The Last Break

There must be 50 ways out of Bloomington, but an hour into their spring break trip, eight IU students hadn't found any yet.\nInstead they sat in two cars at an east side gas station wondering.\n"Where are we going?" asked Luke Hobson, a 21-year-old scraggly would-be rock star.\nIt was getting on 9:30 a.m. The answer of course was Memphis, Tenn.\nTwenty minutes before though, it was Nashville.\nDestinations changed when the map said it would be easier to go straight to Memphis. Nashville was more suited for a stop over on the way home.\nFine, Memphis. But how?\nThere were two cars on this 1,700-mile trip, but only one map.\nThe map showed the way. Those in possession took the lead. Those trailing scratched their head.\nShortly before 10 a.m., the caravan had sprawled out of Bloomington on its way to Nashville MEMPHIS.\nIn the second car Luke sat beside Toby Van Kleeck, who drove the whole way in his 1997 gold Honda Accord. Driving's not a problem for Toby, who's racked up thousands of miles, hundreds of dollars in speeding tickets and one major car accident visiting his girlfriend in Virginia.\nYou can say he's an expert -- despite being legally blind in his left eye.\nAnd to Toby, this rural route through southern Indiana's two-lane roads that intersect in fields and stop at deer crossings doesn't make sense.\n"I always prefer taking main roads to smaller roads," said Toby, who breaks up his drive by banging on his legs. He's a drummer, not spastic. "It may look longer on a map, but most times its quicker and easier."\n"Then why are we going this way?" asked Luke, gesturing his hand down the windy rural route. His left pinky is inside a brace. He broke it the other day playing basketball.\n"Hey buddy, I'm not leading," Toby said. "And I don't have the map."\nToby is a left-handed, pale-skinned, 21-year-old who graduates in May (though the actual diploma comes in August). He wears old oversized silver circular glasses held together by wire that turn anyone else's face into a caricature, but are fine on Toby.\n"Whenever I see somebody else with my glasses on, I think, 'What kind of dork wears them,'" Toby said. "Then I realize, 'Oh yeah, me.'"\nIt was nearing 11 a.m., and no interstate was in sight.\nMemphis was still hours away, and Toby and Luke weren't sure they were getting any closer.\nThe cars stopped in tiny Bloomfield, Ind., short of the center of town and pulled side-by-side in a strip-mall parking lot.\n"We're lost," Luke said.\nRead Chapter 2: The Mixes of Life, Friday