Down to Kokomo

One exam, one lab, and two flights are all that's left before I'm in Miami!  Yeah! It's pretty much Spring Break! My favorite single week of the year that I've been waiting for for 51 weeks since the moment I got back from Daytona!

Spring Break is like a team effort in college. The professors (except for the bitchy ones) all know it's in their best interest to plan fun and easy lectures the Friday before Spring Break. The students who don't skip class bring their best attitude and smile to accompany their vacation music and cup of coffee.

With the exception of my bitch Calculus professor, who schedules a fucking exam on the Friday before the big S.B, I don't have much to crush my excellent mood. I've been looking forward to tweeting through my physics lecture, blogging through my break, killing this exam like Dahmer, getting in a good work out, then having the best Circuits Friday EVER.

You remember Circuits Friday right? Well Circuits Friday today will be exceptionally fun. In fact I'm renaming it. Today is Circuits Friday Before Spring Break. Happy CFBSB. Today Mr. Samsung has us building some Op Amps! Yeah! And it's gonna take two hours! Don't know what the hell an Op Amp is? Well neither do I and I'm an Electrical Engineer who's been studying Op Amp's for two weeks now. Anyway, the last two hours before Spring Break for me will be spent building this super tiny integrated circuit that somehow is supposed to match voltages without matching current? Or vice versa? I should probably figure that out. Anyway I'm gonna be sipping my tea, listening to some Spring Break music, playing with some $600 circuit board, zapping shit for two hours. Sound like a party? It does to me.

All day I'll be tweeting Kokomo lyrics. That's what kind of day it is today. I was just now listening to Kokomo on my way over to the POT lounge, the lyrics are actually fairly deep. I've always considered the song to be the anthem of Spring Break. Back in High School, they'd play it over the P.A. system instead of the usual bell tone to announce that school has let out for Spring Break. So for seven and a half hours we'd be rotting and dying in class, anticipating the big SB. Then the last period would roll along and the true anxiety would set in and it was awful. But after you've served your full day of school, at 2:20 on the dot, instead of the usually bell tone, you'd hear "Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya..."

After four years of that, it turned the song into a signal that Spring Break is near. Plus the song is pretty much all about Spring Break Caribbean getaways. But the song goes even further than that in my opinion. The whole song describes a perfect vacation, in the middle of some seaside paradise where the drinks come in abundance and the worries are nonexistent. The stresses of normal life are drowned out by the noise of the waves crashing against the shore. The entire song creates this extreme desire to book a plane ticket and fly on the next flight out to a nonexistent metaphorical island.

But that's the catch. The Kokomo they sing about doesn't actually exist. There's a Kokomo in Hawaii, Mississippi, Indiana, and a place in Jamaica that's nicknamed Kokomo; but no actual Kokomo. Which makes it kind of depressing. This perfect, beautiful utopian island where time doesn't move is just a legend. Like Bigfoot and Atlantis, they're just imagination; you can never actually truly experience Kokomo.

Then, the penultimate line in the song changes everything. "Everybody knows a little place like Kokomo." Meaning Kokomo is in the eye of the beholder. Kokomo can be anywhere. It's not necessarily one island, city, resort, etc. Kokomo is the one place in the world that you love so much, time stops and stresses fade like the horizon over the deep blue sea. Everyone has they're favorite island in the Caribbean, vacation party city, unique country side, national park, or resort. Some people love the Don Cesar in Tampa. Some love the freshness of the wilderness of Yellowstone. Some love the hustle and bustle of New York City. And some enjoy the status and sexy Latin beauty of Miami.

And the final phrase in the song makes it the Anthem of Spring Break for me. "Now if you wanna go and get away from it all, go down to Kokomo." It's Friday, everything is packed, assignments are turned in, and boarding passes are printed. It's time to stop daydreaming, and actually fly down to Kokomo. The stress, anticipation, anxiety, bore of day to day life is in conclusion. Now go enjoy yourself.

I had my pizza party last night. It was pretty fucking stupid. I think like 8 people showed up. I had ordered four 20" pizzas. 20 inches is huge by the way. If you do the math, that means each slice was 10" long, and the crust was over 6" in width. But we still demolished the pizza and had nice idle chit-chat about Spring Break.

I'm excited to fly through Atlanta. Atlanta to Miami is one of my favorite flights, both on the sim and in real life. It's certainly a treat to get to partake in the action. Karen and I will be clinking our spiked plastic cups together and dancing to the house music on our iPods for the exciting two hour flight along the intracoastal waterway.

During the flight, I'm pulling some classic Decker shit. Let me explain before I go take this calculus exam. It will be cold in Louisville for our departure. So I'll be wearing the typical Decker winter gear, jacket and jeans. Then on the flight to Atlanta, a layer will come off and be stored in the carry-on. That way for Atlanta I'll be looking ready for Spring, but not quite there yet: jeans, Sperries, and a tropical T-shirt. Then halfway through the flight I'll shed another layer, completing my transformation. I'll go from topsiders to beer-flops, t-shirt to Miami v-neck, and jeans to shorts. Sunglasses will probably be worn inside. By the time the 752 makes it's landing on one of the 6 gorgeous runways at MIA, I will look like I'm ready for Spring Break on South Beach.

And I will be. Happy Spring Break everyone. Enjoy your week and act like you've been there before. Until next time everyone.