The Thursday early morning drive to Atlanta each year is an odd and wonderful tradition in our world. The back seats are removed from the the Element and it’s sturdy and voluminous steel walls are packed all Tetris like with more than a dozen costumes and the weekend’s supporting “normal” clothes. If a Utilikilt can be considered normal. But normal or not it all gets packed. Along with some roast beef, a pair of gallon jugs filled with water and a wide mouth V8 Fusion bottle. More on that later.
The caravan compatriots start arriving at the house late Wednesday and we kick off the road trip with a DVR clip party. We watch bits and pieces of Tosh, The Soup, two year old Metalacolypse episodes and some of whatever is fresh and awesome. This year it was the “Whywolves” ep of Adventure Time. We are creatures obsessed with the spirit of inquiry and blood lust so it seemed apropos. We watch, double and triple check the packing list and then hit the road a bit before midnight.
An all night road trip can get weird. Surreal. As you drive through the fugue of night oh so many things you’ll see. Or think you see. The sketchy writing on the gas station bathroom wall advertising the phone number of the best BJ artist in Ocala. Yes, artist. A good bj is like art in that it should challenge your perceptions and leave you feeling perhaps different than you thought you would. But the phone number, that’s real, you see that and the Circus Peanuts you bought and the fifty Waffle Houses along the way. All real. The faces you end up seeing on the backs of semi trucks or off in the woods are not real. At least I hope they’re not. Being tired makes you see a lot of things that just aren’t there. Maybe it’s the body’s defense mechanism against falling asleep because just about the time you start nodding off that giant devil/donkey face wakes you right the fuck up! Add to this the fact I’m on a low carb diet and drinking three gallons of water every twenty four hours and you have all the ingredients for six to seven hours of 100% pure wacky. What’s the empty V8 for…um…all that water and we only stop for gas…do the math.
Somehow we manage though and just before dawn, when according to legend it is darkest, we stop just shy of the 475 around Macon for breakfast. For the last two years it’s been the Shoney’s breakfast bar that meets and greets us weary travelers. We eat up, and I carb up, and we roll out for the final push into Atlanta. Which through the mist of early morning and oh so tired eyes appears like a jovial juggernaut in the wilds of Northernish Georgia welcoming us with scaly open arms as it has for so many, many years.
We arrive with fumes in our tank. Not the vehicles but ours. After we check in and smuggle a great deal of alcohol past the fortified gates of the Marriott comes what may be some of the best sleep of our lives each year. The last few quiet hours before the storm. We shower and sleep and then wake with mind, body and soul ready for the wonder to come. Thursday night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday await. And I’ll tell you all about those times in a bit.
