Day 5 - Driving

We weren't looking forward to day 5 of our cruise because day 5 wasn't really a cruise at all. All it was going to be was a day full of driving. They gave us breakfast on the boat and then started shipping us off. We did manage to get lucky and be one of the first sets of people to be let off the boat. Seeing as we had 16 hours of driving ahead of us this was nice.

I'll spare you the details of a 16 hour trip in the car, but I had mentioned on day 0 that I hated Georgia with all of my soul. Well, three things happened in Georgia on I-75 that served to increase that hatred.

First, we got stuck in a half-hour standstill out in the middle of nowhere. We finally decided to pull off at a gas station for a little break. Luckily Jen was able to talk to a local and found out that there was a state highway that ran parallel to the interstate for about 60 miles. So we hopped on that and took what turned out to be a very pretty half hour drive north through the backcountry of Georgia. Even though the drive was pretty it still managed to add 30 minutes to our driving time.

Shortly after that we ran into what only can be described as God pouring a bucket of water directly onto my car. It rained so hard that we couldn’t even tell the wipers were working. I mean, they would swoosh by and everything, but they didn’t seem to have any effect on the amount of water on the windshield. I was half expecting a dolphin to swim by the window. To top it off it started to hail as well. Fantastic! It took about 15 miles of driving to get through the storm, so it didn’t take too long, but at 25 miles an hour 15 miles can take a long time. Luckily, we didn’t get any damage from the hail.

The third and final “how ya’ll doin’” from Georgia involved Atlanta traffic. I knew we were in trouble because our delays earlier put us into Atlanta around 4:00 pm. I figured rush hour traffic was inevitable. To my surprise, however, we managed to go all the way through downtown and past the north bypass with very little problem. My spirits were high; I thought Georgia was finally giving me a break. I should have known better.

It appears that there are approximately 5 billion people that live a few miles north of Atlanta. It also appears that every single one of those people is on I-75 at 4:30 pm. Traffic was so backed up it was ridiculous. It was incredible, there were 6 or 7 lanes of traffic and every single one of them was at a standstill. It took us at least 45 minutes to get through the mess.

To top it all off, just when traffic started to pick up we almost got in an accident. The guy in front of me switched to the right lane and I moved into his spot. I know he saw me because we locked eyes in his mirror. However, a truck started to come into his lane and he decided that the best course of action would be to cut the wheel as hard as possible and swerve back into my car. Luckily I saw it, hit the brakes, and eased to the left a bit. I missed both the guardrail on my left and his car on my right by less than a foot. That got the ol’ blood pumpin’. Afterward, I had an overwhelming urge to let that guy know he was the “number one” driver, if you know what I mean.

That’s it, that’s all the trouble we had on our trip. Everything bad happened in Georgia. You know, I’ve always heard that song “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” I guess I just never figured that he stayed there.