Vacay Day Two

Usually, when I am out of the house, my normal routine goes out the window (also out of the house!). I stay up late, sleep late, find energy I never knew I had, you know, the kinds of things that just shout, "I don't have ANYTHING to do !" So I was a little worried about getting on the road to Savannah on Thursday morning. If I left around 8:00 a.m. Central time, I could arrive in Savannah around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. This assumed a normal drive around Atlanta.

I didn't need to worry. I woke up full of energy around 7, "bright-eyed and bushy tailed," and loaded up the car. I headed across the outer road to Panera, took a right to the gas station and filled up, and then made one more right turn onto I-Whatever-it-was, bidding good-bye to the Doubletree precisely at 8:00 a.m. Wow! I watched for lots of traffic, because I had been warned about Bonnaroo the night before by the helpful desk clerk at the hotel. As she handed me my warm chocolate chip cookie, she said, "Hon, if you're headed south, you better watch out for lots of traffic. It's Bonnaroo, and there will be lots and lots of people and trucks and RVs and troopers. It might take you a while to get to Chattanooga." I remembered seeing a car with a phrase, "Bonnaroo or Bust," chalked on its back window, and so I asked, "What is a Bonnaroo?" "Music festival," she said. "Big. Big."

So as I sped along the interstate, I watched for the huge conglomeration of traffic, but it didn't show up that early. Everyone was breezing along quickly and quietly, except in a couple of areas where the speed limit was lowered to 55. In my naivete, I thought the signs were serious, but I found myself terribly mistaken as I watched all kinds of cars and trucks and RVs passing me and all the troopers as if we were sitting still. Well, the troopers WERE still, but they were not sitting. They were doing their jobs and getting ready for the inevitable onslaught of people. I decided to call Max and have him tell me what Bonnaroo meant, so he looked it up, and I was really missing a party. Radiohead was there, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beach Boys, Alice Cooper, Kenny Rogers, Steven Wright (one of my favorite comedians), and a bunch of other acts.

Sorry to have to miss all the fun, but really glad not to be having to sit out in the sun for two or three days and wait in line for a vacancy in a porta-potty, I headed straight to Chattanooga, where my grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and I went when my parents went to teachers' meeting in, probably, 1963. I remembered going to Lookout Mountain and Rock City, and generally finding all kinds of tourist stuff to do. I remembered the mountains, and I was happy to find that they are still there. The drive into Chattanooga is nothing short of spectacular, the road drifting and winding and climbing and falling in the midst of the Smoky Mountains. It was still early and cool, and the sun turned its face on the layers and layers of mountains on the horizon in all directions; I could see the green trees and a little blue haze and a ribbon of gray that wound about in the distance. I will drive to Savannah again just to see that vista.

I got through Chattanooga just fine, and decided that I needed to stop on the way back to see the Civil War battlefield at Chickamauga, and then took the next leg of the trip on I-75 toward what I dreaded most: a drive around Atlanta, about 110 miles from Chattanooga. I have often heard the East Coast being described as a "megalopolis," with city running into city into city, with no green area in between. I go on record here today to say that I-75 is the same way. From Chattanooga to Atlanta, exit after exit, traffic was unrelenting, at least three lanes each way, and crammed to exploding with huge trucks and pick-up trucks, RVs and vans, SUVs and cars, all screaming along at what seemed to be 110 miles per hour, taking no prisoners, leaving a wake of shattered tire rubber and broken glass all over the highway. I know how hard I was gripping the steering wheel because my tan line stops at the second knuckle on each hand where my fingers turned under the wheel. And I had no choice but to go as fast as I could, right along with them, hoping that I could see where I was going when I had to get in the correct lane for my exits from I-75 to I-285 and back to I-75.

Changing lanes became a practiced art. I looked in each mirror, and turned my head just the way Bill Wheeler told me to do in Driver's Ed in 1969, and then quickly claimed my space in the next lane. I also had to watch out for people in front of me doing the same thing, only doing it at their own speeds, decidedly slower than traffic in the left outside lane. Speed, slow down, speed, slow down. Speed. And then, as I expected, right when I was about to change lanes around the airport (I think the cars at the airport in Atlanta are just about as bad as planes at the airport), someone came up on my blind spot going so fast that I hadn't even seen him in my mirrors, or when I looked over my shoulder a few seconds earlier. I jerked the car back into my own lane - or so I thought. This was my education in the responsiveness of our little black convertible. I jerked the car as I would have my Honda Accord, and though the Accord would have been just fine, the jerk I gave the wheel put the car not in the lane from which I had come, but about one-third of the way into the NEXT lane to my right! Fortunately, and incredibly, that lane was empty. I shook for a while after that, but made it through just fine, and heaved a sigh of relief (sounds trite, but it's true) after I took my exit from I-285 onto I-75.

Fooey! The traffic AFTER Atlanta was only marginally better than the traffic BEFORE and IN Atlanta, and to my surprise, the three-lane highway extended to Macon, some 85 miles south. At Macon, however, I would be able to make my final turn, onto I-16 East, toward Savannah! Before that, though, I was getting hungry, and so I tried to find an exit with fast food that would be an "easy-off, easy-on." I took the exit for McDonough, Georgia, in honor of my friend Mark McDonough, and found nothing easy about it. I managed, however, to find something to eat at Burger King, and knew I would be able to wait for real food until I arrived in Savannah and we went to dinner at Sapphire Grill. That thought kept me going. When I turned onto I-16, my last 160 miles before I saw my lovely girl, I began to get excited all over again. I knew a great time was waiting, and I would be happy to see all the people who would be arriving about the same time, and who would join us for dinner for the next three nights.

Coming up: Dinner at some really good places, and Savannah Dan, the best tour guide EVER! See you next time!