The Journey – Day One

Tuesday, 6:50 AM – Hyde County, North Carolina

I am dead tired. Not like exhausted, just sleepy; after waking up at ten past five I feel like I could have done well with a few more hours.

The car finished loading perfectly, and much to my surprise, everything fit like a glove (and I can still see out my back window.) I said goodbye to mom and dad and Albus and tried to at least hold off the tears til I got on the boat. And now I’m on my way.

There’s an awesome storm brewing over the water, and its only barely raining. The boat is starting to rock a lot, something I’m not really used to, but we’ll survive! I just finished doing some minor re-arranging and eating a bowl of cereal. Naptime after I finish writing. :)

So, my set up: I have all of the important things in the passenger seat. Sharkie the Shark, Tiny Bus, my camera, my purse, a travel pouch thing with my maps, some emergency PB&J’s, peanut butter cookies, and a carry on suitcase full of clothes. I’m in my pajamas now, but plan to stop and change along the way.

I think it’s time to get some rest – see you on the other side.

Wednesday, 12:20 AM – New Philadelphia, Ohio

Today has been a roller coaster.

I meant to stop and blog along the way, but I was in such a hurry to get down the road that I didn’t. I actually even had a specified “stop here to blog!” point and couldn’t be bothered to pull my laptop out – what you see above I wrote on my Blackberry while I had no service on the ferry; something that is much harder to do on a phone when people are constantly calling and texting.

North Carolina took a long time to escape, for one reason or another. It was this, or that, making pit stops along the way (a few bathroom breaks, once to purchase ant bait for the small colony that seemed to have taken up residence in my dashboard…as well as a couple of cases of Cheerwine to haul up north.)… I was more than excited to pass around Greenville and Raleigh, get out of Greensboro, and pass the tall buildings of Winston-Salem before rocketing out of the state. It took the majority of my day to get through that part…but once I did, it was nice. I stopped at the Virginia line briefly, then headed on through the state.

I had rain for most of the day, on and off, and luckily I had a variety of great CDs to keep me company. Today I listened to cds from @ShaneWSanny and @iManda2014, as well as one my dad made. More on that one in a bit. The cds were fabulous, and paired with the ones I mixed for myself, I had a great time jamming out. It’s nice seeing what everyone else thinks is the “perfect road trip album,” though the music on Amanda & Shane’s cds were totally different, they were both, indeed, perfect.

Eventually I made it through to West Virginia with a bit of a headache, I stopped at one point to just do some puddle jumping and enjoy the scenery. My favorite scenic spots so far have been Pilot Mountain in NC, the mountain tunnels in WV, and the gorgeous bridges along I-77 in West Virginia. WV, for all of its scenic byways and what have you, is a pretty crappy state. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s great for you if you live there, but I was pretty glad to be done.

I stopped around 6:00 for dinner at Cracker Barrel, right on time and schedule like I’d planned. The failed part of the plan was that I was starting to get a headache from the altitude changes and my lack of proper nutrition… which was making it complicated to drive. Mom and Dad started suggesting that I stop in Ohio for the night, which I protested, repeatedly telling them I could do it…I eventually gave in.

As I pulled out of West Virginia, I put in my dad’s CD that he had mixed me. The whole day had been a lot of time to think and to ponder things, and being as how I’ve had a lot to think about lately, I welcomed it. I can’t lie – the very first CD I put in I’d made knowing it was going to strike a nerve. I spent the first thirty minutes just driving through the driving rain and crying and thinking and just…getting over things. Getting over the state, the people in it. All the reasons I was leaving.

Anyway, I pulled out of the McDonalds where I’d stopped to get a coffee and no sooner did the first notes fill the car than I started bawling. “When I was a child, my family would travel…” John Prine crooned out of my way-too-loud-for-mellow-country-type-music speakers. I was really leaving, wasn’t I?

The past few days I’ve been asked a lot about you know, what my parents think about me going. I could never be too sure. They said I could do what I want, but why not wait? Why now? Do you have to do it this way? When Mimi sent me a devotional book yesterday (I will be honest, I am too tired to see if I mentioned this yesterday, if I did, too bad.) …she mentioned that everyone was really proud. Everyone. Not just her, or PopPop, my parents too. Everyone.

Ages ago my dad’s job sent him across the state to work. He was there for a week at a time – sometimes more! When he first left I made him a mix cd that he still keeps in his car to listen to. Today, he returned the favor. It’s nice knowing that I have that… that even after six hundred miles and four hundred more to go in the morning, something like a plastic disk with some songs on it can make you feel closer to home than ever before.

So it was when I started listening to the CD, even though I was a little rejuvenated from that and the coffee, that I decided I would stop. It wasn’t until the CD was over and I’d talked on the phone for awhile that I made up my mind. They wanted me to stop, my dad wanted me to stop. Everyone on Twitter, Facebook, back home in Ocracoke… here is this whole world of people cheering me on, and even in a time where I am Doing Things For Myself, I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t feel so close to my family and then do something stupid like drive off into the night. I was more tired than I admitted, more weary than I wanted to say. I wanted to do it, I wanted to be stubborn. But my family has done me so many favors…I figured I should at least do them one.

So here I am in Ohio, I was originally going to go to Akron (if you’ve been following twitter, you know) but apparently the hotels were all booked, as were most of the ones in Canton. I stopped here for gas and it turned out that there was a nice-ish looking hotel with reasonably good rates, so I might as well stay. It’s a fairly nice hotel, I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow’s leg just because I’d wanted to get further today, but I’ll press on.

Today proved to be more of a journey than even I was anticipating. Riding down familiar roads, listening to songs that have certain meaning, watching the milestones tick away on my map. This is bigger than just getting in a car and heading down the road – it really is a major shift in my entire life, and even now I’m not sure how prepared I am for that.

At any rate, Sharkie the Shark and I are ready to enjoy this giganto king sized bed that was clearly made to hold, like, four Mandas. In just a few hours I’ll be waking up to do it all again, and will be (sorta) homeward bound. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, the tweets, the texts, the phone calls, the gas money, the everything. You have no idea how much it helped to see even the tiniest “Good luck!” or “Man that dinner looks good!” pop up while I was headed down the road.

Tomorrow is a new day – and I’m feeling pretty good about it already.