Hi again.
Long time no post.
Last week was April vacation which means among many other things: I now only have 32 days left until my last day of wearing burgundy and I promise I will never wear burgundy after that in my life. I will be glad to not have to wear a school uniform ever again. They're fine for school but I want to be a "normal person" from now on.
Over April vacation I, with ten other people, crammed into a fifteen passenger van with the back four seats removed last Sunday morning at the crack of dawn (give or take) to begin a seven hour trek down to the lovely world of central Pennsylvania. My finance class (more on that later) and I visited one of my family friends down at his college where we saw a tree randomly split down the center and fall down. We went to a coffee house open mic night they had going on. Refilled our thirty-two ounce cups three times in the cafeteria. Walked on a bridge that was partially submerged in seven feet of water and had "CAUTION DO NOT CROSS" tape at the entrance. (Please, who reads warning signs?) Then once it hit around 11:30 instead of thinking "hey, we have to leave at six tomorrow morning three of my friends" (Amanda, Elisha and Jake) and I all decided: Hey! Why not go driving around and try to find something to do in the middle of nowhere in a state we know nothing about? My mom (my parents were chaperones because my dad teaches the finance class) drove us around but because she has the worst sense of direction we ended up getting lost a few times mostly because we didn't have much of a plan in the first place and didn't bring a GPS.
We ended up at a twenty-four hour supermarket.
We purchased a bunch of food and headed back out to our big white van that besides reading "DAVE RAMSEY OR BUST" and "LIVE DEBT FREE" "DEBT FREE AND LOVIN' IT" and "DEBT'S NORMAL BE WEIRD!" on the windows was otherwise unmarked. When we returned where we were staying for the night, we started a full game of Apples to Apples since the people who had stayed already played a newly invented game: "Ghetto Scrabble" (which instead of playing the word "post" you can play "pohsttt" instead). Armed with salsa and chips we came up with similarities between Dumbledore and Classy (because "Dumbledore makes sassy classy.") and Dick Cheney and quaint. Discovered that the trump cards for Apples to Apples are: anything with old people, E.T., and Santa.
After my best friend Jessie won by a landslide, we all settled onto the floor and slept for three hours (again, give or take).
The next day we began our journey from the middle of Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee where the whole purpose of our trip would take place. The drive took twelve hours. Are you counting? That means eighteen hours in the car out of two days. At this point most of us had forgotten how to walk. The first real stop was at a gas station/Dunkin' Donuts in Woodstock, Virginia. We met Margie and Elaine there. Two southern women who worked there. Margie tried to hit my dad with a towel and Elaine said she wanted something to punch herself with because the cash register was not working. Oh Virginia, the land of awkward and crazy. After a couple more stops we finally hit Tennessee. We went into a McDonald's but then Jessie saw a shop that sold Beanie Babies and so we went in there for a bit. It smelled like old cigars. Welcome to Tennessee. Jessie bought a beanie baby Walrus.
After an extra hour that we hadn't been expecting because we hadn't figured out that there would be a time change, we reached our little motel: "Fidr's Inn." It was supposed to be Fiddler's Inn but some of the letters were burnt out. Still Fidr's Inn gave us all a chance to shower up and nice beds to sleep on for the night. Before going to sleep though we went for a walk through Grand Ole Opryland. A gigantic hotel with a waterfall, night club, and about five restaurants inside. Basically a small city inside that was probably even larger than my actual city. At Amanda's suggestion that we "Live a little and have dessert before dinner." We all got gelato. Except for Mike who is too addicted to coffee (like a true New Englander) to pass up a chance at fresh non-gas station coffee. Then we headed to the Carney Fork which was a restaurant in the same plaza as our motel. Jessie and I split a Gator tail because one of our teachers always say they refuse to eat anything that could eat them. So being the type of students we are, we went directly against that. We got there around 9:45 pm and it was closing at 10 pm but fortunately other people were there too so they didn't dislike us too much.
Then around eleven almost all of us piled back into the van to see if anything was going on in this state. We figured out how to get to Nashville this time WITH the GPS even after a couple of mishaps such as coming to a complete stop at a red light and waiting for three minutes before realizing that is was a "blinking" red light (it got brighter then a little darker and we made the same mistake the next day during the daylight). After finding out where the real part of the city was we walked up and down the main street but then left because we all had a very big day in the morning.
The next day was THE day. It was the whole reason we planned this trip. It was the day we were going to meet Dave Ramsey. Yes THE Dave Ramsey of The Dave Ramsey Show.
We walked thru Nashville again trying to calm our nerves and again burn time. We arrived at Financial Peace Plaza where Dave does his show a little early so because it was past lunch six of us got back in the van to stop at Burger King down the road. Halfway through the meal a girl on the trip named Amanda got a text from one of the boys who had stayed at the plaza that said Dave had gotten there early and they were chatting with him. Because this was the whole purpose of the trip we all immediately left and got back into the van, someone even threw away their food. We almost got into an accident we were in such a hurry and then halfway back he replied, "I'm just kidding."
We met Dave, handed him a basket of presents and a little book we put together over the year. He even signed our copy of the book. :]
Then we met Rachel Ramsey Cruz. Rachel is in the movies we watch of Dave for Finance class too. She was very sweet and answered a lot of questions that we asked her.
The way back was when the real trip began. We came, we conquered and we were on our way back. A twelve hour drive without stops. What else can you do but sing songs about anything and everything you see that had to do with trip? For example one lyric was:
Poor windshield, covered in bug guts and no one to clean it, poor windshield.
The only part of another I can remember is:
LIKE A BANANAAAAAAAAA!
And then there was the famous:
If you're happy and you know it, say DAVE RAMSEY!
At the end of the singing we stopped at a gas station off the interstate called Love's. I think it was still in Virginia but I'm not sure. It was midnight and we were all kind of spaced out and hungry. We started doing lunges in the middle of the gas station while half of us either ordered food or put quarters in that machine that you try to push more quarters forward to win more quarters. Then we went outside and did more stretches. We had started doing stretches at gas stations the first time we stopped on the trip back to see who could touch their toes and who couldn't. It was at a gas station called Pilot and they had the best gas station coffee I've ever had and during that trip I had A LOT of gas station coffee. But this brought it to a whole extra level actually doing them inside the store.
We arrived at the place we were staying in Pennsylvania at six in the morning after leaving at four from Nashville. Needless to say we fell asleep on the floor immediately after rolling out our sleeping bags and dropping our pillows.
We woke up to two random ladies typing on the computers in the room and men coming in with a Coke machine saying: "hey look, people are sleeping, must be April vacation and they're having a sleepover." It was a very strange feeling to wake up to people you could barely see talking about you.
By ten a.m. we were on the road again. The rest is pretty self explanatory. We did make it back and we were groggy and felt gross but we were all home and it was good.
It was a fantastic time and this post took longer than I expected.
Peace, Love, and Gazelles,
Maggie
