Reader, I have been to the top of the mountain, and there is absolutely nothing good about it. Quick. Think of everything you’ve ever heard about the state of West Virginia. Got it all? Okay. That’s exactly what West Virginia is like. Fine, hilly vistas? Check. Rugged, undeveloped countryside? Check. Cows? Check. Large pockets of trailer homes? You know it, reader. Winding, narrow highways that pass through an absolute lack of civilization? Uh-huh. Honest-to-god outhouses visible from said highways? Yep. The shells of old, heavily burned barns and homes still dotting the landscape? For some reason, yes. Rednecks? Oh hell yes.

Fortunately, there are many, many kind people in that backwoods state, as well. And I say “fortunately” because there were many occasions yesterday when Jeanette and I were very much in need of help. For those who don’t know, Jeanette and I yesterday began the long, slow trek down to Florida by way of my walking route (in reverse, of course). Driving the route backwards seemed like a diligent and even wise thing to do. And even though a little voice in the back of my head nagged at me that it was a terrible decision, I figured following the turn-by-turn walking directions provided by Google Maps would be at least close to an accurate and representative process for making our way down to Florida. Here’s the part where I say I was wrong: I was wrong.

Reader, I have a bone to pick with Google Maps. Google Maps, you suck. Hard. In only two ways are you superior to Mapquest: 1) You offer “walking directions” at the toggle of a menu option and 2) You provide a street-level view of almost every location in America (which, when you really think about it, has got to be one of the truly great achievements of modern man). In all other respects, Mapquest makes you its bitch. And I’m talking, like, the-gimp-in-Pulp-Fiction-grade bitch. Mapquest makes you its whiny, simpering, leather-clad dungeon-bitch. I wish I could say that this was just about your cockamamie walking directions (which, to your credit, you admit to be in beta state), but it’s not, Google Maps. Just this morning, on what’s going to be a hellish Day Two of driving, you wanted to send Jeanette and I sixty miles back into the Appalachians to connect with I-81 when there was a perfectly good I-81 onramp a mere five miles in the opposite direction. Mapquest cleared that up for us, by the way. By my calculation, we’re a good forty-five minutes ahead of where you’d’ve had us by the time of this writing.

I don’t mean to take it all out on Google Maps, reader. Make no mistake, yesterday was entirely my fault. You ever have one of those days where nothing you do – no matter how much time you spend on planning – goes right? Sure, we all do. Have you ever had one of those days coincide with a long drive? If you have, then you’ve got yourself a decent idea of how horrible yesterday was for Jeanette and me.  I’ve had bad driving days, reader. Given my embarrassing lack of a directional sense, it kind of goes with the territory. But yesterday? My god. Yesterday was an unmitigated disaster. I’ve never in my life had a drive where more things went horrifically wrong (and in such close succession!).

We didn’t even make it out of Pittsburgh before Google got us lost. I’m not putting you on when I say that there were stretches of time when it expected us to take US-51 south for twelve miles, only to take it back north for another six. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure that one out for a full twenty-four hours now and I still can’t come up with anything. The logical thought might be that Google Maps was merely trying to keep me in sidewalks. But no. There was nary a sidewalk on any of the streets we traveled.

Anyway, back to the disastrous day. So we get lost. Thoroughly. And when we come out the other end of lost, we find that we’re in a town with more outhouses per capita than cars with four wheels.  There weren’t more outhouses than cars propped up on blocks, mind you, just more than there were cars with four wheels. Finding that our phones and their fancy GPS features were utterly useless, we decided to do the American thing and pull over to ask for directions. The gas station looked like something out of Mayberry, but it was literally the first we’d seen in sixty miles, so we were willing to take whatever we could get. Inside, I encountered the first set of super-nice West Virginians that would eventually save the brownish smear of a day that yesterday would become. Yes, they were missing a few teeth (no lie), but they did know how to get through the Monongahela National Forest and onward to Roanoke. They even gave us a free map.

We’d been wandering without aim through the Appalachian Mountains for almost four hours by that point, so it had come time to let Adama out of his travel crate and feed him. I did this on the stretch of white gravel that served as the gas station’s lot. Adama’s food was in his backpack, so I took it out of the trunk, unloaded a couple of cups of food into his dish, and waited for him to chomp away. He refused. I was already cranky as all hell, so I had little patience for my dog’s finicky behavior. Leashed him up, grabbed his bowl, and re-crated him so he could eat. In the car, he ate like a champ.

When Jeanette returned, we put our heads together and determined the best route down to Roanoke. We settled on a route different from the one we’d been told because it looked to be a more direct heading. Excellent. I grabbed a Diet Coke and off we went.

Not five miles down the road, we came to a complete standstill in bumper-to-bumper traffic. If you could’ve seen the locale, reader. This must’ve been the first traffic jam in the area’s entire history. We waited about ten minutes before a nice family came back and let us know that we weren’t moving because of a felled tree. Again, no lie, the paterfamilias of this family was also missing teeth. His twelve-year-old daughter, meanwhile, wore a shirt that said “For Sale: Free.” I’m not entirely sure what that was supposed to mean, but I took it to be the equivalent of wearing a sequined shirt that reads “Slut” across the bust.

Finally, the tree was un-felled and we were allowed to pass through. By this point, we’d been on the road for nearly five hours and had yet to eat anything. So we wound and weaved down the mountain and through the hick towns in search of a restaurant. One appeared maybe forty minutes into the journey – a quaint-looking pizza place with a front patio amenable to dogs. So we stopped and Jeanette went inside to grab menus while I searched for Adama’s harness. Couldn’t find Adama’s harness, reader. Know where it was? Same place it is nearly all of the time: attached to his backpack. His backpack, meanwhile, still rested in the white gravel beside the gas station where we’d stopped for directions. 

Now, apart from my backpack and maybe my tent, I would argue that Adama’s backpack is the single most important piece of equipment I’m bringing along on this trip. Damn thing also cost $120.

This was the only occasion on the trip where I felt like throwing up. It was not the only occasion where I screamed profanities to the sky. I couldn’t do the walk without that backpack.

I ran inside the pizza parlor and asked the kindly purveyors whether they had a phonebook with Aurora, West Virginia in listing. They did. The gas station I was looking for, however (a Sunoco), was not listed. Fortunately, the woman at the counter knew someone in Aurora. She called this person. This person – for reasons I can’t imagine – knew the phone number for the station by heart.

I called. Sunoco-guy answered. Sunoco-guy strolled around the parking lot looking for Adama’s pack. Sunoco-guy found it. Righteous.

So now Jeanette and I are driving back up the mountain so I can right my ridiculous wrong. We’re not talking to each other, at this point, as you can imagine. Tensions are high. Forty minutes of reckless driving later and I’m loading Adama’s pack into the trunk while Jeanette’s buying Snickers bars (our dinner for the evening, due to circumstance).

There’s more, reader, but I’m getting all worked up in retelling it, so I’m just going to skip to the part where I say that the drive from that point on took seven hours. We arrived in Roanoke at 2am. We were tired. We were cranky. I’d made more mistakes than I can count on one hand. And it was the first day I can remember having in a long time where I was glad the damn thing was over.

So that was Day One of the journey. I figure it’s the universe telling me that this walk is a terrible idea. You know what, though, universe? I’m gonna do it anyway. I’ve got two more days until I take my first step toward home. And my resolve to make it has not waned. Bring it, universe – because I might be more than a little spacey, but I’m also tougher than I look.