We got up early and got off to a bad start... I missed a turn and it was 45 minutes before I figgered it out... we were heading for Virginia!
So, we lost 90 minutes right off the bat.
But that wasn't the worst of it, no, no, not at all.
We had a three-hour forced tour of the Smokies, thanx to construction on I-40 west. Now it was a beautiful drive, don't get me wrong... but we weren't in the mood for it, not at all.
You see, our intention had been to drive clear through, and getting five hours behind was not conducive to that plan.
After we got back onto the interstate, we drove and drove. And drove. We finally decided that we wouldn't drive all night, but pay the price for the room.
Driving all night was something that we'd both decided on, and we really didn't want to give it up, but we should've been past St. Louis by now, and we were still 200 miles from there at least... so we decided to chuck the idea.
We finally made it to Paduka, Kentucky, and I spied a motel that looked almost vacant. It was about 00:30, and I went up to talk to the clerk.
For some reason or another, when he told me the price, I told him that was way too high. "Well, " he said, "I can give you the business discount..." After about five minutes, I'd talked him out of about 45% of the bill. I usually don't do stuff like that, but the parking lot, as I said, was pretty much bare, so he had lots of rooms going to waste, and he knew it. And so did I...
Karen and I hadn't stopped for super, but we had four chocolate cupcakes that sufficed... The room had two queen-sized beds, and Karen laid down and went right to sleep.
Not me. Well, I laid down, but I was soon up with chest pains. When I do this sort of thing, I make a careful evaluation of the pain and other symptoms. My pulse was steady and strong and a little high, but I'd had a cuppa coffee about an hour before, when I still thought that I might drive all night.
The pain went from my sternum straight through to my spine, and I wasn't sweating... so that meant that I was having an episode of esophagitis. I took another dose of Zantac and sat up waiting for it to work, and pretty soon it did and I went right to sleep.