Entry One: Canastota

Atlanta: Not much happened here, just a beginning. For the first couple of hours everyone was quiet, as if not really sure how we were supposed to react and feel on a road trip. We kind of each did our own thing. I drove, Justin sat and listened to the music, and Ryan wrote. Nothing really interesting from when we left Justin's at nine thirty until we hit the McDonalds a couple hours later.

McDonalds: About eleven thirty we stopped for food and caffinee. I think the trip really began here. We all knew how to go to fast food together, so we began to interact more. The McDonalds was almost closed, in fact they wouldn't even let us inside. We had to go thorugh the drive-through and basically order what they still had...... 6 cheesburgers, 3 fries and cokes. For lack of a better place to eat, we hit up the pool at the Holiday Inn Express next door. It was funny, got some good pictures of Ryan looking like a gypsy over a globe light.

1st Highway (85, 77): This one is just here to be methodical about this journal. I drove until we passed Charlotte, taught Justin how to drive a stick, and let him take over. Ryan slept through all of this. He says he was awake for most of it.... liar.

NC / VA Border: I was asleep by this point, for about an hour I'm told. But we had decided that at the important states, we were going to stop and take pictures. We figured that both Virgina and North Carolina were important, so we'd kill two birds with one stone. After releaving ourselves, we took turns standing in front of the Virginia state sign and taking pictures. I-77 was dead. A rural freeway at two thirty in the morning. We simply walked across both sides to take pictures of the "Welcome to North Carolina" sign. Ryan, for effect, even lay down in the north bound lanes and insisted on getting a picture. We took our snapshots, jay-walked back across, and kept going.

2nd Highway (77, 81): Again, not much to say. I slept through most of this one until around five thirty when Ryan took the wheel and I had to keep him company. I crashed again around seven, but that hour and a half was fun. The saying that, "The darkest hour is just before the dawn," is true. The sky was absolutley pitch black until about six, when it began to pale..... sunrise over the Shenendoah Valley at six thirty. Spectacular. That is where the line in the song came from, "For Purple Mountain Majesties."

Breakfast: Eight AM and we've all had less than three hours of sleep: yeah, we're a little punch drunk off of it. Stopped at Hardees for breakfast and to possibilly clean up. So since we're out of it, EVERYTHING became funny. The coffee was horriffic, and that was funny. I put sugar in it, and that was funny. Nothing should have been, but everything was. Then the adventure became trying to change cloths and wash up in a fast food bathroom. I somehow think I didn't get much cleaner...

Stamps: After breakfast, Ryan wanted to send out a post-card. We walked across the street and bought the corniest one we could find, but the problem was one of a lack of stamps. The convienence store didn't have any and neither did the town grocery. No one did. So we got back on I-81. But we HAD to send this post-card immedietly (don't ask why, i'm not sure). So the next sizeble town we came to was Hagerstown, MD and we got off to find these ellusive stamps. We stopped at the first place we came to, and the Texaco attendent gave Ryan very specific directions to the nearest post office. "Eleven lights down. Turn left. One light down. Turn left. It's on your left, you can't miss it." Yes, we could. We went down, turned twice, and came all the way back, seeing nothing. After trying this a couple of times we found a CVS and resolved to hit them up for stamps. Ryan and I go in and while I look for something with caffinee, Ryan talks to the employees. He tells me that he'll meet me in the car, and I figured he had found his stamps. Wrong. I get back to the car and find only Justin asleep in the back. Turns out Ryan had only gotten directions to the post office (again) and had walked off to find it. He got there only to find himself penniless. So we had to drive there and wait for him to buy stamps. The entire affair took the better part of an hour, and Ryan lost his speaking privledges.