Escape From L.A. pt. 4 - Goddamn Tennessee
Up and at 'em after not much sleep at all, we gassed up and got on the road. We weren't far from the TN border, and since we were going to be going through it the long way, the earlier we got started the earlier we'd finish. (Okay, so that's true with anything but whatever. Shut up.)
Now, I've made the run multiple times (mostly with The Fabulous Lundemoo) up and down the Eastern Seaboard on the way to North Carolina for the faire. And I've taken AmCrak's Crescent from NYC to New Orleans and back again. Always always always, it's goddamn Virginia that never. Fucking. Ends. No matter what you do, it takes a million brazillion years (seemingly) to get through Virginia. After having been through Tennessee, all the way through Tennessee, I may never bitch about Virginia again.
Sure, there was some nice scenery (though it would be nicer, I imagine, if it had been earlier in the year). The traffic wasn't awful. The weather was completely unremarkable. We didn't stop in to either Graceland or any of the fabulous spots in Nashville. We. Just. Drove.
Forever.
See, we had to take I-40 to right around Nashville, and then pick up I-81. Go check out a road map of TN. I'll wait.
(I don't have hold music, so I'll just sing.
I GET KNOCKED DOWN. BUT I GET UP AGAIN. THEY'RE NEVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN. I GET KNOCKED DOWN. BUT I GET UP AGAIN. THEY'RE NEVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN!!! Pissin' the night awaaaay. Pissin' the niii---
Oh, you're back. Awesome.)
See what I mean? On the atlas I bought just before we crossed the CA/AZ border, most of the states take up one page. Not TN. It needs TWO. One for the eastern half and one for the western half. If you are unobservant and let your road-addled brain deceive you, you'll think you're doin' pretty damn good just as soon as you get to Nashville! And then you'll look at the VA map, and the border area, and think, "Hey...I don't remember seeing those towns on the TN map. WTF, Rand McNally, you asshole!" And then you'll go back to the TN map and wonder where the hell the road goes already because you're totally baffled, and then you'll look at the next damn page and realize that you've still got a whole nother huge-ass half of the state to cross. And then you'll start cursing and weeping simultaneously. Which will confuse the hell out of the 16 lb. cat sitting happily on your lap and crushing your femurs with every bump in the road (only you won't feel that part, because she's conveniently put your legs to sleep).
When we finally cross into VA, having spent the better part of the day foolishly thinking that we might make it home that night, lots and lots of cursing commences because it's damn late. We didn't dawdle in TN. We had no reason to. We sped like fiends, actually, pretty much across the entire country (except in AR, where they'll give you a ticket just for being a Yankee). We stop in a place just south of Roanoke called Christiansburg.
Note for people taking this trip: DO NOT STOP IN CHRISTIANSBURG. FOR ANYTHING. EVER. THANK YOU PLEASE DRIVE THROUGH.
It was innocuous enough, we thought. The first motel we hit is an EconoLodge, and its parking lot has a flight of stairs that connects it to the Awful...er, I mean WAFFLE HOUSE just down the hill. It was midnight and I could smell bacon. Those bastards.
Anyway, I go in and chat with this adorable Front Desk Nerd, who was nice enough to hook me up with a little travel agent discount. We chat a little bit about nerd stuff, I get the keys, we park, and the unload begins.
The room has properly stained carpet and a door that looks as though it's been forced open at least once (the bottom of the door doesn't quite meet the floor, as though it's been kicked in). The bathroom floor, behind the door, is littered with pubes and some strange brownish stains. Glancing at the door, I see that it and the jamb have been deeply scratched. When I point this out to Nick, he says, "Oh relax, somebody had a dog in there." I, though, expect to look up and find a fingernail embedded in one of the grooves and then I would start screaming and screaming and screaming and then I'd look further up and see F.D. Nerd holding his shirt out at the nipples and mock-screaming back at me while alternately babytalking to a small white dog.
