January 31
Sundays are good days for flying. I went west again, this time following along the main road. I'd looked on the map for the Kal-Haven trail, and I'd found it. It started near the center of town, but I thought I'd pick it up a little bit further out, because that would give me a chance to fly and see more of the city.
It was easier to follow Main Street, so I went west past the Maple Hill Mall and across the 131st highway and then much to my surprise I saw another Meijer off in the distance, which isn't the one that Peggy and Christine and I went to. I can't imagine why there would be two of them in Kalamazoo; surely one has enough things for everyone. Plus you can get some of the same things at Walgreens (except when an angry man shouts at you).
The Meijer was a very good landmark, though, and I turned north along the 10th Street N and followed it until I came to a parking lot with a sign for the Kal-Haven Trail.
There were several cars in the parking lot, and some of them had racks on their roofs. I'd seen a few cars like that in the college parking lots too, and asked Peggy what they were for, and she said that people put bicycles and kayaks and other sporting equipment on them.
I followed the collection of feetprints to the trail. There was an informational sign planted right next to it which said what the rules were, and I dutifully read them like a good pony. One important rule was that horses weren't allowed on the trail, but I'm not a horse; I'm a pony. Horses don't go to college. So I could go on the trail.
The snow on the trail hadn't been cleared off at all, and most of the tracks on the trail were either long, mostly-parallel lines, or big wide tennis-racket shaped marks. Humans have skis and snowshoes that they put on their feet so that they can walk on the snow, and that's what kind of marks they leave.
I didn't have skis or snowshoes, and the snow was pretty deep along the trail; but that didn't matter, because I could fly.
It was a different kind of flight. I kept below the canopy of trees, following along the path of the trail. It was sort of like being in a tunnel, but not at all confining because the open branches of the trees let lots of light through and I could fly up and over if I had to.
As I got close to people, I would drop down and slow down and kind of gauge their reaction before I got too close. There was one woman who had two colts young sons who were all bundled up in snowclothes and on pony-sized skis, and they were very excited to see me, so I landed and let them pet me. That made them really happy and I didn't mind too much except that the smaller one was a little bit grabby and tugged on my mane some.
I followed the trail for two miles—roads outside of cities are a mile apart, so it's easy to keep track of how far you go. Then I turned around and flew back, taking it nice and easy. I came upon the woman and her sons again at the parking lot; she was helping them take their skis off. She said that they'd just talked about me ever since they saw me, so I let them pet me again, and everyone was happy.
I had a late lunch, and then went back to my room to relax. Peggy asked me if I had any plans for the evening, and I told her that I was going to watch Star Trek with Sean. I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said she was going to dinner with a friend.
I read a little bit more of Genesis, but it got really confusing. Either God was really mean, or people weren't very good at following His rules. I wasn't sure which, and I thought about calling Liz and asking, but what would she think of me if I couldn't figure it out for myself? I ought to at least give it a good attempt. I was not even one full chapter in, and a lot of times stuff that doesn't make sense at the beginning of a book makes a lot of sense when you get farther into it.
So since there was still some time before dinner, I read some more poetry, and that cheered me back up. Then Peggy got re-dressed (it must be inconvenient to wear clothes all the time but Adam and Eve were ashamed to be naked and I guess other people must be, too), and asked me if her new outfit looked too slutty. I wasn't a good judge of that, I don't think, because I didn't know much about human clothes still, so I said that it looked fine.
When she left, I went over to the dining hall, even though it was a bit earlier than I usually get there. I sat at my favorite table, and pretty soon Christine and Sean had joined me, and then Joe showed up as well, and before too long everybody was having nice conversations.
As we ate dessert, Sean began to give me background on Star Trek. He said that unlike the Star Wars movies, there were a whole bunch of different movies and television shows that were all based in the same universe, and that he was going to start by showing me a movie which everyone had liked, which was called Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. Then Christine told him that he was cheating if he showed the movies out of sequence, and he told her that she'd showed me Star Wars 4 first. She said that she'd showed them in the order that they were filmed so that wasn't cheating at all.
We went over to Sean's room to watch the movies. He had several little models hanging from the ceiling, and he told me that they were different spaceships from the show. They didn't look anything like the ones in Star Wars. I guess nobody has settled on one spaceship design.
The room was kind of crowded—it was even a little smaller than the room Peggy and I shared. It was also in the basement, which I didn't like all that much. He had a window, but it was half-covered with snow.
Since there weren't any couches or papasans, we all clustered together on his bed to watch the movie. Christine and Sean leaned back against the headboard, and I stretched out at their feet.
I liked the movie a lot. There wasn't as much fighting as there had been in Star Wars, and I thought that their plan to go back in time and save some whales was really clever. I know that a lot of time spells are banned in Equestria because of the unintended consequences of using them. Princess Twilight has used a few, but that's okay because she's a princess.
It was also neat because some of it was set on historical Earth, which is something that I still don’t know a lot about. A lot of it looked pretty much the same, except the cars were bigger and blockier, and there weren’t as many computers. There was one scene where Scotty tried to talk to his computer, and I didn’t understand why that was funny, but Sean said that back then you couldn’t talk to computers. I can talk to mine!
In the middle of the movie, I had to use the bathroom, and asked him where to go (I should have turned down that second beer). He said that there was a men's room right around the corner and I could use that if I wanted to—that there weren't any other men in this wing besides his roommate, who was gone for the weekend and wouldn't be back until early tomorrow morning.
I thought that was against the rules, but Christine also said it would be okay, and she would guard the door for me if I wanted her to. She said she had to pee, too, so it wasn't any bother, and so then Sean said that he would guard the door for both of us, and that way we could get back to our movie sooner.
It wasn't like the one in our dorm. Instead of a stall for the shower, there was a big shower room on one side, kinda like the shower rooms they had at the weather factory. So maybe boys like social bathing but not girls.
On the other side there were the usual stalls with the usual toilets, and there were also some different ones mounted against the wall which Christine said were urinals for boys.
I thought that they might be more convenient for me to use than the normal toilet, but I didn't want to break any more rules, so I just used a normal stall.
When the movie was over, Christine said that she was going to stay with Sean, so I went back to my dorm room by myself. Peggy wasn’t there, which probably means that her dinner went really well.