Day 1
I write this from the room of a motel which I shall refer to as GoatLodge. I refer to it by this name because I don't want to get an angry letter from their company (Hello, D!), although I think in this case it's fairly justified. I chose to call it GoatLodge because it smells like a goat took a shit on a pile of its own vomit, and then died on top of it. The smell is ridiculously strong, and fluctuates with time. Oh, and I think there's a dead woodchuck stuck in the air conditioner, because if you turn on the heat, it makes a different - though not at all better - smell.
But this isn't really about GoatLodge, this is about my trip to Mississippi, which Google logs as a 10 hour drive, and which my girlfriend and I managed to turn into a 16 hour nightmare.
An unrelated image, taken at a friend's apartment complex.
See, her stepfather purchased a sailboat not too long ago, and had it delivered here to Gulfport. Since it is summer, and my girlfriend would like to go sailing, we offered to come down and help him fix it up, get it in the water, etcetera. So off we went to Mississippi.
Microsurgical vasectomy reversal signs are only out on interstates, on the outskirts of large cities. I've never really seen one in a city, or facing traffic that is approaching a city, only traffic leaving. For that reason, I now imagine that all of these microsurgery procedures take place in weird barns off dirt roads. I just can't believe that someone needs their vasectomy removed so badly on that specific day that they would turn around and head back to whichever city they just came from. I mean, how badly do you need to impregnate somebody?
An amusing "sign of the times" was www.washme.com written in the dirt on a trailer. Apparently it's a national phenomenon.
The drive itself was pretty uneventful. Texas is empty. In Louisiana, the highways are surrounded by tall trees on both sides, which is pretty, but makes it look deserted. We only saw maybe two towns that were near the major freeway, the rest being tucked away somewhere down shady two-lane roads. Maybe it was the rain, but Shreveport itself looked fucking dismal as hell when we were driving up to it. Maybe it gets prettier when you get in it, but if I was leaving a city having gambled away a small fortune, and saw that the whole drive, I'd just plow my car into oncoming traffic. Lousiana, though, is where clouds are born. The moisture from the swamps and rivers and lakes evaporates and condenses above the treetops, making it looks as if little clouds were being born and swept into the sky to grow.
We stopped for food in Opelousas, and for some reason decided that a tiny chinese restaurant behind a Wal-Mart was good place to stop. How to describe it? In a word: B;LASDFOISAJDF;LKJASDF. (That's how you type out the sound of violent vomiting, by the way.) The Lo Mein tasted and looked as if they drained chicken noodle soup, and the vegetarian meal was all huge chunks of Tofu in some sort of gross sauce, with a few bits of peas and carrots for color. I paid fifteen dollars for it, and now I just wish I'd saved it and instead paid a hobo to knife me in the ribs.
I suspect this thing is pretty stolen, since we saw it in Louisiana. Why couldn't they steal some vegetables, too?
By the time we got to Slidell, it was already late, and we started thinking about getting a motel.
Up until that point, we hadn't even thought about the fact that we were traveling along the coast during fourth of july weekend. Every hotel for (I shit you not) 200 miles was booked. We drove around for two hours searching for a place that's open, and the only thing we discovere was that in fucking Louisiana, access roads are inaccessible, and that motels love to hide their entrances behind them. God fucking knows how anyone found these places, but they were all full, every single one. A nice biker with huge Omega scarifications on his arms suggested a Hampton Inn in Gulfcoast, but even if it did have any rooms open, we would have to part with so much money that it would be cheaper to simply buy an RV and a lot to put it on.
In the end, there were only two places with any vacancies. One was a ridiculously expensive hotel in New Orleans, and the other was The Inn. It was a pretty accurate name, because it was pretty much the only place with vacancies, but with a catch. The man in charge had run out of regular rooms, and started renting out "unchecked" rooms. These are the rooms that hadn't been cleaned, may or may not have a TV, and quite possibly might be missing a significant part of a wall. Lindsay and I briefly considered it, while being gawked at by weirdos, and then considered the fact that seven police cars had gathered at a gas station a hundred yards away, and three parked at the Waffle House. All the police officers looked self assured, but not in the same way they they look when they've caught the bad guy. Rather, they had the look of those people who knew that whoever was out there, that someone wouldn't be knifing the man in the uniform, with a gun, surrounded by nine compatriots all of whom are also not only armed, but trained to kill.
We moved on.
