David's Blog

The Trip Back after Spring Break

I drove back to Gainesville last night. It was the worst trip back ever.

First, I started off a little before nine at night. I stopped off at Publix to grab a sub for Joy and I to split and a car charger for her cell phone. The car chargers weren't compatible with Joy's phone and when I went to get the sub there were three people at the deli, and none of them seemed interested in helping me. That happens a lot when I go to the Publix deli, but this time I decided to just walk out, because there was only one sub left and it looked kind of stale.

So, I leave Publix and start driving to meet Joy at exit 161 as planned. She wasn't there though, and when I called her she said she went on to exit 170 to get Taco Bell. So, I get back on the Interstate and drive nine miles to that Taco Bell. I don't find Joy though, because she is at the RaceTrac trying to pick out a car charger. I go there and we pick out one that isn't compatible, but she was willing to try it anyway, because it looked like it should work anyway.

We then go to Taco Bell. She doesn't get anything to eat, which really confused me, because she had changed the meeting place for Taco Bell. When I find her finally -- sitting in the parking lot right next to the drive thru entrance -- she is upset. The charger isn't working.

We decide to leave anyway, and I start to eat my food. She pulls up to me right as I am biting into my bean burrito and honks at me. Ahhhhhh!! What does she want!?! She motions that her charger is working, so I give her a thumbs up and we move on.

Later on she calls me on my cell phone to tell me that her charger is working. That's cool, but the one I got for my birthday at RadioShack is not working. My phone is running out of power. So the conversation is pretty brief.

A little while later we run into this wall of stopped cars. We're essentially stopped, but we move forward about two car lengths every minute or so, so I can't just leave my car in park and turn it off to play my GameBoy Advance SP.
Joy is in front of me, but there is a green Ford Explorer in between us. It has a huge CB radio antenna sticking out of it. I park my car after we move forward a bit, run up to Joy's car, knock on her window and talk to her for a bit. I scared her pretty badly by doing that. One of the things I tell her is that my cell phone battery is close to dead so she needs to answer my beeps when I try to beep in.
A few minutes later, a huge Dodge Ram 2500 decides to do a little off roading. It flicks on some lights and heads through this passageway through the forested median. A black BMW wanted to follow him and tried to get in front of me to do so. We didn't realize it at first, but then Joy talked to him and told him to go ahead in front of her. He ended up going through the trail too, so I told Joy that her car would be able to make it as well. She was a little scared to try it, but after some enouragement she drove through with me behind her in my Jeep.

We got back onto the Interstate and headed south for two miles before getting off at an exit and driving north on US 41. We went along 41 for a while and finally I decided to give the Interstate another try. I wanted to talk to Joy first though to let her know what was going on. She was on the phone though and not answering my beeps again. So I had to resort to swerving around on a six lane road to get her attention. Finally we pulled off at a strip-mall and talked. Then I decided to go in to a Chinese restaurant to charge my cell phone for a while.

We went in and told the lady working there what happened to us. I told Joy that we should sit down and order something while we were waiting, because they were being pretty nice to us. We stayed there for 45 minutes and each ordered our own large meals and had them in to-go boxes. I left a $10 tip and thanked the lady profusely, because we were there after close.

Back onto the Interstate...

We were still south of Tampa, but getting closer when Joy decides she is really tired. This happened right after I told her that I called my Dad and he said that we could stop at a hotel if we needed to do so. That made me pretty upset, becuase I was feeling pretty certain that she was wanting to just call it a night and get a hotel. I didn't really want to do this at all though. So, I got all upset. I ranted and raved and I told her to just drink some Amp and buck up for another hour and fourty-five minutes of driving.

Conflict ensued. We got gas, a can of Amp and then I had Joy walk around and gave her a pep talk. Then we took off pretty upset with each other and went well over 80 MPH all the way to... the rest area before Gainesville and Ocala.

That is where we stopped after Joy called me again to say she was tired again. I told her it was fine to just stop at the rest area. We'd wait there until she was less tired or she could park next to the Security Gaurd's truck and sleep in her car. I told her that I'd probably drive on though, because we were only like 37 miles away, and at the rate we'd been going that would take a little over a half an hour.

We stayed at the rest area for a while and talked, and got into a lot better moods. Up til that point we were both frustrated, tired, upset, and acting like jerks to each other. (I hope I made it clear in my story that -- at the very least -- I was being a jerk.) After making up a bit and having developed a plan for Joy to stay awake for another thirty minutes we took off and drove to her dorm. I figured that once we got inot Paine's Prairie (sp?) she'd be so excited that staying awake would no longer be an issue. This turned out to be the case.

Once we got to Joy's Apt/Dorm we had one last issue. Her dorm was locked, no one was home, and she didn't have her key. This sucked, because we had lugged a bunch of stuff up the stairs by the time this was all realized and communicated to me. Luckilty, the Key was with Jessica who lives on the other side of the residence area. So, I called her, woke her up and ran back with the key in the cold. We had made it! What a relief.

What a stressful trip that was.

Posted by David at March 15, 2004 12:29 AM