Previously on the NABJ Chronicles…
Get to the Roof.  Break out the debit card.  Buddy needs me to give him my plate number, but I couldn’t remember it.  Go outside.  Come back.
“Strange, but your card’s not going through.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when the fun began.  Or started.  All depends on perspective….
So yeah, my debit card wasn’t running through.  Luckily, I’d been able to charge the Blackberry in the car, so I could check my balance.  It was low.  Real low.  Inexplicably low.
Yeah, in my infinite wisdom, I didn’t quite realize a couple uncommon occurrences were going to jack my cell phone bill up.  Cuz I’ll be damned if I can’t get a room at the fucking Red Roof Inn on the 6th of the month.  If it was like that, I’d have been started working the third shift at UPS (then, I could cut off that gym membership I don’t use).
But it’s all good, kinda.  I’ve got about $50 in cash in my pocket, more than enough for a room…
But what about gas???
What followed was one of the most complex decisions I’ve ever had to make, one that could have been, literally, the last decision I ever made.  The way I saw it, these were my options.
1.  Pay for the room in cash and get some sleep, then work out the gas part later.
Keep in mind how working things out later worked for me earlier.  It left me without a room.  It was the reason I had to make this decision in the first place.
2.  Save the dough and go find a place to park the car to catch a nap.
Yeah, I could stay in a car in Shady Tampa and catch a nap.  A dirt nap.  Hell no.  I watch the news every now and then.  How big of a mark do you think I am?  Hell no.
And, to tell the truth, getting robbed wouldn’t be the real problem.  It’s that they’d be robbing me and I didn’t really have any money.  That’s the shit the bandits really, really dislike.
3.  Just jump on 75 North and drive.
It would get me to Atlanta.  At the very least, it could get me to a rest stop after sunrise, when it would be way less likely that someone would charge me a sleep tax, if you get my drift.  Sure, I’d been up for 20 hours, and I started that stint with a four-hour drive, but I had some energy.
I used to be a road trip king, too.  Done three cross-country drives with one co-pilot and no stops.  Once did one of those drives, got out the car, and had a full day.
Know what I was then?  21.  That’s what I was.
Not 21 any more.
But the options were slim.  I wasn’t gonna call anybody at that hour if I had any other option.  And I had one.
Take that nifty I had in my pocket and turn that into enough gas and caffeine to get back to Atlanta.
So that’s what I did.
I must say, I was kinda proud of myself.  This required some real strategy.  You can’t just fill up the tank when you start because you never know what might happen, and you can’t give up all your liquidity.  Further, what if you spent all your money up front on gas, and you didn’t need all that petrol?  Then you’ve given up your ability to eat.  It’s a delicate balance of sustenance and liquidity when you’ve gotta make it work like that.
So I ran down that quarter tank I had, got out, put a dub on it and got a cup of coffee.  A friend was so kind as to talk to me as I tried to make it to sunrise.  When the sun gets up, so do I.  Once I got there, I was good.
There were a couple of moments where I got a little too, shall we say, deep in thought, but I got to sunrise.  From there, all I had to worry about was 5-0.  Thank you, cruise control.
But check this out…low on gas at the end, and the GPS on the phone said there was an accident on 285 that would hold up my trip.  I really couldn’t be wasting gas on idling.  I also wasn’t sure, however, that I could make it through their alternate route without petering out.  I couldn’t get details on how bad the traffic was.
Rolled the dice.  Went right at the accident.  Went up 285 North.
The accident was in the southbound direction.
One last 7.  Whew.
Managed to make it to the parents’ house with the needle kissing the E on the dash.  There was gumbo to be reheated. There was Blue Bell Butter Pecan in the freezer.  And I was no longer in the car.  Giddyup.
So let’s see here…by the time I went to sleep about 3 p.m., I’d been up for 30 hours.  12 of them were spent behind the wheel.  My debit card was scoffed at by a scoffworthy lodging establishment.  And — and this is a HUGE and — I spent ridiculous amounts of time in South Georgia and North Florida.
And guess what?  I haven’t been mad about a single part of it once.  That tells you how much fun I had in Part I.  The nonsense that followed just made for a great story.  If you know me, you know I’ll go through damn near anything if I’ve got a great story to tell when it’s done.
But this story isn’t done.  We must revisit my night in Tampa.  Since I’m sure we can’t have a panel discussion on it or anything, I’ll use this as a place to address one of the biggest scourges affecting the National Association of Black Journalists…
Hateriffic busters.
There were in force.  And they must be stopped.