Two Weeks in November, Episode I: The Phantom Hope
I know I've been away for a while, and I do apologize, but I swear this installment will be worth the wait.
Ever since I started grad school, the weekend of my birthday has corresponded with the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional organization for the study of religion in the world. The other grad students and I have made something of a tradition to road trip to the conference. We've been to Nashville, Denver, Toronto and now Atlanta. This is the story of one little mo's journey into the heart of Dixie.
Typically, I take a very active role in the planning of these trips, but this year I decided to be hands-off and let the new kids take care of the arrangements. That was mistake number one. The wankers decided that it would be great if we left at 4 AM so that we could avoid rush hour traffic in St. Louis. Now, I know, most persons don't like to do anything at 4 AM, but I REALLY don't like to do anything at 4 AM, especially when it means that I'll have to get up and have myself ready to go at 3:30 AM. If I'd attempted to go to sleep and then get up, it would have been hopeless. So, like the responsible chap I am, I decided to pull an all-nighter. So I did. I entertained myself through the packing process with my newly-arrived Battlestar Galactica DVD collection, and was actually good to go by 3:00.
The half hour between 3 and 3:30 was absolutely hellish. I'd sit on the couch. Then, I'd lie on the couch. Ultimately, I found myself sleeping on the couch, and I knew if I let that happen, there'd be no rousing me for either love or money, so I got up and paced about the apartment. Finally, 3:30 rolled around, and I figured my pain was nearly over. Such was not to be the case. 3:30 came and went with no sign of my ride, as did 3:40 and 3:50. By 3:55, I was tired, concerned, irritated and on the verge of becoming one of the most vicious queens in all of Christendom, so I resolved to call my erstwhile chauffeur, whom I shall refer to as The Rev (since she intends to study for Methodist ordination) and see what was going on. I got her answering machine, so I assumed that meant she was on her way. After another 15 minutes, The Rev called me back to inform me that it had been taking her longer to get ready than she had anticipated, and that she would be leaving her apartment in 10 minutes.
I figured that it would be wise to call the other two sets of travelers with whom we were supposed to rendezvous. As it turns out, nobody had anybody else's home or mobile telephone numbers. I have already mentioned that I had NOTHING to do with the planning of this affair, haven't I? So, we're cut-off from the other travelers, and we haven't even gotten going.
Finally, about 4:30, my ride shows at my apartment. After a quick packing job, we head off to retrieve one other fellow traveler, whom I shall refer to as D&D Guy (since he not only looks like a character you might see in a medieval themed adventure game, but enjoys playing them as well) and then we all finally reach the rendezvous 50 minutes late, which happens to be 20 minutes after the other crews have left. This really isn't as big of a problem as it might seem. I had both a ride and a place to stay since both of the rooms we had waiting for us in Atlanta had been reserved under the names of my two traveling companions. The bigger problem was for the other cars since none of them had a reservation. But we did get our hands on a mobile phone number for one of the other cars. Finally, we made it on the highway at 5:20 AM, nearly an hour-and-a-half after we had intended, and close to an hour behind our six classmates.
At this point, after nearly 24 hours of consciousness, I had officially become a vicious queen, so I decided to stretch my 6-foot frame across the back seat of a Toyota Corolla to get some sleep. And so I attempted to sleep, but I was very nearly rolled off the back seat by inertia several times since we had managed to arrive in St. Louis in the heart of rush hour. After braving the St. Louis highway system, I suspected that it would be reasonably safe to sleep through Illinois.
This seems to have been yet another mistake on my part. When next I began to awaken, I overheard D&D Guy ask The Rev, "are we in Missouri again?" My friends had been so involved in their conversation that both had missed the interchange between the two major highways we had to travel through Illinois. Still feeling a bit tired, and more than a little cranky, I decided that it was very important for me to be asleep through that conversation and the next 30 minutes, since I very likely would have said some very cruel things to persons whom I otherwise consider to be my friends. So I slept some more.
When next I woke and asked what state we were in now, the consensus reply was, "Confusion." While amused, I was not heartened. At what seemed like long last, we finally recrossed the Mississippi river (again), this time into Kentucky. We'd now lost another hour on the other cars and were a total of two hours behind.
The rest of the trip through Kentucky and Tennessee was largely uneventful. We hit Nashville just before rush hour, so we didn't have any trouble there. We neared Chattanooga toward the end of rush hour, close to 7:00 PM. Part way through downtown Chattanooga we struck a piece of debris on the roadway. There was some momentary clunking and chugging, but there was no pulling, so there seemed to be no great damage, if any at all. Just as we left Chattanooga (East Ridge, actually) and crossed out of Tennessee into Georgia (Ft. Oglethorpe, to be exact), the driver's front tire went flat. So, at 6:50 PM, on an eight-lane superhighway, with heavy traffic moving at speeds well over the legal limit, there was no chance in hell of safely changing the driver's front tire, so the motley trio of The Rev, D&D Guy and The Gay (it is an awfully big responsibility being the gay, but I can handle it) decided to take a walk to the nearest pay phone to call the insurance company to tow the car and save our butts.
When I'm a little more conscious, I'll fill y'all in on how we survived Chattanooga, and how I survived Thanksgiving with only one "when are you going to get your hair cut?" and a solitary "you've put on weight."
