This is my favourite road trip. I was going to Baltimore and I had a friend who wanted to go to DC. How convienent. Anyway, we left Las Cruces at around 6 in the morning and started driving.
Don't get me wrong. I normally really enjoy hanging out with emilie.
However, she had two strikes against her on this trip:
(1) She didn't know how to drive.
(2) Her taste in music (She hated the Dead and could barely tolerate
Phish)
So we drove down the road listening to Suzanne Vega pretty non-stop. We listened to Suzanne Vega's third album maybe 20 times. For non-fans, let me tell you a secret about that album. It sucks.
After finally making it through Texas playing the non-strategy game War, enlivened by the Texarkana rule (whenever we saw a sign giving the distance to Texarkana, the low card won), I began to get tired. This was the first crisis of faith. Should we go to a hotel and crash? After grabbing a quick nap in a rest stop, I awoke refreshed and decided to press on.
Sunrise came in Tennessee. We celebrated by going to a Waffle House. This was one of the kewl ones with the yellow Waffle-esque signs, not one of the ones with the sun-moon sign that Emilie was so fond of. The jukebox had a whole row of Waffle House songs; I Meet My Baby at the Waffle House was my favourite. After unsuccessfully trying to convince the waitress to give us the Waffle House plates, we pressed on again.
Little known fun fact. Both I-40 in TN and I-81 in VA go on for far longer than you would expect. Somehow though we eventually made it to I-66. I dropped off Emilie in some punk rock house in the outskirts of DC, missing out on driving the entire length of the I-66 by miles, and retraced my steps to the Capitol Beltway. I was almost there, and the trip went quickly. I soon found myself at my parents' house. I told them what I did, watched their perplexed expressions, and decided that taking a nap might not be a bad idea.