This weekend was only really two days long for me. It's just that one of the days was 48 hours.

We accompanied Jenn's friends Dave and Nina on a fairly spontaneous roadtrip to Punxsutawney for Groundhog's Day. The thing about a roadtrip is it's damn cool, even if you leave at 3 in the morning, and even if you're carsick the whole time. Cause it's a friggin' roadtrip.

My dad always asks me if I've been on any roadtrips. He went on quite a few in his day, and in his opinion that's just something you're supposed to do in college. And in retrospect, it's something I wish I'd done more often, but I never had a large number of friends with cars.

Punxsy seemed very small-town, although it was hard to tell because some tens of thousands of people were there for the 8 hours that we were. We parked at the McDonald's, waited in a long line for a shuttle bus, stood in a huge rock-concert crowd craning our necks to see the groundhog, walked back to town in a mob, sent homemade postcards to our families, and were unable to find a diner that wasn't absolutely packed.

The ceremony itself was kind of quaint and amusing - for the hours leading up to sunlight, the small stage was filled with shirtless folks, a second-rate morning DJ type, and songs on the caliber of "Hot, Hot, Hot". Then there were fireworks and the old dudes in top hats came on and hammed it up with the groundhog. The whole thing had an unfortunate jingoistic tinge to it due to recent events, but it wasn't enough to make it unenjoyable.

This was a good roadtrip.

Sure made for a rough weekend, though.