{"id":704,"date":"2010-10-09T13:29:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-09T17:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=704"},"modified":"2010-10-09T13:29:01","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T17:29:01","slug":"monday-miles-821-1200-destination-home-distance-380-miles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=704","title":{"rendered":"Monday, Miles 821 – 1200.
Destination: Home
Distance: 380 miles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Operation Wedding:\u00a0 1200 Miles in 5 Days<\/strong>
\nMy cousin\u2019s getting married in Chicago.\u00a0 Game on.<\/em><\/p>\n

So there I was, Crackberry on and no way to charge it.\u00a0 I fired off one note to a well-placed, well-trusted peep and hoped for the best.\u00a0 No calls for you today, Grommit!<\/p>\n

We found the best, about four doors down from the hotel, and we began the end of our road trip the way we started the beginning \u2013 that\u2019s right, there\u2019s a Waffle House.\u00a0 It was laid out in signature Waffle House style, which is to say that it looked exactly like the one in Frederick, MD.\u00a0 The similarities, however, stopped there.\u00a0 Our waitress was a dusky-eyed, tattooed beauty named Carol, and she clearly owned the place.\u00a0 Perhaps not literally, but she knew everyone on both sides of the counter, all the orders, all the drinks, and every word to every song I played on the jukebox.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what a girl has to do to look \u201cdusky-eyed\u201d at 0730 in the morning, but she did it.\u00a0 In between taking our orders, keeping Number One Son\u2019s undivided attention, and delivering enough coffee and calories to feed a small third-world village<\/span> get us through the trip, she managed to shout hellos to every person that walked in the door that Monday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mind you, so did many other people.\u00a0 \u201cNorm!\u201d\u00a0 Dear god, may I never become so established in my ways that all my friends know me when I walk into the Waffle House.\u00a0 On the other hand, I\u2019m sure the grease keeps them regular, and that\u2019s healthy \u2013 right? \u00a0Anyway, if you\u2019re passing through Bowling Green for breakfast, go see Carol at the Waffle House.\u00a0 She rocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Piles

Piles of Clouds<\/p><\/div>\n

Do you remember the clouds that looked like tanks in western Ohio?\u00a0 As we approached Pennsylvania, the clouds looked like hemorrhoids piled up on the ass of the sky \u2013 I felt like we were driving into a scene from the Grapes of Wrath. \u00a0So to speak.\u00a0 Once again, we were going to end the trip the way it started, raining sideways and pissing down the road.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Driving

Driving Into Hell<\/p><\/div>\n

My good friends Billy Joel and Billie Joe Armstrong got us through the worst of it, a musical Preparation H to ease our passage down the Highway of Darkness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once\u00a0we were back\u00a0on the road again, SOBUMD rang up the hotel in Twinsburg to see if they had my charger.\u00a0 They connected her with housekeeping, please leave a message and we\u2019ll get back to you.\u00a0 And they did \u2013 about 100 miles past the exit, but still.\u00a0 They found it, and shipped it to the house, and it\u2019s plugged in now, safe and grounded.\u00a0 (I know you were worried.)\u00a0 Thank you, Hilton Garden Inn!<\/p>\n

Rain or no, the America you can see from a car window looks considerably different than the one you see from the window of an airplane.\u00a0 SOBUMD said this with her camera more eloquently than my humble words ever could.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Farming

Farming in the Heartland<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Industry

Industry in the Heartland<\/p><\/div>\n

As if by miracle, we got home in time for the 5pm call with the office that I didn\u2019t expect to make. \u00a0My aforementioned peep heard me join the call just as it started and said, mostly to remind our boss, \u201cHey, you\u2019re supposed to be on vacation!\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s good to have friends!\u00a0<\/p>\n

And this trip proved that simple fact, several times over \u2013 it\u2019s not just good, it\u2019s great to have friends.\u00a0 Without all of you, we\u2019d never have gotten past the front door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Sean and Katie, and thank you all for helping us get there and back again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our road trip ended the way it started, with a Waffle House. Our waitress was a dusky-eyed, tattooed beauty named Carol, and she clearly owns the place. Perhaps not literally, but she knew everyone on both sides of the counter, all the orders, all the drinks, and every word to every song I played on the jukebox. I\u2019m not sure what a girl has to do to look \u201cdusky-eyed\u201d at 0730 in the morning, but she did it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}