warp together, which was a lot of fun, especially since I knew the steps to it.
It was really strange when the play got over that it was light outside. It was confusing to be in a theatre during the day, 'cause you got used to the dark and then were expecting it to be dark everywhere. And we congratulated all the actors again, and rather than wait for Aric, I went through the door that went upstairs and nobody stopped me. Aric was by the light board, cleaning up, and so I hugged him and told him that I'd liked the audience participation even better than the audience just watching version.
He had a lot of stuff to do, because after the last performance they had to take down the set and all the lights, but we had a few minutes together because he couldn't start working until everybody was out of the theatre, since he might accidentally drop a light on someone.
I asked him if that had ever happened, and he said he hadn't dropped a light, but he'd dropped gobos and gel frames and wrenches before. And he said that he nearly got someone with a length of pipe when they were taking down the set for Six Characters in Search of an Author, because they were supposed to all be off stage, but someone hadn't been paying attention while he was taking apart their temporary lighting grid.
When the actors started to come back on stage, dressed in work clothes, he kissed me and said that it was time for him to work, and I asked if he'd gotten done with his project, and he said that he was almost done with it and if he finished her pretty quickly he'd have it done by the end of the night, and that me and Meghan could come over if we wanted to. He said if he wasn't done, maybe the thought of two sexy girls in his bed would motivate him to finish up.
I went back to my room and Peggy was gathering up her laundry so I thought that I should do mine, too, so I stripped everything off the bed and emptied the pockets out on my flight vest and then took it downstairs. We had to wait for a washing machine that was almost done, and then she put all the wet clothes on the table and I said that she could put her things in first and I'd wait until the other machine had finished to do mine.
So she went upstairs and came back down with her homework which she hadn't done yet, and we both sat on the washing machines because there weren't any chairs, and she read her art book while the washing machines were cleaning our laundry.
When you really focused on them, the washing part was a pretty relaxing noise, and the machine moved gently under you. But then it got more chaotic during the spin cycle, when it was trying to fling all the water off the clothes.
We put our clothes in the dryer before going to dinner, and Peggy said that probably some impatient jerk would take them out before they were finished and we'd get back to the laundry room and they'd all be piled on the table and still wet, and it turned out that she was right. We should have stayed in the laundry room and guarded them.
She wanted to take the clothes out of the dryer and put ours in but I thought that was mean, so we waited until they were dry and then took them out and Peggy folded them up but instead of putting them in a neat little pile, she put them all through the laundry room so that whoever had left them there would have to get them one at a time. She said that maybe he'd learn something from that.
And when he finally did come in, he saw his shirt sitting by itself on the middle of the table and another that was on top of the dryer right between us, and Peggy just crossed her arms and glared at him as he went through the laundry room finding all of his clothes, and his face was really red by the time he'd gotten everything and left, and I didn't think he'd be mean like that again.
She helped me fold up my sheets and blanket, even though I was just going to put them on my bed when I got back up to my room, so they didn't need to be folded. And I put them across my back and let her put her blankets on my back, too, and she said that I looked like the world's cutest pack mule, which was kind of insulting but she didn't mean anything bad by it.
After we'd made our beds and she'd put her things away, I said that I was going to go to Meghan's and then to Aric's, and she told me to have fun. And I packed up my flight gear and this time remembered to bring the Kama Sutra, too.
When I got to Meghan's room, I told her that I had it, so she decided that she'd be daring, too, and changed into her sock-skirt without any underwear, and her tall boots, and I said that she should try not to distract Aric too much if he hadn't finished his homework.
So the two of us walked to his house together, and when we got there he was upstairs in his room, sitting at his desk and working on his computer, and he still had his theatre clothes on, so I guess he'd just come right home and started to work.
Meghan asked him how much longer he thought he was going to be, and he said that he was getting close, so the two of us sat on his bed and we went through my saddlebags and got out my book and looked through it for inspiration. The drawings were kind of crude and there were some positions that looked really athletic and others that just looked like they'd be uncomfortable and not fun at all. And there weren't any that included a pony, which was disappointing, but some of them were things that I could do; my legs might just be in a different position.
We tried to be quiet and not distract him, and so we were mostly pointing and making gestures at each other, and I guess he started to wonder what we were up to, 'cause he turned around and looked at us to make sure that we were still there, and then he looked back at his work and a moment later he turned around again and I guess he saw what we were reading or else he saw up Meghan's skirt, or maybe both.
And I guess that motivated him to finish, because it was only a couple more minutes before he said that he was done, and Meghan leaned over and whispered in my ear that she bet he wasn't really and he was just saying that because he wanted sex.
I thought that was probably true, but I wanted sex, too, and I was getting impatient.
Besides, if he wasn't done yet it was his own fault for not starting sooner.
So Aric sat down on the bed between us and we started going through the book again until we'd found a position that we all thought looked like it would be fun to try, and then I undressed Aric, and I was gonna undress Meghan, too, but Aric said that she should leave her dress and boots on a little bit longer and she said that she didn't know he had a clothing fetish, and he said that anyone would with that dress, and I had to agree with him.