Ever since I started grad school, the weekend of my birthday has corresponded with the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional organization for the study of religion in the world. The other grad students and I have made something of a tradition to road trip to the conference. We've been to Nashville, Denver, Toronto and now Atlanta. This is the story of one little mo's journey into the heart of Dixie.
Typically, I take a very active role in the planning of these trips, but this year I decided to be hands-off and let the new kids take care of the arrangements. That was mistake number one. The wankers decided that it would be great if we left at 4 AM so that we could avoid rush hour traffic in St. Louis. Now, I know, most persons don't like to do anything at 4 AM, but I REALLY don't like to do anything at 4 AM, especially when it means that I'll have to get up and have myself ready to go at 3:30 AM. If I'd attempted to go to sleep and then get up, it would have been hopeless. So, like the responsible chap I am, I decided to pull an all-nighter. So I did. I entertained myself through the packing process with my newly-arrived Battlestar Galactica DVD collection, and was actually good to go by 3:00.
The half hour between 3 and 3:30 was absolutely hellish. I'd sit on the couch. Then, I'd lie on the couch. Ultimately, I found myself sleeping on the couch, and I knew if I let that happen, there'd be no rousing me for either love or money, so I got up and paced about the apartment. Finally, 3:30 rolled around, and I figured my pain was nearly over. Such was not to be the case. 3:30 came and went with no sign of my ride, as did 3:40 and 3:50. By 3:55, I was tired, concerned, irritated and on the verge of becoming one of the most vicious queens in all of Christendom, so I resolved to call my erstwhile chauffeur, whom I shall refer to as The Rev (since she intends to study for Methodist ordination) and see what was going on. I got her answering machine, so I assumed that meant she was on her way. After another 15 minutes, The Rev called me back to inform me that it had been taking her longer to get ready than she had anticipated, and that she would be leaving her apartment in 10 minutes.
I figured that it would be wise to call the other two sets of travelers with whom we were supposed to rendezvous. As it turns out, nobody had anybody else's home or mobile telephone numbers. I have already mentioned that I had NOTHING to do with the planning of this affair, haven't I? So, we're cut-off from the other travelers, and we haven't even gotten going.
Finally, about 4:30, my ride shows at my apartment. After a quick packing job, we head off to retrieve one other fellow traveler, whom I shall refer to as D&D Guy (since he not only looks like a character you might see in a medieval themed adventure game, but enjoys playing them as well) and then we all finally reach the rendezvous 50 minutes late, which happens to be 20 minutes after the other crews have left. This really isn't as big of a problem as it might seem. I had both a ride and a place to stay since both of the rooms we had waiting for us in Atlanta had been reserved under the names of my two traveling companions. The bigger problem was for the other cars since none of them had a reservation. But we did get our hands on a mobile phone number for one of the other cars. Finally, we made it on the highway at 5:20 AM, nearly an hour-and-a-half after we had intended, and close to an hour behind our six classmates.
At this point, after nearly 24 hours of consciousness, I had officially become a vicious queen, so I decided to stretch my 6-foot frame across the back seat of a Toyota Corolla to get some sleep. And so I attempted to sleep, but I was very nearly rolled off the back seat by inertia several times since we had managed to arrive in St. Louis in the heart of rush hour. After braving the St. Louis highway system, I suspected that it would be reasonably safe to sleep through Illinois.
This seems to have been yet another mistake on my part. When next I began to awaken, I overheard D&D Guy ask The Rev, "are we in Missouri again?" My friends had been so involved in their conversation that both had missed the interchange between the two major highways we had to travel through Illinois. Still feeling a bit tired, and more than a little cranky, I decided that it was very important for me to be asleep through that conversation and the next 30 minutes, since I very likely would have said some very cruel things to persons whom I otherwise consider to be my friends. So I slept some more.
When next I woke and asked what state we were in now, the consensus reply was, "Confusion." While amused, I was not heartened. At what seemed like long last, we finally recrossed the Mississippi river (again), this time into Kentucky. We'd now lost another hour on the other cars and were a total of two hours behind.
The rest of the trip through Kentucky and Tennessee was largely uneventful. We hit Nashville just before rush hour, so we didn't have any trouble there. We neared Chattanooga toward the end of rush hour, close to 7:00 PM. Part way through downtown Chattanooga we struck a piece of debris on the roadway. There was some momentary clunking and chugging, but there was no pulling, so there seemed to be no great damage, if any at all. Just as we left Chattanooga (East Ridge, actually) and crossed out of Tennessee into Georgia (Ft. Oglethorpe, to be exact), the driver's front tire went flat. So, at 6:50 PM, on an eight-lane superhighway, with heavy traffic moving at speeds well over the legal limit, there was no chance in hell of safely changing the driver's front tire, so the motley trio of The Rev, D&D Guy and The Gay (it is an awfully big responsibility being the gay, but I can handle it) decided to take a walk to the nearest pay phone to call the insurance company to tow the car and save our butts.
When I'm a little more conscious, I'll fill y'all in on how we survived Chattanooga, and how I survived Thanksgiving with only one "when are you going to get your hair cut?" and a solitary "you've put on weight."
posted by Master of Disaster @ 12/02/2003 12:55:00 AM
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