Road Trip
Posted by Nate Murphy
We knew it from the start that the best part of the whole thing would be the drive. The whole trip was really a shot in the dark anyway. The original plan was to make a straight twenty-eight hour high speed burn to Boulder, Colorado; making it there less than an hour before the end of St. Patrick's Day. But a few days before departure I found out that in March the weather in Boulder sucks. No, we were heading South. We'd been to Savannah once before but so much has happened since then. We were willing to give it another try. Why not?
Among the turbulence of mid-semester, I had been making preparations all week: AAA road maps, sandwiches so we wouldn't have to stop, a two man tent, some drugs, and enough booze to kill a small horse. After I left my last class about an hour early, I packed the Red Rocket, and headed to Hopkinton where I would be meeting Dube. We transferred his things into the car, threw his parents canoe on top, and hit the road. Though it was less than aerodynamic, that canoe was a blessing in disguise. We didn't get pulled over once on the whole trip. Something about having a giant red canoe on top of your ride must lets the cops know that you are not to be disturbed; even if you are clipping by at eighty miles an hour with Mass. plates.
Eight thirty and we were on the road. The first part of a long drive is always easy. There is some sort of adrenaline that just keeps you going without having to question your decision to drive one thousand miles through the middle of the night on about five hours of sleep. It was midnight on the Garden State Parkway so we both cracked open a Guinness to celebrate the arrival of St. Patty's Day. I have yet to travel a more terrible stretch of road than the Jersey highway at night. It had only been the 17th for thirty minutes and there were already cars that were narrowly avoiding the median concrete barriers. I trekked on, Dub was finally getting some sleep, but fatigue was taking its toll. I was past the Mason-Dixon line, and that was far enough for me. I pulled off of I-95 just short of D.C. and found an empty stadium parking lot where we could switch. Dube was exhausted after a long week of work, but he chugged two Red Bull Lights (which he claimed had more crack to make up for the lack of sugar) and he took the wheel.
I was in the back seat, drifting in and out of a troubled sleep while Dube was driveling the Rocket down highway for the first time, at speed, through the God-awful state of Virginia. While I was in and out, feeling every movement of the wheel, Dube was raving some untold story into his voice recorder. Stopping to fill up the tank, I decided it was time to give up sleep and hop back in the front. I'd been in the back for about two or three hours, it as light already, and I had all the sleep I would need.
It was time to address the fact that we were heading to Savannah, Georgia, on a holiday Friday, without knowing a single person to call and having absolutely no solid plans on where we were going to spend the night. I started going through the hotels in the AAA guide book, but every hotel within 20 miles of Savannah was full to the hilt except one, and they were only accepting walk-ins. Two hours further down the road we stopped for quick urine break and I did the only appropriate think of at the time, which was purchasing a tin of Copenhagen. I was behind the wheel for the home stretch now. Something like three-hundred miles to go and a desperate race to get to that hotel before we were shit out of luck.
As it turned out the race wasn't as important at a chance to purchase bulk tobacco products at a discount price. JR's was advertising cheap cigars and tobacco on huge billboards for at least forty miles of the South Carolina highway. We were in dire need of that hotel room and it was a distinct possibility that we could lose it at the last possible moment if we delayed any longer than necessary, but what's the point of a road trip through the South if you aren't going to indulge a little? We emerged from JR's with enough cigars and pipe tobacco to give cancer to a small third world country. On the road again I made it a point to drive with a sense of urgency.
I can tell you one thing right now. If you haven't packed a hearty sized lip of Copenhagen and smoked a Marlboro red cigarette at the same time, you're just letting the best in life pass you by. The only thing was after Dube took his lip, I was packing the can and the top came off, spraying shredded tobacco all over the both of us. I put what was left in the tin in my mouth along with whatever I could pick up off the seat, lit my red, and decided that this was the appropriate time to bring up the Jim Beam handle up to the front seat. Less than one hundred miles to go, no doubt the most treacherous part of the journey.
Well, we made it into Georgia and we got the hotel room without any trouble. We changed and started drinking while we figured out a way to get a shuttle into town. The logical thing of course, being that it was only two o'clock, would have been to take a nap. Not us, we had a buzz on before we even hit the streets. Savannah is a beautiful town, but on St. Patty's Day, it turns ugly. This is where Southern hospitality is at its worst, in an overcrowded town on a holiday. It didn't take us long to find out that most of the locals wanted nothing to do with us, and that anybody that could, got out of town for the weekend. Most of the people drunkenly roaming the streets were from other parts, Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville; and they wanted nothing to do with two drunken Yankees like us. The best thing about the place was that once you made it into a bar for a drink, they gave it to you in a plastic cup and you get out of the place just as fast as you could and back out onto the street.
