Saturday, March 14, 2009

"Come on, trip" PT. 1

At the moment I'm preparing myself to attempt to convert the extensive history the past weeks into an accurate slur of comprehensible prose.  It may be difficult.  It may be time consuming.  It will be worth it.

I'll begin my tale with Spring Break '09.  As opposed to filling the trite role of the alcohol-enamored, tan-seeking, "hook-up"-yearning college student, Chops, Charlie, and I decided to take a loosely-planned road trip to Nashville, TN, Athens, GA, and Atlanta, GA.  My journey to Spring Break began at 5:30 am at the surreal ringing of my cellular alarm.  Who? What? WHY?!  Alas, I remembered.  I must be up and ready to go by 6:30 am or so to pick up Charlie and Chops in their corresponding towns, in order that we could be on our way to southern hospitality.  As planned, I got dressed, packed the car, and was off to the highway at a decent time.  However, on my journey to Charlie in Bath, MI, I was confused by Jill's [American accent of GPS] quite unusual directions.  However, as humans generally falsely assume, I believed Jill knew something I didn't.  I took that exit 62 in the middle of nowhere, and found myself on a long stretch of road leading to seemingly nothing.  Suddenly, Jill alerts me I must turn left onto Clark Road.  "What road?!" I asked myself.  The ground was freshly glistening with several layers of snow, so I believed I simply couldn't see the dirt path underneath the sheets of ice.  Turning left onto...nothing, I began to panic.  I did not know what I was driving on.  What is a lake?  Rows of crops?  I couldn't handle the anxiety anymore, and I swiftly turned the car around.  Frantically, I called Charlie asking "Where am I!  What's going on?  Do you have this and that street by you?"  "Umm..no," Charlie replied, "Where the fuck are you?"  With some help from Charlie I got back on the highway and at last, I was on the right path to success.  After semi-seamlessly picking up Charlie and then Chops, then changing GSP to Karen [Australian accented hottie] the road trip finally began.

The drive to Nashville was relatively static, considering Ohio is officially the worst state to drive through.  I have never seen such a vastness of grey, unappealing, bullshit.  Sorry, Ohio, it's difficult to respect you.  After driving for 5 hours, I decided to attempt to take a much needed nap, in order to simply survive the rest of the day.  My slumber felt hazy as I occasionally woke up to "I LOVE THIS PART! [followed by steering wheel drumming]," "Look at the house on that hill,"  and "Shut your fucking Aussie mouth, Karen."  About thirty minutes away from Nashville I decided to awake from the dead [won't be the first undead reference] and join the three-fold collaboration.  Once we turned on that Dr. DB Todd Jr. Boulevard [hilarious in an Australian accent] we saw the Music City Hostel, our home away from home for a night.  

We pulled into the mini-parking lot and was greeted by Hope, the owner of the hostel.  She gave us some paperwork, and kindly escorted us to our room.  "One question though," she asked, "what color is your car?"  "Black," I said, then realized the car was so enveloped by layers of dust and dirt, the color was simply incomprehensible [we spent the rest of the time in Nashville with the dirtiest car in Tennessee].  Once we unpacked a little, we entered the common room of the hostel and into a living stereotype.  An attractive Australian was playing "Hotel California" with the help of his acoustic guitar.  I wanted to ask him, "Do you know Karen?  She's good at directions," but I decided against it.  

Next, we walked to downtown honkey tonk Nashville to discover nothing was open, all of the decent places were 21+, it was semi-cold, and we were hungry.  After some Mexican food and souvenir shopping, we decided to call it a night.  Back at the hostel we chatted, ate taffy, and slumbered awaiting the next day.

Once we woke up and got our asses out of bed, we made a pit stop at Krispy Kreme's and walked around the Vanderbilt University area.  One shop, named Pangaea, had many cool imported items that Charlie, Chops, and I drooled over.  I settled on three Frida coasters and a Frida ring for Charlie [which looks beautiful on her].  Then, it was off to Athens, GA, where many many interesting events took place.