Well, it's a good thing my friends and I know how to have fun when not at a concert that we are traveling to. If it
wasn't for us knowing how to have a good time, we might have been just as annoyed as the other 34,000 + fans
who journeyed to Lovingston, VA for the Country Music Jamboree sponsored by the local radio station there and
their parent company Clear Channel.
My friends and I were traveling from the Northeast. My one friend, Jen, lives on Long Island near me. My friend
Nikki lives near Binghamton, NY, and my third friend, Patty, lives in Connecticut. Nikki drove four hours Friday
morning, while Jen and I both worked, to join up with us at Jen's house. Patty drove to my house that morning, it
took her over two hours, and that included the ferry ride. We were all meeting up at Jen's house since we were
taking her car for this road trip.
When I went to make my visit to the nice folks at AAA to get the triptik for this adventure, they had said it would
be 351 miles to where we were staying in Charlottesville. Let's see 351 miles, going at least 60 mph, should only
take just under six hours. Yeah right. We left Jen's house just before one, and we finally arrived at our hotel at
9:30. That works out to be over eight hours. Well for those eight hours, boy did we have some strange things
happen.
Since we were "on vacation" for a few days anyway, we wanted to make sure we had lots of fun. Along with all
the stuff we had packed, we included lots of road sodas. What is a road soda? Well, I'll let you just figure that
out for yourself. We were still on my "lovely" island when we decided it was time for some road soda. Needless
to say, when we finally got to New Jersey, we needed to stop at the first rest area we came to.
You would think that making a stop at a rest area would be just a boring thing to do, not with these road trippers.
You might recall from the last road trip, that Jen developed an abnormal attachment to road cones. Well, it wasn't
just a fleeting thing. When we were walking into the building, there was a line of road cones, there had to be at
least 20 of them. Jen was so excited. She even posed for a picture with them. I guess I should mention that she
made herself her own T-shirt. Yep, all about the road cone. The front says "warning" and the back says "who
said it's just a cone", including a picture. Not to mention, that whenever we pass a construction site, she gets
really excited. The worst is when there is just one lonely cone somewhere. All she wants to do is rescue it.
Whatever, that's her gig.
When we got back on the road, Nikki decided that we should play a game to pass the time. So, we played
truckers. NO, not CHECKERS, TRUCKERS. The object of the game is to see how many waves, honks, etc.
You can get from the men and women hauling those 18-wheelers. Rules, well there are no rules. It was around
4:30 when we had started this game. I remember clearly because most of them were eating and not paying
attention to the road. It was supper time. We got mostly waves at first, but we soon discovered that four women
with their hands out the window and waving worked a lot better than just one. We actually made some friends.
This one trucker followed us for at least two hours, through the tail end of the DC rush hour traffic, that we
somehow got caught up in at 7:30 PM. I still can't believe that we hit rush hour traffic on a Friday evening at
7:30. That's one reason why it took us so long to reach our hotel that night.
While we were playing Truckers along 95 South, going through Maryland and Virginia during the DC rush hour,
we somehow came along some guy in a White Ford Taurus Station Wagon feeling small. He was driving the
family grocery getter, and we were only waving at the people driving the 18-wheelers. This guy decided that he
wanted to grab our attention. So, he decided to eat a banana, and since it was still around suppertime/dinner time,
we didn't think anything of it, at first. Then we realized that the banana wasn't getting any smaller. He kept
putting it in his mouth, but each time it came out of his mouth, it was the same size it was before. It was amazing
how deeply he would put that banana into his mouth. At which point we were all hysterically laughing. I tried to
get a picture of him deep-throating that banana, but he put it away just then. It seemed that I scared him off with
the camera. He got off at the next exit. By that, I mean he exited 95 south.