It's during this bathroom visit that I realise that I've gotten my period. GOOD TIMES. And no emergency supplies in any of my bags. Of course not! I left them all at Brokenhaus cuz I'm awesome like that.
So, after thoroughly freaking ourselves out about the condition of the room, Nick and I decide that we both need bacon now. First, though, I head to the lobby to ask F.D. Nerd if he's got any feminine supplies. Only to find that he's watching "Escape From Jonestown" on the lobby TV. Twitching only a little, I make my queries and he hands over half a dozen individually wrapped pantiliners. We're chatting a little more about D&D and The Walking Dead and some other stuff, when Nick gets afeared and comes to find me. F.D. Nerd includes him in the convo as well. We take it outside, this talk of zombie apocalypse and such, so that the nerd and I can smoke. As we're doing so, somehow, the talk of Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons comes up, and he says out of his actual mouth, "Yeah, I don't know. Some of those people's views are REALLY out there." The delightful banter continues as he starts in on conspiracy theories. And how the New World Order is actually happening RIGHT NOW but a lot of people don't know it, and about how we're fucked when the dollar drastically devalues cuz what will we use for currency THEN, and about the microchip that they're gonna start putting into people pretty soon and and and
During all of this, I'm slowly edging toward the stairs. I finally, however, can't take any more of this, and as he's asking for our phone numbers and telling us it'd be great to hang out with us (he mentioned a girlfriend - a friend of mine later wisely asked, "Does she know she's his girlfriend?), and raining more doom and gloom upon us, I tell him that yes, it may well happen, but before it does, I'm gonna have me some goddamn bacon. And we make our escape, fleeing down the hill into the dubious arms of Awful House.
We arrive, grab a booth, and begin perusing the menu. We are accosted by a waitress with a somewhat repellant personality and an intense desire to involve herself into our conversation. After a young man from a few tables away comes over and asks her if he'll get dysentery from the chili and she makes it clear that she has no idea what dysentery is, we joke with him about the various possibilities of food-borne illness in an establishment such as this. He asks the waitress about rickets. Nick says, "Eat a lime" and I say, "Eat an orange" at the same time, and he smiles upon us because we actually KNOW what he's TALKING about with his fancy college book-learnin'. All this talk of chili must've inspired our waitress, because suddenly we find ourselves presented with a bowl of chili as some sort of questionable amuse-bouche. Neither one of us really wanted it, but at that point in the night, we were willing to do the equivalent of nodding and smiling.
The bacon was disappointing. The short-order cook was a wiseass who was actually amusing. We were getting along just fine participating in the time-honoured tradition of eavesdropping on the people around us. It seems as though the couple sitting behind me was on a first date. A very earnest, Serious Question Asking first date of what I would assume would be the E-Harmony ilk, although who on earth thinks that Waffle House is a good venue for such a thing? In any case, they were grilling each other about their thoughts on kids, religion, and pets. SRS BZNS!
Our waitress fails at this game, though. The thing is, you can eavesdrop all you want, but do NOT (unless the conversation is very loud) interject yourself into that conversation as though you were well and truly included in it. We were startled on a number of occasions to have our relatively quiet conversation intruded upon.
We finished as much as we could, paid, and FLED LIKE THE WIND back to our creepy room. Where Nick took every precaution to lock the deadbolt AND flip the little bar thinger across. Not for nothin', but that door had been forced before, and Mr. Escape From Jonestown has access to a master key.
The next morning, we saw no other guests. A few cars, yes, but no other guests. Free donuts and suchlike in the lobby, but nobody to eat them. The woman working the front counter was strangely surly in that super super helpful way (and the microwave would only work for her). Other than the housekeeping staff and the weird lobby lady, all we saw was a small fluffy cat. We believe that this cat is Satan, and that everyone there worships this cat. He's what keeps the victims docile. Nonono...pay no mind to the man behind you with the cudgel! Pet the kitty. Fluffy, lovely kitty. Pet the kitty...yes.
The gas station down the hill stank of Subway and some horrible chemicals. Nick encountered "Children Of The Corn" type kids in the restroom.
