Life is a Highway

Given that in all reality Coronavirus is everywhere and truth be told, I can be furloughed from anywhere, I left this past Wednesday on a little impromptu trip down to Jacksonville, Florida. My very near and dear friend, formerly known as California Nancy, recently moved all the way across the country here to Jacksonville and as a result, will from here on out be known as Florida Nancy. Sidenote: anytime I have two prominent people in my life who share the same name, I always assign the geographical location of where they live to each, so I can ensure there’s zero confusion when I’m sharing stories about either. Anyway, my drive from Cutesville to Jacksonville – while highly documented in my Snapchat story – was quite the little adventure and this blog is here to showcase all the parts that Snapchat didn’t get to see and I knew I’d be blogging about later.

Leaving Cutesville and driving through Illinois and Kentucky was pretty smooth sailing, but let me say this, I feel as though I’ve been duped by a great many people! Up until Wednesday, I’d never been to (or really in this case through) Nashville, Tennessee, but time and time again, I’d been told that the drive takes roughly five and a half or six hours. I MADE IT IN FOUR AND A HALF! Let me just stop you right there! No, I wasn’t driving like a bat out of Hell. My cruise control was set between 75 and 85 miles per hour the entire way, so when I made it there in four and a half hours I felt like I was making record time! I was completely ecstatic! This did nothing more than provide me with a false sense of hope that I used to dupe myself with because all in all, THE DRIVE THAT DAY TOOK FOREVER!

Roughly an hour past Nashville, I stopped to get gas and let me tell you what, when I got up out of my car, I could feel EVERY SINGLE joint and bone in my body creak and crack! Lord almighty was that feeling something else! It was literally like a chain reaction of fireworks or dynamite going off inside my body. It was such a weird moment for me as I stood there between my car and the gas pump because while I certainly felt the chain reaction within, I also felt like I could hear it, which made me nervous anyone else pumping gas around me could as well. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice my rikoty ass, so I proceeded as normal, but still, the moment had been had. I’d never been so stiff in all my life, but thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense given that literally the ONLY muscle of mine getting ANY exercise no that trip was my mouth from my never-ending singing.

Aside from Céline Dion, no one loves to sing more than me and I literally sang the ENTIRE way down! In total we’re talking about twelve hours of me just showcasing my olympian vocals to the audience of myself. Funny enough, I knew I would need to bless my journey, so I started out with my Céline Dion playlist. It’s literally nothing but four hours of my favorite Céline songs and needless to say, I was in Heaven every second of the way. I know I just made a great many of you jealous, but don’t worry, I’ll be sure to share this playlist on Apple Music as soon as I return back to Cutesville, so you too can enjoy yourself four hours of the greatest singer in the world!

Initially, after I had gassed up, I intended to go get myself a #9 McValue Meal from the McDonald’s across the street. For those of you who oddly enough don’t have the McDonald’s menu memorized, the #9 is the two cheeseburger meal, but because I’m obviously a Clean Eater, I always get mine without the cheese. Well, I never got that #9 because someplace else caught my eye that I’d only ever seen before in the deleted scenes of my third favorite film of all time, Borat. That eye-catcher just so happened to be a Krystal’s Burgers.

I couldn’t drive over to that Krystal’s fast enough! In that moment I probably was driving like a bat out of Hell! My excitement level was truly off the charts and at the drive-thru I promptly ordered myself a #1 combo. After pulling up to the window I couldn’t resist telling the lady just how excited I was because of the fact I’d never had Krystal’s before. She couldn’t believe it until I told her that we didn’t have any in St. Louis, but she then told me she knew we had White Castle and they were just like them only in her opinion better! “BETTER THAN WHITE CASTLE!?!” I remarked given my affinity for them lil’ sliders, but truth be told, they were every bit on par. Almost identical really other than there is mustard on the Krystal’s where there isn’t on White Castle. After thanking her and wishing her the best of days, I drove off and wasn’t even out of the drive-thru before I was shoveling one of them lil’ burgers down my throat. They had me changing the song to Austin Mahone’s, Mmm Mmm Yeah because that’s exactly what I was feelin’ about them Krystal’s!

