Traveling Man

I've been reading some really well written stuff in other people's blogs lately, so I've been inspired to actually update my own for once. In an uncharacteristic turn of events, there are actually quite a few very interesting things going on for me right now, so I've really no reason not to write about them...except complete and utter laziness, of course.

Two weekends ago, Delvox and I headed way down souf to hang out with my nephew. It was a fantastic trip, filled to the brim with little of substance. It was one of those great weekends with almost no purpose or planning, but plenty of hanging around and doing absolutely nothing. It really made me miss our days at College Park and Pheasant Run, sitting around watching Comedy Central and being generally worthless.

We started on our epic journey on Friday morning. We left from Delvaux's house in Actiondale and went right for the freeway. Traffic around NoVa wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. We stopped somewhere south of Richmod for gasohol and donut holes. We then took our leave of this state and its anti-radar-detector laws. We cooked through NC, admiring its bounty of interesting billboards and outlet malls. I was pleased to find that Pedro has made his way back onto most of the now rather sparse South of the Border billboards. Almost all of the fun 3D ones are gone now (the only one I remember seeing this trip was "You Never Sausage A Place"). The rest are all two dimensional and not horribly interesting. Smash Hit is gone. So is Have a Ball and You'll Go Bananas. The one with the mechanical sheep jumping over the fence is still there, but only northbound. South of the Border advertising just isn't what it used to be.

Orlando advertising, however...wow. I guess the people who run the "Discount Orlando Tickets" place really underestimate the powers of both the Internet and people's ability to plan a vacation. The very presence of the "Discount Orlando Hotel Deals" billboards flies in the face of planning. I know that when I go somewhere and need a place to stay, I like to decide where that place is and make my arrangements before I'm half way to my destination. This is something which I consider normal behavior. Granted, I'm no whiz when it comes to planning things out, but if I'm going to drive 14 hours from my house, I'm going to make sure I know exactly where I'm sleeping before I leave.

Other billboards of note include those for JR Outlets (a much smaller building than you'd think they'd need to house pretty much every item ever conceived and sold by man), Cafe Risque, and JABS Fireworks (Cleanest restrooms on I-95). If you know anything about my job, you realize that JABS Fireworks is absolutely hilarious and required a stop. Fortunately, we needed gas, so we decided to check it out.

We bought gas at the BP station (no affiliation with JABS) and then went to the other side of 95 to check out JABS Mobile. We used their restroom (billed as the cleanest on a road stretching from Maine to Miami, remember), which Delvaux adequately described as "not the best breakfast I've ever had." It did have a rather amusing sign which I neglected to photograph. It basically warned you not to pee on the seat. Just one more in the myriad of reasons why I should carry my electric screwdriver with me everywhere I go.

Once we finished our tour of this much over-hyped restroom, we went to the actual fireworks store. It was pretty run of the mill. Lots of illegal explosives and such. I got a couple t-shirts and tried to convince Earl (the large man working there) to give me one of his JABS Mobile polo shirts so I could wear it to work. He was agreeable and told us to stop back in on Sunday. Of course, when we did, he was nowhere to be found. Earl, you sneaky bastard.

From this point on to our next destination, I was given the reigns to Delvaux's pimpin new ride. He recently got equiped with item Mazda 3. A nice little car which is insanely smooth at blistering speeds. At one point I looked down at the speedo after not paying much attention for a while, only to find I was bouncing around between 105 and 110. Who knows how long I'd been doing that or what my actual top speed was. That's one smooth car.

The car also has a navigation system. A novelty to me, a necessity to others. I was highly amused at it's utter astonishment that we'd ever want to get off the highway before reaching our final destination. As soon as you got off the road, the robot lady who lives in the dashboard was yelling at you to turn around and get back on. She didn't know where my sister lived, but she knew the general area, and I was able to pick up the trail where she left it. A few short, fast miles later, we were in Cameron, visiting my sister, Kate. We hung out with her for a while, and discussed paint colors, airplanes, wildlife, frozen birds, and how awful it must be to have children of your own (a sentiment I do not necessarily share, but it did make for an interesting conversation). We took our leave from Kate and headed further west to Cayce, a small suburb of Columbia.

After traversing several sets of railroad tracks, an industrial park, the worlds best restaurant, and some pretty ghetto houses, we arrived at my nephew's place. We got situated, then went out for wings. While waiting for our table, we encountered the largest man I've ever seen in my life. This guy was bigger than life itself. Absolutely enormously huge. Our waitress tried to convince us that we ordered a plate of miscellaneous fried vegetables, and was rather undone that we didn't agree. We eventually got our wings, which were no doubt tampered with by our now peeved waitress, ate, and headed back to the house. We stopped for beer on the way (of course) and proceeded to drink Snakebites and Coors Light until eventually passing out for the night.

The next day, my nephew showed us around some. We hit the highlights of Columbia and USC. The bookstore. The parking garage. The frat houses (which are insane, by the way) and, of course, the liquor store. The liquor store was interesting. It had two sides, which were completely separate. One side sold beer and wine, the other liquor. There were cops all over. The place was huge. I bought watermelon vodka (DANGER! DANGER!) and some beers, and we were on our way.

Back at the house, we watched Van Wilder (one in a long list of movies I've not seen) and drank. I had some of the previously mentioned watermelon vodka, and discovered just how evil that shit is. You cannot taste the alcohol in it. I repeat, you cannot taste the alcohol. At no point during the evening did anyone mix it with anything. It's like drinking juice....35% of which is undetectable alcohol. We went to California Dreamin' for dinner and were served by my nephew's roommate. We ate baked potato soup and learned an alternate meaning for the word "Canadian." We then went back to the house and pretened to watch The Patriot while drinking more beer and polishing off that bottle of vodka. I was pretty ripped by the end of the evening.

Sunday morning, we arose and prepared for our journey home. We stopped off at JABS BUrger King for lunch, and then headed to JABS fireworks like Earl said, but as I mentioned earlier, he was nowhere to be found. We took our leave of that place and continued north. We enjoyed more billboard watching though NC and tested out the nav system a couple times to avoid traffic jams. It worked well, and allowed us to soak in some of the culture of the less traveled areas of North Carolina and Virginia. Eventually we made it back to NoVa and that was, as they say, that.

Now that I've bored you all with this dull tale of adventure and billboards, I have to get to bed. I've got to get up in 6 hours to catch a plane to Seattle for the weekend. A trip which will undoubtedly generate an equally long and boring blog entry. Until then, consider yourself a sucker for actually reading this far.