We got the high holy fuck OUT of Christiansburg as soon as we could. And if the FSM smiles upon me, I will never go back to that place again.
Now, I've made the run multiple times (mostly with The Fabulous Lundemoo) up and down the Eastern Seaboard on the way to North Carolina for the faire. And I've taken AmCrak's Crescent from NYC to New Orleans and back again. Always always always, it's goddamn Virginia that never. Fucking. Ends. No matter what you do, it takes a million brazillion years (seemingly) to get through Virginia. After having been through Tennessee, all the way through Tennessee, I may never bitch about Virginia again.
Sure, there was some nice scenery (though it would be nicer, I imagine, if it had been earlier in the year). The traffic wasn't awful. The weather was completely unremarkable. We didn't stop in to either Graceland or any of the fabulous spots in Nashville. We. Just. Drove.
Forever.
See, we had to take I-40 to right around Nashville, and then pick up I-81. Go check out a road map of TN. I'll wait.
(I don't have hold music, so I'll just sing.
I GET KNOCKED DOWN. BUT I GET UP AGAIN. THEY'RE NEVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN. I GET KNOCKED DOWN. BUT I GET UP AGAIN. THEY'RE NEVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN!!! Pissin' the night awaaaay. Pissin' the niii---
Oh, you're back. Awesome.)
See what I mean? On the atlas I bought just before we crossed the CA/AZ border, most of the states take up one page. Not TN. It needs TWO. One for the eastern half and one for the western half. If you are unobservant and let your road-addled brain deceive you, you'll think you're doin' pretty damn good just as soon as you get to Nashville! And then you'll look at the VA map, and the border area, and think, "Hey...I don't remember seeing those towns on the TN map. WTF, Rand McNally, you asshole!" And then you'll go back to the TN map and wonder where the hell the road goes already because you're totally baffled, and then you'll look at the next damn page and realize that you've still got a whole nother huge-ass half of the state to cross. And then you'll start cursing and weeping simultaneously. Which will confuse the hell out of the 16 lb. cat sitting happily on your lap and crushing your femurs with every bump in the road (only you won't feel that part, because she's conveniently put your legs to sleep).
When we finally cross into VA, having spent the better part of the day foolishly thinking that we might make it home that night, lots and lots of cursing commences because it's damn late. We didn't dawdle in TN. We had no reason to. We sped like fiends, actually, pretty much across the entire country (except in AR, where they'll give you a ticket just for being a Yankee). We stop in a place just south of Roanoke called Christiansburg.
Note for people taking this trip: DO NOT STOP IN CHRISTIANSBURG. FOR ANYTHING. EVER. THANK YOU PLEASE DRIVE THROUGH.
It was innocuous enough, we thought. The first motel we hit is an EconoLodge, and its parking lot has a flight of stairs that connects it to the Awful...er, I mean WAFFLE HOUSE just down the hill. It was midnight and I could smell bacon. Those bastards.
Anyway, I go in and chat with this adorable Front Desk Nerd, who was nice enough to hook me up with a little travel agent discount. We chat a little bit about nerd stuff, I get the keys, we park, and the unload begins.
The room has properly stained carpet and a door that looks as though it's been forced open at least once (the bottom of the door doesn't quite meet the floor, as though it's been kicked in). The bathroom floor, behind the door, is littered with pubes and some strange brownish stains. Glancing at the door, I see that it and the jamb have been deeply scratched. When I point this out to Nick, he says, "Oh relax, somebody had a dog in there." I, though, expect to look up and find a fingernail embedded in one of the grooves and then I would start screaming and screaming and screaming and then I'd look further up and see F.D. Nerd holding his shirt out at the nipples and mock-screaming back at me while alternately babytalking to a small white dog.
It's during this bathroom visit that I realise that I've gotten my period. GOOD TIMES. And no emergency supplies in any of my bags. Of course not! I left them all at Brokenhaus cuz I'm awesome like that.
