"Eat Mor Chikin"

Chick-Fil-A is which of the following:
a) Home of the original chicken sandwich.
b) The only fast food place with painted cows holding signs that read "Eat Mor Chikin."
c) Where Sarah and Ragan spent several hours in Jackson, Tennessee on Monday waiting for a AAA tow truck.
d) Managed by the nicest guy ever who drove Tai and me in his "Chicken Van" to the nearest motel, which turned out to be a gorgeous yet affordable pet-friendly inn a few hundred feet from a mall where we can, as Ragan put it, "spend money while waiting to spend money."
e) I won't insult anyone's intelligence by listing an "all of the above."

Welcome to our cross-country blog, which until yesterday was going to be a tally of how many horses (27) , cows (104 cows, 2 bulls, 1 calf, and 4 herds before I quit counting), Emu (2), armadillos (1, dead), deer (1 alive, 1 dead), and donkeys (1) we have seen on the endless expanse of highway. But things have gotten a bit more exciting lately, so perhaps I should go back to the beginning.

Friday, or Your Hummer Looks Stupid

Anyone who knows me knows I tend to get things done with a last-minute push (like those 10 page college papers), so of course there were tables to move, bags to pack, and breakables to wrap in the wee hours of the morning. Ragan posted a Craigslist posting for free stuff we'd put on the curb, and less than ten minutes later a woman pulled up to pick up a dresser I was leaving behind. Her bumper sticker: "Your Hummer Looks Stupid."

It seemed like the best name for our blog considering the insane amount we'll be Shelling out for gas (go ahead, groan). Props go out to Jane and her band name generator for "Road Trip Finger and the Onions." It was a close second.

Jersey Sucks

By 10am we were on the road, with Taima (my cat) adjusting to his portable apartment in the back seat and me learning the ins and outs of our new Garmin GPS while Ragan took the wheel. We made our way through Massachusetts and Connecticut and planned to plow through New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland to my sister's house by nightfall. Man, were we wrong. Traffic getting out of Boston. 2.5 hours of traffic to get over the GW bridge in New York. And then we hit the Jersey Turnpike, where after getting very friendly with the bumpers in front of and behind us, we had 30 seconds to decide what the toll lanes "ticket" and "no ticket" meant, and ended up blowing through an EasyPass lane. (We blamed Jersey Girl Rebecca.) At a late night dinner in Delaware, I tried the house drink special, "freckled lemonade." Let's just say pink lemonade and strawberry sauce are best kept separate. Even for me it was too sweet! 13 hours after leaving Cambridge we found ourselves in Baltimore traffic and decided to call it a day in Elkville, MD while we were still on speaking terms. Or maybe it was Elkwood. Whatever the name, we're not going back to that motel or its creepy-crawlies, and we needed no nudging getting up with the sun to have pancakes with my sister Kristen, brother-in-law, Brian, and Brian's brother, Shawn outside of D.C..

It was so good to see them that we decided to stay overnight instead of continue driving after breakfast. In sisterly fashion this involved a day of eating a bowl of cookie dough, a trip to Blockbuster to introduce Kristen to the first season of "Desperate Housewives," and an evening of Will Farrell with the boys. (You're my boy, Blue!) Tai (or should I call him Custard the Cowardly Dragon?) spent most of the day behind couches after a friendly greeting bark from Sambu, the resident yellow lab. Kristen and I had to sweep him out with a broom to get him downstairs, then put up a gate to keep Sam from more traumatic hellos.

Masterpiece of Foam

With parting directions to I-81 and a signed copy of Brian's new book in hand, we returned to the road and watched the compass needle change from South to West. We were on our way, headed for the Shenandoah Valley. Our first stop of the day: Foamhenge.



Yes, some guy decided to build an exact replica of Stonehenge on a Virginia hilltop conveniently located a few hundred feet from one of the world's Seven Wonders: the Natural Bridge. Unfortunately, we couldn't stop to hike the Wonder with cat in tow, but we could leave him for five minutes to view a "masterpiece of foam." The pictures star Velociraptor (named many years ago by Brian), who is our stand-in Red Sox Team Gnome for photos until we figure out a way to get one.

Sunday night landed us in Knocksville, Tennessee, where Enoch the Holiday Inn front desk guy informed us, "You're in the Bible Belt now, sweetheart. Nothin's open on Sunday evenin'." Ragan hit up the hotel bar before they closed (at 7pm) and the only unopened bottle of wine they had for sale was pink and apparently tasted like kool-aid. Crazy nightlife cast aside by Christians Closing Early, we found ourselves some takeout BBQ with biscuits and corn puddin' and had ourselves a feast.

