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Show 23 NIGHT We were glad when Alan came home from his Mormon mission early because we missed him and because it meant we would be going to the waterfall again on Saturday nights. We had driven over the gravel and climbed the rocky trail up there a couple of times without him, but we were disorganized and scattered, and the practice quickly started to lean away from ritual and into the realm of distant possibility. The boredom of the first half of summer felt like an ulcer, and was nearly as debilitating. We missed Alan's van, a gold, early 90s GMC with the back bumper tilting up into a sneer. He had purchased it to haul around dram sets and amps, and without it we didn't have a unified mode of transportation capable of fitting all of us in one neighborhood swing. But when Alan came back from Brazil after seven months, his van was waiting in his parents' garage, still without back seats, which meant he could fit an unlimited number of people in the back. On Saturday nights, we usually needed room for six: Alan, Steve, Chris, Travis, Brad, and me. Besides having the best vehicle, Alan was the only one who didn't seem to mind going through the elaborate steps necessary to pick me up. That process involved a precision and patience that the others didn't have or even understand, |