this could be our last post...

Hello everyone. It's Steven Tsapelas. We might die tonight. I'll explain more later. But first let me explain what got us to this point.

After the moving guys left, Evan (Rod) Bass came upstairs, with his vacuum, to help us clean up the place. I vacuumed Brian and Angel's floors, but Evan felt I didn't do a good enough job, so he came in and revacuumed my vacuuming.

After this, he bid us goodbye, and we said goodbye to Astoria, New York.



We're taking two cars to California, and today I was paired up with Patrick in his car while Brian was paired with Angel. Patrick put me in charge of the iPod and we quickly realized we have pretty similar taste in music. We sang along to REO Speedwagon and performed a duet of "Don't You Want Me Baby." Then, we hit a Billy Joel tear that lasted for way too long and resulted in Patrick singing, appropriately enough, Movin' Out at the top of his lungs.

We passed through New Jersey...



And Pennsylvania. (Didn't get a photo...)

The hours and the miles passed, and somewhere around the beginning of Ohio, Brian radio-ed me over the walkie talkie. See, as adults, we brought along short range walkie talkies so that we could communicate with each other from car to car. They proved to be fairly useless at short distances, but when we were within sight of each other, they worked just fine.

Anyway, Brian radio-ed to say that he'd found a cheap motel in Richfield, Ohio. It was a Howard Johnson's that cost an astronomically low 40 bucks a night! We were in luck!

Or so we thought. When we eventually pulled into Richfield, Ohio, after eight hours of driving and four hours of moving we were greeted by...

NO HOWARD JOHNSON'S.

This seemed impossible. After all, both Brian and I called the front desk to confirm that there were free rooms and Wi-Fi.

We pulled over into a nearby Wendy's to eat. It was actually a combination Wendy's/Convenience Store and Gas Station. While there, we discussed our prospects for a living place in Los Angeles. Brian said that if we go into an apartment complex and they say they don't have air conditioning, we should walk out immediately. Patrick said, "Well, unless we look into the pool and see a ton of hot women. Then we stay." Then Angel, in a fit of brilliance, said, "Unless those girls are a hologram, made to trick us into renting in this apartment."

I think he was serious.

We explained to him that it would be ridiculous for an apartment complex to invest hundreds of millions of dollars on perfecting hologram technology just to fool people into moving into their apartment complex. But Angel really believed his hologram theory was possible.

While this was funny, we were still without a Howard Johnson's motel. So, Brian asked a cop in the convenience store, "Where's the Howard Johnson's?" The cop looked at Brian like he was a babbling lunatic. He said, "It's over there" and pointed to the building DIRECTLY next to the Wendy's.

Of course, we were confused. After all, we're all college graduates. You'd think we'd be able to find something as prominent as a Howard Johnson's on an empty road near Akron, Ohio. When we pulled into the parking lot, we realized why we hadn't seen it.




See, that crappy, unlit Howard Johnson's sign was hidden next to a bigger, brighter, Holiday Inn sign. Not only that, but the motel itself was jammed behind a Holiday Inn. After being greeted by the unhappiest, unfriendliest motel desk clerk in the history of motels, we entered our rooms.

The first thing we noticed was the smell. You know that smell? Like that time a squirrel died in your backyard and no one wanted to pick it up, so it just decomposed all summer? That smell.

Then, we went into the bathroom... It was filthy. So filthy we shot a great video of it. Unfortunately, the HoJo front desk staff lied about the wireless. Sure, there's wireless. But it's stolen wireless from the Holiday Inn. But, somehow, I've managed to upload one of the videos from tonight. It's of the filthy bathroom. Check it out...


Untitled from Ragtag Productions on Vimeo.

That's not even the worst part. The worst part is the door lock, which appears to have been smashed off of its hinge at some point.



I'm sharing a room with Patrick, and I made sure his bed is the one closer to the door. If I don't make it through the night, please, someone, carry on with "We Need Girlfriends."