Hanging by the Door
This past weekend Ben and I drove down to St. Louis, Missouri, for the wedding of our friends Tim and Erin. That’s what people do out here in the Midwest, you know, they just “drive down to Missouri” or “out to Colorado” or wherever, without really a thought about it. The distance between Minneapolis and St. Louis is about 560 miles - or a little longer than the distance from Portland, Maine, to Washington D.C. The drive itself takes from 9 to 10 hours with a few short breaks and little traffic.
So on Friday we hopped on the road and started our merry way down to Missouri. Traffic was pretty light and the speed limit was high, when there weren’t signs for construction. (Very little actual construction was apparent, but there were numerous construction zones. There was even one “school zone” which dropped the speed from 65 down to 55.) We listened to NPR, which had its various assortments of shows. And then, close to five hours into our trip, as we were driving through the cornfields of Iowa, Ben had a realization.
What he realized is that we had left our dress clothes hanging up by the front door, placed there so as to, well, not forget them. We had with us our suitcase with our non-dress clothes and our toiletries and even our dress shoes, but we were planning on keeping the suit and dress hanging in the car, so they wouldn’t wrinkle much. Except. Except they were doing an excellent job of not wrinkling in Minneapolis, almost five hours back.
Hmm. Well, we could A: go back and get them. That would add another 9+ hours to our already ~19 hours on the road for the weekend; plus we would have to sleep short. Bonus: dinner at home. Option B was to keep going and buy new clothes. We pondered briefly Idea C: get a friend to break into our apartment and FedEx us our clothes; and Idea D: have a friend who we knew was driving down to Iowa City that evening break into our apartment and bring the clothes with him to Iowa City, delaying the second half of our southbound journey to the following day. Since both C and D involved getting someone into our locked apartment, and A was depressing, we scrapped them and went with Option B. The wedding wasn’t until 4:00 PM on Saturday, and while we had planned to have a relaxing half-day hanging out at a park (we, um, forgot the frisbee, too), we decided we’d go shopping instead.
As it turned out, our hotel (one of the Drury chain, and very pleasant) was less than fifteen minutes from both the best consignment store in Missouri, Women’s Closet Exchange, and a comprehensive mall. (Ah technology: having our laptops in a hotel with free wireless made finding them quite easy.) So Saturday morning we got up early, ate, and then - waited, as neither place opened until 10:00. First up was the consignment store to find me, well, something to wear. It was smaller than I imagined, but the saleswoman was super friendly. We didn’t find much in the way of dresses, but our very-attentive saleswoman suggested skirt and blouse combos. There we had more success, and I eventually left with a rather nice top and skirt - all for under $20!
Ben was up next and we headed to the Men’s Wearhouse at the mall to get him a suit. We decided that he’d tuck in and just get a nice outfit, since he had been considering getting a new suit anyway. The salesman there was also quite attentive and got the trousers hemmed and the new shirt steamed ahead of other waiting orders for us.
We had just enough time to go back to the hotel, shower, dress, and head out to the wedding. Halfway there we realized we had forgotten the camera in the hotel room. (Theme of the weekend?) But we didn’t have time to go back. Other folks had cameras, though, and thanks to Tim and Erin’s friend Lori, there’s a picture of us in our duds (at least the tops): 
The wedding itself was lovely. I shared an apartment with Tim in D.C. when I lived there. He started dating Erin shortly after I met him, so I’ve known her for a quite a while as well. They had wonderful weather, a lovely locale, and the ceremony suited them excellently. (She’s pretty religious, he’s not, and the service was a beautiful compromise.) The cameraman was a bit zealous, but they’ll have some great shots. I got a chance to chat with my other D.C. apartment-mate, Mike, who was in the wedding party, and is hoping to move out to San Francisco soon. We also became reacquainted with Lori and Roz, the only other people I knew there, and met some other friends of Tim and Erin’s. Oh, and I was randomly complimented on my ($14) skirt by someone I didn’t know(!)
Erin, Tim, and Lori:
May 24th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Hmmm. The first sign of impending middle age, you know - forgetfulness.