Driving South-Day 2

Upon waking up alive in Indianapolis, I decided to chance the shower. And I would have right away, were it not for the lack of towels. I don't just mean a bath towel, I mean a lack of any linens what so ever. Upon asking about it, I had to go to the office to be greeted by someone who was "busy". It sure was nice of him to take time away from his personal phone call to get me some.

We decided to stop at the Waffle House before leaving. At this point I tried grits (not a fan), used the most disgusting restroom imaginable, save a men's room, and met a guy from Winnipeg. Just when I think I'm the one from the furthest north....

We were finally going to take off at that point, but had to get gas. Now I didn't mention this in the last entry, but this was not as simple as it would seem. Apparently, there's this thing called a vapor lock in the Uhaul Will was driving. When we stopped the first time, we thought it was the pump that we were at. But when the ex-priest gas station attendant from New York came and helped us, he informed us that it would be like this the entire trip. And it was. Our goal was to find a Speedway at any time possible, as he assured us they had the fix for it on their pumps. This proved to be a false assumption, but we had perpetual hope. So we drove out of our way through neighborhoods that looked much like Mayberry. And there was still a 20 minute fill up awaiting us.

Needless to say, the trip began late again that day, which led to the events that occurred later. We took off ready to fly and found that we managed to hit all the bad weather possible. Before we did though, we stopped to fix the...er...problem. About two hours after crossing the Kentucky border, I couldn't help but notice something flying in the wind on the side of the Uhaul:

I left that pretty big because if you look close enough on the left side, you can just make out the image of it flying. See? Between the yellow line and the truck...

That stop to fix it led me to this gem, which I hope never to see again.


Oh, Kentucky, you never disappoint. Another thing the good old state of KY is getting to be well known to me for is bad, bad weather. Appropriately enough, we started to get rain. Heavy rain. Accompanied by thunder and lightning of pretty mass proportions. And then we tuned in to the local stations and found that that rain was actually a massive thunderstorm warning, a flash flood watch, a tornado watch (in some places a warning as one had touched down a few miles from where we needed to go) and hail warning.

Now I'm generally not a negative person, but this pretty much covers all the bad weather possible at this time of year. I couldn't help but refer back to the dramatic scene of the ice storm in exactly the same area of Kentucky none the less when we were assessing our survival goods. I was starting to feel this panic all over again. Especially since we had a large Uhaul with us. When the hail began, I basically started to get mad. At that point I decided: "I hate Kentucky, and Kentucky hates me." End of story.

So we pressed on, and after the hail and not having to hide under the overpasses as other cars were doing, we got the heck out of KY and hit up Buddy's BBQ in Tennessee one more time.

After this, it was a bit of a blur as I was very tired and just wanted to get there. The darkness was setting in, I had discovered somewhere along the way that there is no bank at which I can cash a check in all of South Carolina, and we had passed about 20 semis in the mountains while trapped between this wall of semis and a concrete road divider. My hell had happened. I can't say I was as exhausted as the last trip, but it was coming close.