This Is NOT About Tennis (Hardly At All), Part 1

I was sitting at home watching TV and saw turmoil up north with snow paralyzing Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and areas nearby. We never get any snow here is Texas. I immediately thought to myself, "I should go there." The kids are gone, and I have no responsibility for the next week. i was going to stay home and slack off, maybe catching up on some chores. When the kids took off, they left the house a total mess. What I would be looking forward to would probably be cleaning up that mess, and catching up on some other stuff I kinda need to do. It is pounding rain outside, so there is no possibility of playing tennis for the next few days.

Why not just split? I should just take off in my little car, with my inadequate Texas clothing, and just head north for parts unknown with no destination in mind. I should just work out my destination along the way as I go. It could be sort of a homeopathic remedy for me, one that treats the symptoms by creating similar symptoms. I'm feeling vaguely unsettled, so I should do something that unsettles me. I'm feeling tight on money, so I should get out some money and spend it on my trip.

I call my kids to see how they are doing, and tell them that I am going on a trip. They ask me where I am going, and I tell them I don't know. I say maybe I'll got to Kentucky or Canada or something.

So I toss a few things into the back of my little car and roar off around noon on Christmas Eve into the great unknown. I drive, and drive, and drive. I head roughly northeast, heading toward the northeastern quadrant of Texas. Once I get close to Texarkana, I figure my goal for the night should be to get through Arkansas. The rain is accompanying me on my trip the whole way

Once I get through Arkansas, I am arriving toward Memphis, Tennessee. I had planned at first to only go this far, but I'm feeling pretty good, so I decide to keep going. It is around midnight now and I've been driving with very few stops for around twelve hours. The rain is picking up, too, and it is now coming down in torrents.

I thought I was going to die in Memphis. Once I got there, it was raining so hard, and the streetlights were creating so much glare on the rainy roads, that I could hardly see the lines on the road, or the boundaries of the road. I am darting in and out of unfamiliar construction on the road that is making me detour to places I can't see upfront. I slow down a lot, but still am having trouble figuring out what to do and where to go. I've never been to Memphis before; the freeways keep merging in and out of other freeways in even more unfamiliar ways, and just trying to drive and stay on the road is keeping me on the edge of my seat.

Miraculously, I survive Memphis. Once I get out of the city, the rain slows down, and there are less streetlights that cause so much glare so I can see the road better. I'm still feeling pretty good, so I decide to keep going. I figure I can stop at rest stops every once in a while and get some kinda-sleep in lieu of getting a hotel room. Amazingly, this works. Almost every time I see a rest stop after Memphis, I stop for an hour or two of dozing; I just put my driver's seat back and sleep until I wake up either too uncomfortable or too cold, and then get back on the road for a while.

I drive into and through Kentucky. Around this time, I start thinking to myself that maybe I should visit Athens, Ohio. I was born there, but only lived there until I was six months old. So I know nothing about the place. I decide to make that the first destination. Plus, if I'm actually going to go to Canada, I need a birth certificate, since I don't have a passport (I looked this up on the Web when I was thinking about maybe going to Canada).

For this whole trip, I've been using my cruise control. I don't want to get a ticket on this long trip, so I've been very careful to stay mostly within the speed limit, or at least within the same speed as the rest of the traffic flow. But in Northern Kentucky, I stop at a gas station, and forget to turn my cruise control when I leave. I am distracted, and for about five miles, I am driving a little fast. As I pull around a car, I immediately realize that I'm going too fast, and slow down. But wait, there's a car tailing me. Oh crap, I bet it's a cop. Yup, he turns his lights on and pulls me over. Damn it. I've been trying this whole trip to tow the line, and here I am driving a little over for about five miles, and I get nailed. Maybe he'll only give me a warning. Nope, of course not. A ticket. On Christmas. Merry Christmas. Grrr. Oh well, every once in a while you have to pay stupidity tax. You know, when you get some unforeseen expense that is due to your own lack of foresight or retarded blunders.

See if I get cought without cruise control for the rest of this trip. I'm going the speed limit, and turning on the cruise control even if the speed limit is 25, even if it pisses everybody off around me. It's better than getting another ticket.

I pull into Cincinnati, Ohio, and look at the map. Athens is all the way on the other side of the state, and it looks like there are no major highways that get there. I take this tiny, winding road that passes through all kinds of little townships across the state. In retrospect, I could have taken another road that would have been a little faster, but hindsight is 20/20. And besides, i got to capture a little more of the character of southern Ohio on this road. Which is desolate and economically depressed. But it has a certain hometowny charm. There are hardly any businesses the whole way, and those that are there are in houses. Not like strip-mall-obsessed Texas. I see a convenience store in a little house that also sells guns. Okay, that's a different combination.

I somehow get lost and off the little windy road I am on onto another little windy road. I look at the map and figure out a way to still get to where I am going. I have to pay close attention, because these little curvy roads all seem to interbreed, snaking in and out of each other, merging, and then separating, with signs that are sometimes hard to see. Plus, the rain has just not let up at all since I left Austin, except for brief periods. I finally pull into Athens, Ohio and get a room at the first cheap hotel I see.