March 17 [St. Patrick's Day]

I woke up in the middle of the night still on the couch with Aric's arm around me and at first it was really disorienting. It took me a minute to remember how I'd wound up asleep there.

There really wasn't any way to get out of his arms and get to the bathroom without waking him up. I tried, but it didn't work. He opened his eyes and hugged me a bit tighter and kissed my head and started stroking my belly, and I felt bad that not only had I woken him up but now I had to push his arm off so I could go to the bathroom again because I'd had too much to drink with Peggy.

I thought he'd already be asleep when I got back but he wasn't and so I snuggled up against him and pretty soon we were doing more than just snuggling and he whispered in my ear that we should go up to his room because anybody could come downstairs and see us.

Sometimes it's fun to be bad, though, so we didn't stop.

When I woke back up in the actual morning, it still felt weird, because not only was I still on the couch with Aric, but it was Thursday and I didn't have to go to class. I didn't have to do anything if I didn't want to, not for a while at least. So we snuggled a bit more, and then we went up to his bedroom.

Peggy thought that a small drink helped her after a night of drinking too much, but I thought when I saw her after Spring Break was over I was going to tell her I knew a funner way of taking care of a hangover.

We sat in bed and talked for most of the morning. Neither of us really felt like actually putting effort into getting up and—for him—getting dressed. Although he did put on a pair of pants when he had to use the bathroom, but he took them off again when he came back to the room.

He said that he was going to go on a road trip with David and Angela. They didn't really have a destination in mind; he was just going to drive in one direction until they found something that looked interesting and then they'd turn that way, and when it got late they'd camp for the night. That sounded like a whole lot of fun to me, and I told him that I wanted to do that over summer break if we could.

I said that I was going to visit my friend Aquamarine, and then I was going on a sightseeing trip as well: we were going to take a train around the US, meeting up with a couple of other ponies on the way.

Aric drove me back to campus around lunchtime, and kissed me and told me to have fun and not do anything too crazy and said that he'd miss me while he was gone. I gave him the same advice, and we both agreed to take lots of pictures to share.

The dorm room felt emptier without Peggy. I'd been in it alone lots of times, but this was the first time since I'd met her that I knew she was gone and wouldn't be back for a week. Her computer was turned off and her half of the room was neat and tidy and already looked lonely.

I packed up what I thought I'd need for the trip. It wasn't much; my flight gear, the camera I had hardly used because I was too busy experiencing things to step back and take pictures of them (and I probably would forget to use it on the trip, as well), a notebook and some clicky pens so that I could write things down, my Bible because I ought to read it some more, and after a little bit of consideration, two books of poems.

I needed some more shampoo and conditioner, so hopefully we could get that on the way.

The dining hall was mostly deserted for lunch. I sat by myself at our table and ate lunch, constantly looking around to see if any of my friends were around, but I didn't find anybody.

Then I went back to my room and waited until Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn arrived.

We got in Sienna and I told them what I needed, so they drove me to Meijer first (I didn't want to go to Walgreens even though it was close). There were a lot of signs up about St. Patrick's Day, and I asked them about it. She said that it was a holiday for an Irish saint, and that a lot of people celebrated by drinking.

So I thought I ought to get something to celebrate the occasion, and bought a necklace with little plastic clovers and a bottle of Jameson's which Mister Salvatore disapproved of. I thought about telling him that I'd had a bunch of White Russians last night but then thought better of it.

We took a bunch of different Interstate highways until we finally got off on Trowbridge Road. It was really a strange coincidence that it would be named the same as the dorm where I was living. Miss Cherilyn said that a lot of roads were named for people, and maybe the road and the dorm were named for the same person. She said that a lot of rich people donated money and in exchange wanted things named after them, and maybe that was the case here.

We drove right by the train station, and they went into the parking lot to let me see what it was like so I wouldn't get confused with where I had to go tomorrow. There was a lot of construction going on; Mister Salvatore said that it used to be an Amshack but they were making it better.

When we got to Aquamarine's dorm, it took a few minutes to figure out where we needed to go and then we went into a little room called an elevator.

I reflexively popped my wings out when the floor came up under my hooves. I didn't like it, and I probably would have been banging on the door to get out if they hadn't been with me.

They weren't sure exactly where Aquamarine's room was but luckily there was a student who knew. As soon as he saw me, in fact, he pointed us in the right direction.

When Aquamarine answered, they said their goodbyes and Miss Cherilyn wrote down her portable telephone number and then they left.

Aquamarine and me nuzzled and she introduced me to her roommate named Jenny, who was studying to be a veterinarian.

She was really excited to meet me, and said that it was really cool to meet a pegasus and wanted to know if she could look at my wings, so I held them out and let her run her fingers over them so that she could feel the bone and muscle structure underneath the feathers.

The three of us talked for a little bit, and then it was time for dinner, which was not anything like how they did it at Kalamazoo College. They had dining halls and mini-restaurants, and Aquamarine asked me which one I wanted to go to. I thought Wendy's sounded fun, although it turned out that they mostly had hamburgers.

I probably could have had one, but I just ate a salad and some French Fries, and then we went back to her dorm room.

I knew we'd have to get up early, but it was kind of hard to think about when they kept the door open and lots of people were roaming up and down the hallways drunk out of their minds. I got out my bottle of Jameson's and we started passing it around between the three of us. I didn't have all that much, because it burned my throat and I also didn't want to overdrink like I had last night. Beer was a lot safer to have.

Aquamarine turned on her computer and started showing me pictures of the plants in the greenhouse she had class in, and she also had a picture of her nose-to-nose with an Earth horse, which she said had been on the front page of the newspaper. The horse was huge!

There was a pasture where they lived not too far from the dorm, and Jenny said that we ought to get Aquamarine’s assistants (who were going to give us a ride to the train station) to take us by there.

I showed her and Jenny the YouTube video that Gates had made of me flying around Kalamazoo College. I was hoping that when Spring Break was over he'd be done making one about my trip to Boyne Mountain.

The evening kind of blurred into a bunch of faces and pictures on the computer and occasional sips from the bottle of Jameson's, and it was finally time to go to bed, because the train came in the morning.

Jenny said that we looked like a couple of puppies the way we were snuggled up together in bed and I stuck my tongue out at her as my answer.

Next Chapter: March 18 [the trip begins] Estimated time remaining: 58 Hours, 10 Minutes