Flat Tires and Morning Afters

Day:109

Tap, tap, tap.

“Housekeeping?”

“Nooo…” We all mumble in unison, or at least as close as we could get to unity after barely four hours of sleep and the mass quantity of drinks we took in the night before.

Shit. I realize after a few minutes that I am wide awake and won’t be going back to sleep. I get up, shower and get some blogging in, laughing as I look through last nights 300 pictures. There are things in there that I had forgot I had done, and some I wish I could have forgot forever. (Oh, and to complete my New Orleans visit I did manage to pull some tail last night. Score for Rob, literally)

Finally around eleven everyone else starts to get up, because of our noon check out time and the fact that we want to make it all the way to Aaron’s grandparents house near Tampa, so we have a 12 hour drive ahead of us. We packed our bags and headed to the elevator for a quick elevator party and to see how Skittles stay in New Orleans was. We hand the valet the ticket, and he drives her down, complete with a flat tire.

Double Shit; Must have been that mammoth six inch deep Katrina pothole I hit yesterday on the way into the city. The hotel maintenance guy filled our tire and gave us directions to the local Wal-Mart where we could get in patched. To make a long story about car maintenance short, we ended up with a new tire, a tripod, a belly full of Cracker Barrel (which made Aaron and I slightly sick to the stomach), and got back on the road around 3pm.

Hours of endless driving through three new states and we soon came to the realization of one undeniable fact: Florida is a big state. It was three-thirty in the morning before we found ourselves in muggy Lakeland Florida, being escorted through Aaron’s Cuban grandmothers home to the den where they had set up air mattresses for all of us. It was a welcome sight.