Road Trippin It

Where did we go? Who came along? Well, I'll tell y'all. Kiley, Anna, Drew, Zac, Joe and I left at the crack of dawn to drive back to my place in Raleigh! Naturally we hit Chicago rush-hour, a blizzard, more traffic jams, incompetent drivers, unexpectedly unplowed lanes, windshield wash fluid line froze, an interstate shut down, mountains, Raleigh rush hour traffic. But hey, we made it.

So that lovely blizzard that hammered the northeast...yeah, we were driving through that the entire first day. The drive wasn't bad at all except for the people going like 25 on salted, plowed highways. That got a little irritating to say the least. Oh yeah, and then in Kentucky they decided to shut down the interstate. Yes, they SHUT DOWN AN INTERSTATE!!! For what? A freaking inch of snow. So we took a detour for 4 miles that lasted over an hour. Are you kidding me? Anyways, we stayed the night on the KY/WV border. The next day we left early in the morning again, ate lunch at Applebee's and then I took over the wheel to carry us home sweet home. I've missed the South!

The South, The place where: 1-Tea is sweet & accents are sweeter 2-Summer starts in April 3-Mac'n'Cheese  is a vegetable 4- Front porches are wide and words are long 5-Pecan pie is a staple 6-Y'all is the only proper noun 7-Chicken is fried and biscuits come with gravy 8-Everything is darlin' 9-Someone's heart is always bein blessed

Oh, that day when it was -55F with the windchill back in Wisconsin. Yeah, it was a sunny 45F in Raleigh (psst! That's 100F warmer than y'all!) My friends got to experience a typical winter of 50s and a nice day of 60 as well! I took them to my 2 favorite bars - Flying Saucer and Raleigh Times Bar, toured the capitol (Madison's is a million times more stunning that Raleigh's), went to a few museums, showed them my lab, had a few drinks, cooked a dinner or two, relaxed, walked around Cary, and then had to say goodbye. 

View from Raleigh Times Bar

Downtown Cary, NC

Then as they left for Washington D.C., I took a shower to get ready for class. How lovely. Saying goodbye is the worst! I want my 5 roommates back!! Y'all can clutter my room as much as y'all want! I won't even complain about stepping on chargers and stubbing toes on suitcases and being woke up in the middle of the night!! Just please come back!! And what's even worse...today Anna flies back to London :'(  If I could shrink the ocean, I totally would! As much as I love my international friends, I hate them for having to live so far away!! As long as we keep in touch and visit each other when we actually have a savings account...I can't imagine anything more worthwhile than that! No lie.

Look at the globe :( So far away!!

Anyways, I need to get back to analyzing toxin data! I need to crank out an extension paper sometime in the near future. I should work on that...