Meg and Anna's Winding Road Trip - Part Two

We awoke in Hell (aka, the Ramada Inn of Macon, GA) and prepared ourselves for another day of driving, taking time to get pretty for Asheville, North Carolina.

My breakfast at the Ramada Inn consisted of:

One peach flavored yogurt.

Anna: Don’t do it, Meg!

Meg: But we’re in Georgia! I HAVE TO!

One stale biscuit.

Anna: How’s your biscuit?

Meg: Meh…

One banana

One coffee

Then we were on the road! We stopped into a little diner for a break and Anna bought the freshest most delicious brownie on the planet earth. 

It was freshly baked and gave off the aroma of rich cocoa and southern heart. We would never find such a delicacy again.

As we drove up the mountains, our ears started popping. The view was staggeringly beautiful and for the first time in my life I understood the phrase “purple mountain majesty.” The skies were cloudless and the trees glistened like emeralds. I felt ten years younger going up that mountain.

We paused again to buy some strawberries from a local farmer and we ate them along the way. The drive was only four and a half hours, which to us, on this day, on these mountains, was anything but a chore. Before we knew it, we were in the magical town of Asheville.

Here is a picture of Anna riding bear back to help express how magical this town really is.

We were starving, so we stopped into the first lunch place we saw, a cute pizzeria with a trippy theme. 

Anna ordered magic mushroom soup and I had the magical mystery pizza. Just before our food came, a man approached us.

“Do you believe in magic?” he asked.

My first thought: This is a crazy person.

“I’ll show you some tricks, if you like.”

Oh no, it’s worse. He’s a scam artist or a pickpocket.

But then I noticed he was wearing a name tag and there was a poster behind him that said there was a magic festival the following weekend. “Are you with the festival?” I asked.

“Yes I am!” he said. So we let him stay, and with a close eye on my wallet throughout the little show, I tried to enjoy his tricks. I’m sorry, but I just instinctively don’t trust people anymore. He effortlessly bent a fork, signed it and let Anna keep it as a souvenir. Oh, Magic Wayne, we will never forget you.

I fell in love with just about every store we visited, Royal Peasantry in particular. Every piece of clothing was a work of pure artistry. 

While browsing their wares, we met a beautiful woman who was strangely familiar.

Anna: Have we met before?

Lady: (smiles) Think about it.

Anna: Are you from Naples?

Lady: No, but I have a friend in Naples… but that’s probably not where you know me from. I did a reality TV show.

Anna: You were on America’s Next Top Model!

Lady: Yep.

Meg: >:O EXCUSE ME. MAY I PLEASE TRY THIS ON?

Okay. It didn’t end like that, but I had no idea who she was, and I did end up trying some clothing on that I couldn’t afford. After we left, Anna explained who she was to me and I realized she was my favorite model from the show, from one of the only seasons I ever watched.

Meg: That was the blind girl who had long blonde hair?????????? NOOOOOOOOOO.

I would have gushed over her had I known, but maybe it’s better that I didn’t. You should never meet your heroes, kids.

We went to galleries, cafes and crystal emporiums and everything we could fit into a single day.

For dinner we went to Jack of the Wood and ate rabbit and parsnip fries. The fries were a little funky, but interesting. We each had about four before we couldn’t stand the taste. Then a bluegrass band took the stage. There was a steel guitar, a twelve-string acoustic, a bass and a mandolin and all of the musicians were extremely talented.

They sang beautiful harmony and we bought their album for the road. Then we headed off to the Altamont Theater to meet my dad’s friend Nathan. He was an Asheville local so we decided it would be cool to see him while we were in town.

He took us to a West African concert. The man in the middle’s name is Diali Cissokho and he is Nathan’s teacher. The music was so powerful, charged with ancient energy. After a few songs the whole room was dancing in front of the stage. One woman had brought a gourd instrument and she was shaking it passionately while throwing her head forward and bending into the rhythm. Another woman danced like a serpent, coiling her wrists and ankles and a synchronized, hypnotic movement. And then there was an older woman with long, long blonde hair who danced in a sort of frenzy, hopping on her toes and flailing her arms. She was my favorite.

After the show it was about 9:30, and we had to get to our next hotel, which was an hour and a half away in Kingsport, TN. We hurried back to the car. For the drive we started playing our new CD, and it was every bit as good as we had hoped it would be. Just as we got on the highway, it started raining. Visibility was limited and we were going down the mountain now. Cars were passing us going about 80 mph. As the rain is falling harder and the mountainside is getting steeper, this song comes on with the lyric “she’s slipping and she’s sliding” and something about making a deal with the devil.

“I would sell a piece of my soul for us to get through this,” Anna said. We saw a road leading off the highway that was all lit up with red lights. “That is the road to Hell,” Anna said. And then she fell asleep.

An hour and change later we had reached the Econolodge in Kingsport, TN. We wasted no time getting our keys and going straight to bed. After being up since five in the morning, we were beyond exhausted. This hotel was quite nice, and after checking my credit card bill, I am amazed that it was the exact same price as the Ramada Inn. We slept well on comfortable beds in a quiet room, knowing that the new day would bring our last day on the road, and then we would be in New York City.

