Last night’s hunch was correct — I had a great night’s sleep outside of the Love’s. Slept so good I missed McDonald’s breakfast. Open my front door a little before 11:00, step out into my yard1, and bop on over 30 feet for my first coffee of the day.
The goal is home by sundown. Nothing else. No time for lunch in Chattanooga, no time for an auto parts store to look for fuses. I won’t need tail lights if I make good time.
Still had some mountains left to get through, but it immediately felt great to be on familiar roads, cruising past signs for places I recognized. No podcasts. Music only. Trans-Europe Express of course, Blanck Mass, Black Eyes, tunes to propel me down the road.
Moved through the Appalachians with much more confidence than the last mountain range. Kept an eye on my gauges, with a much better feel for how to avoid the worst of strains. Temperature only crept up once — flirted with the red band, but stayed safely in the gray.
Hit my first stretch of Greater Metro traffic around Kennesaw. Made mutual pointing recognition with a car next to me whose two passengers were both wearing banana costumes. Saw a guy in front of a horse at a gas station filming a promotional rap for a college sports team maybe?
Decided to go straight through the city. 285 is a crutch I’m unwilling to bend to. Let the Downtown Connector be the crucible I’ve been training the last 2,000+ miles for.
It sucked, but driving through that shit always sucks. Felt confident in my lane changes, and my fellow slow-moving Saturday travelers largely gave me a wide-enough berth.
Passed a comically large motorcade coming into town as I made my way to the south end of the perimeter. Some presidential whoop-de-do coming to watch a college football game with 600000 of their closest cop buddies maybe? Grateful we were going opposite directions.
Hit my last stretch of traffic past the airport — an agonizing patch that brought things to a crawl with my exit like, 10 miles away. Reminded me of Megabus trips to New York 17 years ago, when you’d make it 16 hours no problem, then be driven slowly insane as you crawl through gridlock for another hour to two as your destination is right there, just outside the window.
Inched to my exit, and started the last 20ish minutes of driving. I’ve been learning these Ola roads much more since I moved to McDonough earlier this year, but there’s some tiny little roads between the exit and my place. Prior knowledge paid off though. My route took me through three unmarked curves that can be a little hairy in the Kia sometimes, and I knew exactly how slow I needed to be going.
Took a right on to Snapping Shoals road. Three-quarters of a mile from home, and I’m hit with a burst of the most vision-impairing sunlight I’ve dealt with this whole journey. No shoulder to work with, and I can’t really tell if there’s any oncoming traffic. Felt like the ending of Wages of Fear coming on.
I come into my slim gravel driveway a little hot, but I’m home. The neighbors are out — Lauren and Ashley, with their four boys who cannot wait to see this bus. Within seconds of putting it in park, I’m welcomed with a mob of kid hugs, questions, and updates from recent soccer games.
It was another two hours before I even went inside the house. Showed the neighbors around, decompressed on the bus couch for 20 minutes, then went next door for dinner. Got ravenously hungry as soon as that bus was parked. Lauren made her favorite Thai lettuce wraps, the boys ate pizza, and melted into my first real meal since Nashville.
Unlocked the front door after supper. The house smelled good. Nothing out of place. Things still more or less tidy from three weeks ago, when I was last really home.
I turned on the propane heat that works, took a long shower, put on the sweatpants that I was kicking myself the whole trip for not bringing, and put on the UGA/Texas game.
Feels good to be back home, but I’ve been home this whole time too. 2,253 miles, give or take.
Thanks for following along. I’ve got this URL for a year at least, so I’ll probably post some more quick-hitters when I take the bus out for weekend trips. Maybe other stuff too? Not sure, but this is really my only Proof of Life internet presence at the moment. I’m sure there’s a way to feature a Subscribe button if you want to see more bus posts later down the road, but I’m too sleepy to figure that out right now.
- Liminal patch of grass used for dogs pissing and dumping out drinks. ↩︎
bus.hair 