05/26/11

UP!!!  Well…I didn’t sleep much…napped?  It’s 4:30 am.  I have ½ hour to get ready and be on the road by 5 am…which you would think would be fairly simple in a RV all by yourself right?  I mean the shower doesn’t work everything is within 5 feet of you, you don’t even really need to move, just reach out and grab it.  Oh, but I’m a bit tall so every other move after a few hours of sleep consists of bashin’ ma’ head on everything.  Owie.

5:00 am:

On my way to Raligh, Virginia (airport) to pick up the other Amazon goddess who will be accompanying me for about a week!!  YAY!!!  First thing any normal human needs at 5am with possibly 2 ½-3 hours of sleep is coffee, right?  Starbucks is just across the street!  And……..it’s closed.  Ok, I’ll keep driving.  This water is just not cuttin’ it though.  OH!  Gas station (after ½ hour of driving), perfect!  I walk in all excited and the dude looks up and says: it’s not ready yet.  Someone unplugged it and I didn’t notice until just now.  No coffee.  REALLY??!!  You didn’t notice that there was no coffee brewing??!!  BAH!!  Ok.  OH!  Gas station!  At this point it’s just a thing I have set my mind on.  It’s been 2 hours.  I don’t even really need it, but I want it because I got up needing it.  But see, it was meant to be because this gas station on a back road somewhere in Virginia is where I first experience the true Southern culture.

I walk in and the woman behind the counter looks up from talking with her friend on the customer side of the counter and says to me, “Mornin’ there, honey.”  AH!  Love!!!  I get my coffee and pay for it.  She ends EVERY sentence she says to me with hon or honey and there were like 4 more sentences!!  YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!  Starbucks wouldn’t have done that…Starbucks coffee would have been better, but there would have been something missing.  “Have a good ‘un, hon, be careful out there.”  I love Virginia!

8:45 am:

Arrive at airport!!

Now if we can just side step for a moment.  To get from where I was to Raligh, VA should take about 2 ish hours according to Google and according to normal vehicles.  It took me almost 4…yea.  Just think on that one now.  Ok!  Enough!  Get back to readin’!  GO!

So, I have this van right?  Barb doesn’t get in until 10:15, so I need to find an outdoor parking area to keep this beast since I’m preeeeeeety  sure she is not gonna fit into a covered lot!  And the movie Airplane still messes me up as to whether I can park in the white or yellow zone.  So I’m following the parking signs…cautiously…I know about airport parking!  They TRAP ya’!  I cannot get trapped with Jezebel.  Ah there, ahead are those hangy thingys that they use sometimes with the maximum height restriction on them…oh and thank god Raligh Airport is slow!!!  Otherwise I would have been makin’ a whole lot of people mad!  So, this here hangy thingy states that the max height is 9’-0”.  Now I know that Jezebel is under 12’-5” ‘cause of the oil change station and I am fairly certain that she is more than 9’-0”, but how would I know??!!  I looked through all my books on her before I left and there is NOTHING printed about that!  So…um…yea, I went under it…and um……….yep.  She’s taller than 9’-0”.  WAAAAHAHAHAHA!  I’m assuming that’s what that banging noise is on the roof. Great.  Luckily, they give you an escape route, which I took immediately.  I loop around and pull into the Avis rental car place (it’s an open lot, phew), and ask if I can just leave my van there while I wait for my friend at the airport.  The woman behind the counter gave me this sour what chu talkin’ ‘bout girl look and directed me to the Airport Authority Parking area because “they have so much parking over there it’s not even funny”…like she was jealous of the amount of parking spaces they have?  Hmmmmmm…  So I loop BACK around again (avoiding the 9’ parking area like a pro at this point), pull into the lot, park Jezebel in the furthest space, and walk into the building.

The gentleman at the counter (after telling him what I want to do) said this is a cellphone lot.  I give him a blank stare.  He tells me again.  Um…yea…I don’t know what that means, sorry.  A cellphone lot is a place that you can park and wait and have the person call you on your cellphone when they get in so you don’t have to pay for parking!  Oooooohhhhhhhhhh!!!  Tssssss.  I dunno!!!!  Sheesh!  That sounds great!

10:15 am:

BARB!!!  HI ! HI! HI!  And she brings with her coffee cake (from Becca) and BOURSIN (the girl panda bear)!!!!!!!  BARB!!!!!

12:00 pm:

Arrive at South of the Border in South Carolina!  (no hills, twists & turns, etc)

Hung out at this crazy place—they have a “Hats from the World” shop that includes, but is not limited to a kitty cat hat, a Dr. Suess hat, a Pirate hat…so um, what is this world?  Did I miss something?  It’s probably a good thing I’m on this roadtrip because now I will be able to visit the lost city of kitten people!!!! 

Oh and they have a reptile area.  Which is sad.  They should stick to the sculptures of animals…I’m not gonna go into it.  Aw, great.  Now I’m sad.  Dammit!!!

Time unknown:

Driving into the mountain areas and around 8 pm I decide that I want to pull over at the next gas station in order to watch the storm and play in it!  So we pull into what is called the “Hot Spot”.  It’s a store in the South that carries EVERYTHING and they are specifically designed for RV people!  We park on a little hill and sit inside the van, and then I get out to take some photos since the sky is AH-mazing!!!!  And GOOOOSH!  Lightening streams horizontally across the sky, the wind picks up (enough to rock the van)—gosh I wish I could put sound effects into this!!!— and we decide that it just might be a good idea to go near the building and maybe under some cover.  So we pull in and the rain just starts POURING in sheets!!!  From the sky!!!  And there’s huge lightening and thunder and it’s AWESHUM!  Barb and I decide to hang out in the back of the van on the couch with the doors open and listen to music on her phone in order to pass the time.  –love-  And lemme tell ya’.  Them there truckers ain’t never seen the likes of Barb and I before.  Whoa. 

Time unknown:

Finally the rain stops and we head out to the nearest Wal Mart!  Wheeeeeeeeee…oh and lookie here.  That there is a real gosh darn mountain with warning signs for trucks.  Mmm hmmm.  35 mph the whole way up.  UGH! 

9:45 pm:

Wal Mart!  Horray!!!! 

So now that we are settled we gonna hang out on the couch again with bears and whiskey and talk until one of us collapses (oh, that’s me)!!! 

Total driving time for 5/26=approximately 14 hours…