Em and I are on the road following bagels, coffee, and a rather dodgy night's sleep; although the 15 hours on the road left both of us exhausted, I was battling a really mild food poisoning that I can only assume came from the cuisine at Country Cookin', and a cough that made me sound like an old man with black lung. I slept fitfully until around 2:30 am when Emily woke up eeryone in the apartment with one of those bloodcurdling screams.* Our host's resident dog, Reynolds, had taken an interest in MJ the cat immediately upon our arrival, and waited until the middle of the night to make his move. We don't know what happened, exactly, because both animals were fine, but MJ apparently made a noise like she was dying.
In any case, we both found ourselves awake inexplicably early--before 7--and so now are headed joyfully towards Memphis.
When we made this trip in five days last summer, across the upper part of the nation, we really felt like we were booking it. Given the terminal velocity of the White Whale,¹ I think we were. But we're in a Honda right now, and we can easily cover several hundred miles more a day than was possible in the Whale. When I calculated our original route in terms of calendar days a little bit ago, I saw that our original plan would have us in the Bay Area by Tuesday. It's unlikely that we will press forward that fast, if only because there are places in this part of the country called "Loretta Lynn's Dude Ranch", and there are hotels with resident Ducks on Parade, and 60-foot tall neon soda bottles, and god only knows how many of the world's largest inanimate objects. There are entirely too many distractions to blast through this.
Notes:
* I learned last night why the term "bloodcurdling" is less of a cliche and more of a precise and cogent description of what happens when one wakes up in abject terror.
¹ May that beast be prospering, wherever it is right now.
11:40 pm. Oklahoma City, OK.
Today found us in Memphis, eating southern delicacies like fried green tomatoes and gator bites, drinking To-Go beers on Beale Street and being obviously from out of town as we debated whether it was acceptable to walk on other streets with open containers, and wandering the lobby of a hotel most famous for the ducks that walk through the lobby every single day (see above).
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| Drinking beer in the open street? We're a little unsure. |
It found us driving through Arkansas, which is one of the most boring states I've ever had the fortune to drive through--and that includes Wyoming, the land of nothingness and despair.*
Finally, it found us in Oklahoma City before 9pm, in high spirits and looking forward to a hotel room and some dinner. An hour and a half later, we found the only hotel with any available rooms in the area: the Four Points Sheraton across the street from the Will Rogers International Airport. Our harried faces¹ earned us a double discount from the front desk agent, and we are now living (or sleeping, at least) in the lap of luxury.
It turns out that our lesson of last summer, to never trust Tom Tom's navigational technology in tense situations, hadn't been fully learned, but definitely held true. After being turned away from several hotels along the highway, I turned to the GPS for aid, and it promptly directed us to the section of the city in which there only stood one thriving business per block, and only three types of businesses in total: fast food restaurants, pawn shops, and check cashing establishments. It made the Bronx look like a cultural metropolis.
We gave up, and used our wits rather than the little robot. That took us to the downtown area, where the architecture was oversized, and the hotels overpriced. They were also full.
But we have a room now, and are curled up in bed with The Nanny. Tomorrow, we'll do it all again, perhaps even better.
Notes:
* This claim applies only to parts of the mentioned states easily visible from the highway, of course.
¹ And the fact that our agent may very well have been high as shit.
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