Chapter 1

So, even though I gave a whole bunch of stuff away, and abandoned some more, this car is ridin loooow.  Finally got all the stuff I thought I might need loaded at 4:00pm Monday, Dec 1, called my dad and got his blessings and prayer and final advice (flip flops) and pulled away from the curb at 4:45pm, just in time for rush hour in NYC.  No wonder no one owns a car in NYC…  Anywho, for all that, and in spite of my complete lack of timing it only took an hour to get to Brooklyn and another half hour to get to the Verrazano Bridge.  A couple of stops at rest areas and I got to New Castle DE just after 10pm – yeah I’m taking my time, lol!

I’m gonna have to get somewhere where I can get rid of some of this stuff because the car is riding real low and I can’t really stay in the car if I can’t fold the back down and lay out the bed, I’m not really trying to sleep in the driver’s seat, lol, I ain’t trying to be THAT rough, LOL!  So, thinkin I’m gonna need a spot where I can park and be able to thin out the load and repack so I can fit better.  Then take the excess and donate it.  Only thing is there’s snow coming to the South, which should be interesting to say the least.  So, my thought is to get down the coast fast in order to get south of it and hope it all holds together.  That will cost me more $ though, so therein lies the dilemma.  Did find a nice cheap $35/nt one here in Washington NC though.

Oops, missed a day there, that was yesterday, Dec 2.  Met my friend Tara for lunch at the park right over the bridge in New Castle DE.  There’s the biggest silver statue of what I thought was Jesus welcoming me to DE the night before but turns out that it’s the Virgin Mary instead.  Anyway, it’s huge.  Chit chatted until the rain started and that was the story of the day – rain.  All the way through DE, down through Salisbury, MD and into VA.  Was a real pain in the butt drivin in the monsoon down Hwy 13.  And can I just say that the Captain’s Quarters in Onley VA is the bojanketiest motel ever?  If I hadn’t been so through with driving in the rain I woulda kept going, but I was done.

Today was beautiful and if I hadn’t gotten stuck in the only traffic jam on Hwy 17 in Norfolk, I’d have been much further down the road.  I’ve been taking the smaller hwy’s as they’re much more interesting, but I might have to take the Interstate, because while the small highway has more stuff to look at, it takes a lot longer.  We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

Anyway, so far this has been rather ordinary, just a car loaded down with crap, and somebody escaping the north and heading south to FL staying at cheap motels, but I’ll try to make it more interesting as I go on, I swear.

Oh, two interesting things today: the Chesapeake Bridge/Tunnel 17 mile thing was pretty cool, especially seeing all these big ships lined up to cross over the tunnels.  The other was not so cool, it was a burned out house along the side of the road right at the beginning, near Exmore VA.  Had a hand-painted sign out front that said:  KKK Brun Out.   That was disturbing.  I thought to myself, welcome to the south…

Alright, let me go check on all these emails and catch up with everybody.  More later…