5/4/00
ROAD TRIP - DAY 3
2 PAGES

Despite waking up several times thinking a tornado was about to kill me, I actually got a good nights sleep that night. I got up in the morning at some truck stop in Arkansas. It was pouring rain. I went to the diner and order some eggs and grits. I came to really love grits on this trip. Made by southerners who really know how to make them. You add a little butter and eat it on toast and it is just delicious. I saw the front page of the newspaper and that's when I realized the magnitude of what I had driven through the night before. The tornado devastation made the cover of USA Today, not just the local paper. Over 40 people died. Millions in damages. I don't know how I made it all the way through the the middle of hell without a scratch.

Arkansas was probably my least favorite state to drive through. I swear to god, 90% of the state was under construction. The entire drive was in these little lanes between solid cement barriers which drive me crazy. I have a terrible time gauging the distance between my car and anything on the right side. So I was white knuckled the entire time trying to keep my car from swiping one of these girders. I was behind a big fucking truck the entire way who was sending an unending spray onto my windshield. One thing that I did think was cool about this part of America was the way people drove. If this had been LA, with a combination of rain and construction, traffic would've been at a standstill, people going maybe 30 miles per hour. But not here. In spite of everything, traffic was still moving at a steady 70 miles per hour.

Day three was without a doubt the hardest day. After two hard days of driving, the novelty of being on the road was starting to wear off a little coupled with the fact that I knew that after 15 hours of driving today, I still wouldn't be home. I'd still have a whole other day ahead of me. It was a little frustrating, but the way I looked at it, "my worst day driving is still better than my best day at work."

Music is what always kept me going during the long hours on the road. There are a few songs that will always make me think back on the road trip because either they were new or else I just kept hearing them and they brought me up. "Single White Female." "Friends in Low Places" "I'm from the Country and I Like it That Way" "Tonight the Heartache's on Me" "That Don't Impress me Much" Everytime I hear these songs, I can't help but be taken back to the wide open road and country side all around me.

Speaking of music, a little side trip here. You know how every band, especially classic rock bands, they all have their cliché songs. The songs that even if you're not into the band, you know. These tend to be the "bridge" songs that start a person listening to the band. And then once you get into the band, you realize how much other great music they have, and you tend to leave the cliché songs to the top 40 masses. Examples: "Stairway to Heaven," "Another Brick in the Wall," "Bad Company." Basically, you like the songs, but you get sick of hearing them over and over and wish the stations would play some of the band's other music. Well, I've found that there is one cliché song that I never get tired of. In particular, on the road trip, every single time it would come on, I'd crank the radio and it would put me right back into the zone again and I'd be good for at least an hour. "Sweet Home Alabama." It's the song that even people who have no idea who Lynyrd Skynyrd is, they know that song. And even though I've gotten into the band and like so many of their songs that don't get much play time, I will still always love this song and it will always make me sing. My other one is "Down on the Corner" by CCR.

Anyways, I crossed the Mississippi into Tennessee. By now the sun was out and I saw Memphis for the first time. Even though I was only on the outskirts, Memphis struck me as a city that I would definitely have to come back to. It looked like a quaint city, small by city standards, a walker city, like Boston. The whole look of the city reminded me a lot of Boston.

I was now hearing radio stations with call letters starting with W. After 5 months of hear K this and K that, it was refreshing to remember things about the east coast that you don't get in the west. Even things as small as call letters were letting me know that I was close to home.

The line in the song about Davy Crocket "Born on a mountaintop in Tennesee. Greenest state in the land of the free:" is totally justified. Everything was so green in Tennesse. Some of the most gorgeous scenery I've seen. And it's all countryside. I'm driving on a major interstate, but as soon as you get off an exit, you're in God's country.

I hit Nashville right at rush hour and after 2 whole days of driving east, I finally turned off the I-40 and started heading north. By nighttime, I was in Virginia. This was probably the roughest patch of driving mentally. I was exhausted, but was trying to make it to some particular town in Vriginia before I went to sleep. Somewhere in Tennesse, I had left my gas cap on the pump and now without the vacuum, my "Service Engine Soon" light was on. Being the dumbass that I was, I never thought that that was what was wrong with the car. I was fighting to stay awake. After 2 days worth of 75 mph speed limits, it was hard to adjust to Virginia's 65. The last hour before I finally threw in the towel for the day, I started playing Star Wars with the cars. Pretending I was in an X-wing flying down the trench of the Death Star getting ready to drop my proton torpedos. Childish yes, but it kept me awake.

I finally pulled off at a truck stop and went to sleep in the car. I hadn't made it to the point that I wanted to but I was too exhausted to drive the next hour. It had been a full 15 hour day. I went to sleep and actually slept well. No cold, no tornados, just a calm sleep, knowing that by the end of the day tomorrow, I'd be back with my friends in Boston.