on the road again...

thank you, micah! just the mention of "good road trip stories" put a smile on my face. indeed, i do have numerous road trip stories to share. my love for random road trips started shortly after the 6 month "no driving after 9" restriction ended and i received my "full provisional" license. this love quickly evolved and has resulted in a 1900 and some odd mile drive from north carolina to colorado and back and then back again. i will tell you of this evolution.

i believe my first road trip memory after the age of 16 occurred one early summer night just after my junior year of high school. if i recall correctly, miss kace was involved in this "mini road trip", as i will call it. we were in helga. she was my lovely and very loud glimmering gold 1989 honda accord. there were five of us who packed in there and decided to go for a drive. i think it started out as dinner in asheville, but i can't really remember. for whatever reason, we wanted to keep going on I-40. "let's just see where the road takes us" are famous last words! we did and we ended up in marion. the classicly beautiful, booming metropolis of marion, nc. we stopped at some super sketchy gas station. for the life of me, i can't remember what was said, but a very overweight lady with less than groomed hair and a quite fashionable looney tunes shirt with matching spandex shorts threatened a very shy, less than 100 lb 16 year old haley gibson. throughout the ordeal, i simply remember haley running back to the car white as a ghost. we laughed the entire way home! it was then that i realized just how much fun you can have in a car, even if you aren't necessarily going anywhere.

i shortly followed that excursion with my first overnight "sneak out", if you will. i pulled the switch-a-roo with natalie. you know, i'm staying there and she was staying with me. we drove to the lake for the night. sneaky-sneakerson and me didn't even have to place to stay really, but we knew plenty of people there so all was well. i think we may have slept in my car at someone's campsite. it was uncomfortable, but we didn't care! it was a slippery downward slope from there.

the slippery slope led to one of my dumbest adventures yet when i was a freshman or maybe a sophomore in college. after a tragic breakup, heather and i followed the "friend in need is a friend indeed" theory and made an emergency late night trip to charlotte for some consoling for one of our bff's. heather had to be at work at 6 am at the jones cafeteria the following day. this would not have been a problem had the consoling been just that. lying on the couch watching chick flicks and eating a pint of ben and jerrys with whipped cream and a bag of doritos would have left us driving back with little sleep and perhaps a stomachache, but that's about it. however, it went more like this instead: "those pi kapp boys are cute and they always flirt with me, but i've been dating stupid. they're having a party tonight. i think we should go there." continuing with the same theory, off we go to the frat party in tow of the consolee. needless to say, against our better judgement, we had a few drinks and before you know it, it's 3 am and heather is scheduled to be at work in 3 hours. with the consolee happily drunk and tucked safely away in bed, we venture out on the streets of charlotte to find some late night food to appease us for the drive home. first we tried the waffle house. there was a wait and just after the lady at the counter and everyone else in the place turned to look at us, we realized we were a bit out of place. the gentleman who walked in behind us and also felt quite out of place, suggested we try the 24 hour taco bell just around the block. we were thrilled to hear of this 24 hour fast food. (it was still a new concept then!) we gladly followed him to the drive thru and ordered our tacos, nachos and mountain dews, forgetting all about the drive we had ahead of us. with full stomachs, we headed back to the mountains. as the rising sun approached and we reached the steep saluda grade, we encountered the densest fog i have ever driven through to this day. foggy minds filled with leftover booze, greasy food and no sleep do not mix well with foggy roads. i must've been driving about 10 miles an hour. it was torture and it took ages, but by the grace of god, our dumbasses made it home to haywood county, where i dropped heather off at work a mere 30 minutes past the time she was supposed to be there.

these late night trips ensued throughout my college years, but none quite as bad as the previously mentioned.

this leads me to post-college adventures and my most favorite road trip of all. unlike, most of my trips, this one was not so much about the journey and more about the destination. i must start with explaining the time period in which this occurred. i was living in hickory (which i do NOT recommend). my best friend in the area was a very hip and single 57 year old lady who worked a few cubicles over from me at hanes industries. we were having drinks at a bar just across the street from my apartment. we had talked about lots of things. how much we hated our jobs and how we wanted a vacation. it occurred to us that we had a long weekend and that the beloved pavillion in myrtle beach was open for it's last weekend before being moved out to be replaced by high-priced retirement communities. we felt we just had to see it one last time. a guy that i was semi-dating at the time showed up for a beer and we told him of our plan. he would drive since he hadn't been drinking. he could buy some trunks at the beach. we would leave immediately. after grabbing a swim suit and minor other necessities, joy and i fell asleep to the sound of the motor and probably jack johnson while josh drove us. we woke up just as we pulled onto kings highway right at dawn. after some time frolicking on the beach, we checked into a hotel room and josh went to sleep. he slept and watched baseball in the room for the rest of the trip. joy and i layed by the pool and on the beach, went shopping and had cocktails at the tiki bar next door. it was fabulous and she was having the time of her life! i drove home. i dropped joy off and then drove josh back to his jeep. he had bought me a ticket to a concert in charlotte the following week and wanted to know if i could go. it was three doors down, i think. poor guy. he was such a bum on the beach trip that i never called him again. i guess that's one of the coldest things i've ever done, but that random weekend at the beach with joy sure was fun!

of course my trips from nc to co and back are quite memorable. this last trip that i made to nc with miss lindy-licious in april was entertaining. it consisted of a burger king hat, A LOT of coffee and the establishment of a strong bond with her gps. we stopped at a subway just outside of st. louis. we gave ourselves the luxury of eating inside so we could strech our legs and enjoy not being in the car for a bit. as soon as we got back in the car, i turned to her and asked what that smell was. she replied with, "i don't know. i just thought you farted and didn't want to admit to it." "no, no", i said, "plus that smells like body odor". we had just showered a few hours earlier and didn't smell when we went into the subway. we had to roll the windows down and take off the hoodies we were wearing for the next 50 miles or so to air out the smell of b.o. i'm still not sure what was in that subway that could've caused it and i don't know the name of that town, but i hope i can remember enough to avoid stopping there on my next trip through.

and as for colorado, miss kace, that is where i had the highlight of my road trip adventures. anyone in colorado will know what i'm talking about. when you are driving west on I-70 coming out of denver and climbing into the mountains, you reach that peak just past buffalo bills grave and see before you the most amazing feat. you see the colorado rockies and know that god does exist. there is no other explanation. it is breathtaking!

i don't know that anyone could possibly still be reading my road trip babble, but if you are, i wish that i had some moral of the story for you. maybe don't drink and drive. don't lie to your parents. most of all, have fun! and trust me, random road trips are really fun! life is a highway, ladies...keep truckin'!