What's the state of racism in America? I'd say Alabama.

Truthfully, we saw that Confederate flag in Tennessee, but the title was a joke Steven Colbert made as Jamie and I watched his show from our hotel room in Scottsboro, Alabama. Yeah, that Scottsboro, of the Scottsboro Boys fame. We watched a movie on it (with the train and the rape) in Mrs. V's English class in ninth grade, if any of you were there. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So we get to Alabama and it sucks. I'll upload pictures to my facebook as soon as I can be bothered, but just imagine trailers and rundown, abandoned buildings and a woman with few teeth and a unibrow and the aforementioned cowboy and there you have Jamie's and my experience with Alabama. I mean, I'm sure the whole state doesn't suck that much, but the part we were in was awful. We're basically like, "We have to leave here," so I call my mother to tell her we're coming home early, because after Alabama we were going to camp and the forecast was all thunderstorms, all the time, and there is less alcohol in the world than would be requirred to convince me that I was have fun camping in the rain. So Jamie and I are sitting in my car outside of a McDonald's, and Jamie's laughing so hard about the horse guy and the unbelievable level of suck that I start laughing hysterically and my mom can't understand what I'm saying, so I get out of the car to calm down and explain to her about how awful Alabama is when this guy in a red pickup truck pulls in to the parking lot with a Confederate flag bandanna and fucking gun rack, and he looks like the type of person who would shoot me for insulting his home state in front of him, so I get back in the car, and I explain to my mom, and we decide that we're driving until we get out of this godforsaken state. So we stop at a Starbucks (yes, there was a Starbucks in backwoods fucking Alabama, I don't understand either) and load up on caffeine and I commence with the driving.

It's been raining on/off all day, not like drizzling, but just dropping buckets on to the windshield, pull off the road 'cause I can't see freakin' pouring. So we're driving for like two hours before it starts with the lightning and the rain and, again, I can't see, so we pull off in to a Subway parking lot and cry about how much we want our mommies for a while, and make jokes about the four "Get help with your meth addiction" billboards we saw in two hours, and it slows down to a normal amount of rain so I can see again, so we start driving again. But it won't stop lightning and I can see, by the lightning, that I was mistaken about our surroundings. I thought we were in some gentle, rolling hills, but I'm looking around and it occurs to me that we're actually on top of a mountain, surrounded by other mountain tops, it's on/off pouring, very dark out except for the lightning, and the only other people around are truckers. Well, I can't take it any more, we pull off in to the first hotel we see. I have never wanted to hug someone more than the desk guy when he told us they had a room. And it was lovely. Softest beds evar! And we try to sleep (recall earlier with the excessive caffeine consumption) and laugh way too hard at that Colbert joke and are generally glad we are not out driving.

Next morning I had a nice conversation with the front desk lady about the origins of my last name, because it turns out there aren't many Polish people in Alabama, and she's like, "Ya'll have a safe trip home," and it's adorable but also weird because I assume that nice strangers want something from me and I don't know what to do if people are just being nice because they are nice (yeah, the midwest/south is a confusing place for me). And we take off, it's 9 am (10 am EST), and we're looking to get home at...12:30 am. Long day. We drive through the mountains in Tennessee (lovely state, by the way. I don't mean that sarcastically - I'd totally live there, it was awesome) in the can't-see rain and it's horrible. We were on I-81 for probably twelve hours, and it basically traces the Appalachians, so more mountains! and rain! and trucks! so many trucks! and Katie having neurotic fits! We stop at some more gas stations stocked mostly with cowboy hats and beer (cold beer, like "Have one for the road!" WTF?). Jamie drove for an hour of the entire fifteen hour trip because I'm insane and, if any of you have ever seen that episode of Gilmore Girls in which Rory and Paris go to Florida and Lorelai is like, "Paris, why don't you let Rory drive?" and Paris answers that if she's going to die she wants it to be at her own hands? That's my basic philosophy. I was fine when Jamie drove through PA and Illinois (and, honestly, she's a fine driver), but...I dunno, I stressed. Anyway, highlights:

• We were passing through Chattanooga (say it! it's fun!), and there were other cars around, which is strange if you've been driving mostly by yourself with a few trucks. I see a guy out of the corner of my eye, he looks like he's headbanging, so I look to confirm and I guess he sees me looking, because all of a sudden his back window was rolled down and he was twisted around in his seat leering at us and grinning.
  
• There was a nuclear power plant in Alabama that we passed by, with signs leading up to it like is a goddamn tourist attraction. "Plant Farley, 2 miles!"
  
• It turns out there's a Jefferson County in pretty much every state (I guess TJeff was a pretty popular guy), but in the Jefferson County in Tennessee there is a Morristown. It's like bizarro-Jersey.
• Sweetwater, TN's billboards make it look like the best town in the history of ever. Every time we passed one I was filled with a burning desire to pack up and move there. It's even home to The Lost Sea Adventure, America's largest underground lake!
  
• Just before we passed over the border into Virginia, I see this huge flagpole up on a hill, so I look at it and I look at it and I'm just not understanding, so I have to ask Jamie to confirm and she does: it was the Confederate flag. On a gigantic flagpole. On a hill. Heritage, not hate, ya'll. Sometimes I really glad I'm white.
  
• At a gas station in Virginia: I'm coming out the door as another person is walking up to it, so I hold it open for him, and as he passes he tells me, "Thank you, sweetie," at the same moment I see his mullet, which Jamie compared aptly to him having a squirrel on the back of his head. It was a mullet, not just like "haven't gotten a haircut lately" mullet, but a for serious mullet.
• More mustachioed truckers than I can ever even describe. They were a lot more aggressive than the Illinois truckers, too. Having a trucker pass you around a curve going down a mountain in the pouring rain? Terrifying.
  
• Virginia is huge. So huge that they couldn't be bothered to come up with scenery for all of it. It just goes: town, old farmland, hills, town, old farmland, hills. It repeats itself every hour. And it's always the same town, the same farmland, the same hills. The names of the caverns in the hills change, but nothing else does. I'm not kidding.
• Being on the same highway for twelve hours is sort of amazing. We went from TN to PA, it was weird.
• I never thought I would be so happy to see that, "Welcome to New Jersey," sign.