I just need to get this over with, this whole recap of the trip. I'm starting to have real things to write about and I'm not remembering things right. So, onward ho! Here's the 12th one. To see how it all began, go here.

I don't generally like checkout day at the hotel. Any hotel. Anywhere. It usually means It's All Over ? the trip's over, vacation's over, the fun's over. But at least in leaving Chicago, we had a weekend left. It was in South Bend, and I'm sure Casey would've just as soon preferred to go home, but I was looking forward to a simple weekend in South Bend. She had said before we left, "South Bend is all you," meaning anything and everything we did there was to be decided by me. My requirements: 1) play trivia at BW3, 2) drink lots of beer at BW3, 3) eat lunch at CJ's (for a pub burger), 4) go to the wedding. But we're not there yet, so let's get on with our story.

We wake up and pack up and while Casey goes to drop off a CD for Erin at her office (since she'd forgotten it the night before), I start packing the car. I figure I can make a trip, even two, while Casey walks the few blocks to the office. I'm not sure how easy it will be to park along the curb, since the only guest-friendly street is where all the cabs pull up, and usually (at airports and such) they're very strict about cabs only in those areas.

After my second trip, I see Casey in the lobby on her way to the bakery to pick up some Krispy Kremes and I join her. Instead of our planned two, we decide to get six and figure we can give some to friends in South Bend if we want. We do this, of course, knowing full well that we'll be eating them ourselves.

After buying the doughnuts, we return to the room to eat one each, make a last check of desk, closet, broken mini-bar, bathroom and chair for anything we might own and head down to the desk to protest the charge on the bill for the mini-bar. It's not more than $8, but the amount doesn't specify what the charge is for, and it doesn't match any of the items on the list. Casey says as much, explains that the lock was broken when we checked in and we'd been using the fridge for our own things, and they say OK and send us on our way.

What they fail to do is ask if we brought a car and if we parked in the garage across the street, which, although public, is for the hotel guests as well. The problem arises when I give them our ticket to leave the garage and he asks if we were at the hotel.

"Yes," I reply.

"And they didn't ask if you wanted to pay there?" he continues. "Because it's $86. If you pay in there, it would only be $66."

So I have to back up out of the lane, but I can't go back to a parking space since we came down a one-way ramp to the exit. So he has me pull up alongside the guardrail and park near the office and Casey and I walk back inside. We get it squared away (and put it on our bill, which had been $0, because the hotel insists it's easier, and Jim offers to pay it anyway) and finally are allowed to leave.

We hit Lake Shore Drive and go south, a drive I've never done before. It's a nice road, continuing, as the name suggests, along the lake. It's best to look out the window to the left (east) rather than the right (west), where South Chicago looms. We follow signs for the Museum of Science and Industry, which sits on a broad, grassy campus with the tiered parking garage underground beneath the wide, open lawn. On a summer Friday, we prepare for swarms of children.

The first thing we do inside is see the Titanic exhibit, a collection of artifacts and a reproduction of various sections of the ship. The exhibit begins in a big, main hall of the museum, where visitors line up as if waiting to board the ship. We walk through a door as if boarding the Titanic herself. I begin quoting the movie.

We're given boarding passes, which are little biographies of actual passengers on the ship. Casey and I are both young men; I am traveling with my family, she with her brother-in-law. Inside the "ship," we see some artifacts brought up from the bottom of the sea, then walk through mock-ups of cabins from first-class down through steerage. We see the grand staircase, a dining room, the bridge. At one point, we walk out onto the "deck," and it's dark and cold, the air conditioning must be set to 40 degrees. There's a low wall to signify the edge of the ship, and the room's wall and ceiling are dotted with tiny points of light representing stars. The floor hints at an ocean. It's my favorite part of the display, and I cry out in a weak "British" accent, "ICE BERG! RIGHT AHEAD!"

At the end of the exhibit, all the passengers' names are listed on the wall. They're divided into traveling class, with the survivors listed first, those who died beneath them. I say I don't know anyone and am about to leave when Casey, through simple observation obviously beyond me, points out, "Everyone's looking for the names on their boarding passes."

"Oh, good idea," I say. We both died.

The gift shop has some amusing Titanic-related trinkets, among them a $30 replica of the Heart of the Ocean necklace. I tell Casey I'll buy it for her if she really wants it.

We wander through parts of the museum to see the fastest locomotive ever, the actual United plane they got in there by taking a column out of the front of the museum one day in 1993, and the big dollhouse castle some famous actress had built. She could fit into the foyer or somewhere.

We leave the museum and eat snacks in the car and are back in South Bend in 90 minutes. We're able to check right into the Marriott downtown and I knock on Matt's door #506 as we pass by to our room 511. Or maybe he was 511 and we were 506. I can't remember.

Casey and I walk over to Osco to complete our wedding purchases: a card and a bag to put the gift in. We have to return to the hotel to actually get the gift and make sure it fits in the bag we want to buy, but then we get squared away. Once finished with all that, we are ready for dinner, so we wake Matt from his nap and get in his rental car to cross over the St. Joseph River to go to Macri's Deli. We each order the huge 34-ounce mugs of Amber Bock and it all begins.

From dinner, we drive back to the hotel and then walk directly down the block to BW3. Matt gets the beers, I get the trivia keyboard, and we pick out a table in the bar. When we sit down, the game is kareoke trivia, in which they give you a song and artist, then a line, and you have to complete the lyric.

But I remember nothing because I drink a lot more. We win several games because we're that good. And it's two Notre Dame and one Bucknell grad playing against a bar full of townies, but we're not elitist or anything.

Hungry, we order 12 wings and continue playing until after midnight, when we stumble back to the hotel drunk.