All I can say is thank goodness I got those Krystal’s when I did because the events that unfolded next were infinitely worse than any that had surfaced before. Driving through the Great Smoky Mountains proved to be a truly nightmarish scenario!

How in the world are they going to give us nothing but TWO LANES through those damn mountain passes!?! It made the experience buttclinchingly awful! There were LONG downhill stretches that because of the seemingly unlimited number of tractor-trailer trucks on the road around me, we were all going no more than FORTY miles per hour! FORTY! I was so irritated and going up the hill was often even worse! I don’t blame the semi-trucks! Hell no! I know for a fact I’d be driving as cautious as them. I blame Tennessee for not providing us with a third lane, but all those third lane prayers were finally answered once I entered Georgia.

Georgia, to its credit, had no less than three lanes of traffic at any point on the interstate and just like McDonald’s, I was lovin’ it! This made traveling SO MUCH BETTER and although there would later be LONG stretches of roadwork, the three lanes still remained in tact and for that I was very much thankful. Now while driving through Georgia was infinitely better than it had been anywhere else thus far, there was one trend I continued to notice that I hadn’t any place prior.

Naturally, along the interstate there were billboards galore, but in Georgia I kept noticing that a great many businesses down there would take a word that typically always ends with a k and instead, finish it out with a c. For example, rather than park, they’d spell it parc. It wasn’t just one business either, it was a handful and at first I kept thinking this was such a peculiar trend, but then when I truly thought about where I was and the way in which a great many things are, I figured probably a lot of these people down in Georgia already have three K’s in their lives, so I’m sure a fourth just seemed redundant.

When I calculated my route, I failed to take into account the time change and as a result I ended up driving through Atlanta, Georgia at 4:30 in the afternoon. While I did definitely hit traffic and added a solid half hour to my commute, I’m certain another hour later would have been disastrous. I had honestly no idea just how big of a city Atlanta truly is! IT’S HUGE! I’ve always wanted to vacation there and after driving through those vacation desires have honestly only been amplified!

About an hour outside of Atlanta I was feeling in dire need of a lil’ pick-me-up, so I stopped at this gas station to get three Red Bull’s. I’d seen them advertised at the same gas station chain in Tennessee as buy two, get one free and my love for Red Bull runs deep, so I knew I’d be wanting them later, so I kept that lil’ ad in the back of my mind. Well, when I went in to get them I wore my beautiful Britney Spears branded mask that has TOXIC sprawled across the front like I had been all trip long. The difference was this time around the cashier told me that she, “ABSOLUTELY LOVED MY MASK!” I thanked her and told her I got it at the Britney Spears store and then she and I shared a nice little talk about how perfect Britney Spears is. It made buying those three lil’ Red Bulls such a pleasant experience that if my receipt invited me to take a short lil’ survey, I would’ve done so right then and there in the lobby because that cashier lady was phenomenal.

Georgia felt like it was never-ending, so I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to finally enter Florida because it meant I was that much closer to arriving at Florida Nancy’s, but Florida’s roads had nothing on Georgia’s. It was now night and there were scarcely any lights on the interstate! It was dark as could be driving along those densely forested roadways and I was not lovin’ it! I kept imaging that an alligator would be crossing the road out in front of me and it made me increasingly nervous the whole way down! After all, there’s one alligator in Florida for every sixteen people. At any given point there were easily fifteen other people around me, so I kept figuring our gator had to be someplace nearby. Thankfully, that fear of mine never materialized, but still, the possibility loomed on forever in my mind.

All things considered, the Florida portion of the trip was quick and within no time I found myself knocking on Florida Nancy’s new door. We’ve since been having THE BEST time exploring Jacksonville and cannot wait to continue to explore more for obviously there’ll be another blog to share with you all from all our vacationing!

You’ll notice I finally have ads again and naturally I’m beyond thrilled about this! PLEASE feel free to leave me a comment of any variety below the ads and I’ll of course eagerly respond to you! There’s really nothing I love more! As always, THANK YOU ALL for reading! I’ll return next week with another all-new blog, so until then, have THE BEST week ever! I miss you all already!