Joe and I caught this one on our way home. Anyone know what this sticker is?
I talked to my friend, Google, and quickly encountered whatever I get when I do an image search and go past the first page: porn. In this case, I also found a site that sells nice “I heart Condi Rice” bumper stickers.
Dawn came early, and we refused to rise with it, making our exit around 9:30 AM after giving the park rangers the gift that keeps on giving: a leaky propane cylinder. We took turns driving and Joe didn’t enjoy me as his navigator.
We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts manned entirely by white people which included a spastic woman who listed all the allergens in my donut and got impatient with the register receipt dispenser.
We landed at 4 PM, ate dinner and decided to drive to University of Vermont to visit Matt Grob. I have no idea why. We visited Matt Grob and watch his friend’s room mate attempt to rocketjump before landing after jumping off a building in GTA 4. We watched that for a solid hour. We ate at Denny’s drove home and arrived at Pat’s house again at 1:00 AM… and decided to drive straight home.
Joe and I started on our way and I selected “HOME” as our destination. I got suspicious of the GPS once we hit New York and it started taking us west. I checked the future directions and the GPS apparently thought “HOME” was located hours west of me somewhere beyond Harrisburg rather than SE PA. We put in Joe’s address which had us return east and shaved 90 minutes off of our drive, three and a half hours if you include the time we saved after overcoming the sense of whiskey-tango-foxtrot after theoretically “arriving” near Harrisburg. I got drowsy around five AM but powered through by yelling about what I thought was wrong with Scouting, it was surprisingly effective.
Dawn came, we arrived at home, and I hit the sack like a midget boxer. All in all the trip cost only about $250 for five days of stuff. One day I’ll make it to the mythical “Canada” and may even remember to bring my passport. Perchance to dream.
I woke up at the crack of 11:30 AM after the forceful deflation of my air mattress and after a sequence of shit-we-forgot’s and two pizzas which were eaten across from surly old people we made out way Northward.
I got to drive Pat’s Rav4 and being in another person’s car the most dangerous thing I did was drink and drive.
At a previous point I’d taken a picture while driving and holding my iPod, so this is a cakewalk. Pat and Joe were also strongly opposed to a practice I call “slap steering” which terrifies both of them.
Around 10 PM we stopped at a Target in Augusta to get a 1/8″ patch cable so I could bore everyone with The Economist audio edition. The hand dryer was quite potent and my hands came away red with windshear. On our way out, we hit a T-intersection with no obvious path back to the highway so I picked left at random. This small change resulted in us taking a sequence of country roads, byways, and semi-paved paths to Acadia through the “drive faster, I hear banjos” portion of Maine. I got bored and started taking long exposures of lights while driving of which some came out well.
We arrived at Acadia at about 11:30 PM, several hours after the proper closing of the park. My concern for lateness dropped when I learned there after-hours check in process was “go to a campsite, and tell us sometime the next day that you’re here”. We entered our gravel-covered campsite and discovered that one was supposed to sleep on the gravel. Gravel ranks as slightly below a battery of dull steak knives for uncomfortable sleeping surfaces and the hours taken to actually sleep proved this.
Luckily, the rest rooms were exceptional and even included two-ply toilet paper. The walls also held some of the most erudite graffiti I’ve ever seen including:
Euler's Identity
I was impressed.
When I get in early I pass a home that has Windows Media Center powering what appears to be their living room TV. The TV is always on and even at 3 or 4 AM is showing pictures of some aesthetically pleasing landscape. The house is located next to a traffic light so sometimes I watch for up to a minute.
Today, the video had changed: the slideshow consisted entirely of converted modular homes. I sat through an entire light cycle looking at pictures and there were probably about 30. Maybe with some planning this person could charge to show home ads. They’d have my attention.
I drove 800 miles. With Tardbagel. We passed Hickesville, and got passed by a cop while doing 80. I ran out of podcasts. And started listening to a reading of De Rerum Natura by Lucretius after dropping off Tardbagel. I woke up and I was home.
