My friends and I are taking a year-long trip to Europe.

I’m not exactly sure what to expect of this trip. Knowing us, everything nobody would expect to happen will happen. Some events that I’m predicting are Andrea and Jekabs’ elopement (is that a word?); Devin getting lucky (or at least trying to) with a different girl in every city we visit (of which there are forty-one); Alli falling in love with some random Irish bloke and forcing Andrea and I to stalk him with her; Stan causing some great catastrophe that gets us kicked out of somewhere (the Louvre, maybe?) and John spending too much time Photoshopping all of the pictures we take while still on the trip (if he does this, he’ll be put on Alienware restriction and forced to be social).

Now that I’ve mentioned some of my friends’ not-so-admirable qualities (in my own defense, not everybody’s were), I feel obligated to tell you some of their admirable qualities. Let me use the metaphor of cars.

Alli. If Alli was a car, I’m pretty sure she’d like to be a Lamborghini; unfortunately for her, I am the one writing this, not her, and I think that she would be a blue mini-Coup.

No, not really. I’m guessing that when she reads that, I might get a whack across the head. The pregnant roller skate--ha. Honestly, though, I think that Alli would be a black Volvo. Classy, but practical, with good gas mileage. I don’t know if Volvo’s typically have GPS systems installed (I’m probably one of the least mechanically inclined of the group), but if they did, Alli would have a top-of-the-line one. She wouldn’t always be right, but she would have it. She would also have persnickety air bags.

Stan. If Stan was a car, he wouldn’t have any air bags. Hell, he might not even have any breaks. Stan would be an Ultima GTR, this tiny, crazy red car with 730 horsepower that goes from zero to sixty in 3.6 seconds, not including driver reaction time. Yep. That’d be Stan: going a million miles an hour with no brakes. Potentially dangerous and potentially mentally unstable (we never officially checked this), but a hell of a lot of fun to be around.

John. If John was a car, he would be a rocketship.

Andrea would be some brightly coloured car with a picky transmission and a stick shift. She can make mistakes, but she’s a lot of fun to be around and she’s got crazy acceleration, speed, and volume.

I’m not entirely sure what Devin would be. I think he would be a 1953 Chevrolet Pickup Truck; unexpected, but fun, occasionally agitating but completely loveable, and sometimes in need of a good, swift kick.

And this is where my knowledge of cars completely burns out. I have no idea what kinds of car Jekabs would be. In general, I’m thinking Jekabs would be some crazy European car that none of us knows about with automatic transmission and eight cylinders that runs on electricity. I don’t know. I just made that up.

And me, Katharine. I would be...a Honda Tercel? Slightly forgettable with good gas mileage, easy on the environment and easy on the eyes. Damnit. I don’t know.

Even though we’d be a pretty screwy band of cars, this trip is going to be amazing. There isn’t any doubt in my mind about that. We’re finally going to get to see all of the places we’ve been talking about for years. Of course, we all have our personal lists of worries, though we’ve kept these lists to ourselves. The things to look forward to are plowing over all of our worries. We’re going to drive through Dublin blasting U2 CDs; we’re going to see da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Lovure; we’re going to try to make the guards at Buckingham Palace move. We’re going to do everything touristy and cliche, and we’re going to do crazy things nobody else has ever thought of to do before.

I’m terrified, but at the same time about to pass out from excitement. Tomorrow is going to be the first day of the rest of our lives, I think. Unless I miss my guess, tomorrow is going to be the day that we realize just how much we really need each other.