I wander into Sarah's room late at night and someone points at me. "Do you want to go to the IHOP?" (That's the International House of Pancakes, for the uninitiated). Apparently, certain parties had never been, and this is considered a travesty equal to never having seen Disney World, or the Iowa State Fair. So someone got a map and some directions, we all piled into Kristin's car, and we left.
The first thing that should have clued me in was the rain. It started pouring even as we drove, which is Not A Good Sign™. But the other clue was that we were driving down Route 9 (pronounce "root 9" by northerners for some reason). This is the same road that had hopelessly tangled us up in our attempt to see "The Man in the Iron Mask". Come to think of it, it was kind of raining that night, too.
But who cares when you have new tapes to play? We bounced, sang along, and drove right past the turn-off. So we came back. We thought we had it. We took the first of many wrong turns.
Pretending to still follow the map that Miko was reading, we turned left, then right again, and found ourselves on Mass Ave. Now, if you asked me to find Mass Ave. from Route 9 in the daylight hours without the help of rain, I would have to drive all the way to MIT. But not tonight. The interdimensional portal had been turned on.
You don't believe me? Watch this. We drove on Mass Ave for a while, with our only clue being that the road we accessed it with was called Washington Street. Since there are about a dozen Washington Streets in the Boston area and Mass Ave covers a territory roughly the size of Rhode Island, that wasn't much help. Neither was the map, which did not happen to show the southern half of Boston.
The one thing we knew was that we had to cross the river before we could reach the IHOP. It had become our Mecca, our Holy Grail. We had to find it.
A policeman (doing the normal police work of helping drivers figure out that the bright lights, blinking signs, and orange cones mean there's construction work going on and you shouldn't run anybody over) watched us drive by with an unfolded map, a frantic driver, and three faces plastered to the back windows looking for street signs. He laughed.
The construction cleared and we drove down a quieter part of Mass Ave that many of us recognized from trips with the Senate Bus. Suddenly Miko shouted and pointed to our right. The IHOP. Hallelujah, praise the lord! We did a quick u-turn, parked, and fished for umbrellas.
Two umbrellas do not cover five people, but it wasn't that far a walk.
We went inside and chowed, and allowed Miko to order her own coke instead of saying "everyone wants water except her, she wants coke", which we have actually done in some restaurants, to save time. We sang along to the great 80's station that I never found on the radio dial again, ate each other's food, talked loudly, and generally acted like the obnoxious college students we are.
By the time we were ready to leave, it was like a fish tank outside. We looked at the two umbrellas, looked at each other, and sent Kristin and Miko to get the car. The rest of us hid in the little entrance thingie that northern buildings have to deal with snow.
The car pulled up and we made a mad dash for it, and tried not to drench Kristin's upolstery. Then we argued over how to get back.
Interdimensional portals do not work in reverse. What's more, we seemed to have found an IHOP that was not the IHOP we were trying to find. In fact, we had about 3 seperate theories as to where we were. And we had never crossed the river.
Miko won and we took the Senate Bus route back. Though we had to use the Pike, it could have been worse. We crossed the river on the way back. Go fig.
The next time someone asks me if I want to go somewhere on a dark and stormy weeknight at 11 pm, I think I'll pass unless they have a map that covers the whole city. Or maybe we could try it deliberately, in an attempt to find a cheaper way to get to Halafax. Hmmm.
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Last Updated: June 21, 1999