We ended up finding the GoatLodge where my girlfriend's stepfather had stayed, and slept in the parking lot for a few hours, until we figured he would be awake. Well, I slept. Girlfriend tossed and turned. We got maybe a half hour's worth of sleep in the GoatLodge, but it was well appreciated because her stepfather had gotten there literally seconds ahead of a horde, and booked the only available room in the place. I am dead certain that we saw some of the people that he had rendered effectively homeless driving on the highways with us, trying to find a place, any place, to sleep under a blanket.
A lesson learned: Plan ahead, know holidays, and stay the fuck out of the South. Seriously. Unless you're coming to a major city (Austin, Dallas, New Orleans - that's it), don't fucking bother. Yeah, there's some beautiful scenery, but the places you have to go through aren't fucking worth it. It might be nice in an RV, where one person drives while the others stretch out their feet and play a few games of checkers on the dining table to pass the time. It's shit when you're driving all over the place trying to find a place to pull over and sleep where you won't get raped.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. We might sleep on the boat!
I almost forgot to mention. The worst part of this trip? I have a bug bite on my penis, and it itches like the dickens.
Day 2
I think it was Archimedes who tried to calculate the number of grains of sand that it would take to fill up the universe. Of course he was wrong, but the number he came up with was very, very big. Let's call it an Archemillion.
I recently tried to calculate the number of Waffle Houses in Mississippi, and I'm going to call it Pavellion. And if you divide the Archemillion by the Pavellion, you will get one tiny fucking insignificant little number, a number so small that nobody in the world would even want to waste digits trying to count it out.
What I'm trying to tell you, in case I lost you with my mathematical mumbo-jumbo, is that there are a fuckload and a half Waffle Houses in Mississippi. (I'm typing this on my laptop. From the time I started typing to now, I have already passed two. And I type fast.) And a little while earlier, I saw two Waffle Houses not more than a quarter mile apart, on opposite sides of the freeway. If you happen to be a fan of Waffle House, you will love Mississippi... or at least you'll leave a little fatter.
Last night I only got about 3 hours of sleep. I hardly ate, except snacks on the road, and horrible Chinese. Today was much the same, with the exception of an unnotable Sonic sandwich, and a few more snacks. So by nightfall, I was fucking starving. And when I'm hungry, I get pissed off. I wanted to yell at someone tonight, at anyone. We went to an Applebee's, and the waitress took forever. When we decided to walk out, we saw her carrying our tray of drinks to our table. I thought she was about to cry, and I thought, Good. Fuck you for being slow, whore. I hope you fucking slit your wrists in the kitchen. I wanted to blow up at someone, anyone. By the time we (inevitably) decided to eat at Waffle House, I was just hoping not to snap on the people I was with. I was pretty pissed off that we passed up a Chili's for Waffle House. The reason we didn't go to Chili's is that Chili's had too many people. I wanted to say, What the fuck, we're not going there for the ambiance, we're going to cram carbohydrates and proteins into my stomach via my mouth. Argh! And at Waffle House itself, the temperature was low enough to freeze ay drink served below boiling point.If an eskmo walked in, he'd have shivered and walked back out. The waitress said that they kept the temperature down low because "It was hot by the stove."
What? Who the shit cares if you're a little warm when you walk by? You're being paid for shit's sake, and we're paying you. Who the hell thinks that 55 degrees is a good temperature for a restaurant? It took all my willpower not to tell her off.
But by the time we finished the meal, I was cheerful. The chicken salad that my girlfriend's stepfather had ordered was delicious, my bacon was crisp (that is the most important quality of the bacon, by the way. Soggy bacon is good for nothing but throwing at homeless people), and my orange juice was pulp-free and delicious.
It's scary how much my mindset is affected by how hungry I am. I think that from now on I should carry around a snack with me at all times. Instead of slowly counting to ten (that always just pissed me off anyway, and gave me time to compose my argument) or chewing gum, I'll just take out my snack and consume it in its entirety. Who knows, maybe I only get angry when I'm hungry.
Day 3
The first night in the South, we slept in a GoatLodge parking lot. For two hours. The second night in the South, we slept in a swamp. Hour and a half, tops.
Tonight, I sleep on a King Size bed, in a king size room, with a princess-sized girl.
Of course, it is fourth of July this weekend. Apparently, this is the most travelled weekend in America. Not just in general, but apparently ever. Every hotel was booked, so we had to stay in a campsite. I was impressed as hell that they had a really nice shower facility, so I figured that even though we're sleeping outside in the heat, at least we'll get a shower in the morning and wash the sweat away. We took the campsite, and
Yeah, we kind of camped in the middle of what felt like a swamp.
