Tanner and I - The Chronicles

Tanner and I (me, being Ryan-The Comic Relief) have had many an adventure together. Usually these adventures include us driving around in Tanner's car into the wee hours of the morning.(okay, not really, I always get home by curfew, but that sounds way more exciting). Anyways. In this post I am going tell about two of our adventures: the longest, and the most cathartic.

Number one:
During the summer and into the start of the school year, Tanner and I, with our lives being so busy, hardly got to see each other. We would always see each other fleetingly, when I would come over to Katie's house to cram in some English or math homework, but we hadn't really had a good, long, hang-out in a long time. So we planned it out: on a Saturday that we both were free, we decided we would spend the day together and see where fate would take us. So as you can imagine, Tanner came and picked me up from my house and we just started driving around without any particular destination in mind.
So there we are, driving aimlessly around, (by this point we are out in Eagle Mountain) when we come upon a sign that has an arrow going left--pointing to civilization, and an arrow going right--pointing out into the middle of nowhere (otherwise known as Tooele). Tanner looks at me, sees the skeptic look on my face, and cackles as he takes the turn right, leading me out into the middle of nowhere.
We drove for a long time, taking the extremely scenic route that Tanner chose for us. We drove up through Tooele, and are coming up on the freeway, when Tanner suddenly sees a road sign, gasps, and yells "I CAN TAKE YOU TO SALTAIR!!!" I smiled inside, and agreed, of course. (in case you didn't know, Tanner has quite the obsession for saltair). So we drove alllllllll the way up to Magna, and went to this abandoned old building with tons of graffiti inside, which was pretty cool, but then we had to leave pretty quickly, because we were pretty sure a drug deal was going down, and we didn't want to be there when the 5-0 came and busted the crack party up.
This adventure makes it into The Chronicles because we must have spent at least 6-7 hours in the car together that day. It was pretty cool.

Number Two
This day started out as another scheduled hang out time with Tanner (the only kind we ever have). We started out by having lunch at Tanner's favorite restaurant - Blue Lemon. I thought it wasn't that good and overpriced, another tribute to how different me and Tanner are, but it made him happy, and that was the objective. While at lunch, Tanner and I started talking, specifically about his past. To summarize, Tanner didn't have the best group of friends before he met us, and we were discussing how he had found a bunch of stuff that had reminded him of them. Wanting Tanner to forget about them, we decided that we would put our inhibitions aside and purge his life of those mementos, by destroying them. So of course, our method of destruction was what any two people of the male gender would decide upon in collaboration; fire. We left Blue Lemon, filled up his trunk with the various items to be destroyed, and left for my house to get matches and accelerant. We made two quick stops on the way, one for a round of Killer Bunnies - The Game- and for ice cream - The Delicious - at Cold Stone, but then continued on our way. We ran into my house, and Tanner tried not to sound too conspicuous as he chatted with my mother, while I changed my clothes, because I didn't want to sully my good clothes with smoke. I snuck the matches in my pocket, went to the garage and grabbed a can of brake cleaner, and then Tanner and I departed for Willow Park down in Lehi to commence our burning. We parked the car, got out, crouched by the fire pit, threw everything inside, and then he dropped a match in while I sprayed the items with brake cleaner, which sent tongues of flame exploding from the center of the pit, engulfing everything that we were trying to forget. I suggested tribal dancing and chanting, but the flames were almost extinguished, which disappointed me. We stood up, ready to leave, but realized that there were still embers glowing in fire pit, and being the good boy scouts that we are we couldn't just leave and not extinguish these. I looked at Tanner and said, "Do you have anything in your car we could use to put this out?" He looked at me, smirked, and said, "I have soup." I cracked up, but he was serious. We walked to his car, pulled out two cans of soup, and extinguished the final embers with a little chicken noodle.
Now that we had finished that up, I suggested we celebrate, and of course, me being me, I came up with the most random way possible. Go to walmart, buy champagne glasses and some apple bubbly and usher in the new phase in his life with a toast. I let Tanner pick the location, and soon enough, after a little more driving, we were parked in front of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. (when we stepped out of the car, I realized that we had no bottle opener to open the bottle, so after rummaging through Tanner's trunk I found a pair of safety scissors inside his first aid kit that I resourcefully used to pry open the lid). I poured some into the glasses, and we clinked glasses and then drank. In that moment as we overlooked the temple, change was even more tangible in the air then it had been during the burning. We finished off the whole bottle, and then started for home, driving by the Draper Temple and going over Suncrest, which definitely was less fun with Tanner because he actually drove the speed limit.


Thus ends the first and second account of The Chronicles of Tanner and I. There have been more long drives that Tanner and I have taken, but none were as awesome as these two, and I'm pretty sure that more will be added in the future.