Wednesday, July 06, 2005

West Virginia, Mountain mama, part one...

The trip started out much worse than was expected.
For starters, I still had a stuffy head, runny nose, and crud in my throat when I woke up.
I forgot to put the trash out the night before and it was filled to the gills, so I left it by the curb, in the hopes that my neighbor will remember to bring it back in while we are gone.
Not one mile from my house I pulled up to a stop sign in my neighborhood, I see an unmarked police car sitting at the other stop sign, I stop (or what I have programmed my mind to believe is a stop), waved to him, and went through the intersection. To that I am greeted with flashing blue lights in my rear view mirror.
I pull over and he asks me if I know why he pulled me over… A little ticked off I say nothing, then, in typical Jamison fashion, my face lights up, and I turn to look at him and say “California roll right?”
“is that what they call it?””That’s what I call it.”
“Are you from California, or are you from Texas? Somewhere halfway?””No, I am from Tennessee.”
From here he makes some joke regarding how he could understand it if I was from a place closer to California…
“Do you live in this neighborhood?””Yes officer.”
“Well, we are out here getting speeders…””Thank goodness!”
“…And people running stop signs. Next time I am gonna have to hand you a ticket.””I appreciate it.”We shake hands, and the trip continues.

It is raining, continually. I have no tissue. And hate “hacking” up the crud. Then, my nose starts bleeding. My wife, after looking all over the car gives me some unused yarn… to soak up the blood.

Birmingham, traffic. So, Larissa shows me some back roads to by pass the traffic. It works, but I hate getting off the interstate. Red lights all the way.

We finally get back on the interstate, and I take the exit to I-20, towards Atlanta. To which my wife says, “So, we want to go to Atlanta?”
I sigh, and say, sadly “No.” And we have to find the next exit to turn around.

Not so bad really. We arrived at my parent’s house in 4 hours and some change. It is normally a 3 and a half hour drive. But 20 miles from my parent’s house, the light on the gas gauge comes on. We are running on empty, but hey, we made it without having to stop. But promise me this; if you can travel without going through Chattanooga, do it. Its traffic is growing and its roads are still as wide as they were 20 years ago.

We leave mom and dads and hit the Mullins house by 5pm. We sit and talk, wait on Jules to arrive, sit some more, watch the kids and we go out to dinner.

We come back and me and Mullins do some jamming on the mandolin and guitar. It was a GREAT break and if the trip ended there I would have considered this a great trip, even though it is less than 24 hours old.

We leave their home at 8:30 and hit our la quinta hotel at 11pm, which is where I am posting this blog as I type it. Love you guys, more news from the north as it happens…

Actually, you may not hsee another post till Saturday night or Sunday… no internet access up there ….

1 comment:

bigsip said...

Cool, cool man. Glad the trip is going well at last. It's rainy as all get-out down here. Hope your trip stays nice and dry from here on out!