So, after thoroughly freaking ourselves out about the condition of the room, Nick and I decide that we both need bacon now. First, though, I head to the lobby to ask F.D. Nerd if he's got any feminine supplies. Only to find that he's watching "Escape From Jonestown" on the lobby TV. Twitching only a little, I make my queries and he hands over half a dozen individually wrapped pantiliners. We're chatting a little more about D&D and The Walking Dead and some other stuff, when Nick gets afeared and comes to find me. F.D. Nerd includes him in the convo as well. We take it outside, this talk of zombie apocalypse and such, so that the nerd and I can smoke. As we're doing so, somehow, the talk of Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons comes up, and he says out of his actual mouth, "Yeah, I don't know. Some of those people's views are REALLY out there." The delightful banter continues as he starts in on conspiracy theories. And how the New World Order is actually happening RIGHT NOW but a lot of people don't know it, and about how we're fucked when the dollar drastically devalues cuz what will we use for currency THEN, and about the microchip that they're gonna start putting into people pretty soon and and and
During all of this, I'm slowly edging toward the stairs. I finally, however, can't take any more of this, and as he's asking for our phone numbers and telling us it'd be great to hang out with us (he mentioned a girlfriend - a friend of mine later wisely asked, "Does she know she's his girlfriend?), and raining more doom and gloom upon us, I tell him that yes, it may well happen, but before it does, I'm gonna have me some goddamn bacon. And we make our escape, fleeing down the hill into the dubious arms of Awful House.
We arrive, grab a booth, and begin perusing the menu. We are accosted by a waitress with a somewhat repellant personality and an intense desire to involve herself into our conversation. After a young man from a few tables away comes over and asks her if he'll get dysentery from the chili and she makes it clear that she has no idea what dysentery is, we joke with him about the various possibilities of food-borne illness in an establishment such as this. He asks the waitress about rickets. Nick says, "Eat a lime" and I say, "Eat an orange" at the same time, and he smiles upon us because we actually KNOW what he's TALKING about with his fancy college book-learnin'. All this talk of chili must've inspired our waitress, because suddenly we find ourselves presented with a bowl of chili as some sort of questionable amuse-bouche. Neither one of us really wanted it, but at that point in the night, we were willing to do the equivalent of nodding and smiling.
The bacon was disappointing. The short-order cook was a wiseass who was actually amusing. We were getting along just fine participating in the time-honoured tradition of eavesdropping on the people around us. It seems as though the couple sitting behind me was on a first date. A very earnest, Serious Question Asking first date of what I would assume would be the E-Harmony ilk, although who on earth thinks that Waffle House is a good venue for such a thing? In any case, they were grilling each other about their thoughts on kids, religion, and pets. SRS BZNS!
Our waitress fails at this game, though. The thing is, you can eavesdrop all you want, but do NOT (unless the conversation is very loud) interject yourself into that conversation as though you were well and truly included in it. We were startled on a number of occasions to have our relatively quiet conversation intruded upon.
We finished as much as we could, paid, and FLED LIKE THE WIND back to our creepy room. Where Nick took every precaution to lock the deadbolt AND flip the little bar thinger across. Not for nothin', but that door had been forced before, and Mr. Escape From Jonestown has access to a master key.
The next morning, we saw no other guests. A few cars, yes, but no other guests. Free donuts and suchlike in the lobby, but nobody to eat them. The woman working the front counter was strangely surly in that super super helpful way (and the microwave would only work for her). Other than the housekeeping staff and the weird lobby lady, all we saw was a small fluffy cat. We believe that this cat is Satan, and that everyone there worships this cat. He's what keeps the victims docile. Nonono...pay no mind to the man behind you with the cudgel! Pet the kitty. Fluffy, lovely kitty. Pet the kitty...yes.
The gas station down the hill stank of Subway and some horrible chemicals. Nick encountered "Children Of The Corn" type kids in the restroom.
We got the high holy fuck OUT of Christiansburg as soon as we could. And if the FSM smiles upon me, I will never go back to that place again.