Hey,
ya’all. How is everyone? Doing good, I hope!!! Well, Cheyenne McCray and I are back home
from RT…well, Cheyenne is. I’m visiting
family in the south this week…making the most of the miles I put on my truck to
get to Atlanta for the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention.
What
a blast it was! We ate too much, drank
too much, waited too long for elevators, and slept too little. But we had a ball. Reconnected with old friends, made new BFFs,
and got to hang around with LOTS of wonderful authors and readers. Woo Hoo!
So,
something I wanted to share with you was the last half-hour of our trip into
Atlanta. It’s about midnight and we are
dead tired. Cheyenne is talking a mile a
minute to try and keep me awake behind the wheel. Our sights were set on hitting
the convention hotel Monday night so we would have all day Tuesday to rest and
recuperate from the 3-day drive from Arizona to Georgia.
We
are almost there. It’s midnight and our E.T.A. is about midnight-thirty. We are
tired and punchy and our bodies are operating on fumes. It’s dark and neither
of us has ever been to Atlanta, so we are clueless about where we are or where
we are going.
We
are on a major freeway in what seems to be the edge of downtown Atlanta. We have the high-rises in our sights just up
ahead. We are in the city and almost
there. I am focused on staying awake and
getting to the hotel! We are in the
heart of Atlanta.
Anyway,
we are hurtling along at about eighty m.p.h. when I catch something that
appears to be a light brown color off on the right side of the road. I look, but too late—I see nothing. A minute or so later, I catch another light
brown blur on the right side, but am too late to get a good look. Now I’m on high alert, and if they’ve put
stupid pieces of artwork on the side of the freeway just to scare me, I’m gonna
be pissed.
So
now I’m driving 80 m.p.h. with my eyes (somewhat) glued to the right side
emergency lane. There it is—another light brown blur…then another…then a bunch
of anothers. We have a whole freaking herd
of deer grazing on the grass on the other side of the emergency lane of the
freeway!
Now,
don’t get me wrong. We have deer in
Arizona. And Arizona deer like to run
across the highway in the middle of the night, just like they do in the south. But Arizona deer like to jump out from
between tall trees and bound across the country road or highway close enough to
the front of the truck to give me a heart attack. They do not graze at the side of a
metropolitan freeway in the heart of town!!!
To
the people of Georgia…ya’all have too much grass! There are advantages to having a lot of dirt
rocks…deer don’t want to graze on our freeways.
Holy
hell! So now I back it down to about 60
(which I probably should have been doing all along, but I really wanted to find
that bed in the hotel room), and traffic is flowing around me like creek water
around a rock in the middle of the stream.
And, yes, I’m smack dab in the middle of the freeway because there are
herds of deer grazing on the right side and now I see that there is more grass
over on the left side. I don’t want to be the first to hit one. Now if someone else hits one, I know which
direction it’s going to be coming from—overhead! Only one place I have to watch—the sky—and I
figure their brake lights oughta give me a split second warning.
How
come deer don’t come with warning bells and lights? Seems like a poor design to me.
So,
long story made a bit shorter, we missed the deer. And now I’m WIDE awake. In fact, the adrenaline shot I got from that
episode has me a little wired. Now I’m
seeing signs floating in the sky.
Seriously? How do they keep them
up there?
I
ask Cheyenne, “What the F…? Are those billboards floating in the sky?” I’m starting to get freaked out and
goosebumps are skittering up both arms.
Cheyenne
asks, “What are you talking about?”
“Those
billboards.” I point to the lighted
billboards all along the free way that are floating in the sky…way up
high. How could she miss them? They’re
lit up like the Fourth-of-July and floating, for crying out loud! LOL
She
looks over at me and starts laughing. “They
aren’t floating. They’re on poles.”
I
squint at her. “I don’t see any
poles. All I see is dark air between
them and the ground.”
She
laughs even harder. “That’s not dark
air. It’s dark trees. The billboards are mounted on tall poles so
you can see them over the tops of the trees.”
DUH! Here’s
your sign!
To
the people of Georgia…we don’t have that problem either in Arizona. The signs are mounted on regular height poles
that you can see because there are no trees hiding them. Our billboards do NOT float in the air and scare stupid people!
Okay,
another crisis averted. But we are now beginning
the serious downtown Atlanta search for our hotel. No problem…we got Garmin! So I’m meticulously following Jill’s
instructions as she politely tells me to turn right, turn left, turn right,
turn left, make another left, and another, turn right, turn left…now we are
officially LOST! And, Auntie Em, I don’t
think we are in Kansas anymore.
To
the people of Georgia…you got too many on/off ramps side-by-side…makes Garmin
communication a bit unclear. In Arizona,
we like to do one at a time…they are usually sequential. Just sayin…
So…now
it’s after midnight and we are lost in Atlanta in what appears to be a very
industrial part of town…you know, the kind of neighborhoods where they always
take the kidnap victims so they can’t be heard screaming during their torture
sessons?! Yep. The thing that keeps running through my mind
is that they always say, “Don’t get in the running car.” Well, we are already in it! Against all rational logic, I’m beginning to
worry about who might be hiding in the back seat!
Cheyenne
gets out Siri and saves the day by getting Siri to straighten out the mess Me and
Garmin have created. Now we’re cooking
with gas. We are now in downtown
Atlanta, in the heart of hotel row, searching for our hotel.
Siri
says, “Take a right on John Portman, then take a left on Ted Turner.” Okay, we do that.
After a series of similar
commands, here is how the conversation goes…
I
ask Cheyenne, “Are we on John Portman or Ted Turner?”
She
replies, “Ted Turner.”
HUH? “I thought we were on John Portman.”
“No,
we’re on Ted Turner.”
“Well,
how do we get to John Portman?”
About
that time, we come to a cross-street named…you guessed it…”John Portman.”
I
let out a cheer. “Yeah, there it
is. Finally, John Portman.”
Cheyenne
is laughing as she says, “We knew it had to be here somewhere.”
I
reply, “It’s a hell of a note when you don’t know if you’re on John Portman or
Ted Turner.”
As
you can imagine, it digressed from there.
We were giggling so hard by the time we arrived at the hotel, from all
our stupid John/Ted jokes, that we were crying and almost fell out of the truck
when we opened the doors.
I
guess it was one of those things where you really had to be there because when
the Valet asked what was so funny and I replied, “I didn’t know if I was on
John Portman or Ted Turner,” he just nodded and smiled like I was the village
idiot.
Well,
those are just a few of the fun moments we experienced on our trip to
Atlanta. Next time, ya’all’ll have to
come with us. And yes, I’m certain ya’all’ll
is a real word (in the south)!
That’s
my story, funny and frivolous, and I’m stickin’ to it. Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real,
real fast!
Love
ya,
Kayce
