The Long Drive

Friday I drove to Atlanta and back.

I'm ambivalent about driving versus riding on long car trips. I honestly wish I could do both.

The driving part requires me to be alert and keeps me busy at doing something, and it is easy enough to break the monotony with some news or good programming (NPR is my best friend). And when someone else is in the car, it's easy enough to talk to them. But after a while it can still get tedious.

While riding, I'm limited to sedentary activities, sedentary in the mental sense. Reading, playing a handheld game, and doing crossword puzzles are fine, but to do only that for hours and hours upon end gets me bored and more importantly makes me drowsy. And when I get drowsy on car trips, it's very difficult to get me to sleep. (Whenever I've slept on car trips, it's because I was already exhausted before I got in the car.) And yes, you can talk to the driver or other people, but on a particularly long car trip, it's likely you aren't going to constantly talk. Jaws and vocal cords need breaks, if the conversation never does.

In this case, I chose to drive the entire way since it was the simpler solution. I'm carrying a load of stuff to Atlanta. Leslie is carrying herself and about six empty folded boxes. We will meet in Chattanooga and carpool down. The solution presents itself.

I leave just before 6 AM. The first fifteen miles or so on the interstate are always the longest, because the stretch from Clarksville to Nashville is painfully familiar, and I'm still counting every mile marker and exit, having not yet let that go in favor of the zen-like, "Another twenty miles has passed?" Luckily the morning news is on, so I listen to that for the first two hours. Then... it repeats. I know it's repeating because I heard the last part of their first broadcast. And I'm not so bored that I want to hear the news again. So music comes on... the Mirrormask soundtrack, because I need something quirky to keep me going. Coasting into downtown Chattanooga, I find a parking spot, take a walk around a block of high-priced restaurants and parking lots, and and then read The Two Towers until Leslie gets there.

At this point, I must say Leslie brings pie. And I am also obligated to say that she makes a damn good peach pie. She brought it, and it gets devoured at intervals on the ride home. (It was so good the plastic Panera fork we got to eat it starts breaking down or something, with the tines slowly crumbling away after contact with it. Maybe the fork just had issues.)

And so for the next two hours we enjoy some music she brought (including some from a rather mature anime called "Speed Grapher") and talk. And then lunch at Panera at around 12:15, a brief walk around, and... leasing office of doom!

No, the leasing process actually went fairly easily. It was just slow, reading and skimming through all of the paperwork, items sometimes repeated two or three times. Initial, initial, sign sign sign. Then we got to see our new apartment!

The layout looks exactly like Diana's apartment when she taught at the high school for a year, my freshman year in college. (Being intentionally vague here, since it isn't *my* information.) The door is positioned differently by 90 degrees, and the kitchen look differs a little, but that's about it. Big open space with patio on one side, kitchen on the other, and then a hallway to the bathroom and bedroom. Must've been a common design... I like it.

Once we got done checking it out, listing about every thumb-tack and spot on the walls and ceiling, we went back, turned that in, offloaded my stuff, got chores assigned, and drove back to Chattanooga. By then it's around 5. I drop Leslie off, and then listen to the news while it remains on. Then Market Place. Then Fresh Air. After I listen to a 2005 interview with Neil Patrick Harris, there's another guy that comes on. I listen to his swing interpretation of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and then decide it's time for "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me." It's last week's episode and Peter Sagal is on vacation, replaced with someone more overbearing in their humor, but it keeps me well enough engaged. Plus, Mo Rocca's on there, my second favorite panelist after Paula Poundstone.

By the end of the day, I've logged 12 hours. Was it worth it? Definitely, if I get an apartment out of it. I hope the next time there's a vacation in the mix though. It's not as satisfying to lounge in a bath as it is to lounge on the beach.