Mudlane

This is not my window! I woke up at my 'regular time' of way too early anyway. Even though the sun is coming up on Roanoke, Virginia. At this time, it's still dark in my bedroom at home, some 20,031 miles to the west. Pretty Pretty Princess is on the hunt for college. This particular weekend, Mom and PPP are on a road trip. The road to Hollins for an interview is circuitous. Why, might you ask, would we go hundreds of miles out of the way? Or, as BigD said, "What the hell? You're adding 5 hours." Why indeed?
Hello, my lovely. Pshheeh! Why would we add 5 hours? (Don't tell, we SPENT 4:35 hours there, which means we added way more than 5 hours.)

Most of the day looked like this.

We stopped at no small number of drive-through's in search of an elusive GOOD cup of coffee. Note: there are no readily avabilable Starbucks or Kinko's on that route. This lady talked to somebody for a solid 7 minutes, waiting for change, which was all $1 bills. We made a total of 3 full on U-turns, and got stuck in a traffic standstill at Chattanooga, and flat out lost navigating the poorly marked detours in Knoville, but found our way thanks to a policeman we found beneath an underpass in a sketchy part of town. Not before we a significant dent in another side trip to Lexington; then I realized that it was Lexington, Kentucky the signs were pointing us to, not Lexington, Virgina.

This was PPP's daytime picture of danger. Mirrors were busted out. DANGEROUS for the weaving in and out of traffic.

Her NIGHTIME version of dangerous was when we passed Mr. Nice State Trooper at 11:50 p.m., going....well, fast. More dangerous when we saw the blue lights. MEMO: Despite popular belief, you CAN get pulled over for going way too fast in the middle of the night. I think he anticipated a car full of crazy drunk guys, or maybe a car full of illicit substances hurtling through Virginia at 21 miles over the speed limit. He got a mom and PPP, who quickly said "It's my birthday in 10 minutes. You aren't going to give me a ticket on my 18th birthday, are you?" He was about 10 minutes on the other side of his 18th birthday, and somehow that all worked in her favor. WARNING: That's what she got, instead of reckless driving, which indeed would have been a bad way to start the birthday.

We got here late. My contacts were dry, and it is a full 20 degrees colder than it was when we left home. I'm sure the Hotel Roanoke didn't roll out the red carpet just for us, but it sure felt like it. Game on, Hollins.

First, we're going to find the laundromat, though.