Driving to work at the crack of noon involves sharing the road with the retired, jobless, and equally late. I got stuck behind this guy on his phone waving frantically and driving erratically. These are the kind of people that make me not answer my phone when I’m driving… sometimes. I passed him on Street Rd and found he had no cell phone; just a oblong tuft of hair on the right side of his head which grease, grit and time molded into a whip antenna of insanity. What was he yelling at? Immitating opera? Was his hair thick enough or did it contain enough embedded metal shards to function as a Bluetooth headset? More mysteries.
Why I volunteered to help Kyle move from Florida is beyond me. Our trip to Penn State still stands out as my worst trip ever. We left at 7:30 in a GMC Sierra and 27 hours of podcasts for 42 hours of driving. The trip down was marked by false hope:
I thought this was the furthest south Wawa and shed a tear leaving it, until I saw signs for the next 3. Boo…
At about 1 AM we encountered an “I-95 South Closed” sign. Hm…. So we took a detour around
CAPE FUCKING FEAR!!! I want to become a dentist in this plaza and knock out the light behind “Cape” so I can be the dentist at Fear Plaza. Later, there was another delay.
A jack-knifed trailer. I’ve always been stunned by the jack knifed trailer on an on-ramp. LIke some how one thinks that throwing the wheel will magically fix your truck once you realize you’re going the wrong way.
I was hell-bent on going to a Waffle House after reading a review in Maxim that they were superior to IHOP. This died in my chest after Kyle pointed out to me that the car was being cased by four separate people and I spotted two pimps. Go Carolina! We switched after 11 hours and in Georgia I noticed a sign where the design was identical to the Brass Ring Cafe in Hopewell/Pennington.
We arrived in Florida and began Operation:Packupkyleslife. I wanted to pack-up and return to PA the same day, but biology interfered. I met Kyle’s cat Dunyazad. A cat that fits into the category of animals with awesome names that are abbreviated to something retarded, in this case “dunners” or “duny” or something equally dumb.
I had an idea to increase our efficiency on the way back:
BED SAIL!
Packing was an ordeal with the ultimate goal of “protect the suade couch and queen sized bed”. I was angry at Kyle for dragging his feet until I realized he was leaving his life behind, frown. We departed the next day after packing in the rain which only stoked the fires of my determination.
The drive back was awesome in that I got to drive 1100 miles at a maximum speed of 63 MPH, w00t. Our overnight stop involve Dunderella nearly becoming potty trained.
We had to pull over about 6 times because something was about to bounce out and kill someone. I ran out of podcasts around Fredericksburg, Va and was reduced to listening to old episodes of Security Now! and listening to PC security problems from 2005. Anyway, observations:
Virginia had signs that said “Overheight Vehicle Detector ahead”. Isn’t that just a bridge? Virginia also had the best custom plates: “LRIGTAB”, “Uh huh”, “W00K1EE”, “Nerdc4rt” and “FLAMING”. The last was on a Hummer H3, no idea. Finally, Virginia had many illuminated signs that said “DUI Crackdown In Effect” with metal signs beneath that said “CRUSH CRIME”. Best crimefighting initiative name ever.
Please note that Hell is in comic sans.
Salvation came when we did find the furthest south (on I-95) Wawa. It was glorious. Most rest stations had hand blow-dryers. I much prefer a paper towel but this Wawa had retrofitted a jet engine as a hand dryer. I was nearly knocked over initially by its force.
I have more pictures available on my Flickr Feed of this trip.
I’m glad I made the 2200 mile trip alive. The 800 mile trip to Glen Ellyn will be a cakewalk. Go 5-Color Worlds!
I played hookie today to take care of some things and part way through the day, ducked out to pick up a cheap pair of speakers for my back-up computer. On the way to Circuit City, I saw the line of cars in front of me was going a bit slow and I found out why.Continue reading