No Viva La Volo

Hey Everybody, as Todd mentioned previously, there is a new contributor on board. As you may have guessed, that contributor is me. My name is Jeff. I'm a sophomore at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and am currently studying History. The Toddster and I go back and have quite a few stories together. We also played in the critically-acclaimed high school band, Scrumtrilescent. But enough of me. The time has come. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present you with, The Volo Auto Museum: A tale of anticipation, David Hasslehoff, and comical amounts of blood.
One Saturday afternoon, Todd, Ken, and I ventured to the North West suburb of Volo, Illinois. Ken, Todd's friend from Japan, was staying with Todd for a few weeks so we planned various tourist activities to give Ken a memorable experience of America. With Google Maps on our side, we were unstoppable.
The madness started before we even arrived at the auto museum. As we traveled northbound on Rand Rd, we encountered a n odd little intersection. We couldn't believe it when we passed by Rand and Old Rand Rd. At first, our reactions were, "huh, that's interesting, I guess they just got lazy with the road names but no big deal. " But then, things started to get crazy. Every few minutes, we traveled by yet another intersection of Rand and Old Rand Rd. In fact, during the trip, there was a total of five of the exact same intersections. On the Google map, all of the five yellow flags are separate intersections of Rand and Old Rand Rd. Our evidence leads us to this conclusion: Volo, IL contains some sort of black hole and Old Rand Rd. is a dark and mysterious apex of the universe.
We arrived at the auto museum confused and slightly shaken up but we managed. Ken, a huge fan of classic American muscle cars, was ready to begin sight-seeing. Not only does Volo contain hundreds of American roadsters, the museum has a section dedicated to Hollywood cars as well. We're talkin' about all the cars from tv and movies that everyone recognizes. We were graced by the presence of the Batcar, the Delorean (Back to the Future) and of course, the original KITT from Hasslehoff's 80's action-series Nightrider. But the fun doesn't stop here at the Volo Auto Museum!
Unfortunately, Volo also has a Military Adventure Museum. It's not as fun as it sounds. For example, the "Adventure" aspect is more of a haunted house. But instead of cheesy scare tactics and surprise monsters, you walk through a faux-warzone with tanks, soldiers, and annoyingly loud gunfire constantly ringing. Yep. Volo's got "Military Adventure" written all over it. And what could be better for the kids than walking by an exhibit depicting a medical unit in Vietnam? Better yet, the kids get to see a soldier with missing legs and another one with severe burns. In addition, education comes as an "unnoticed bonus" in the Combat Zone. Almost as bad as the Combat Zone was the artifacts museum. Not only do they collect cars in Volo, Il, but they also collect racist government propaganda from World War II! I knew we had to leave when we passed by the section with multiple anti-Japanese news clippings with racist depictions. There's nothing like visiting a country only to find out just how much their leaders used to hate your kind in the past. Poor ken...
After the Military Adventure Museum, we quickly made our way to the grossly overpriced gift-shop, the Mercantile Mall. Here, you could buy all the crappy antiques that flooded your grandparent's home, except for much more than they're worth. As we've learned from Volo before, there's always something for the kids. Inside the Mercantile Mall, there's a small videogame shop. Here, you can purchase an array of old games for ridiculously inflated prices. Old original GameBoy games for $25. For some reason, we all just knew it was time to cut our losses at the Volo Auto Museum.
On the way out on good 'ol Rand Rd, we spotted a mini-golf course. It looked fun, so we gave it a shot. Turns out, the course was sub-par (alright, that's the end of the puns, I swear). For all 18 holes, there was a simple way that each of them were built: lay some fake grass over cement, randomly place a stone on the grass, cut out a section of the grass (instead of sand-traps, there were cement-traps!) and finally, line the hole with bricks. Somehow, I managed to stub my toe on one of the bricks that lined the hole and I started bleeding all over the course. But all in all, it was still a successful trip to Volo, Il. Ken got to see his cars and Todd posed with KITT. Volo, Il is an interesting little place that seems to be stuck in the past and for the most part, I think I'll leave it there.

-Jeff

Mountain Climbing in Toyokawa

Alright. So. I drank so much yesterday that I couldn't do Air Alert (shitty jumping exercises), so I did that this morning. Then I rode my bike 20 miles and climbed a mountain. This is my story.

So Alex had it planned out that today would be what he likes to call an Adventure Day. Basically we left home on our bikes and biked towards these mountains that were way off in the distance, and didn't stop except to visit his host mom in the hospital. We basically just trucked it for 10 miles until there wasn't a road anymore, then we climbed. We climbed through this forest with a dried up stream bed, and it was really beautiful, and there was this old decomposed vehicle of some kind too:



We finally reached the top of that mountain, which was a construction site on the mountain we had originally intended to climb. I think they were turning it into some sort of residential area, kinda sucks that they need to destroy a mountain to do that.


We tried to go to the very top, but some construction workers told us we couldn't, even when we told them we work for a magazine (we don't) they said that today wasn't good and to come back another day. Anyways, the top of the mountain, even though it wasn't the very top, was still really high up, so we took some killer pictures.





Then we climbed to the top of the mini-mountain in the photo above, and we reached a small shrine in the middle of the woods, which we took as a proverbial sign that we had reached the end.


So we climbed back down, stopping briefly to carve our names into a tree and got back to our bikes. Now this is the part where I'm and idiot. I don't know how much you know about Japanese bike locks, but they are basically part of the bike, and then there's this metal piece you can pull out to stop the wheel from moving. Well, the little metal piece must have fallen out of my pocket at some point during the climb, because it wasn't there when we got back. Oh Fuck. First I tried to pick the lock with tweezers and a toothpick from Alex's swiss army knife, then Alex just beat the shit out of it with a rock until it finally broke. It was actually sort of cool, overcoming adversity like that, except for the fact that the lock broke. I hope it's fixable/replaceable.

From there it was a ridiculously long bike ride home during which we sort of got lost, but then we asked for directions and this lady guided us to a station Alex knew. Then we took an extra long way to go to a liquor store to reward ourselves. I bought the requisite 6-pack of Yebisu Black as well as a can of every beer I've never had before. It looked something like this:


It was at the register of the liquor store that I realized I was yet again out of money. Fuck that.