Super-adorable!

It's four hours from Jensen Beach to Jacksonville, four hours from Jacksonville to Charleston, and four hours from Charleston to Raleigh. And last week I discovered that there's nothing longer than a four-hour drive. Two hours, and you're practically there before you had a chance to switch out your CD. Eight hours, and you go into it prepared for a day-long trip. But I haven't quite mastered the psychological prep needed for the Four...you think it's going to be short and easy, but then you get hungry, and you have to stop for gas, etc. It's the worst, because when you've only got two more hours to go, you get this feeling like you just cannot go on. On three out of the four four-hour drives on this entire trip, I have needed to stop at a rest area and take a power-nap in my car. I'm a little concerned about the Raleigh-to-DC trip awaiting me this weekend...

In any case, after a couple of interviews in Jacksonville last Wednesday, I set out for Charleston, SC. It was my first-ever trip to South Carolina, and hopefully not my last. I stayed with my friends Griff and Kara; Griff was editor of Scholastic our senior year at ND, and he and Kara have been dating since we graduated. They moved from northern Indiana outside of South Bend to Charleston just in time to put me up for a few nights. Of course, this will probably complicate hosting their annual summertime tailgate, when a group of our classmates, mostly Midwest-based, descend upon their house for a weekend of burgers, beer, and a tape of one of ND's great victories from the previous season. On the other hand, maybe this is a good year to skip that tradition...

As ill-fortune and the Verizon network/Motorola conspiracy would have it (that's for another blog entry), I was not able to do an interview in Charleston as planned. But the upside was that I had plenty of time to sleep in and then explore downtown Charleston with Griff. Charleston was absolutely charming—it's right on the ocean, it's brimming with history, the houses are all painted bright colors, and I hear that in springtime, the world seems to be dripping with wisteria vines and azaleas. Not that I read the guidebook or anything. Even in the cold drizzle, Griff and I spent a very enjoyable afternoon taking photos and rambling around town, and at one point, I turned to him and said, "Wow, Griff, this place is super-adorable!" And though he laughed, he agreed that it's true. In the evening, Kara met us for sushi and the three of us sampled some local brews before heading home, where Griff and I stayed up until 2 in the morning talking about my trip, his recent 6-week backpacking trip through Ireland, and the joys of getting 8 hours of sleep.

The next morning, after a blissful 8 hours, I drove four hours to my uncle's house in Raleigh, stopping, of course, for a quick nap along the way.