travel

In case you didn’t notice it, there was no blog post last night. It was a crazy but fun day, but at the end both Dee and I were wiped out.

I got up yes­ter­day and got on over to Roanoke Col­lege to make sure my pro­gram­ming team was ready to com­pete and to answer any ques­tions they might have. Once I’d done what I could there, I went back to the hotel, picked up Dee, and checked out. We then headed for the yarn store near the air­port that Linda Davis (the Roanoke CS depart­ment sec­re­tary, a FABULOUS and woe­fully under­paid per­son) had highly rec­om­mended. We shopped a bit and then went back to the col­lege to hang out, schmooze, have lunch, and wait for the con­test to end.

As for the con­test out­come, this wasn’t one of GPC’s more stel­lar performances…in fact it was a bit abysmal in that they tied for last place. The guys appeared to have a good time, though, and they cer­tainly made an, ah, impres­sion on the other teams and coaches ::wince::.

Once the prizes & such were awarded, we got on the road. Our ini­tial plan had been to head for the Blue Ridge Park­way and take that over to I-77, but when Dee found that I had never been to Floyd, VA, she stated that we MUST go there on the way, as Floyd is appar­ently the Artsy Hip­pie Cen­ter of Vir­ginia. We did get our bucolic coun­try back­roads drive, just on U.S. 220 instead.

Floyd is a lovely lit­tle one-stoplight town, wor­thy of a full day of explor­ing instead of the hour and a half we spent. Dee intro­duced me to the Win­ter­Sun out­let, where I bought two batik tops, and we vis­ited the Floyd Coun­try Store and the local nat­ural foods store.

Once they started rolling up the side­walks at 5 p.m., we got back on U.S. 220 headed for Hillsville and I-77. Dri­ving two-lane coun­try high­ways after dark is not my favorite thing to do, but I def­i­nitely see bet­ter in the dark than Dee so I was the D.D. Head­ing south on I-77 down that lovely steep eight-mile grade into North Car­olina and on towards Char­lotte, past the bazil­lion bill­boards adver­tis­ing JR Dis­count What­ever, it grew darker and darker.

Around Mooresville we finally decided that, it being 8 p.m., enough was enough, and found a Sleep Inn next door to a Carrabba’s. It was a good thing we walked to the Carrabba’s, because a sin­gle glass of Ital­ian San­gria with our tasty (albeit delayed due to a wait) din­ner was enough to put us both out like light­bulbs when we got back up to our room. Even if I had remem­bered about blog­ging in my fuzzy brain, my eyes weren’t focus­ing and my eye­lids felt like forty pound weights.

So that’s my story, and I AM stick­ing to it!