28-I-2003.
The long drive to Atlanta. Just had to be on the road for another of GW2B's SOTU speeches, exactly at the time when I thought I'd drop the headphones for a while. Must replace that radio with the cheap one I saw at Walmart, with the 3mm banana socket, so I could become independent of the FM crap (including NPR). Tried to get one yesterday, but they were sold out. So I listened to my new mp3 CD player via light headphones.
The trip was both interesting and boring. The first part, through Virginia and the first of them Carolinas, was pictoresque and almost idyllic, but then when I left the 29 and hit the interstate, it soon became much easier and very boring. At least it wasn't raining, and the music kept me awake. And the coffee I bought along the way wasn't too bad.
Car radio is simply not safe. At home the blood pressure was endangered, if in the middle of a ride some narodnjaci jump in, or the state (Sloba's) radio, specially the reflex to turn it off as soon as it says „president... met has“ (never „has met“, always strictly exclusively and mandatorily „met has“*). Here the equivalent danger comes from ads, they shout, insert strange sounds, are as boring as diarrhea and may also cause it - our ads are somehow tame when compared with this. I simply don't have the patience to switch stations every few minutes. So I listened to the radio until about half North Carolina, actually some Lynchburg radio had a good classic rock assortment, so as long as I was in range. Beyond that, bad or worse, so I found a rest area, inserted batteries in the gadget, drove away.
The part thorugh the Carolina(s?) was terhaps the toughest, as I went through it during the rush hour. Knowing that there are few hundred tons of hardware doing 110kmh just as you do, close by in all four lanes, makes you really concentrated. By the time I passed Ralleigh (or was it Charlotte? - doesn't get close to it, actually, this is an interstate... looking at the map now, Greensboro it is where I hit the I-85, and Charlotte where I drove around town), it was dark already. This far south the winter day is not as short as at home, but that's no more than an hour in each direction.
Found the place where I should leave the beltway easily, found the building where I should be tomorrow, first taking a wrong turn and ending between the huge HP's building and some fancy hotel, with ladies in gowns and guys in penguin suits strolling with their drinks all over the pavement. It's end of january but it's south enough to walk out with bare shoulders. No sign to divert traffic, though.
Finding the hotel was tougher than travelling 500 miles. I got the street right, but at the given number there was just a blank fence and a forest behind it, no gates, no buildings. Found a mall and asked there - sure, I got the street, but it's not xyz street that my printed reservation shows, it's xyz road, and that's... three blocks away.
Got some bad coffee at the desk as I was getting the keys (reservation was OK, good sign), and had to get back to take a different room, seeing that I got a non-smoker. It's becoming a default. The room is actually a suite, two bedrooms, two teevees, a lazy boy armchair, two bathrooms with enough towels for six people, a little kitchen, the works. Froze my ass off until I realized the heating wasn't turned on. Tried to watch TV and enjoyed a coffee in the armchair, but no, the driver's adrenalin just wore out, and I fainted as soon as I hit the pillow.
The 500 miles back is tomorrow.
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* the reverse order is okay, even considered good literary style, only in case when there's a lengthy insert between the subject and the verb - for example, „Ivo Andrić, author of many good novels and a former diplomat, received has the Nobel prize“. Without the insert it's illiterate.
Mentions: 20-VII-2023., narodnjaci, in serbian
17-XII-2013 - 3-IX-2024