The long haul

Leg 1: Navajo Dam, NM to Enid, OK: 13 hours, 775 miles.

I got on the road after fishing at around 10 AM, and had 13 hours ahead of me. I crossed three million Indian reservations, one of which wasn't trying to hide any tribal secrets:

At mile 1000 of my trip I hit the Texas border, and beside the "Welcome to Texas, Road Work Next 83 miles" was the most awesome anti-littering sign ever:

Texas was completely uneventful, and I made my way into Oklahoma to hit Enid (an hour North of Oklahoma City) right at ten. I had been without cell phone reception or internet access for almost three days, so I had kind of surprised my friends in Oklahoma. In fact, one thought I had already gone through because I didn't tell him I'd had a car trouble setback and been busy fishing. The other friend, Kawika Chang, is in flight school for the Navy and had a test in the morning. After an exhausting 12 hour drive and sleeping on gravel for the past two nights, I was glad to take a break from drinking and get some sleep.

In a house containing both of North America's deadly types of spiders: the brown recluse and the black widow.

Some things should be kept secret, the aforementioned fact being one of them. I would have rather woken up to the questions:

"How do you feel? Any painful bumps, bites, or mysterious swollen inflammations? "

You know, instead of slapping the everloving shit out of the slightest itch until I fell asleep thinking about which limb I would rather live without. It was good to see an old friend and get some sleep before the longest leg in the morning, the drive to the beach.

Leg 2: Enid, OK to Nags Head, NC: 23.3 hours, 1280 miles.

The last leg was a pretty bad drive. It occurred to me that the further East you go, the speed limit slows down, the traffic becomes worse, and everyone becomes a lot less blonde. I got lost in Tulsa, and no one had clued Arkansas in to the fact that you're supposed to drive fast(er) in the left lane. It was bottle neck galore. I wondered what kind of morons this state bred until I stopped to get gas, and my question was answered.

Me: "Do you have any chapstick?"

Lady: "Um should be on the wall there, next to them Do-Dads."

Me: *pointing to the fly swatters* "These Do-Dads?"

Lady: "No them other ones above them."

I wasn't sure if by Do-Dads she was referring to the air fresheners (bottom of wall), trick pens (middle of wall), or the two guys standing behind the wall. I saw Blistex and decided it was a reasonable way to end the game of "What the hell are you pointing at?" I should have just told her that we don't have Do-Dads in the big city, and if we ever did, we've been fresh out since at least 1979. I took a piss and decided against investing in glow in the dark condoms, the Exciter Ring, or the edible body paint being vended in my urinal.

A black guy in a Harvard shirt passed me as I walked out of the gas station, and I waited for 20 minutes to take a picture of him. I didn't realize robberies took that long. I really wanted to post the picture with the caption: "Your affirmative action dollars hard at work." or "The definition of irony." or something along those lines, but I reached my threshold and decided to get back on the road. I crossed the mighty Mississippi River and headed past Memphis towards nightfall.

Mile 2,000 came an hour into Tennessee, and I stopped and ate at Krystal burger to celebrate. If you've never had it, put it down on your list of things to do before you die. Here's an interesting tidbit of information: there is a fraternal order of police, and they have car stickers to identify each other on the road. The sticker is called, "The fine blue line;" it's just a blue horizontal line on a black background, but this sticker is powerful.

On my last trip from Knoxville to Nashville, the kid who drove was a cop. He had the sticker on his car, and explained it to us. If a cop pulls up behind you and sees it, he knows you're a cop and it'll just be a waste of time to pull you over because he's not going to give another cop a ticket. *hmmm, what about a DUI? Check into becoming a cop later* He was right. We FLEW to Nashville and a cop pulled out behind us at one point, came up to run the tags, and then backed off and turned around. So if you ever see the sticker, you know what's up.

The section that makes up Interstate 40 at the Tennessee / North Carolina border is insane. It's in the Great Smoky Mountain range, and the highway is a concrete Super G. There are all sorts of tight turns and runaway truck ramps for twenty solid miles, at a 6% downhill grade. The whole section smelled like burning brakes. This was a good way to wake up and head into North Carolina, the worst part of the drive. In all honesty, I barely remember it. I was exhausted and zoning in and out for six hours all the way until I treated myself to a five knuckle snake massage near Raleigh - Durham. After that it was smoooooth sailing. I crossed the bridge into Nags Head, and was about to begin the best and most exciting part of the road trip.