I guess it didn't help that we were both running on about two hours of sleep, no-doze, and beer, but we made the best of things. I gave a homeless veteran a dollar in exchange for a green rose made from a folded palm. With hopes of meeting an amazing woman I could give it to, I roamed the streets. Instead I ended up winning a string of mardi gras beads by showing a foreign girl my ass. As we faded, the night took a turn towards weird. We went the oposite way and did a long loop through what appeared in the dark to be Savanna's ghetto. It was only something like nine o'clock and we were talking about heading back to the hotel, but the loop brought us right to the place we had been avoiding, River Street. River Street is the epicenter of the shit show that become Savannah on St. Patty's Day weekend. It's a crowded fat-boys dream, crawling with half-wits and simpletons. There are overpriced restaurants across from a vast sea of Porto-johns located right next to drunken women riding on mechanical bulls and jumping on huge trampolines. It was a terrible spectacle, some kind of corporate merger or an Irish holiday and Southern hospitality gone wrong. But we marched through it as a finale to our night in Savannah.
We finally made it out, and I realized that I still needed to give away my veterans rose. I approached a random, beautiful woman, and offered her the green palm rose, but when I told her it was given to me by a homeless veteran she turned it down in horror. Outraged, Dube and I roamed the streets confronting everyone we met with this terrible atrocity. "Can you believe that she wouldn't take the rose that was made by a homeless veteran?" Well, we met one woman who couldn't believe it. She was as bewildered as we were that any girl could refuse a veterans rose. So she took my rose, and with a smile kissed my cheek. She then caught up with her friends and they made their way down the hill toward River Street. The night was over. We were through. Back to the Hotel.
After almost two hours or waiting for the shuttle, we made it back to the room around midnight, grumpy and tired. St. Patrick's Day in Savannah. I felt like I was coming down with a fever and Dube's mood was just short of volatile. But then again, we knew from the start that the best part of the thing was going to be the drive. There was still tomorrow, and don't forget, we still had that God-damn canoe to deal with!
We knew it from the start that the best part of the whole thing would be the drive. The whole trip was really a shot in the dark anyway. The original plan was to make a straight twenty-eight hour high speed burn to Boulder, Colorado; making it there less than an hour before the end of St. Patrick's Day. But a few days before departure I found out that in March the weather in Boulder sucks. No, we were heading South. We'd been to Savannah once before but so much has happened since then. We were willing to give it another try. Why not?
Among the turbulence of mid-semester, I had been making preparations all week: AAA road maps, sandwiches so we wouldn't have to stop, a two man tent, some drugs, and enough booze to kill a small horse. After I left my last class about an hour early, I packed the Red Rocket, and headed to Hopkinton where I would be meeting Dube. We transferred his things into the car, threw his parents canoe on top, and hit the road. Though it was less than aerodynamic, that canoe was a blessing in disguise. We didn't get pulled over once on the whole trip. Something about having a giant red canoe on top of your ride must lets the cops know that you are not to be disturbed; even if you are clipping by at eighty miles an hour with Mass. plates.
Eight thirty and we were on the road. The first part of a long drive is always easy. There is some sort of adrenaline that just keeps you going without having to question your decision to drive one thousand miles through the middle of the night on about five hours of sleep. It was midnight on the Garden State Parkway so we both cracked open a Guinness to celebrate the arrival of St. Patty's Day. I have yet to travel a more terrible stretch of road than the Jersey highway at night. It had only been the 17th for thirty minutes and there were already cars that were narrowly avoiding the median concrete barriers. I trekked on, Dub was finally getting some sleep, but fatigue was taking its toll. I was past the Mason-Dixon line, and that was far enough for me. I pulled off of I-95 just short of D.C. and found an empty stadium parking lot where we could switch. Dube was exhausted after a long week of work, but he chugged two Red Bull Lights (which he claimed had more crack to make up for the lack of sugar) and he took the wheel.
I was in the back seat, drifting in and out of a troubled sleep while Dube was driveling the Rocket down highway for the first time, at speed, through the God-awful state of Virginia. While I was in and out, feeling every movement of the wheel, Dube was raving some untold story into his voice recorder. Stopping to fill up the tank, I decided it was time to give up sleep and hop back in the front. I'd been in the back for about two or three hours, it as light already, and I had all the sleep I would need.