Meg and Anna's Winding Road Trip - Part One

Last Wednesday marked the beginning of my road trip from Naples, FL to Jersey City, NJ (just outside of NYC). I kidnapped the beautiful and charming Anna from my friend Cary and we took off in a black Pontiac Vibe named Tuxedo Mask. I was quite excited to be taking this trip with such an enchanting companion, a  young lady with a 1940s style and a history of being a great conversationalist and an urban adventurer.

As you will see by Part Three of this blog, Anna pretty much wakes up with her hair looking this good. I tried to learn her secrets, but I'm convinced she uses magicks or alien technology. For the first few hours we were psyched to be two crazy dames on a road trip together. We knew the high couldn't last, but we greatly enjoyed it while it did.

We listened to surfer rock and tried to get the trucks to honk at us, erupting into giddy laughter and applause each time they did. We got ten horns in Florida alone, until one of the truckers waggled his finger at us and killed our morale. Our first pit stop was in Tampa at a Panera Bread. We had every intention of eating healthy food along the way.

Interestingly enough, this Panera bread had the worst bathroom of any we would see during our trip. Somebody had made a fecal painting all over one of the toilets and none of the employees had any interest in cleaning it up. We were happy to get back on the road after that.

We drove and drove and drove, stopping for a quick shot in front of the Cafe Risque (ooh la la). An old man pulled up next to our car and asked us, "What is this place?" We both stared at him incredulously.

"It's a strip club," Anna said.

"Oh..."

The scenery of northern Florida was absolutely breathtaking. We had stretches of blue sky and green pastures filled with cows and peppered with wild mustard.

We must have been lost in the beauty surrounding us, because the next thing we knew, we were being pulled over by a police officer. He had been hiding in the woods and he tore out of there and chased us down, flashing his lights and tailing our bumper.

"Were you in a hurry?" he asked us. I know we should have made something up, but we didn't have time to get our stories straight.
"We're on a road trip and I didn't realize how fast I was going," Anna said.
"Drive safe," he said, handing Anna a ticket. He handed me the registration and looked me in the eye. "Drive safe," he repeated.

And then a mile up the road we crossed the state line into Georgia. We were both quite shook up after the run-in with the law, so we pulled off at the next exit and took a breather. While Anna was in the ladies room, a local Georgia man started talking to me.

"I aint never seen this brand before," he said, pointing to a bag of Cape Cod potato chips.
"Oh yeah?" I said. "I live in New Jersey and I see those all the time."
"Really?" he said. "I ain't never seen nothing like it."
Then his friend came out of the bathroom and chuckled at me. "Is he talking your ear off?"
"Yup," I said. They both laughed and headed out of the station. Anna left a Wrinkles sticker in the bathroom and we were on our way.

An hour or so later, we reached The Ramada Inn from Hell in Macon, Georgia. By the time we got there, we just wanted to lie down for a bit and rest our tired bodies. The hotel clerk put us in the back of the building, so we had to drive down there and carry our bags upstairs. When we got to our door, neither of our keys worked. Alas, we loaded up and locked our stuff back in the car and went back to the lobby. We asked for a new room, because the door was definitely broken, but the clerk insisted it would work if we tried again and lifted the door handle up instead of down. Take two. We walked all the way back to the room, went upstairs and tried the new keys. Lifting the door handle worked! Anna went into the bathroom and I suddenly heard her say, "Oh no."

I followed her in to see what was the matter.

"I'm not picky," she said, "but this is foul."

There was dark urine all over the toilet seat.

[picture available upon request]

The bathtub was full of dust and hair and we knew this room had not been cleaned. So down we went again, and we told the clerk the horrors of the room and insisted that we have another.

"Do you want to see the picture?" Anna asked.

"No thanks," said the clerk, handing us a new set of keys.

And back we went, now placed in the room two doors down from the prior. The bathroom was clean in this one, and we ignored the ejaculate on the bedspread and stuffed it into the corner of the room.

After a brief respite, we decided to get dinner downtown.

We found a cute spot called The Rookery and each ordered a glass of wine. It was definitely the hipster joint of the south, because they had grass-fed beef and organic food options. I ordered the fish and chips, which to my displeasure, was literally fish and deep-fried potato chips.

We had an adorable waiter who looked like a blonde Michael J. Fox. Anna asked him if the bar with the mechanical bull was a fun place to go and he told us "it's pretty redneck to be honest." We tried hunting down some live music, and stumbled across this funny sign.

By this point, we had endured a little too much excitement for one day, so we drove back to our Hotel Hell and went to bed. At about five in the morning, I awoke to the siren song of the highway that was practically right on top of us. The curtains didn't block out the light from the outdoor hotel walkway and its fluorescent sheen was burning colors into my retinas.

"Are you awake?" I heard Anna ask.

"Yes."

"Can we get up now? I've been lying here awake since 4 am."

"Yeah. Let's get out of here."

And this began what would be our most thrilling and exciting day on the road, but I will get into all of that in Part Two of Meg and Anna's Winding Road Trip.