Clareified

My car has officially traveled 20,000 miles. Let’s put this into perspective. My car is almost 4 years old. In 6 days, I have put about 13% of the total mileage on my car. - CK

Ah yes, the tale of every NYC professional who buys a car that we don’t really need. Except me, I really needed it. Though, I do not need a new one. No matter what Alceste says. Stupid Alceste and his constant pressuring of me to get a new car with leather seats and a sunroof. Jerk. I mean, assface.
Anyway, these days of unexpected leisure have been chock full o time in my car. I drove down to Maryland to visit my namesake…er…her parents…I mean, my friends. Yeah, that’s it. I got a late start because I had to find a toy store since pearatty seemed quite certain that a two-year-old would not be into a nice bottle of wine as a gift. (I ended up buying her a pink Princess cellphone and about five minutes after I gave it to her, she said ‘hold on Aunt Dawn, I have to make a call.’ Dude, how cute is that kid?

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing – Photo Books
The drive from NYC to Maryland is a pretty easy straight drive from North to South. I know this. I have done it a bazillion times in my life. New York up here, Maryland down there. And yet — for some reason- when my homicidal GPS system tells me to exit in the middle of New Jersey, I decide to do it.
“What the hell? Maybe it knows a faster way,” I think to myself as I exit in Godonlyknowswherecounty in Jersey. And then when I am circling GOKW County for twenty minutes, including a U-turn across a four lane two way street in front of a cop car, I am forced to punch myself in the face.
Met a lovely NJ officer, though, in a conversation that went a little something like this.
Officer: Ma’am, can I see your license and registration?
Me: Yes, sir
Officer: Are you lost, ma’am?
Me:Um… Well, I was following the directions on the GPS, and it said to make a U-turn. (We leave out the fact that the GPS has been trying to kill me for months, lest, you know, we come off as crazy.)
Officer: Where are you trying to get to?
Me: Maryland.
Officer:Well, how’d you end up here?
Me: Homicidal GPS.
Officer: Those things are useless, my wife keeps hounding me to get one for our car and I keep telling her, you’re better off just asking someone for directions.
Me: laughs nervously.

Nice officer does not give me a ticket, points me on the right road and Fred laughs maniacally.

I had a great time visiting in the South, it was pouring pretty much all weekend, so we stayed in and played Wii all night. I became addicted to this “Emergency medicine” game where I was a young surgeon in San Francisco and I had to save the gunshot victims coming in to the ER. If your patient died you got a “F” and had to leave the hospital in disgrace. I did this. A lot. Polo also repeatedly and shameslessly beat my ass in boxing. And you’d think that a grown man would take no joy in beating the crap out of a woman. You’d be wrong. I vowed to get a Wii tutor. That’s show them.
On my drive back, I stopped at a Waffle House. Ever since being introduced to these puppies when I went to Emerald’s wedding in Arkansas, I try to shove fistfuls of delicious waffle into my mouth whenever I am down South. Except this time…instead of a delicious waffle covered in wads of butter, I got this:

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing – Photo Books
The transfat Nazis have gone too far! What’s the point of walking into a place called “The Waffle House” if you’re trying to be healthy?
Ooh, that was also the trip where I saw a semi on it’s side and a bunch of crumpled up cars surrounding it.
Didn’t quell my tastes for driving none though, a few days later I was back on that road going from North to South with Alceste on the way to the Air Conditioned City.
Oh, and this is a funny story. So, Alceste said he was going to get out of work early — which, for a NYC corporate attorney is five p.m. — so we decide to have brinner (breakfast for dinner for you non-Scrubs watching saps) in Jersey City to wait out the rush hour traffic. We get to AC by 9 or so, actually running into my stalker at one of the casinos.) We make a deal to leave by the casino at 2:00. This becomes 3. Oh, oops…um…I’m not sure that Dawn 2 knows about any of this…so…um…instead of Alceste, we’ll say I was with my friend…Bob. Yes, Bob who is not hiding a sever gambling addiction from his girlfriend. Anyway, so Bob and I are driving back. It’s dark, rainy and I am exhausted. Traffic is happily cooperating, so we’re speeding along at 90 or so miles per hour and then I see it. The gas gauge is leaning on the edge of E. Hmm. Now, a younger, foolish and rich Dawn would have pulled off at the very next exit to fill up. But the older, wiser, poor Dawn that I am now, does some quick maths and figures that we could make it two or even three more resstops. So that I can get the tank filled with sweet, cheap Jersey gas and still have a near full tank when I got home.
It was genius. Until the “fill the car with gas now” light came on mere seconds after we passed a resstop that said “22 more miles to next resstop.”
Alces…Bob, who was dozing off, woke up and said “the gas light is flashing.”
“Yeah, the flashing light is not the problem…it’s only a problem when it’s static…hmm…like…now.”
We’d gone maybe like 8 eight miles and now I was really gunning it to get to the next stop as fast as possible.
My heart was racing.
We’re not going to make it.
We’re just going to stop. Right here in the left lane, in the middle of this rain and fog and we are going to be killed.
Probably by the schools of deer which had been stalking us on the way down. (Oh, did I forget to mention the wild pack of deer that was stalking us on the way down because it was wild. And trying to kill us. On the way down.)
Bob was getting nervous.
“Actually, Dawn, you should go slower to conserve gas.”
“Really? I was thinking we should try to get to the gas as fast as possible.”
“You’re burning gas faster.”
So, I slammed on the brakes.
I moved to the right lane and we crawled the last six miles hovering at around 45 mph.
We made it, I got my cheap gas and I discovered that the best way to keep yourself awake while making a cracked out drive to AC, is do it with very very little gas.
Tell your friends.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.