I just wanted to finish talking about my weekend. I’ve recounted most of it to my friends already, but suffice it to say that I’m glad I went to see my uncle and aunt, and of course my parents. We had good breakfasts every day (the last of which I paid for), we had shockingly good Mexican food at a place called El Torito, which is in the middle of freakin’ nowhere (you can see their menu here), my aunt can paint her ass off and is a real delight to talk to besides, Scott is well (if a little down at the edges), and …

And, well, I went to Blacksburg.

I hadn’t been back to Blacksburg since I left it in mid-1994. True fact. It was almost overwhelming.

I only spent the early part of the afternoon there, so I guess my day was full. I started with four caches in town, of which this one was by far the best. When I told Lisa about it she knew the cemetery in question, as she used to walk there to get peace from her roommates at the time (who I remember well and who were inexplicable).

There were two I couldn’t find, one of which was next to a gas station that happened to be on South Main just across from Backstreets, and the other of which was on a bike/jog trail near the stadium. I parked (illegally, I think) in the stadium lot while I walked up to look for that one, and I looked for a long time, but I just don’t have the touch yet.

Parking, perhaps especially on a Sunday after a home game, was impossible, so the driving was stressful and I was only able to snap photos of some of my places (the Underground, Souvlaki, the Lyric, etc.) from the car. But I did okay. Mish-Mish is now a bar, the Balcony is still a bar but has a totally different name, and the other places I wanted to keep an eye out for–namely, the Record Exchange, the cigar store, and the Hokie House, all there in a row at the end of College Avenue–are exactly the same.

It finally occurred to me I could park at the bookstore, so I did. I went in the back by the ATMs, and then I walked up a level and out the other door without even thinking about it, just as though the last time I’d cut through there was yesterday instead of thirteen years ago. I smiled as I walked through the spot where Trina* showed me her then-new tiger tattoo.

The fourth cache was pretty obviously in the War Memorial, so that was easy. I crossed the drillfield road (I forgot and looked both ways, which I always used to do) and went into the chapel, a place I hadn’t set foot since Matt’s funeral in January of 1993, and signed the guest register (“presented by the class of 1963” and wonderful) in his memory.

For a long time I stood there and watched the drillfield, which was to my delight exactly the same. Yes, there were families up by the new memorial, which is right in front of Burruss under the reviewing stand (which now looks like part of it), but there were still Asian guys playing ultimate Frisbee and white girls smoking cigarettes and everything there was supposed to be. On the sidewalk in front of Burruss I even passed a girl who was wearing pajama pants.

The memorial is very nice, very well maintained and very well attended. I thought I would feel strange taking pictures but I didn’t. It felt okay to take pictures. Lots of the students’ stones had tickets to the previous day’s game tucked next to them, and all the flowers were maroon and orange.

Except for the memorial, and, I guess, the tone, and a new building I glimpsed on what used to be the Prairie, the campus had changed very little. (AJ, by the way, had scaffolding all over the front. I’m not sure if that’s a coincidence or some sort of security installation. If it’s the latter, why just that hall?) But the town has changed a lot. The whole downtown is full of brand new upscale-looking storefronts with indoor parts, kind of like Reston Town Center but not in that rich unwelcoming way. Most things I remembered were still there, and as I drove around more and more things ended up being exactly where they were supposed to be, but there were new things in between them. I took some pictures, which will be on the photo site soon (maybe tonight), and I’ll put comments on them.

*Trina Monis was a pretty serious martial arts and self defense competitor back in college, so I figured I could find her online for you pretty easily and it would become clear to you that her tiger tattoo when she was 20 was pretty awesome. What I found is that she married a guy named Todd in 2002, and that it seems he took her last name, which is spectacular, and that he’s running a martial arts school in South Carolina, whose website contains her name but no pictures of her (that I can find). Anyway, Trina was great fun.