So over Labor Day weekend I took a road trip with my friends Elle, Starcher, and Melissa to Wake Forest, North Carolina. Several of UM’s best alumni, including my awesome sister, attend grad school at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. We planned on leaving Mobile around noon on Friday, which worked out just fine. I think we pulled off campus around 12:20. Not bad. The first few hours of the drive were lovely. Melissa, one of the coolest people I know (by the way, she and Elle LOVE McDonald’s Double Cheeseburgers. When I found that out, I knew that those girls were awesome) drove all the way to Atlanta. We were in her car, so it only made sense to let her drive first. By the way, her car is awesome.
Well Atlanta, as many of you know, is a rather large city with a high volume of vehicles. That fact makes rush hour quite the endeavor, as we discovered that day. I’m talking bumper to bumper traffic all the way through the city. We stayed in that for about 45 minutes or so (maybe longer), and then stopped to get gas. I took the proverbial wheel at that point, and slowly (literally) eased my way back onto the interstate. Traffic had not gotten any better. In fact, it may have been worse by that point. I’m not really sure. What I do know is that one of our passengers began to experience intense motion sickness. That, coupled with a bad headache, caused a less than desired reaction in her stomach. We were only going about 20 miles per hour at this point, so she leaned out the window and ‘coughed’. All I heard was a cough anyway. I thought to myself, “I’m glad she didn’t throw up.” Well, as it turns out, when some people cough, they are actually throwing up. She came back into the car and said, “Yeah, it’s all over the side of the car.”
Needless to say, we took the next exit. We found a Chick-fil-a and pulled in. Three of us grabbed dinner. One of us did not. We sat there in that booth and discussed various remedies for car sickness. I told the tale of ginger snaps being a good thing to munch on in such a case. The girls thought that sounded ridiculous, but seriously, people; it works. Anyway, Melissa and I left the sickly passenger with the other non sickly passenger at the restaurant and we went to find a gas station which a) sold Dramamine, and b) had a car wash. We pulled out Elle’s awesome TomTom and found the closest gas station. Sure enough they had both. We got the medicine, went to the register to pay for it/a car wash, and were tempted to pay for ‘The Works’. Although that particular variety of car wash generally runs $8, we qualified for a discount making it cost only $7. In the end, we went with the ‘Economy Special’, which did the job. As we pulled through that car wash, I couldn’t help but think about the terrifying scene I witnessed in the latest ‘Final Destination’ movie trailer. I told Melissa about the trailer. I think it weirded her out.
Anyway, we eventually found our way back to Chick-fil-a. The sick one was asleep in the booth. The other sat there under the sign for the Winshape Foundation. 15 minutes or so later we were back on the road. By then, the traffic was mostly nonexistent compared to what we had been experiencing. So after what had seemed like 5 hours in Atlanta, we finally got out. And, as it turns out, a lack of rush hour Atlanta traffic, coupled with Dramamine, makes sick people well. The only crazy things that happened the rest of the trip were the obscenely slow speed limits of the Carolinas. To me, when you are going 9 over and you aren’t clearing 70, there’s a problem. Nonetheless, we reached Wake Forest at about 2 in the morning.
The rest of the weekend was amazing, and I will tell you all about it later. God bless!
*By the way, a special ‘thanks’ goes out to my big sister, Lori, for her input on this post.
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