"Hooky"

hook=y - a: absence without leave; truancy.

We've all probably done it atleast once in our lives. Whether it be from school or work. I know I have. I guess there may be a few individuals out there who have never played "hooky." To those individuals I would say, "Live a little!" Life is too short!

The other night I was watching a classic movie, or should I say an 80's classic movie - Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Many of you, I am sure, have seen this movie. I'll give you a quick rundown - Ferris is determined to take the day off from school and goes to extreme measures to ensure that. This involves him, his girlfriend, and his best friend all missing school. It's Ferris' day off and he is out to enjoy himself - and he does!

This got me thinking about the times that I have played "hooky." Well one particular time came to mind. In college a couple of my buddies and I decided to go to Lake Havasu, AZ & Las Vegas for spring break. Now you may be thinking that this is really playing hooky if you are going over break. Well, the kicker is that we were going with a couple other guys that went to a different college and their spring break was a week before ours. So we decided that instead of going the traditional Monday through Friday timeframe, we were going to go Wednesday through Wednesday. So this involved getting out of 3 days of classes. Sure I had missed numerous classes in college for various reasons. (sick, hangovers, lazy, playstation, etc.) But the biggest difference this time was I was going to have to miss a test in one of my classes. So after some manipulation I was able to make it work and off we were.

So the six of us piled into 2 vehicles for the journey. And the 20+ hour adventure was definitely that - an adventure! Fifteen minutes into our trip we had already been pulled over by the state patrol for speeding. That would end up being the only major blip in our travels. I definitely enjoyed traveling across the western part of our country. Whether it was navigating the snowy, iced over highways through the mountains in Colorado. Or cruising at 90+ mph down the long, lonely dark highways of Utah passing your occassional "Mountain Lion Crossing" signs. Or twisting and turning through the tight curves of the canyons in Nevada. And driving on "The Loneliest Highway in California" down to Arizona. We finally crossed over the "London Bridge" into Lake Havasu City. (and yes, that's the real London Bridge. After it fell down it was shipped over and reconstructed in Lake Havasu!)

When many of you think about spring break a few things may come to mind: girls gone wild, bikinis, all-night partying, mtv, hook ups, hangovers, etc. Well, I'm not here to ruin your image because many of those elements were in play on this spring break. I'm not going to go into too many details about our spring break trip, but I will say that we had an unforgettable time! Whether it was hanging out on the beach and in the lake during the day. Or partying the night away at "Kokomos." We met some great people and definitely lived it up in Lake Havasu for 4 days.

Our next stop on our voyage was fabulous Las Vegas! Now if you know me, you would know that I love Las Vegas! I love the action, the excitement, weather, the people..... everything about it. So we made the 2 1/2 hour trek north to "Sin City.' During our 48 hours in Las Vegas (4 of which I slept) there was plenty of debauchery. One of our buddies turned 21 on the day that we got to Vegas. So he definitely had an excellent 21st birthday!

So after 7 days of a wild spring break we made the long drive back. As I was driving the last 12 hours on my own straight through, I started thinking about the time we had and how it was back to the real world. (or atleast as much as college can be the real world.) I started thinking about that test I had to make up. (if the professor would even let me?) But then I realized, "Hey I still have 4 more days of my spring break left! Why worry about class?"

Remember, though it may not be right to play "hooky", sometimes some of your best memories are made when you take a chance! In honor of Ferris Bueller, I leave you with this song from the movie.

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Keep on, keepin' on
-J