On the Road: Day Two...

Day Two:

Day two started out as early as Day One. I just had to see the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean… It was on my list and this might have been the last chance (for a long while at least) to see this… The Boyfriend was a great sport about the whole thing… I prodded him awake and climbed into fresh clothes. Good thing that I remembered to put on a sweatshirt as it was cold… And windy… And the sun was rising… So we hurried to the beach… Just in time…

It was spectacular! It was more than what I had thought it would be. It was beyond list worthy… It was certainly better than the sunsets over the Pacific Ocean… And I am sooo glad that we did it. The photos turned out great… And they accurately show how tired we both are… But the colors of the sky and glow of the sun as it rose higher and higher… Awesome! The Boyfriend walked in the water so that he could say that he went from one ocean to the other. I stuck a finger in, as I did not wish to get wet, or become any colder than I already was… But I did touch the water… Just in case… (You never know when, or if, you will return to a place… You know? So I did… Just in case…)

And then the drive was on again…

I drove for a part of it… Much better than trying to go through New York (The Bronx, but it was more than enough of New York driving for me…) The drive was long…

We stopped for breakfast in Virginia. I tried grits for the first time. The waiter was wonderful. Soft accent and very helpful as to how he ate his grits. Butter and touch of salt, which as good. I tried them with strawberries, not bad, fried apples, quite good, with a bit of bacon, just okay, and gravy, not recommended… Then it was back on the road.

A note for those from Tennessee… I am sorry if I offend anyone here. But…

Tennessee drivers are the worst! (Not like L.A. or New York… Not that kind of rude and aggressive driving here… No… This was different and worse…) Now I realize that we were in a vehicle with California plates, and that no one seems to like Californians much. Especially when we are on the road. But… I noticed that this particular driving trait was done by just about everyone on the road, to just about everyone else on the road… And even to the truckers… And when I tell you what this trait is, you too will be a tad surprised at the danger of the habit…

So it seems that the drivers of Tennessee have this wonderful (Note the sarcasm here…) trait of driving in a lane next to another vehicle and then darting in front of the other vehicle with mere inches to spare. They do not speed up once they have acquired this new position in front of the other vehicle, they do not allow for more room. It is rather as if they are daring the vehicle that they have just cut off to rear-end them. They do this not just to pass, they seem to do this just for fun, or perhaps to pass the time. They also do this regularly when there is no one in front of them. So it is not as if they are impatient. They are just dangerously rude. It reminded me of that little pocket game that has 8 tiles that are supposed to be slipped about a space made for 9 tiles to form a picture. Zip, slip, zip, slip, move car here, zip car there… It was awful! If you are nuts enough to drive in Tennessee, consider yourself warned… They even do this to the huge truckers… Slipping in front of the cab with scant inches between bumpers and then the poor truck has to whatever he can to insure that he does not hit the vehicle that is suddenly in front of him for no apparent reason… All I can say is that while I do not suffer from road rage, it was more than enough for me to stick out my tongue to those nasty drivers… (Which is what the Boyfriend discovered when he woke up in the middle of my maneuvering through the mess of the Tennessee highway… Tongue sticking out from time to time and the occasional Grrr escaping my lips…)

We stopped in Chattanooga (At least I think it was Chattanooga) for the night. We had a small sampling of roadside motels to choose from. I vetoed one for “bad vibes” and agreed to one that seemed as good as the others… We were a little surprised by the room… (Actually we were a lot surprised by the room, but were too exhausted to do anything about it other than pray that the blood stains were not fresh, that the cigarette burns would not spark to life, that the hot water would hold out, and that we would not catch some horrible disease while sleeping…) The vehicle was fine, no one tampered with it. The motel was quiet. We must have been the nosiest folks in the place. And the even bigger surprise came the next morning when we realized that we had both slept like the dead. (Better to sleep like the dead than to be among the dead…) While I would not choose to revisit this… motel… again, it was far better than the… motel… that I stayed at in Gila Bend last year. (Now that was a scary place. Bullet hole in the bathroom wall from the outside that looked right into the bathroom and straight onto the bed… I refer to that place as the Bates Motel… And if you had met the creepy guy at the front desk, if he had leered at you before selecting that particular key to that particular room, you would call it that too… Needless to say, I slept with one eye open and the door to the bathroom shut.)