We were still hysterical though. We couldn't believe what we just saw. What's the point in a guy deep throating a
banana at car full of women? Like that would do something for us. Then again, it did it made us all laugh. I don't
think anyone will ever look at a banana, or a white Ford Taurus Station Wagon, the same way again. Nikki kept
coming up with all these comments about that guy. During one of those comments, Jen was taking a sip of her
water, not a road soda since she was behind the wheel at the time, and she choked on the water. She was driving
over a bridge at the time. She really needed to pull over, that's how bad she was choking, laughing, gagging. She
had choked so bad that when she finally pulled off on the side of the road she puked. Apparently she was so
happy, it made her puke.
Every few hours we stopped to get gas. Every time we stopped for gas, we switched drivers. Jen and I did all
the driving from her house to Virginia. We felt bad that Nikki and Patty did so much driving on their own.
Especially Nikki, she had done all the driving for the last road trip on her own. She deserved a break from
driving. Well, we had finally gotten somewhat close to our hotel. We were about 15-20 miles away from it. I
was driving at the time, and I was really gunning it. We all had enough of being in the car. We just wanted to get
there, check in, and hit the pool before it closed. Then all of a sudden I see some blue lights turn around and start
heading in our direction. I thought right away, that better not be for me.
I have been driving for 20 years. Yes, I did start driving when I was 10. Anyway, 20 years of driving and not
one speeding ticket. Actually, until Kenny Chesney played in Maryland last February, I had never had a ticket at
all. My husband and I went to DC after we saw Kenny play in Salisbury. We parked on the street with a meter,
and we got back to the car a minute after the time had expired. So you got it, I now have two tickets, one parking
and one speeding, thanks to Mr. Chesney.
Everyone in the car was very surprised at how well I took it. The state trooper that pulled me over, Trooper
Metz, had asked me for a reason why I was driving 74 mph in 55-mph zone. My first thought was to say that I
wasn't the one going the fastest, but I decided to let it go. What's the point? I was doing over the speed limit,
even if I wasn't the only one. I might have been the only one who didn't have Virginia plates, but that's okay. I
didn't want to talk too much, since I had two road sodas during the course of this trip, which at this point was in
its eighth hour. I wasn't drunk by any means, not even close, but I didn't want to deal with any sobriety tests.
Naturally, he asked for the registration of the vehicle and my license. I couldn't find my pocketbook, turns out it
was in the back of the truck, by the cooler, and the alcohol. So, I ask Trooper Metz if it's okay if I get out of the
car to retrieve my purse from the back of the truck. Well, it's a good thing we got rid of all the empty bottles at
the last stop. I could just imagine empty bottles clanking as I'm trying to get my license.
Well, we made it to the hotel. We even had time to go to the pool. As soon as we got our stuff into the room, the
other girls went outside to smoke a cigarette, by the time they came back; I was unpacked, in my bathing suit, and
making some Lynchburg Lemonades (Lemonade and Jack Daniels). I was ready. As soon as everyone else was
ready, we headed to the pool. The pool was supposed to close by 11 PM. We had gotten in it just before 10 PM.
We were still in it at 11:30 PM. Unfortunately, the pitcher of Lynchburg Lemonades was consumed almost solely
by me. They were busy drinking beer and Bacardi Silver.
After the nice maintenance man from the hotel told us that we really had to leave the pool, he had already let us
stay 30 minutes longer than the pool should have been open, we took our party outside the hotel. It was a nice
night, we still had plenty to drink, and we had a non-smoking room. While hanging outside the hotel, we decided
we were hungry so we ordered a pizza and decided to wait right there for it. While we were waiting, out walks
Kenny's production manager, Ed. He was staying in the same hotel as us. Nikki gave me the choice of three
different hotels that she had found in the area. Apparently, I had picked a good one. When we were making our
plans for this weekend, we never thought that they would stay an hour north of the venue. Oh well, I guess you
can never figure out their plans. So, Ed had a good laugh with us. We were still in our bathing suits, cover-ups,
and towels, looking really pretty.
