Random Travel, Part 1

On-The-Road, Stop 1. (1:15am, 10/21)


Just outside of Florence, SC in a very colorful, very bright Taco Bell attached to a Pilot gas station. I think that WiFi not being free is highway robbery, though I remember reading the other day about the potential setbacks of a government plan to make vast, countrywide WiFi networks available to everyone. Anyway, being here reminds me of the many, many Yahtzee trips that came through Florence, and of my roomie Kristen. I thought to call her and let her know that I missed her, but it’s kind of late (1:15am.)

The nice cashier ladies said that gas is 2.40 in GA. Yes plz.

Driving alone has been a lot easier than I remembered. The time has been zipping by, and for some reason, I’m not tired at all. Got to listen to some music (though in my headphones, which is super illegal, because this greasy old truck doesn’t even have a tape deck that I could use for iPod adapter…) The trip has been, thus far, wholly unexciting. I kind of expected as much considering that I opted to do the first leg of the driving overnight. I don’t care for daytime traffic on I-95, especially in this big cumbersome truck. But I know that this first half isn’t the exciting part. Tomorrow night, I’m going to be sitting down to a late dinner with Jeefy, and currently there’s nothing more exciting than that prospect.

I need a new phone. The battery on this one isn’t worth shit. I suppose I better do more driving while I’m awake and willing. More to come on the truck I’m driving, which I’ve lovingly named Esther. She’s a loose old broad.

On-The-Road, Stop 2 (6:20AM, 10/21)

I stopped about ten miles from the AFB where I’ll be picking up the boots, thinking that some place so out of the way out here in the ‘Heart of Georgia’ would have a room for me to stay in. I was wrong. I stopped at a Best Value Inn (across the street from the Huddle House I’m eating and charging my phone in now) where a very unpleasant little Indian man told me that the only single room he had was a smoking, handicapped room and that it wasn’t available. Clearly, he’d just woken up to assist me and was annoyed. I’m certain that this is the only real reason there were no rooms available.


My thought was that because I doubt the AFB will open to give me the boots for another few hours, I’d sleep for a couple of hours and then head down there. Since that’s no longer a possibility, I suppose that I’ll just camp out here at this Huddle House until 9. The Diet Pepsi I’m drinking tastes like it’s got some kind of cough syrup in it. I’ll switch to coffee. There is a disappointing teeth-per- mouth ratio compared to other places, I think.

One of the only exciting (albeit morbid) things that I’ve encountered thus far is the really disturbing array of road kill in this area. I’ve been driving rural roads for a long time now, but I’ve never seen what I saw today. I was changing the song on my iPod and I looked up to see, literally, half of a deer in the middle of the road (I-16). The bottom half of the deer was splitting the road, and the rest of him was strewn all about for nearly half a mile. Aside from the widely distributed deer parts, there was a massive trail of blood that went for about the same half mile, like something from a horror movie. I ran over some part of the deer with the truck, and I’ll spare you a description of the sound. I was freaked out, needless to say, because I’ve never been witness to such a gratuitous highway mangling of an animal as big as a deer. Very disturbing.

Ugh. I hope this base opens soon. If not, I won’t be Baltimore till after midnight, and that’s simply won‘t do…

On-The-Road, Stop 3 (3:45pm 10/21)

OMG.


WIFI AND SUSHI!!!!!

NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!


Edit: The gratuiutous pictures of me nom-ing are probably here to stay. Just saying. There are a TON of delicious looking restaurants in this neighborhood in Brooklyn...