Excuse me.... Where is the bathroom? My trip from Albuquerque to Florida Pt. 2

We leave Jackson, Mississippi for Hattiesburg. It continues to rain and then eases up slightly. The cd’s my friend gave me before I left are playing one after another. Carly and I ask each other periodically. “Has this cd started over?” It has been overcast and gloomy all day and now it is getting dark. We cancel our hotel reservation in Tallahassee and decide on our new destination of Pensacola. Carly has mentioned the beautiful beaches there and the fort where Geronimo was held captive. Additionally, it is a safety precaution in securing our sanity in preventing another brutal day of driving.

We pull up to the hotel in Pensacola after being diverted by the GPS after a less than mediocre meal at the cracker barrel. Eyes peeled, Carly and I are looking for the Holiday Inn that is located somewhere off of the I-10. The GPS tells us to take an exit where there is nothing but an on ramp and of course this first blip in our steady success with the GPS unit that was so kindly loaned to me happens at the end of the day after ten hours of driving when all we want to do is get to bed. We are rerouted and finally we can see our destination. Instead of taking the south Dixie highway an additional two miles to make a proper left and turn around, I flip a u-turn at the first opportunity and pull into the parking lot. I get out of the car to check in and a man smoking a cigarette, dressed like a cook is staring at my license plate.

“Ya’ll come all the way from New Mexico?”

“Yeah”, I reply.

“Dang man, that’s a long way, like forty eight hours or something right?”

“Yeah, something like that.” And I go inside. I check in, return to the car with one of those big luggage racks that always has one rogue wheel just like the grocery cart I always happen to choose for myself. It soon fills up with our belongings. Cooler, suitcase, duffel, backpack, meanwhile our newfound friend is telling us all about our new accommodations.

“Breakfast is real good here, dinner is better but that’s because I make it.”

This man eyes me throw something away in the trash can and seizes another opportunity.

“There’s a dumpster around back man if you need to get rid of stuff. It’s got a gate around it but it opens on the left side and you can pull right up to it.”

“Thanks” I say, trying my best to sound appreciative but I really am not. I am happy to have fulfilled the conversation this man has been searching for while waiting for a ride at the end of his shift but I am tired, concerned about the well being of my fiancée and myself. I wave politely to the man as his ride pulls up and he puts flame to another cigarette. He mumbles something about being in Colorado a long time ago and I start my car and park as far away from that dumpster as I can.

I think about what he said about New Mexico being so far away and of course I know he is right. Maybe I found it comforting that he at least knew where New Mexico is. In my trips to Florida before moving here I have received many a reaction regarding my origins. My favorite was offered by a woman on the beach who invited us to a celebration of Jesus that sounded increasingly suspicious when there was mention of kool aid.

“Where are you from?” she said

“New Mexico”

“Wow, you speak English very well.”

We get to our room after some degree of difficulty in steering the luggage carrier out of the elevator and down the hall. Carly swipes the room key and it does not work, I return to the lobby where a young man tells me it should work so I try again but it doesn’t. Thirty minutes later we end up in another room. We are exhausted but happy to be settled for the night. My patient, tolerant fiancée and I collapse onto the bed with our clothes on.

Our trip from Shreveport, Louisiana to Pensacola had been enjoyable although the intensity of rain had required extra vigilance and a great deal of concentration. When you are driving in sheets of blinding rain you concentrate in a Zen like state. I listen to Carly and we have wonderful conversations the entire way but I seldom take my eyes off the road.

It is dark by the time we travel from Hattiesburg to Mobile. Somehow it really feels like we are headed south, the pull of gravity as we near the coast. We reach Mobile, Alabama and try to take in as much of the city as we can although it is dark and we are merely passing through. We see a battleship in the distance like a ghost in the night and soon we are headed east. Again, rhythm comes into play. I love to drive, especially when there is a goal in sight. With an hour to go our spirits are high and we arrive in Pensacola with music playing and we are laughing about something, together.

What Carly and I have come to love most about the GPS is that it makes the assumption that you will drive ten miles under the speed limit. So when you are actually driving five to seven miles over the speed limit, you arrive hours earlier than it had predicted when you first punched in your intended destination in Shreveport ten hours ago. We are hungry and close to our hotel and the bright sign ahead that indicates the three hundredth Cracker Barrel location we have passed today is calling our name. The food is bad, Carly’s grits have butter and she can’t have butter because of her Crohn’s. We have been in a car for ten odd hours, we are tired, our eyes are bloodshot and we are on the verge of being really silly because we have been on the road for so long. We are not only the two most attractive people in this establishment. We are the only two who are not overweight and not in need of an entirely new wardrobe. No, we don’t want any candy or games or junk that they sell in the Cracker Barrel. We just want to pay for our bad food and get out of here. We pay the god fearing, pimple faced boy at the counter and split. We walk to the car and I see my bumper sticker that says YNP. I wish we were in Yellowstone.

We wake up in Pensacola and I call the lobby to ask for a late checkout. We leave the hotel and Carly is driving towards Pensacola beach. We have tortured ourselves the last two days so that we can finally have some fun. We feel accomplished and a reward is in order. I send a message to Carly’s brother Adam, telling him that we are in Pensacola. “Dang” is his reply. Dang is right. We reach Pensacola beach and although it is overcast, it is a beautiful day. I see what Carly meant about the beautiful sandy beaches in Pensacola. We drive to Fort Pickens and with great pride I remove my parks pass from my wallet and we get in for free.