While we were outside in front of the hotel, at around midnight, still in our bathing suits and still drinking, the
maintenance man came outside to let us know that it was rude to be drinking in front of the hotel. So, we emptied
our bottles into solo cups. This way, we wouldn't be rude.
This is where it starts to get fuzzy for me. I don't remember ever going inside the hotel until I took my shower. I
know the pizza arrived shortly after Ed left. I believe someone went upstairs with the pizza, or maybe someone
ate the pizza in front of the hotel. I really just don't remember the order of when things happened. This is what I
do know. I was serenading some guys who were just coming back from a night out. I was singing that song that
I love to see Kenny perform in concert. You know the one he doesn't do anymore, but that we all would love for
him to still do. So, here I am singing Lay You Down to some total strangers. I don't even know if anyone was
singing with me. I think I might have been solo and a Capella. They seemed to enjoy it though.
Then at some point, I remember being by Jen's car. We went there to get refills more than likely, that's where the
cooler was. Somehow, Jen and I wound up on the pavement with our feet on the bumper of her car and feel
asleep. That is we feel asleep, until Nikki insisted we get up and sleep in beds for the evening. I remember being
quite comfortable on the pavement.
The next thing I remember, is getting back into the hotel room, for the first time since I made the Lynchburg
Lemonades, and I finally ate some pizza. The pizza was cold at this point, but it was good to put something in my
stomach after drinking the Jack's and the beer that I had been drinking all night since we had gotten to the hotel.
After that I jumped into the shower. Somehow, I feel asleep in the shower, sitting Indian style under the
cascading water. I have no clue how long I was in there for, but someone's pounding on the door suddenly
awakened me. Apparently, they had been discussing who would check to see if I was okay. At first it was to be
the person closest to the bathroom, and that was Nikki, but she didn't want to get up. So then they decided it
would be the person who knew me the longest, and that is Patty, by just a day or two. I meet Jen and Patty the
same week on-line. So, this was the second time tonight I was rudely awakened in my drunken stupor.
wasn't for us knowing how to have a good time, we might have been just as annoyed as the other 34,000 + fans
who journeyed to Lovingston, VA for the Country Music Jamboree sponsored by the local radio station there and
their parent company Clear Channel.
My friends and I were traveling from the Northeast. My one friend, Jen, lives on Long Island near me. My friend
Nikki lives near Binghamton, NY, and my third friend, Patty, lives in Connecticut. Nikki drove four hours Friday
morning, while Jen and I both worked, to join up with us at Jen's house. Patty drove to my house that morning, it
took her over two hours, and that included the ferry ride. We were all meeting up at Jen's house since we were
taking her car for this road trip.
When I went to make my visit to the nice folks at AAA to get the triptik for this adventure, they had said it would
be 351 miles to where we were staying in Charlottesville. Let's see 351 miles, going at least 60 mph, should only
take just under six hours. Yeah right. We left Jen's house just before one, and we finally arrived at our hotel at
9:30. That works out to be over eight hours. Well for those eight hours, boy did we have some strange things
happen.
Since we were "on vacation" for a few days anyway, we wanted to make sure we had lots of fun. Along with all
the stuff we had packed, we included lots of road sodas. What is a road soda? Well, I'll let you just figure that
out for yourself. We were still on my "lovely" island when we decided it was time for some road soda. Needless
to say, when we finally got to New Jersey, we needed to stop at the first rest area we came to.
You would think that making a stop at a rest area would be just a boring thing to do, not with these road trippers.
You might recall from the last road trip, that Jen developed an abnormal attachment to road cones. Well, it wasn't
just a fleeting thing. When we were walking into the building, there was a line of road cones, there had to be at
least 20 of them. Jen was so excited. She even posed for a picture with them. I guess I should mention that she
made herself her own T-shirt. Yep, all about the road cone. The front says "warning" and the back says "who
said it's just a cone", including a picture. Not to mention, that whenever we pass a construction site, she gets
really excited. The worst is when there is just one lonely cone somewhere. All she wants to do is rescue it.
