Road Trip Strategery

(Note:  I know "strategery" is not a real word.  It just seems most appropriate.)

Surprise!  I'm back in St. Louis!  I had planned to be in a hotel in Joplin right now (4 hours southeast of here, and 6 hours north of Dallas), snuggled up in bed doing some reading or general internet surfing...but the National Weather Service people are forecasting a giant blob of storms to cover Missouri tomorrow.  Dreading the thought of wandering a Lowe's for hours on end, and having already tasted the joys of the World's Largest Gift Shop (see this post if you don't know what I'm talking about), I started wondering if it might not be better just to do the whole drive in one day.

The longest consecutive driving experience I've ever had was roughly 9 hours (from Lexington, KY to Raleigh, NC two and a half years ago), and it wasn't all that pleasant.  But, my overeager and overconfident demeanor, mixed with the sweet freedom from schoolwork, made me call and cancel my hotel reservation about four hours into the trip, feeling certain that I could do the whole drive in one day and that it wouldn't be an issue at all.  I even called up my resident weatherman-friend Nick Kelly for my own personal weather advising.  I was feeling good about this decision.

Friends.  It is a LONG drive from Dallas to St. Louis.

The trip is ten hours of driving total, but including all the stops I made along the way, it took me a full eleven hours to get home.  Furthermore, since I wasn't planning on an eleven hour drive, I didn't leave Dallas until 11:00 this morning - a nice leisurely time to start a six-hour drive that would have me into Joplin just in time to grab some dinner and watch Glee.  Not so much; I finally pulled into my driveway at 10:00pm exactly.

Something I discovered on this trip was how little I actually drive in darkness in Dallas.  I realized this when, an hour and a half into driving in the dark, I remembered that my headlights have high beams.  Remembered, as in, I had forgotten.  People always talk about how you can't see the stars when you live in a city (and that's true), but what people never mention is how accustomed you become to having every street illuminated by a never-ending stream of fluorescent light. "Night driving" in Dallas isn't night driving; they've just replaced the sun with lampposts.  Real night driving is taking an evening jaunt along the twisty portion of Missouri Hwy 100 that stretches from Wildwood to Gray Summit.  That's a dark little road right there.

Happily, after eleven hours of driving, I finally made it home.  I was assisted by three medium cokes, an enormous Wendy's burger, a tour of the Fort Leonard Wood Cracker Barrel gift shop, and a random assortment of CDs/radio (including, but not limited to, The Band Perry, the Sweeney Todd soundtrack, the Rent soundtrack, Christophe Mae, Destiny's Child (circa 2000), and a cd of insanely relevant-to-my-lite 608 sermons that divine providence caused me to grab blindly in the darkness).  And now I'm FINALLY all snuggled up on a couch, and got to watch Glee on DVR.  So all is well.

But, I think that now I'm going to go snuggle up in bed instead.  It was a LONG day.

Also, one day, I WILL talk about the Dalai Lama.  I swear.  Remain faithful...