It was time to address the fact that we were heading to Savannah, Georgia, on a holiday Friday, without knowing a single person to call and having absolutely no solid plans on where we were going to spend the night. I started going through the hotels in the AAA guide book, but every hotel within 20 miles of Savannah was full to the hilt except one, and they were only accepting walk-ins. Two hours further down the road we stopped for quick urine break and I did the only appropriate think of at the time, which was purchasing a tin of Copenhagen. I was behind the wheel for the home stretch now. Something like three-hundred miles to go and a desperate race to get to that hotel before we were shit out of luck.
As it turned out the race wasn't as important at a chance to purchase bulk tobacco products at a discount price. JR's was advertising cheap cigars and tobacco on huge billboards for at least forty miles of the South Carolina highway. We were in dire need of that hotel room and it was a distinct possibility that we could lose it at the last possible moment if we delayed any longer than necessary, but what's the point of a road trip through the South if you aren't going to indulge a little? We emerged from JR's with enough cigars and pipe tobacco to give cancer to a small third world country. On the road again I made it a point to drive with a sense of urgency.
I can tell you one thing right now. If you haven't packed a hearty sized lip of Copenhagen and smoked a Marlboro red cigarette at the same time, you're just letting the best in life pass you by. The only thing was after Dube took his lip, I was packing the can and the top came off, spraying shredded tobacco all over the both of us. I put what was left in the tin in my mouth along with whatever I could pick up off the seat, lit my red, and decided that this was the appropriate time to bring up the Jim Beam handle up to the front seat. Less than one hundred miles to go, no doubt the most treacherous part of the journey.
Well, we made it into Georgia and we got the hotel room without any trouble. We changed and started drinking while we figured out a way to get a shuttle into town. The logical thing of course, being that it was only two o'clock, would have been to take a nap. Not us, we had a buzz on before we even hit the streets. Savannah is a beautiful town, but on St. Patty's Day, it turns ugly. This is where Southern hospitality is at its worst, in an overcrowded town on a holiday. It didn't take us long to find out that most of the locals wanted nothing to do with us, and that anybody that could, got out of town for the weekend. Most of the people drunkenly roaming the streets were from other parts, Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville; and they wanted nothing to do with two drunken Yankees like us. The best thing about the place was that once you made it into a bar for a drink, they gave it to you in a plastic cup and you get out of the place just as fast as you could and back out onto the street.
I guess it didn't help that we were both running on about two hours of sleep, no-doze, and beer, but we made the best of things. I gave a homeless veteran a dollar in exchange for a green rose made from a folded palm. With hopes of meeting an amazing woman I could give it to, I roamed the streets. Instead I ended up winning a string of mardi gras beads by showing a foreign girl my ass. As we faded, the night took a turn towards weird. We went the oposite way and did a long loop through what appeared in the dark to be Savanna's ghetto. It was only something like nine o'clock and we were talking about heading back to the hotel, but the loop brought us right to the place we had been avoiding, River Street. River Street is the epicenter of the shit show that become Savannah on St. Patty's Day weekend. It's a crowded fat-boys dream, crawling with half-wits and simpletons. There are overpriced restaurants across from a vast sea of Porto-johns located right next to drunken women riding on mechanical bulls and jumping on huge trampolines. It was a terrible spectacle, some kind of corporate merger or an Irish holiday and Southern hospitality gone wrong. But we marched through it as a finale to our night in Savannah.
We finally made it out, and I realized that I still needed to give away my veterans rose. I approached a random, beautiful woman, and offered her the green palm rose, but when I told her it was given to me by a homeless veteran she turned it down in horror. Outraged, Dube and I roamed the streets confronting everyone we met with this terrible atrocity. "Can you believe that she wouldn't take the rose that was made by a homeless veteran?" Well, we met one woman who couldn't believe it. She was as bewildered as we were that any girl could refuse a veterans rose. So she took my rose, and with a smile kissed my cheek. She then caught up with her friends and they made their way down the hill toward River Street. The night was over. We were through. Back to the Hotel.
After almost two hours or waiting for the shuttle, we made it back to the room around midnight, grumpy and tired. St. Patrick's Day in Savannah. I felt like I was coming down with a fever and Dube's mood was just short of volatile. But then again, we knew from the start that the best part of the thing was going to be the drive. There was still tomorrow, and don't forget, we still had that God-damn canoe to deal with!
This entry was posted by Ben Myers, on
Wednesday, April 05, 2006.
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