Whatever, that's her gig.
When we got back on the road, Nikki decided that we should play a game to pass the time. So, we played
truckers. NO, not CHECKERS, TRUCKERS. The object of the game is to see how many waves, honks, etc.
You can get from the men and women hauling those 18-wheelers. Rules, well there are no rules. It was around
4:30 when we had started this game. I remember clearly because most of them were eating and not paying
attention to the road. It was supper time. We got mostly waves at first, but we soon discovered that four women
with their hands out the window and waving worked a lot better than just one. We actually made some friends.
This one trucker followed us for at least two hours, through the tail end of the DC rush hour traffic, that we
somehow got caught up in at 7:30 PM. I still can't believe that we hit rush hour traffic on a Friday evening at
7:30. That's one reason why it took us so long to reach our hotel that night.
While we were playing Truckers along 95 South, going through Maryland and Virginia during the DC rush hour,
we somehow came along some guy in a White Ford Taurus Station Wagon feeling small. He was driving the
family grocery getter, and we were only waving at the people driving the 18-wheelers. This guy decided that he
wanted to grab our attention. So, he decided to eat a banana, and since it was still around suppertime/dinner time,
we didn't think anything of it, at first. Then we realized that the banana wasn't getting any smaller. He kept
putting it in his mouth, but each time it came out of his mouth, it was the same size it was before. It was amazing
how deeply he would put that banana into his mouth. At which point we were all hysterically laughing. I tried to
get a picture of him deep-throating that banana, but he put it away just then. It seemed that I scared him off with
the camera. He got off at the next exit. By that, I mean he exited 95 south.
We were still hysterical though. We couldn't believe what we just saw. What's the point in a guy deep throating a
banana at car full of women? Like that would do something for us. Then again, it did it made us all laugh. I don't
think anyone will ever look at a banana, or a white Ford Taurus Station Wagon, the same way again. Nikki kept
coming up with all these comments about that guy. During one of those comments, Jen was taking a sip of her
water, not a road soda since she was behind the wheel at the time, and she choked on the water. She was driving
over a bridge at the time. She really needed to pull over, that's how bad she was choking, laughing, gagging. She
had choked so bad that when she finally pulled off on the side of the road she puked. Apparently she was so
happy, it made her puke.
Every few hours we stopped to get gas. Every time we stopped for gas, we switched drivers. Jen and I did all
the driving from her house to Virginia. We felt bad that Nikki and Patty did so much driving on their own.
Especially Nikki, she had done all the driving for the last road trip on her own. She deserved a break from
driving. Well, we had finally gotten somewhat close to our hotel. We were about 15-20 miles away from it. I
was driving at the time, and I was really gunning it. We all had enough of being in the car. We just wanted to get
there, check in, and hit the pool before it closed. Then all of a sudden I see some blue lights turn around and start
heading in our direction. I thought right away, that better not be for me.
I have been driving for 20 years. Yes, I did start driving when I was 10. Anyway, 20 years of driving and not
one speeding ticket. Actually, until Kenny Chesney played in Maryland last February, I had never had a ticket at
all. My husband and I went to DC after we saw Kenny play in Salisbury. We parked on the street with a meter,
and we got back to the car a minute after the time had expired. So you got it, I now have two tickets, one parking
and one speeding, thanks to Mr. Chesney.
Everyone in the car was very surprised at how well I took it. The state trooper that pulled me over, Trooper
Metz, had asked me for a reason why I was driving 74 mph in 55-mph zone. My first thought was to say that I
wasn't the one going the fastest, but I decided to let it go. What's the point? I was doing over the speed limit,
even if I wasn't the only one. I might have been the only one who didn't have Virginia plates, but that's okay. I
didn't want to talk too much, since I had two road sodas during the course of this trip, which at this point was in
its eighth hour. I wasn't drunk by any means, not even close, but I didn't want to deal with any sobriety tests.
