English practice 27
Road Trips Back Home
During my junior year of college, it became a kind of ritual for a group of us to hop in a car and "discover" a new suburb every month. At first, we all agreed, we had come to college in this major city to escape what we thought were our boring lives in our various places of origin, but after a time, we realized that it would be impossible for us to turn our backs on our old lives16 completely. I grew up in Pennsylvania, many parts of which look like the ones we drove to.17
The first stop was typically some old diner, which reminded each of us of one from our various hometowns. There we'd usually sit, chat with the restaurant's owners18 drink a cup of coffee, and figure out which new and exciting place we'd be driving to next. Even now I can remember one diner in Maryland, whose sign we could see flickering from the highway as we turned off looking forward to it in anticipation19. Although we had all agreed that it had to be a new town each time, we tacitly agreed a few times to break the rules and come back to this place. 
After we had taken nourishment (usually a grilled cheese sandwich, a patty melt, or something similarly nutritious that could be ordered from21 the menu) for our "big night out," we would then drive on. We got to know the lay of the land so well that we could usually just follow our noses to the kinds of places we liked to visit in these towns, typically stopping by the biggest retailer we could find. There we'd buy industrial-sized packs from childhood22 of instant noodles, huge packs of soda, and other types of foods we all remembered but which we were either too embarrassed to buy in front of other people at the University market, or which were too expensive in the city, where there is a lot more variety.23 Going24 to as many places like this as we could, we were always sure to happen upon something strangely familiar to us. The place-whether it was one of a million grocery stores, movie theaters, or fast-food restaurants-were25 unimportant; it seemed that everywhere had something special for at least one of us, and even now, many years on, I still think of these trips fondly.26
Looking back, I'm still not sure why we took these trips. Nevertheless,27 I have been living in an urban environment now for almost eight years, and should I ever have to move back to the suburbs, I will certainly go reluctantly. Sometimes, though, even now that I live in a different city, I'll still sneak out to those kinds of places once in a while and just drive about the town28. I guess, in a way, many of those early memories are like that diner sign we could see from the highway; most people would never notice that old sign, but to those of us who cherish it in our hearts29 and what it represents, we all harbored a great hope that it would still be burning the same as we remembered every time we drove by or came back30.