cleveland...rocks?

I think I have Adult ADD. Either that or my best friend and I only have it when we're together, because I can't think of any other way this could have happened to us. Well, other than the fact that we just simply weren't paying attention (it's a long story, you might want to get comfortable)...

So, B and I went to Cleveland to see Joshua Radin. I love him and she was along for the ride because she’s always up for a road trip and she trusts my taste in music. We roll into Cleveland with no problem. That is, until we tried to get to Euclid Street where the House of Blues was located. It was blocked off. You know the drill, cones, signs, barrels and flashing lights telling me “ROAD CLOSED.” So, I make a left, figuring that if it’s at all like any other US city, we’ll just go down a little further, cut across and get onto Euclid that way. Apparently, Cleveland is nothing like any other US city. We ended up on St. Clair. Then Prospect. Then West 32nd. We circled downtown Cleveland for about 40 minutes until we ended up on the far end of Euclid and found a parking garage close to the HOB. The good news was that we only missed the beginning of Josh’s set. I had really wanted to see him live and he was awesome. (Insert shameless plug here: http://www.joshuaradin.com/)

So, it was a really fun time. We leave the HOB, get back to the car and head out of C-town. About 5 minutes out, B and I have different ideas about which way to go. We sit at a light and she convinces me to take 422 to get to 77. So I do. We end up in the mo-freaksta ghetto. It was actually starting to get terrifying when B announces that she needs iced tea. sweet tea to be exact. I look at her like she has seven heads, but she tells me to pull into a gas station and she’ll be fine. I tell her I will but that there’s not a chance in hell I’m getting out of my car. She runs into the store and while I’m sitting in the glowing light of an enormous Colt 45 sign, she asks four thugs how we find 77. After they laugh at her (which was, in her summation, only “because I’m white”) she gets directions and pretty soon we’re on 77 and heading home.

So. A couple of girls on the highway, talking, laughing, talking and...well...talking. It wasn’t until two hours later that I stopped B mid-sentence.

“Wait. Wait. It’s 1 am. Get out the directions-how long were we supposed to be on 77?”

B pulls out the directions, takes a look and claps her hand over her mouth.

“Oh my god, oh my god...15.1 miles.”

We’d been on it for 2 hours.

We dig out maps from my glove compartment, and I see that we’ll be fine if I just get on 30 East. We’re on 30 for about 45 minutes when we come to a “T” in the road. And there are no signs for 30 East. I can go 62 East or 62 West. I have no idea how I ended up on 62. We pull over and I don’t think anyone in the history of the world has strung together a string of obscenities like I did. It was actually noteworthy. Hence, the reason I'm noting it. Anyway. That’s when we see the flashing cop lights. They pull up behind us and get out of their patrol car. The one walks over to the passenger-side window, sees two girls sitting there with the interior light on, heads bent over a map of Ohio and states the obvious.

“You girls lost?” Yeah. We’re lost. We tell him we need to get to Pittsburgh.

He looks at me and says, “Oh, then you want to be on 30 east.”

“I thought we WERE on 30 east.”

“No, you’re on 62.”

“Well, I know, but I know I was on 30 at some point. I took the exit, I swear.”

He just sort of shook his head and I wanted to choke him.

Then he walks over to his partner, they pow-wow and he comes back to tell us that they’re going to take us to 30 themselves. He told me to follow him and once they pulled off by the Marathon station I just needed to make a left and we’d be on 30. It was really nice of him, and we thought it must be a testament to our hotness…but then a friend of ours said that it was probably just because we looked really pathetic and it was obvious we had no idea where we were. I maintain it's because we're hot.

End of story: 30 East is a nasty, backwoods, God-forsaken road out of Ohio, into West Virginia and finally into Pennsylvania. We should have been home at 1am. We got home at 5. It was glorious.