Naturally, he asked for the registration of the vehicle and my license. I couldn't find my pocketbook, turns out it
was in the back of the truck, by the cooler, and the alcohol. So, I ask Trooper Metz if it's okay if I get out of the
car to retrieve my purse from the back of the truck. Well, it's a good thing we got rid of all the empty bottles at
the last stop. I could just imagine empty bottles clanking as I'm trying to get my license.
Well, we made it to the hotel. We even had time to go to the pool. As soon as we got our stuff into the room, the
other girls went outside to smoke a cigarette, by the time they came back; I was unpacked, in my bathing suit, and
making some Lynchburg Lemonades (Lemonade and Jack Daniels). I was ready. As soon as everyone else was
ready, we headed to the pool. The pool was supposed to close by 11 PM. We had gotten in it just before 10 PM.
We were still in it at 11:30 PM. Unfortunately, the pitcher of Lynchburg Lemonades was consumed almost solely
by me. They were busy drinking beer and Bacardi Silver.
After the nice maintenance man from the hotel told us that we really had to leave the pool, he had already let us
stay 30 minutes longer than the pool should have been open, we took our party outside the hotel. It was a nice
night, we still had plenty to drink, and we had a non-smoking room. While hanging outside the hotel, we decided
we were hungry so we ordered a pizza and decided to wait right there for it. While we were waiting, out walks
Kenny's production manager, Ed. He was staying in the same hotel as us. Nikki gave me the choice of three
different hotels that she had found in the area. Apparently, I had picked a good one. When we were making our
plans for this weekend, we never thought that they would stay an hour north of the venue. Oh well, I guess you
can never figure out their plans. So, Ed had a good laugh with us. We were still in our bathing suits, cover-ups,
and towels, looking really pretty.
While we were outside in front of the hotel, at around midnight, still in our bathing suits and still drinking, the
maintenance man came outside to let us know that it was rude to be drinking in front of the hotel. So, we emptied
our bottles into solo cups. This way, we wouldn't be rude.
This is where it starts to get fuzzy for me. I don't remember ever going inside the hotel until I took my shower. I
know the pizza arrived shortly after Ed left. I believe someone went upstairs with the pizza, or maybe someone
ate the pizza in front of the hotel. I really just don't remember the order of when things happened. This is what I
do know. I was serenading some guys who were just coming back from a night out. I was singing that song that
I love to see Kenny perform in concert. You know the one he doesn't do anymore, but that we all would love for
him to still do. So, here I am singing Lay You Down to some total strangers. I don't even know if anyone was
singing with me. I think I might have been solo and a Capella. They seemed to enjoy it though.
Then at some point, I remember being by Jen's car. We went there to get refills more than likely, that's where the
cooler was. Somehow, Jen and I wound up on the pavement with our feet on the bumper of her car and feel
asleep. That is we feel asleep, until Nikki insisted we get up and sleep in beds for the evening. I remember being
quite comfortable on the pavement.
The next thing I remember, is getting back into the hotel room, for the first time since I made the Lynchburg
Lemonades, and I finally ate some pizza. The pizza was cold at this point, but it was good to put something in my
stomach after drinking the Jack's and the beer that I had been drinking all night since we had gotten to the hotel.
After that I jumped into the shower. Somehow, I feel asleep in the shower, sitting Indian style under the
cascading water. I have no clue how long I was in there for, but someone's pounding on the door suddenly
awakened me. Apparently, they had been discussing who would check to see if I was okay. At first it was to be
the person closest to the bathroom, and that was Nikki, but she didn't want to get up. So then they decided it
would be the person who knew me the longest, and that is Patty, by just a day or two. I meet Jen and Patty the
same week on-line. So, this was the second time tonight I was rudely awakened in my drunken stupor.
