It should only take you four hours to get to Lawrence, Kansas from Iowa City. Interstate all the way, piece of cake. I knew we’d be leaving late, but our adventure set out to Cedar Rapids, back to North Liberty, brief stop in Polk City, and four orders of chicken wings in Des Moines later, we were finally on the road. Heath picked me up around half past six from my apartment. By this point, it was midnight.
Knowing Heath like I do, this wasn’t completely unexpected. At the same time, I had a hunch that he had probably not slept a whole lot the night before, working the entire day before he picked me up. About sixty miles into Missouri, my guesses were right on track. I won’t be the last person to say that sleeping and driving are a bad thing. At the point where I watched him with his head leaned slightly to the side, front end of the van swerving across the center line, mouth gnawing on some piece of candy in a desperate attempt to stay awake, I thought maybe I should drive before all of us die. However, we were only traveling at around 35 miles per hour, so the resulting crash wouldn’t have been horrible. In my mind, I couldn’t help but picture some speeding semi doing about seventy-five when it took out Alex and Nikky in the back seat.
“Is there anything I should know about this van?” Heath said it should be perfectly fine. Going eighty on the speedometer, we’d be there by four in the morning.