We all woke up the next morning, not with the hangovers we needed, but with the hangovers we deserved. Becky and her sister came over to retrieve Chipper in the morning, she was too drunk from the previous day and had left him at our hotel. So when she came over, we got to talking and we made the spontaneous decision to have her join our LA crew. Becky rushed home to pack while the rest of us checked-out. We snapped a quick pic before leaving for breakfast:

The only time you’d see me happy that morning. My head was throbbing so I begged Dave to shoot me in the face, but he was too busy eating his breakfast sandwich.

After breakfast we parted ways. Dave and Stella to enjoy another night in Vegas before going home. Bobby to home to have his leg looked at. And the rest of us + Becky to converge on LA toward our wonderful host Neema.

It seems somewhat wrong and inconsistent to recount the happenings of LA within smelliots. Because smelliots was always envisioned as a way of sharing the lives of six friends in an RV with the people who care about them or want to track their whereabouts. And now that the RV is gone and friends have gone their separate ways, all I have left to do is reflect.

Most of my time typing and talking has been spent insulting and deprecating my friends in a very fun way. And they do the same. Its because we’re the worst people and there are so many flaws to point out in each one of us. It just goes without saying that Geoffrey “Brickface” King is the worst person on the planet.

And you would think it would be easy to say bye to such awful people. But 4 years of hanging out and multiple cross-country road trips hypnotizes you into thinking that maybe Geoffrey is more than just a shithead, Roach is more than an insect, ZZTop actually is more interesting than the Z’s in his first and last name, Nas might survive without a cabana, and Camo Dave might actually side with the Union. The last one probably isn’t true but I inserted it for the sake of parallelism. We’re shitty people who grew up together, saw the world together, laughed together, and watched Geoffrey cry and fight together. And that makes us a bit less shitty, at least in each other’s eyes. I didn’t cry when any of these people got on their planes, because I’m a man. But more importantly, there’s no sadness in friendships that aren’t ending.

If I learned anything after 4000 miles of driving, its that car seats are uncomfortable and roads are bumpy, but friends can make 5 hours seem like 5 minutes.