The air was so humid, it felt like we were camping under water. There wasn't a single breeze all night. And there was some punk kid on a bike with training wheels that squeaked so loudly, you could hear it across the campsite. I actually got a half decent amount of sleep, but I woke up when
When we came back, her stepfather was gone. We thought he went out looking for us, but as it turned out it was too humid even for him. This is a guy who has probably travelled across all of America, sleeping in the back of his car - half the time, with his wife. I felt pretty good about toughing it out, until I realized that
After we woke up and called her stepfather, he told us that he wasn't going to work on the boat anymore that week. It was too hot, we needed to replace the water filter which was under the entire engine, and we dropped the dipstick into the keel. (p.s, the reason we were in Mississippi to begin with was the fact that he had purchased a sail boat. More on that eventually.) We said our goodbyes, and I decided it was a good idea to try to go into Alabama, and then into Florida. Not having been at the beach yet, we thought we'd park somewhere on the beach and check out the Gulf.
Didn't happen, you see. Combine 4th of July traffic with shitty roadsigns, obscured by construction, and we got pretty thoroughly lost. By the time we even got to the water, we realized that parking was nearly impossible, and the actual shore was more of a swamp than a beach. I don't know where the fuck the signs that said "BEACHES: left" and "BEACHES: right" were supposed to lead us, but we got fucking nowhere. Tired and pissed off, we decided that it would be fun to visit my e-pal XBJ-9000. Trying to think ahead, we called a friend,
Something should be said about that. I'm really surprised, amazed even that during this time of trial and difficulty we managed to not blow up at each other, to stay cool in times of crisis, and to endure the hardships (self imposed, I guess) that we faced. I don't know how we did it, but I'd like to attribute it to the fact that we love each other and have learned to put up with each other's shit (the flow of which is mostly directed from me to her.)
When we finally got to Evergreen, after traversing some beautiful southern scenery, we got a little creeped out. The town itself, which we passed through unnecessarily, was creepy as fuck. I think I finally understand how
We finally got to where I am now. A Comfort Inn built for a king, if that king had spent the previous two nights in a parking lot and a swamp.
I'll admit it. I'm a city person. I don't like camping out in a tent. I don't like having to sleep on the ground, even if it's insulated by a tent and a mattress. I prefer concrete to clay, heaters to humidity, and neon to night sky. I'd rather sleep in a car than in a tent. Am I the only one who thinks that a tent is just unsecure by default? It's difficult to exit, but easy to enter. You can't see anything around you, but anyone can see you from a mile off. A car is tough, and easy to escape, a tent is soft and is a big net that you climb into voluntarily. I've never felt safe in them, and as a consequence I don't sleep well in them. I do better reclined, with a steering wheel in my lap.
This was definitely a place for a city person.
Not only was this place better enclosed, and in a much better part of the state, it was even $10 less. We have a Wal-Mart nearby, a Taco Bell right across the street, and - need I even explicitly mention this - a Waffle House. The shower was huge, the towels were fuzzy and warm, and it was really nice showering somewhere that I didn't have to wear sandals. Oh, and the water was nice and hard. (I don't know what it is about soft water, but when you're rinsing off, you feel greasier and slicker than when you still had the soap on. Every time I walked out of the shower, I didn't know if I had soap suds all over myself. Here, it's harder than Superman's erection. Hell, I might take another shower tonight just to feel the soap come off.
So now we're going to enjoy our room, because damnit, my girlfriend deserves a full night's rest in a bed at least one day a week.
Photos
Me driving to Mississippi.
I dislike sponges.
Cleaning the boat is hot and hard work.
This is our campground buddy Pecky. He was a jerk, tried to eat our tent, and mooched away a bunch of bread. But what the hell, we loved him. Also, I don't know what that jazz on his head is.
An early McDonald's logo, reminiscent of The Oblongs?
Pearl's Carry O Bar-! Yeah, I think it's seen better days.
"And then you're gonna wanna take a turn on GAAAAAAY..."
My girlfriend is not gay.
Beach phoon.
She reminded me of a bug in this photo.
Treasure Bay casino, with girlfriend in foreground.
Protecting my crotch from dangerous radiaton.
Yes, dangerous radiation. Actually, we took a bunch of pictures and then were pulled over by a Louisiana state trooper. Turns out the truck was surrounded by armed dudes, and they got suspicious of us taking pictures. Luckily, the sheriff noted the distinct lack of turbans on our heads, and let us go.
Longhorn Pride.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who thought of this.