On Traveling with Friends

Holy crap, what a ridiculous ride I have been on. 3000 miles in 9 days? That's an average though, my god, I can't believe I made a 2700 mile trip in 6 days! A few notes on my adventures:

First, let me say that this trip could not have happened at all if it weren't for the adventurous nature of my friends and the endless charity that I receive from my family on so many occasions. I'm amazed at how much of my shit my friends are able to put up with, and similarly, quite amazed at how much of my friends I'm able to put up with. I think we're at least wiser having taken this trip, and it has helped us to grow. I appreciate the willingness of my friends to hop in a very sketchy vehicle with me and take off into the middle of nowhere without any plans of where to sleep or eat or when our next shower may be. It was in this way that we set out from Raleigh with extremely high hopes and adventure running through our veins.

Everything went pretty smooth I think, but as with every undertaking there were some proverbial bumps in the road. We basically didn't plan this thing out at all, and any plans we did make weren't anywhere near concrete. This lead to a diet of basically nothing but Waffle House which, long about the 4th day of roadtrippin, I was sick as hell of, but "The Team", as we have named ourselves, had plans to hit a WaHo in every state we traveled through. We missed Arkansas, we had plans to hit one in the last 10 or 20 miles before the border...as it turns out, there isn't a Waffle House in Arkansas before about mile marker 30 which we were unaware of until we were already in Texas. We also missed Mississippi, which is silly, because several of the exits in Mississippi had 2 Waffle Houses at them! We had also eaten just inside the Louisiana border so we weren't hungry for MORE Waffle House until we stopped in Alabama that night. We also missed South Carolina, mainly because we were ready to be home with hot showers and stationary seats, but also because at this point, the rest of "The Team" was beginning to share my sentiments about WaHo. Nevertheless, we ate at 9 different Waffle Houses over the course of the one week vacation, and I'll be happy if I never see another one as long as I live.

The other aspect of this trip that made things really interesting was a lack of sleeping plans. We crashed at my family's place in Asheville the first night even though we were supposed to make it to Knoxville (oops) , then we drove 9 hours from Asheville to Memphis so we could be back on schedule the next day. We ended up in a truck stop in West Memphis, Arkansas the second night (that's right, West Memphis is in Arkansas, not Tennessee as you might have guessed) as my contacts in Memphis didn't even try to get in touch with me after several attempts on my part. The third night is a story in its own right. We had gotten in touch with my mom's brother John about a place to stay, and got some very sketchy directions which resulted in driving around Farmersville, Texas, totally lost, at 11pm. I was ok with this, I've never really had a problem with being "lost", I just continue making guesses until I see something that looks familiar. Chris and Michelle were having none of this and eventually we ended up at a gas station talking to some friendly locals who told us how to get to the county road we were looking for and at 11:30 we finally found my Aunt Sharon's farm. The hot shower at their place was TOTALLY worth the 45 minutes of driving aimlessly around Texas looking for any of the numbers on the directions Uncle John gave me. In my opinion Farmersville/Dallas was the absolute greatest part of the trip.

Chris' roommate from Hong Kong lives in San Antonio, so we crashed at his place the next night, and then spent the next two nights at truck stops before returning to my family's house on Friday.

I think I may have had too much driving planned for the trip, as it felt like we were speading through every place we stopped. We spent the most time in Dallas, San Antonio, and New Orleans just walking around, looking at the BEAUTIFUL architecture. I am dumbfounded at how many fountains are in the state of Texas (especially after being informed by my Aunt that they are in a drought). Still, this was definitely the GREATEST experience of my entire life and I'm so glad I took the trip. I look forward to more adventures in the future, hopefully with more/different people. Everyone should get out and explore this ridiculous nation that we live in, because how in the world can you speak about the people of the United States of America when you don't even know who you're talking about? How can you talk about the 50 states of the Union if you've only ever been to 3 of them? I don't consider myself an expert by any means, but my ratio is improving, and maybe some day I'll know what it means to be from Nebraska, or Alaska, or Minnesota!

Here's to adventure! And here's hoping that all of you are able to take your own some day very soon!

<3 Me