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.
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