Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

Note:  I know it’s been a while, but when the last segment of "The Great Road Trip of 2009" ended, it was just after midnight Thursday morning, April 2, 2009 and Mom, Laura & I were on the road from Abilene to Mississippi in our hotel room in Shreveport, LA getting a good night’s rest.  At least, some of us were.  Here’s how the last segment ended:

"The day ended with me wide awake.  As a new day began, I prayed for sleep, to no avail.  

Then, some 45 minutes into the new "day," – 12:45 a.m. Thursday
morning – me still in bed wide awake, the peace was shattered by a loud
knocking on the door.

What on earth, I thought."

April 2nd – Early Morning, DiamondJack Casino Hotel

I fumbled around trying to get out of bed and find my glasses, which were around the corner on top of the TV in the sitting area.  At the same time, Laura jumped out of bed just as confused as I was.  She followed me to the door, as a second round of loud knocking commenced.  She asked me what I was going to do, afraid I’d open the door, but I told her I was just going to look through the peephole to see what was going on.

Luckily, we were on one side of the atrium and the hall was well lit.  I saw a husky young black man standing at our door with a cell phone in his hand and as I watched him, he placed a call to someone saying, "What room are you in, again?  I’m here, but you’re not answering."

"Oh," he said.  He repeated the room number given him, which was on the same 6th floor, but he had transposed the other two numbers, leading him by mistake to our room, instead of the room he wanted.  As he sauntered off, Laura and I got back in our bed.  It was 1 a.m.

Mom had somehow slept through the whole thing, but Laura and I were both now wide awake.  Me, still, and as it turned out, her, too.  I’d been still as a mouse, except for checking out my indiglo watch every few minutes and thought Laura had been sound asleep the entire time because she had been still, too.

Nope.

We started talking quietly and giggling about things.  Mostly about Mom and how much fun she seemed to be having.  We agreed she was having a great time, some of which was evident by her falling asleep so quickly and easily when she got in bed at 10:45 p.m. and now sleeping through this latest commotion.

We talked about not being able to sleep and what to do about it, and I remembered I’d brought along a few sleeping pills of Tom’s that he’d used when the bursitis in his right hip was so bad, and I offered one to Laura, who was most grateful.  I wasn’t sure about taking one, myself, since it was already nearly 1:30 a.m. and I had a long day of driving ahead of me to get home, but decided I needed the sleep and the pills had never made me feel drowsy the next day before when I’d taken them, so I took one.

Laura & I giggled some more as I talked about feeling bad for not letting her sleep with me more often when we were kids.  Then, I told her I’d been lying there comforting myself with my new light up watch and showed her how bright it was (and that it was now a bit after 1:30 a.m.).  She really started giggling about me and my obsession with my new watch and showing it off so much, and then our voices faded to silence.

I could tell that she soon fell asleep because I could hear her soft breathing and a bit of quiet snoring. Me?  I tried my best, but still could not go to sleep.  By 3 a.m., I figured it was a lost cause, but there was nothing I could do about it but lie there and wait until Mom woke up, which was usually early.  I think I finally – maybe – got about and hour and a half of sleep, but by 5:30 a.m., I was once more awake.

Mom got up quietly about 6 a.m. and I called out to her, telling her I was awake, as well.  I got up and told her I’d not slept much at all and we talked about the day to come, both wanting to get our things together and get on the road as soon as possible.  We figured we could just wake Laura up to get her things together and that she then could go back to sleep in the car if she wanted.  What I wanted was to go home.  I felt totally wiped out, but wanted to get home with my precious "cargo" this day more than anything else in the world.

But, there were potential problems looming.  

We’d talked with Tom the night before and had been watching the weather forecast the previous few days and knew that this day was supposed to be very rainy and stormy all across the south, moving from Texas to Louisiana to Mississippi and then on over into Alabama.

We had decided the night before, as Tom had advised, to head straight east on I-20 across Louisiana to Monroe, then into Mississippi across the Mississippi river at Vicksburg, on to Jackson, where we would head southeast to Hattiesburg and down I-59 to Picayune.  We all thought that trying to head down across Louisiana on I-49 from Shreveport to Lafayette, then on I-10 to Baton Rouge and across the south part of Louisiana to Slidell and back up I-59 20 miles to Picayune would present more storm problems and much more traffic.

It was a toss up, I suppose, but I felt more comfortable with our plan because there were a lot more towns along the entire way and I knew the roads well.

As we got our things together and drank coffee, thunder boomed and lightening lit up the still dark sky to the west out our 6th floor window overlooking the Red River.  We were packed and down in our car by 8 a.m., glad to be under the portico of the hotel because rain was pelting down.  We’d had nothing to eat, but thought we could stop later somewhere along the way.  I was anxious to get us on the road.

We were on the far east side of Shreveport, Bossier City and interstate access was next to our hotel.  I merged into a good bit of traffic covering four lanes, but it thinned out fairly soon, although the rain in the dark sky kept coming.  We could tell that we were on more or less the front edge of the bad storm and thought we could drive out of it soon.  But, then we realized it was coming at us at an angle from the southwest toward the northeast.

Still, by about 10:30 a.m., even through sometimes very heavy rain and a lot of 18 wheelers, we’d made it 2/3 of the way across Louisiana.  We stopped to take a break in now light rain and I checked my blood sugar, which had done great the entire day before.

My old nemesis was back.  My sugar was low.  I pulled out a Coke and quickly drank it, thinking that would take care of things.  However, little did I know what lie ahead of us as we headed into not only major low blood sugar problems, but also the furies of the horrendous storm chasing us home.

To Be Continued . . .

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