Cross-Country Drive

I arrived in Florida on Friday, in one piece and enormously impressed with myself. I sunburned within approximately 30 seconds of crossing the Florida border, please forgive me if I ever complained about the heat in Madison. Or the traffic. Humidity and traffic jams aside, it feels good to be back here. There's something to be said for the place that raised you.

The drive was long and mostly uneventful. On Thursday, I drove through Illinois (in which I spent approximately three hours trying to find my friend Malka's apartment), Indiana (in which you can turn your head to the left and see clear across the state), Kentucky (in which I fell in love with Louisville from the interstate), and finally Tennessee.

I stayed the night at a motel of questionable repute in Murfreesboro. A motel which the night clerk informed me offered such surprising amenities as a swimming pool and free breakfast. The pool turned out to consist of about 3 inches of slime and broken concrete and the breakfast was all the watery coffee and stale mini donuts I could eat. I was hungry so I ate two.

The breakfast room was divided down the middle-- one side was linoleum and folding tables and the aforementioned stale donuts. The design scheme of the other side could best be described as 'Demented English Tea Parlour'. It featured a dizzying floral carpet in a shade of fuschia that cannot and should not be found in nature along with several wingback chairs with a similar pattern and color scheme. It was kind of amazing.

I arrived at my parents' house on Friday night. It's funny because flying here is a bit like teleporting and seems perfectly normal but driving here feels awfully strange. I guess I never realized before that these two places are connected and that roads run between them.

It's a good thing to realize.

Cross-Country Drive

p.s. Did I mention that I'm leaving the country in five days?