Pole Dancing In The Dark

Day by Day, Play by Play

This is a picture from the return trip. I was stupid and packed my camera for the trip down, so I don't have any actual journey to SC pictures.

I hate spending the day at work when I am lacking substantial sleep and I am doped up on Benadryl. I'm just having a difficult time getting hubster to move to New Mexico. (Damn family.) Also, the assnuggets that work facilities replaced the lights in the ballast right above my desk while I was gone. I feel my will to live being sucked right out of my noggin. (I hate fluorescent lights.)
But enough about that… more about the trip.

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Day One (Prelude)
Thursday night around 10:30, my cousin came over top spend the night (as we both figured it would be a lot easier to get an early start Friday morning if I didn't have to drive to her home and pick her up.) After she arrived, we transferred the entirety of her house (including the kitchen sink) from the back of her Honda Civic to the back of my Saturn SC2 (with the convenient third door.) There was just enough room for my one really small suitcase and overnight bag as well as a smallish cooler. It's amazing how much crap you can stuff into one of those little cars. Of course, it helps when the back seats go down flatten out. (let's see how many hits that gets me…)

After the expert packing job (no applause, just money) done on my car, we decided to hop on over to the local Wegman's to fill up one some snack foods for our long ass haul down country. (I would have like to have said "across country" but really can't.) When we finally approached the check out it was around 11:30 PM and our cart looked as if two teenagers with a serious case of the munchies had just wandered through the store. (I should have taken pictures… but I was busy charging the new rechargeables that were just purchased) There, in the cart, encompassed all great munchie foods with the noticeable exception of pizza (and if we could have figured out how to cook that while driving, it would have been there as well.) There were pretzels, popcorn, potato chips, cookies, yogurt (our one concession to health food) and candy. We were all ready for a road trip.

We paid for our over abundance of munchies, went home, unpacked some of our food booty, ate some of our food booty as we watched The Incredibles, then I went to bed… and again was attacked by the inability to sleep until about 3 AM.

The real Day One:

I can boil it down to three words: Allergies suck sweaty Donkey testes. Ok, that was five. Leave me alone.

Naturally, the day that I have to actually be awake, aware and semi-coherent is the day that I get the smack down from an allergy attack at 6 AM. Needless to say, I was a touch grumpy. But there was no whining to be done because it wouldn't do us much good anyway. Hubster got up and did his usual morning routine, and then after much hugging, kissing and me threatening to throw him in the trunk to take him with me, he went off his merry way to work.

(Aside: To all those wondering why hubster didn't go with… A week with my family is NOT something I would wish on my worst enemy, let alone the man I love. Yes, some of them can be that bad.)

Anyway, I realized the error of my cockiness about the 15-hour drive around hour 2. I started having a pounding headache and wanted to throttle the person that was snoring in the passenger seat. There was a reason why we were driving together, and it wasn't so that she could sleep all day. But the time we drove over the Pennsylvania boarder (right near my college home away from home - the land of elicit fireworks and Adult Superstores) I was desperate enough to pull over into a McDonald's. I woke her lazy butt up and forced her to drive, while I tried to nurse the oncoming migraine down to a dull roar.

When she took over, she did some of the strangest adjustments to my seat that I ever did see. She moved the bottom half of the seat forward, and then tilted the top have (the back support) way way back. Then she proceeded to slouch-drive for the next five hours. (And then wondered why her back hurt so bad… kids, these days…) We switched off again. No sooner was she in the passenger seat then she began snoozing away. (She isn't very good company on road trips I decided and even if she is the mac mommy of navigation, it doesn't really do me any good if she is sleeping through the entire drive.) I took advantage of her downtime in the eternal quest for some place, any place that would sell me some Advil. I soon found one and took enough to numb an elephant.

After a long and arduous drive, we eventually wound up in Charleston, South Carolina, in front of the circular Holiday Inn. It was then we found out that there was a big tennis match thing going on in the city that weekend and apparently all the hotels were booked. I nearly cried. The mere thought of spending one more hour, let alone the rest of the night in my car, despite my passion for my Saturn, was more than I could take. Nor was I the only one, as sleeping beauty decided to take up the call to arms and literally call every single hotel in all of Charleston. She found us a place, with an extremely rude night manager, the narrowest parking spots known to man kind (did I mention I drive a very small Saturn?) and a room that smelled like stale cigarettes that may or may not have been infested with kitten sized bugs. I'm not entirely sure those weren't just my over active and over tired imagination working against me to make sure I would never sleep again. But eventually I lost consciousness to continue the adventure the next day.

~~

I learned a few important things on my first day of travel.
1. It never matters how much crap you pack, there is going to be something you need that you don't have, and you will have to stop somewhere specifically out of the way to pick it up.
2. When traveling vast distances by car, plan your bathroom breaks accordingly.
3. Never ever ever believe those "Next Exit" signs, unless you can see the big honking logos somewhere along the road. (My cousin decided that she really really really had to use the ladies in the middle of nowhere. I wound up getting off at one of those exits that had the "Next Exit Gas" signs. We drove 18 miles out of the way to find that stupid gas station. What can I say, the "Gas - this way" arrows were just taunting me to go just a little further.
4. Always have the camera out, just so you can prove the silliness that occurs on trips.
5. Always have the Benadryl handy, because the allergy attacks can really foul things up.

Posted by Ethne at April 26, 2005 08:20 PM