A few weeks back, I headed out on a road trip to Florida and Disney World by way of Virginia.  To say things did not go as planned would be an understatement.  This is the story of that trip.

Friday

The plan was to leave work around noon, thanks to a meeting I had with the fine folks in AF.  Our first stop was across the street at Mariano’s, to get lunch, snacks for the trip, and a opaque container that would allow Jeff to drink during the drive outside the view of law enforcement.  An hour later, we were on the road, with Val behind the wheel, me in the passenger seat, and Jeff and a case of Blue Moon in the back.  Our destination, Roanoke, Virginia, lay 700 miles away, with an estimated arrival time of 11:30 PM.  Jeff, thinking this road trip was taking place in the early 2000s, had brought along a collection of CDs for us to listen to, which lasted through much of the Illinois portion of the trip.  Eventually, though, we switched to the playlist I had put together, which led to the first amusing tale of the trip.

When Lily Allen’s hit song Fuck You came up on the playlist in Indianapolis, a not-so-slightly inebriated Jeff instantly took to its charms, seeing it as an anthem against his perceived work antagonists.  As the song played, he dialed it up in the iTunes store on his phone, passed it up front to make sure it was the right one, and then purchased it.  More on this later.

Speaking of drunk Jeff, his plan on drinking throughout the drive had an unintended consequence: our estimated arrival time.  He made the cardinal sin of breaking the seal, after which we needed to stop for him to use the bathroom practically ever hour.  Once you added in his smoking time, we spent approximately 20 minutes of every hour standing still, which pushed our expected arrival in Virginia well past midnight.  During one of these stops, in the lovely town of New Castle, Indiana, we even had to find a WalMart in order to replenish the supply of Blue Moon.  Eventually, we made it out of Indiana and into Ohio with Val still behind the wheel.  However, around 7 PM, things started to go wrong.

We were starting to go through some mountainous terrain when Val suddenly started to feel sick.  She pulled off at the next exit, found a driveway next to what appeared to be a trailer park, and stopped to walk around and catch her breath.  Meanwhile, Jeff, claiming he was now sober (but lying through his teeth) decided he would drive once we got back on the road.  I tried to stop him, but he had the keys, it was his car, and Val was in no position to back either one of us, so he won out.  Eventually, we tried to get going again, but had to pull off again at a gas station before we made any real progress.

While Jeff and Val came in and out of the gas station, I started looking for local hotels.  It was obvious at this point that we would not be making it to Virginia, so this was as good a spot as any to stop for the night.  The closest Hampton Inn was about 10 miles back in the other direction, so, after purchasing some Pepto-Bismal, we slowly reversed our course and found the hotel, where Jeff decided he and he alone could help Val, leaving me to babysit the car which he had left in front of the door.  Unfortunately for us, the hotel did not have any double rooms, so, after a bit of finagling, we ended up with 3 rooms for the night in Chillicothe, Ohio, a mere 300 miles short of our intended destination.

Saturday

Waking up in beautiful Chillicothe, I showered and headed down for the free breakfast in the hotel lobby, where I ran into a now sober Jeff.  The day was off to a great start, as he had thoughts about this Hampton Inn and how it did not live up to his expectations for the chain.  I had a bed to sleep in and was able to make my own Belgian waffle, so I was content.  Neither one of us had heard from Val since the night before, so we were both anxious to see how she was holding up, hoping, of course, for the best.

Eventually, Val came down for breakfast, feeling better, but not 100%, and with a hole in her favorite sweatshirt thanks to Jeff’s chain smoking.  We all hoped this was a mere glitch and headed out, looking forward to the remaining 300 miles going off without a hitch.  Jeff had even downloaded a Gabriel Iglesias album to listen to, since Val had mentioned she liked his comedy earlier in the week.  With Aloha Fluffy on the radio, we hit the road.  Unfortunately, things again went south.  About an hour in, we needed to stop at a rest area.  Later, another rest area stop enabled Jeff to explain to me why he couldn’t listen to a song that someone he hated liked, for reasons that I’m sure make sense to psychiatrist somewhere.

Eventually, we found ourselves at a West Virginian gas station/Arby’s, where Jeff and I managed to grab some lunch while Val tried to settle herself and purchased copious amounts of Dramamine.  And yes, an Arby’s attached to a gas station in West Virginia was just like you imagine it would be.  The workers were slow and the customers were… special, I guess is the word I would use.  I can’t really think of a way to describe the people around us without coming off as a northern elitist, but think about what the people who go to an Arby’s in West Virginia would look like and you’re not far off.  I will say it was the first time I’ve ever witnessed a family say grace in a fast food establishment.

After an hour or so, we finally got back on the road, with our next stop slated to be Jeff’s apartment in beautiful Roanoke.  As we approached, he pointed out landmarks of significance to him, like the community college he once attended and the Allstate building where he allegedly works.  Before long, we had arrived, a mere 15 hours after our initial plan.  After schlepping our luggage up to the third floor, it was time to relax and take in all the sights Virginia had to offer.

While Jeff and Val checked out his balcony and its smoking opportunities, I managed to find the White Sox spring training game on the MLB Network.  After 2 innings, we switched over to Netflix and watched the first 4 episodes of the recently released Daredevil season 2.  As Matt Murdock and gang took on the Punisher, Jeff tried to wow us with drinks made with whatever he had left in his refrigerator weeks before, including moonshine made with some imaginary fruit that Jeff insists is real but nobody else has ever heard of.  A take-out Chinese dinner was the capper on the day, after which we retreated to different rooms and called it a day.

We will pick up here in our next installment.