Drivin' to Raleigh

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The only way to start this out is to say, simply, that I'm the type of person that things just happen to. I am the 1% of people who has crazy stuff happen to them, the 1% that screws up the statistics for everyone else. I imagine that somewhere down the line I pissed off a Roman God or something and, just like Ulysses, he just decided to make crazy, pain in the ass things happen to me.

Case in point: One fine summer night, starting about 5:00 pm, I hopped in a car with two of my good friends and a couple of concert tickets I'd won from a radio station. The journey had begun... We were on our way two hours north on the interstate to Raleigh, the closest thing to a "Metropolis" that North Carolina has.

The ride was going relatively smoothly, until I realized about 30 minutes down the road that I had left the directions to the concert venue at my apartment. My friends mentioned that perhaps we should turn back, but I stubbornly insisted that we keep going. We had a schedule to keep, I wanted to get there early to get a good spot front center, and besides, it was a popular venue and I was sure we could get directions.

So onward we traveled, down the four lane, speeding along in my 2001 Chevy Cavalier (her name is "Layla", she's a manual, (5 on the floor) and she loves to squeal and purr).

Now I admit, I have a tendency to zone out when I'm driving long distances. It's even worse when there are people in the car, because I then have a tendency not only to zone out, but also to pay more attention to my friends than my driving. So imagine my suprise when I looked forward through my windshield and realized that I was about 7 car lengths from a stopped vehicle and I was traveling about 80 mph. Slamming on breaks and praying for a good outcome with eyes shut tight, I opened them to find myself stopped about twelve inches from the car in front of me. See, Prayer really DOES work!

My sigh of relief was cut short, however. Glancing up ahead, I realized that I was looking at a string of tail-lights about four miles long, and that's just as much as I could see before the road curved behind a tuft of pine trees.

Shit.

We were in stand-still traffic for nearly an hour, and I was "chomping at the bits" (southern term meaning I was nearly having an anxiety attack, for all you above the mason-dixon line or across the big pond). I was really wanting to make it to the concert early, cause the guys in the band are all hot as hell and I wanted to wink at them during the concert. Well, there went that theory. At this pace, we'd all end up standing in the back with no view and getting beer spilled on us by the drunk people who couldn't make it up to the front.

After about four or five redundant car games, we grew tired of sitting still and decided to try the "Grey Poupon" thing with a the other stopped cars surrounding us. Apparently, they were all lacking senses of humor, so they ignored us. When we drove up to a hispanic man driving a Taco truck, we leaned out and told him that if he really wanted to make some money, he could sell tacos from his truck to the other stopped commuters. He gave us an evil eye that wouldn't quit. So, we decided to leave the other nice people alone and get back to entertaining ourselves.

After a good hour, we were finally on the road again. We were now about an hour from Raleigh, and 45 minutes until the first part of the performance. So I started to punch it, going about 90 in a 75 (not a good idea on an interstate in North Carolina). We got to Raleigh in 50 minutes... only to find that NO ONE knew where in the hell the concert venue was. The Indian man behind the counter (yes, turban and all), told me several times that he had never heard of it. He gave me a very useless phone book that was about 3 years old... and an old lady with a lazy eye came up behind me, proclaimed she knew exactly where I was talking about. "Really??" I said, excited, "Where is it????"

"Oh, I have no clue." And she bought another pack of cigarettes and left. Well, your heroine was already 15 minutes late for the concert, and had no clue where to go. What was she to do?

Find out in "Going to Raleigh, Part II"

December 14, 2001