Miss Betty

There's another main character in our travelogue, Betty, the 1997 Jetta carrying us from our last home to our next. Betty didn't want to be left out of our StupidHummer blog, so she had a few things to say in D.C. in the form of an alarm that wouldn't shut off and back windows that wouldn't go up. We took her to the mechanic around the corner from K and B's and were informed they wouldn't be able to look at her until Monday. We opted to have her seen in Tennessee, when the Air Conditioning began not conditioning much of anything. In Knocksville, we took Betty to Mr. Cool, air conditioning specialist extraordinaire, for recharging and they put a dye in to track any leaks, I guess. (Ragan knows the lingo, not me. I've been asking her things like "so what's starter fluid again?" to which she promptly replied "honey, they don't make a special fluid to start the car.")

So that brings us to yesterday and the Chick-Fil-A parking lot:
Ragan and Sarah walk into Chick-Fil-A, order their lunch, spread out a map of Tennessee and Arkansas, and plot their evening course through Memphis and on to Little Rock. Ragan and Sarah exit Chick-Fil-A and return to car. Ragan opens her door, sits back down, props her waffle fries next to the emergency break. Sarah gets in passenger side and picks up GPS to get back to the highway. HISS. Smoke pours from the hood of the car. Count one. HISS. Two. Smoke. Three. Sarah and Ragan stare out the windshield. "What the..." By count five Sarah was 20 feet away from the car, cat carrier in her arms. Ragan was about 8 feet away, inching her way closer.
Ragan: "It's not smoke. It's steam, it's not smoke."
Betty: HISS. Steam. HISS.
Sarah: "Are you sure? How do you know?"
Ragan: "It's steaming, Sarah. It's not going to blow up." She lifts the hood and peers inside.
Sarah:"I believe you. I'm just staying over here."
Betty: Hissssss. Spatter spatter. Drip drip drip.

A woman pulls up a few spots away. "Ummm, hey ya'll my brother here is the manager. Y'like me to git him?"
Sure, why not. Ragan paces, waiting for the car to not be spitting boiling liquid anymore so she can approach. The sun beams down at 105 degrees. Taima meows and tries to push his head through the opening on the side of his carrier, freaked out by the fact that he's been unceremoniously plopped down next to a busy fast-food drive through. Sarah feels the already hot top of the carrier and wonders where she can take her cat to get out of the heat.

Enter Daniel. Early thirties Chick-Fil-A manager, part-time caretaker of damsels in distress, and full-time down home country boy. If you have to break down somewhere in the country, you better hope it's Jackson, Tennessee and Daniel is nearby. Within minutes he has called the nearest inn. "It's pet-friendly, my sister brought her dog," he tells us, and recommends the nearest mechanic. Ragan, Tai and I find a corner table in Chick-Fil-A and wait for AAA to arrive.

Enter "Red." AAA tow truck driver who works more than 24 hour shifts and likes to talk about tattoos and the military. He put Betty on a flatbed, brought her to the AAA auto shop which was called - no kidding - Ragan's Old Hickory Auto Repair. Seriously! He then drove Ragan to the inn. I was already there, courtesy of Daniel and his Chicken Van. "My wife would be so proud of me for being nice to a cat," he told me. I decided not to ask why.

I met them at the front door. Red got out of the driver's seat and immediately took off his shirt and showed Ragan his back. It took me a second to realize he was showing her his tattoo.
We checked in, situated Taima, and spent the evening catching up on HGTV, me falling asleep early and night owl Ragan walking down the street to a Japanese Steakhouse for dinner. "The state bird of Tennessee really is the mosquito," was all she had to say about her excursion.

Back on Track

It's Tuesday evening now, and Betty's back in the parking lot. We're spending another night at the inn, which is just fine, and we're looking at movie schedules ("Wall-E" or "Swing Vote," or maybe the new Angelina flick). Then again we've got cable and Yuengling so maybe we'll just stay here.

It turns out the car was not smoking but spraying the green dye the Mr. Cool guy put in in Knocksville, which steamed as it hit the engine and other parts of the car (but apparently not the starter fluid, since it doesn't exist. For the record what I meant was power steering fluid, which I now know is pink.) I was going to call and bitch the Knocksville people out, but Ragan and I decided the call would be more effective coming from her dad, who knows cars and well, this is the South, and maybe a guy would be taken more seriously. When it comes to getting my money back, I'll surrender my pride.

We're making our way to Oklahoma City tomorrow. That's pronounced "ock-la-hom-a" for those of you who don't know. Anyone who thinks different should talk to Ragan.

Peace ya'll.