Spring Break

For those of you suckers who had Friday classes last week, I hope you enjoyed your slightly shorter Spring break. Me? I cut out early. Skipped my last Thursday class. Called in absent to work. Packed my car and all perishable food and headed off with my best friend into the 3:30 Chicago traffic south. South and farther south. After hours and hours of Indiana, we finally crashed on a friend’s couch in Kentucky and then wound our way down through Tennessee to my home state, Georgia.

Now, I’ve been on plenty of family road trips. Many’s the time we’d loop around Tennessee hills to visit old family friends. But this was my first honest-to-God, Thelma and Louise (minus the car chases, police, suicide…ok just about everything except the ‘two girls in a car’ thing) adventure. Splitting a pack of Camel Menthols while blasting every country station we could find, we rolled the windows down despite the 30-odd degree weather and savored the taste of smoke and freedom.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Yet another ‘check out my awesome adventure’ story. But it’s not at as simple as that. It was about actually planning for once (granted, at the last minute) and having everything fall into place. It was about seeing my hometown and randomly dropping in to watch a friends’ play. It was about getting lost looking for a Starbucks, only to see it across the road as we’re getting gas. And it was about swearing at that old GPS every time it decides to ‘recalculate!’

So you know what? I’m glad I went. It’s my last Spring break as a college student and about time for a crazy, caffeine and cigarette-stoked break. Who knows when there’ll be another one?

But for now, it’s back to 15-page papers and coding assignments. Yay.