why does no one ever leave me little messages of love in the ole guestbook? do you not love me anymore?

no more whining. how bout i give you a good dose of

the drive up wasn't bad. not bad at all. we took turns driving. we stopped only for pee breaks and refreshments. we made it to boston in a little under 12 hours. that's right, 2 hours ahead of schedule. we were rocking.

fast forward two days. we arrived on a thursday evening. we left saturday shortly after noon. quick trip, no? tell me why oh why did we think it was a good idea to leave boston for a 12 hour drive at 1:30pm? that would put us home close to 1am.

or it would have. if several things hadn't gone drastically wrong.

for starters, neither my girl nor i had ANY money. that's right. i had zero due to the old apt hunt. the girl had none done to poverty and bad planning. we were penniless. we had a 3/4 full gas tank. for some reason, we saw no problem with this.

we get on the road and are in Sturbridge when things start to ravel. Gas. we need it and we need it quick. no money. so, i call my mother and beg her to western union me. did i mention no gas? the closest WU was two miles up the street. ever been to sturbridge? it's like a hugh golf course on crack. all green and white and woods. we walked the two fucking miles rather than hitch with those crazy bourgie Mass people.

we get to the WU. we're exhausted. he decide to buy some supplies with part of the money. you know, stuff for us to have on the road so we don't have to stop any more. at this point, it's almost 4pm. and we're still in massachusetts. what do we buy? why you big dummy! you know we got a handful of snickers bars, a bag of grapes and some cokes. of course we did! what else would we buy? we are the smartest girls in america!

so, we walk the two miles back to the car, get the gas and get on the road. only, now we're being followed by a car load of young guys with NWO stickers on their car. they were flicking their tongues and waving money at us. being the speeder that i am, i casually accelerated in an attempt to not only get away, but also prove my dominance. they stay by my side. we come to an exit for Camden and the motherfuckers slam over in my lane, forcing me to slam over into the exit. they fall in behind me and try to force me off the highway.

no way man. i drove up over the median and got right back on, flipping them off at the same time. my girl is freaking out. i'm freaking out. we eat two snickers bars.

every thing goes according to schedule for a few hours. we're late, but we're okay and the driving is easy and the radio is blasting good music. it's not til baltimore that things turn to shit again. a thunderstorm. it's close to 9pm and we encounter a downpour complete with booming thunder and gigantic bolts of lightening. my girl has family in landover, so we decide to detour and try to ride out the storm. we both understand we're in no shape to drive through it.

we get to the grandmother's house. the woman is absolutely crazy. i'm not exaggerating. she was a fucking basketcase and i swear she didn't believe my girl's story about our need to crash. there was mistrust and doubt in her eyes and she was disgusted by my accidental snoozing on her plastic-covered white loveseat. she gave us some rootbeers and ushered us out the door with a "drive safely".

so, delayed another hour and extremely tired, we plod on. there's no one on the highway. just us. and this hellacious storm. my girl refuses to drive, so i'm in the pilot's chair. we get as far as richmond when i admit i'm about to kill us and we have to sleep. at this point, it's about midnight.

we pull off at a hotel and park with the other cars cause this is what people do, no? well, i'm laying my seat back and my girl goes, "she's crazy. she's fucking crazy. do you see her? she's crazy." i'm thinking she's talking about her grandmother, so i just nod and try to get comfortable. i realize my girl's still sitting up and now she's pointing. i come up and see what she's talking about.

a girl. a girl in a tee shirt with an extremely long and thick ponytail. she's standing in the rain. actually, she's not standing, she's convulsing. not in a seizure kind of way. nope, she's jerking her head in weird circles and pacing and braying like a fucking animal. her teeshirt is plastered to her body. i can see everything she has to offer.

my girl, satisfied that i'm on the same page, then puts her seat back to sleep. "aw hell nah!" i say to her. "we can't sleep with her out there!" so, being very smart, i move the car to the opposite end of the parking lot. cause that's better, ya know. i try to sleep but have the worse dreams of that crazy ponytail whipping in my face and the teeshirt body pressed violently against my window and her banging banging banging to be let in.

we stay there about two hours. the girl disappears. we conjecture on whether she had been kidnapped and maybe escaped. i stick with the crazy theory. it's around 3:30 now. i'm beginning to think we'll never get home.

we get on the highway and i'm relaxing. everything's fine. we'll be fine. then i wake up. yep. and i've crossed four lanes of traffic. and my girl is still asleep. i shake it off, roll the windown down, find good music. drive on. and wake up again when the left tires go off the asphalt. this is no good. i wake my girl and tell her she has to drive. she does. but she does the same thing. we decide to pull off and sleep, only the signs all tell us we can't do that.

so we drive on, trying to keep each other awake. no good. we're almost back in north carolina when i spot it. an old delapidated convenience store off to the left. i tell my girl to pull off and park behind this old store. there's nothing for miles and this is not a residential area. if we lock the doors we'll be safe and can get some good rest. so she does. we pull up to the store and then cut around to get behind it.

lo and fucking behold! there's a damn acre of transfer trucks back there! i mean, tons of them! and none that can be seen from the highway. at first we don't know what to do, but then my girls spots a compact car sized spot between two trucks and drives us in. immediately we are filled with a sense of protection. she cuts the engine, we roll up the windows, lock the doors, and sleep.

blissfully.

when we wake at around 7 am, there are no trucks. there is nothing but dusty earth and forest. nothing. not even tire tracks. we give each other looks to make sure there is something wrong with this and that the trucks from last night weren't an illusion. then we say fuck it and get back on the road.

we arrive back at her place at 10am. that makes our trip a close to 24 hour horror story. 24 fucking hours. that's double what it took us before.

now that's a road trip!