Kevin’s Wedding: Driving to Charlotte

On Oct 23rd I left Killeen Texas at about 4:40am, to drive to Charlotte North Carolina for Kevin’s wedding. I had intended on leaving about an hour earlier but that was predicated on going to bed earlier and sense I had a lot of last minute things to do before going to bed.  Most of my last minute details that prevented me from getting to bed before 11:30 were packing, and downloading Taylor Swift and Jay-Z songs; so I could have some new music for the drive.  Its not as if I were procrastinating and constantly wasting time by going on facebook or mlb.com, I only went on those websites a few times.

The first few hours of the drive I was listening to my ipod on shuffle and was a little disappointed that I hadn’t heard any of the songs that I downloaded the night before. Which made me question why I spent so much time downloading music instead of going to sleep. Then I realized that the five hours it took to get out of Texas was only the beginning of the drive I would have plenty of time to hear “Tim McGraw and “Big Pimpin”. 

Around noon I started to think I could have really used a little Jay-Z in my life to keep me going, as the early afternoon was the hardest part of the drive.  The alignment on my truck was bad from the start but go a little worse as the trip went on, there were a couple of times when I would doze off and the bad alignment would instantaneously put me in another lane of traffic.  After going through this pattern about three to four times it seem like a good idea stop for gas and lunch.

When I got into Georgia a few hours later I called Kevin and told him I was planning on stopping in Atlanta to get some food, gas and walk around for a little while to stretch my legs and I let him know that he could expect my in Charlotte around 1:00am.  He called back a couple hours later to see if I was still on track or if I deviated from the plan. I would find out the intent of his call about twenty minutes later when I called him back. I kind of had to ignore his call because at the time he called my ipod was playing Wu-Tang Clan’s “Ain’t Nothing to Fuck with” sandwiched in between Taylor Swift’s “Mine” and “White Horse”; easily the highlight of the drive.

Originally I was thinking about finding something to eat in downtown Atlanta, but had second thought when I remembered the last time I was in Atlanta.  I was walking downtown by myself and a girl asked me if I wanted to go on a date, I told her it was kind of late and said no thank you.  She asked me a couple more times if I wanted to go on a date with her, and to each request I said no.  After the conversation was over I wondered if I was just solicited by a prostitute, as normally girls aren’t that adamant about going on dates with me.

Hoping to avoid persistent prostitutes I decided to not to eat downtown, I found a Zaxby’s outside of Atlanta to eat at instead.  Zaxby’s was a nice change of pace as my two previous meals that day were both fast food.  I ordered a salad and found a table to myself; I was halfway done with my meal when a family of three sat down at the table directly behind me.  I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on the family’s conversation but I couldn’t help hear the little boy, who was wearing a baseball uniform, ask his dad which team he liked better: the team he played for or the Braves.  I admire the fact that the Dad gave a very honest answer when he told his son that he thought the Atlanta Braves were a better team because they were more experienced than his team.  Even when he realized the team his son played for last year had the braves for a mascot and he wanted to know if his current team was better than his previous team, his dad stood pat on his answer.

With no further delays I managed to make it to Kevin’s house at 1:00 am.  We talked for about half an hour before going to bed, and I think I slept until about 3:30 the next day.  I began to think that the little bit of money I saved by not flying wasn’t worth spending almost a full day of my life driving, and over half a day sleeping.