GOODBYE TO THE FREEZER AND INTO THE BIG COUNTRY

By Juan Montoya

After a night of Samuel Adams lager and some krazy karaoke ("Suspicious Minds" by the King and "She Thinks I still Care" by Georgie Jones"), it was time to take it on home.
Connecticut is still frozen solid and looking like the poster child of the Northeast with its ancient buildings and historical sites where George Washington and the patriots slogged it out with the damn Brits. We left New Milford at about 10 a.m. and headed west on Interstate 81.
The weather was unseasonably warm (at 34 degrees) during the day as we boarded the moving van and headed west on 81 and on to New York. We crossed the Hudson River (West Point was just a few miles north upriver). Parts of it along the banks were frozen solid. Ice and snow covered the Empire State mountaintops and before long we were approaching the Pennsylvania border.
This is mountain country and the moving van labored up the steep grades. Shale and rock thrust up from the ground, and one can imagine the tectonic activity that shaped the landscape.
To those of us used to driving the entire day just to get from one border of Texas to the other, it is almost laughable at how quickly state lines pass by in the Northeast.
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virgina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama. Mississippi, Louisiana, and on to the Lone Star State.

We made it as far as Woodstock, Virgina on the first day. My friend's mother-in-law rode with his wife in a separate car while we drove the rental van. We could have continued going all night except for the fact that a 73-year-old lady needs to rest periodically. After she fell asleep we decided to go into Woodstock and chill out for a while.
It was freezing outside when we reached town. Woodstock's claim to fame is that George Washington petitioned the House of Burgesses for the land to lay out the city. It boasts of having the longest continuing serving courthouse east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A further claim to fame is that the a bar downtown has to be the loudest, rowdiest karaoke joint in the South.
However, we ventured out of town to a place called the Double Overtime Sports Grille and found a nice spot with a juke box full of classic country.
Next morning we went out on the road but not before my friend took a nasty spill on some ice next to the solid-frozen swimming pool of the hotel.
There's something to be said about the soft twang of Southern women. Hotel clerks and waitresses addressed you with an endearing, melodic, accent all of their own. It was "Can I help you honey," and "What'll you have darling?" everywhere.
About halfway through the 1,749.9 miles from New Milford, Conn., to Houston, my friend's mother-in-law decided she had had enough and wanted to turn back. It took all of her daughter's persuasion to convince her we weren't going to return. We hadn't counted on how tired she must have been or the abruptness of suddenly jumping on a car and traveling across the country. It must have been traumatic to suddenly disrupt her lifestyle and travel all day and part of the night.

After an evening of harrowing white-knuckle interstate changes in Chattanooga, Tenn., we drifted south. We maneuvered the van past Lookout Mountain on the Tennessee River. Later, we crossed the Missisippi as the sun was setting in the horizon.
My friend's mother-in-law decided she didn't like Louisiana one bit. You really can't blame her because the state still looks like it had been hit by a tornado with uprooted trees and snapped trunks littering the sides of the road. The killer was the Achtafalaya Swamp. After a few miles of that garden spot of Louisiana, she decided to sleep in the back seat of the car.
The Sabine river welcomed us to Texas as fog crept slowly from the shore.
It was past 9 p.m. when we crawled into Houston. We were driving in pea soup fog all the way from Beaumont to Baytown. All around us, trucks and cars barreled at breakneck speeds through the thick fog.
"Are these people crazy?" we asked each other.
Finally, the Clear Lake city limits welcomed us and signalled the end of our trek. Would we do it again? Not if we could help it.