Boston to Washington, D.C.

So I decided to document this road trip, mostly for my own nostalgic purposes, but since I am such a voyeur, I thought I'd just post it somewhere public for everyone to see. Trust me, it'll be hilarious. You'll be glad you tuned in.

Boston to DC, Summary:
Miles: ~500
Gas expenses: $40 (1 tank Boston, 1 tank DE/MD)
Good samaritan expenses: $10

At a gas station in what was either Delaware or Maryland, some lady approached me with a gas can and a story entirely too detailed to be true, asking for some gas to help her get over "the bridge." So okay, it's not like I can tell her I don't have any money, and I'm not just going to say no, so I fill up her can. So that's where the "good sam" expenses come from, 'cause you better believe I'm keeping track, Karma.

I got to D.C. in record time--it only took the actual 8 hours it was supposed to take, for once--hitting only little pockets of traffic around the beltway as rush hour started. I arrived at the hotel I booked last-minute on Orbitz and realized all too late that it was one of those swanky, upscale places I can't afford. Probably the only reason I got a room here was that I booked it like 12 hours in advance and they just really needed to fill up the rooms.

So I got out of the car in my pink wifebeater and ripped jeans, where a nice bell boy loaded all my luggage (one suitcase and several Trader Joe's reusable shopping bags) onto a cart while I dragged my misbehaving dogs out of the back seat. Dizzy is deathly afraid of any major break in his routine, so he fought with me about the getting out of the car part until he finally fell to his demise, butt-first on the concrete, as everyone else on the city block stared at me.

A few more minor mishaps later, my dogs, luggage, and I made it to the room relatively unscathed. AC met up with me (right after he first went to the OTHER Westin on M Street) with plans to take me to an "I <3 Bonobos" pub crawl a few blocks away, but first I needed an ATM, since I gave my last $2 to the bellboy as my shitty excuse for a tip. Thinking I had $60 in my account, I took out $40, which it gave me, along with a receipt reading that my account balance was negative $6 and some-odd cents. Fuck.

Whatever. I needed to break one of the 20's for bus fare, and I was sweating balls, so I decided to buy an ice cream bar. AC took pity on me at that point and insisted on getting both the ice cream bar and the bus ride. Even though we couldn't even take the bus, because by the time we got to it I was still eating my $95 chocolate eclair. Whatever. It was good ice cream.

By the time we got to the place that the pub crawl was happening AC had a better idea. Just across the street was a hookah bar, where happy hour is 5-7:30 and all their yummy girly drinks are half price. My first question was, "What is a hookah bar?" and his answer was, "Let's go."

I had two watermelontinis, some kind of wonderful key lime thing, a Caesar salad, and an after-dinner Stella, while AC, Blair and I shared a jasmine-flavored hookah on the patio. It was absolutely just the thing I needed. And since I didn't pay for the hookah or the Stella, I got outa there for like $20.

The dogs miraculously didn't chew on, piss on, have diarrhea on or otherwise destroy anything in the hotel room by the time I got back, although I'm sure they were barking at every footstep while I was gone, because they barked at every footstep the entire night while I tried to sleep. I tried to explain to them that I had 14 hours of driving to do tomorrow, but Echo insisted that his barking was pertinent to our safety here on the 7th floor of the Westin Hotel.

Eight hours and one most-awkward-hotel-checkout-ever later, we are on the road approximately an hour and a half behind schedule. The GPS thinks this is a good time to take me down the wrong road and almost put me on a bike path. Not funny, TomTom, not fuckin funny. We make it onto the highway at 9am, two hours later than planned. Tom says we'll be driving until a little after 11pm tonight. But there's a time change between here and Memphis, so we'll probably get in around 10pm central. In my Starbucks-deprived state I start to wonder if that means I'll only be driving for 13 hours instead of 14, and then I decide not to think about it and turn up the iPod really loud instead. Ahh, much better.