Road Issues - #1

Tupelo again...for the last two days. I've spent so many nights up here that I get a Christmas card from the motel every year.

It's always the same in these places...up an hour before the alarm..rollin' around trying to find a comfortable configuration for the 15 tiny pillows they give you...it's noisy in the morning. Somebody above me turns on the shower. It's a creeking echoing sound with pings...like I'm in a submarine that's changing course. Construction workers and electricians, already up and at it, yelling at one another in the parking lot...slamming the doors to vans that are rumbling and ready to get going...the muffled sound of an infommertial.

(This morning it was some kinda body suit that hides your "muffin top"...say what now?)

At some point in the night I'll turn the television down, but not off. So, everytime I wake up it's just loud enought to be a curiosity. It doesn't take long to get sick of that and I'll break out of my pillow nest and swing my legs over the bed...Coffee.

That means I have to make my self presentable...sorta. I operate on the assumption that anybody in the lobby at 6am is gonna be as groggy as me and wont notice that I've come down in a sweatshirt, slacks and no socks...or that my hair hair is sticking out in every direction like it's scrambling to get away from my head.

This is how it starts...an issue that I will be dealing with for the rest of the day. I'll drink four or five cups in the room before I head out...to breakfast and more coffee. Then I'm in the car for the rest of the day. Doesn't take long before I'm huntin' a bathroom...and there's only one place for that on the road...gas stations. If I can find a busy truck stop it's no problem...I go in, I handle my business and I leave, but...

There aren't a lot of busy truckstops on the roads I travel. Mostly small stores where the proprietor is staring you in the face as you walk through the door...and he's not offering his bathroom up as a public service. You gotta buy something...more coffee. I know better, but it's cheap...it gives me something to do in the car...besides havin' a cup a coffee in one hand and the other on the steering wheel is being on the road.

And so it goes...from cup to curbstore until I finally pull in the drive.

At which point I make a mad dash for the bathroom.