Victory Soap v. 2.0

I pulled over into the nearest parking lot and coasted into an empty space. I managed to actually shut off the engine properly instead of stalling it out.

I'd been driving about three hours, and I was still in Raleigh.

I opened my map and tried to make sense of the different colored lines and highway numbers. I was pretty sure I knew how to read a map in Florida, but for some reason that part of my brain had decided to shut down. Eventually I located a road that seemed to head both south and west, and connect with US 1, which was still my goal. I folded up the map and started up the car.

After stalling several times, I finally got back on the road. The other vehicles, sensing my weakness, gathered around me. I wondered if hitting someone in the back of their car was an automatic no-fault accident for the hittee in North Carolina as it was in Florida. I certainly hoped so.

Eventually I encountered a fork in the road, some confusing highway signs with numbers, and a sign welcoming me to Garner. I had seen this sign about five times so I decided that the way I usually turned there had been wrong, and decided to go the other way. Despite the fact that it was a lovely afternoon of clear skies I didn't notice the direction of the sun, only that I wanted it out of my eyes. I seemed to be heading vaguely south. For a while I bowled along down one-lane roads through suburbaney countryside interspersed with small towns. I finally began to feel like I was finally out of Raleigh. Eventually I entered another small town. These small towns, by the way, were real headaches for me, because that meant I would have to change gears. I had a special problem with first gear. I began to tire. I noticed that the small town was named "Clayton."

People who know the environs of Raleigh will know that I was not going in the direction of US 1, but away from it.

That wasn't the problem I had with Clayton, though. The problem was the fact that though I had left the city behind as rush hour commenced, for some reason this town was a real traffic hub. I kept stalling the car, and finally pulled over on the side of the road, in a parking space, to rest, telling myself that I'd wait until the spate of cars eased. That proved to be a mistake.

I was stuck there for an hour.

Car after truck after car whizzed by, or else sat there as traffic ground to a halt, trapping me there in my parking spot on the side of the road. I began to lose it. The sun was starting to set, and I was nowhere near getting out of North Carolina.

Finally I was able to get the car into a gap in traffic and get out of town. But I was exhausted. I managed to make it to Selma, where I found a hotel. Once I was in my room I took out my map, and found out I was going southeast instead of southwest. If I kept in the direction I was going I'd end up on I-95, and I still stubbornly wanted to take US 1 instead. So I decided I that in the morning I would take the road I had been traveling on (the 301, or maybe it was the 701 -- all the signs said "301" but the map labeled it "701"), until I got to route 421, which if followed back northwest would take me to US 1. Plans made, I went to bed.

The next day I was on the road again, and after stopping in Newton Grove for breakfast at a little old diner where people smoked indoors (the anti-smoking nazis don't seem to have made much of a headway in Tobacco Country), I continued on my merry way through North Carolina. I was convinced that this time I was headed in the right direction, and would get to US 1 in no time. I felt better about the ride -- the weather was still beautiful (the morning air was actually cool! the humidity was low!), the countryside the very dictionary definition of "bucolic," and traffic light. I thought a couple of times -- when I passed through the occasional town -- of pulling out the map and making sure I was going in the right direction, but I decided not to. I was sure I was going in the right direction.

Around noon I found myself in Elizabethtown.

To be continued...