The Road to Atlanta

Weddings are a lot like vacations. They both require a ridiculous amount of planning and when successful, the end result is something beautiful. But anyone that has ever planned something relatively complicated knows that plans are like college students; they like to get fucked up.

I was fortunate enough to get to stand in my friend, Kyle's, wedding this past weekend. I've known Kyle longer than I've known almost all of my friends. We met through a semi-Nintendo related message board while we were both still in middle school. I don't really know how it was that we managed to remain so close over the years but I'm sure it didn't hurt that we have nearly identical taste in movies, music, and literature.

Ali, Paul, Kyle circa 2004

We met for the first time in 2004. One of the most interesting parts of our friendship is that we also gradually began to become friends with each others friends as well. A quick glance at Facebook shows me that we have 16 mutual friends which I find kind of impressive for two people that have only met in real life a handful of times. Kyle's friend, Ali, thought it would be a great idea to fly me down as a surprise for Kyle's birthday. It was actually a great idea, though Kyle managed to figure it out ahead of time due to his super sleuthing skills.

I managed to return the following year and got to spend a bit more time in Athens and Atlanta. This time we were able to surprise Ali and she reacted appropriately by braiding my hair. 

After that, we didn't actually see each other again for seven years. But we talk every day through text message or various forms of internet communication. I think it's probably safe to say that I send more text messages to Kyle than I do to my own wife. I think it's pretty amazing to think that friendship like ours wouldn't have really been possible a decade earlier. But we've made it work and when it was time for my wedding, Kyle was able to make his first trip to Michigan to be one of my groomsmen. I really wanted to do my best to give him a whirlwind tour of our state while he was here, but I was kind of getting married the same weekend, so just ended up going to the mall.

Part Time Travel Crew Featuring Kyle in the background

Again, we have nearly identical taste in things so it's not really much of a surprise that we both decided to marry really awesome girls within months of each other. I was honored to be a part of his wedding and almost equally excited to take a mini-vacation with my wife. Weekend trips up north withstanding, we haven't really taken a trip together since we've been dating.

When we broke down the price we decided that it would probably be very similar in price to drive as opposed to flying. This is always an easy decision for me to come to as I never do any of the driving, but Katie was a trooper throughout. Of course, as she would be doing all the driving, I set out to do most of the planning. We were leaving fairly let on Friday evening and decided to choose a spot a little less than halfway there so we'd get a decent amount of sleep but still be able to leave fairly early Saturday morning.

Unfortunately this happened to be at a hotel just outside of Cincinnati. Even though Matt seemed to have fun there on his recent adventure, spending any amount of time in Ohio is enough to put a damper on any trip. Had I done a bit more research, I might have realized that Kentucky was just a scant 15 miles away, but I digress. We generally stay away from hotels because they are all overpriced and you can generally find much nicer accommodations for far less money but given the amount of time we needed it for, there were really no other options. I do have to give a shout out to La Quinta, who was the only hotel chain I managed to find that gave you the option of looking for a hotel upon a specific route which makes the planning portion of the trip much less stressful.

The trip to Atlanta from Detroit is a straight shot down I-75 and Katie and I have a certain strained relationship with that specific interstate. Over the course of the last few months, it seems that every time we need to travel along 75, no matter where we're going or what time of day it is, we always manage to find some sort of construction that causes ridiculous delays. This time was no exception. For whatever reason, when we entered Detroit, we were met with a ridiculous amount of traffic and were eventually routed off the freeway entirely with no signs of any indication of where else we should go. To further prove the point I have against using a GPS, when I attempted to pull up directions, it did nothing but tell us to get back on 75. This would have been helpful if it had been at all possible, but given that it was trying to route us towards something which was shut down, I promptly told it to fuck off and immediately called Justin.

GPS = unnecessary with this guy on call

I don't know how much truth there is to this, but in my mind, Justin is like a walking atlas. He was immediately able to tell us where we needed to go and how to get there with the little information I was able to give him. I know we were still relatively close to home, but I have little doubt that I could have called him from somewhere in Atlanta and he could have provided the same amount of guidance.

After nearly an hour of sitting in traffic and being slightly lost, we were back on our way. The drive through Ohio is slightly better at night because at least then you're unable to see just how boring everything around you is. I was hoping we'd be able to catch some Coast to Coast, but it was still too early so we settled for some indie jams on XMU instead.

I love Katie as a travel companion because she seems to enjoy spending time on the road the same way that I do; small bits of conversation, and the music turned as loud as possible. I know that there are certain people that tend to dislike silence in the car and those kinds of people drive me crazy. Part of this is due to my fear of impending death while on the road, and the concentration required on my part to will us away from fiery death is immense. But I also love watching the road pass us by with the music cranked. For me, shared love of music is as great a communal experience as a good conversation. There are certain songs or artists that over time have come to represent certain periods in my life and there are some that still remind me of certain trips. The first year in OBX, we couldn't turn on the radio without hearing something by Drake on nearly every station. A good traffic jam will always require Girl Talk at maximum volume thanks in part to our first trip to Virginia Beach. And every year, the long Michigan winter is made slightly more tolerable by sitting around listening to Beach House, fantasizing about our next excursion to a house on the beach.

On this trip, we heard this song, The Mother We Share by the artist Chvrches about a thousand times. We enjoyed it the first time or so but after that we were in love and the volume would be increased every time it was on. This might seem like a little thing, but every time I hear the song in the future, I'll be reminded of my first real trip alone with my wife and the nuptials of one of my best friends.

We made it to Cincinnati around 1. Check in was slowed a bit as they had cancelled our reservation because they said we hadn't used a credit card when booking the trip. Now, I'm not really an expert, but how exactly would I have reserved a hotel through the internet without entering my credit card information? I'm pretty sure that it's kind of hard to bypass those required fields. This was eventually taken care of as they still had plenty of rooms (of course they did, it's Ohio) and we were quickly off to bed so we could recharge for the rest of the journey, which for brevity's sake, will come next time.