I know I said there wouldn't be any updates for a while, but with so many people still visiting on a daily basis, I feel compelled to say something for my loyal readership. I left Tallahassee at 5:30 on Wednesday morning and was stuck in pea-soup fog until Savannah, Georgia or so. The trip, though long, was fairly uneventful for the most part, and I made it to Blacksburg around 4 PM (about 730 miles). I did have a close call on I-77 outside of Columbia though. The fog had lifted by this point, and up ahead, I could see a 12-foot metal ladder stretched perpendicularly across a lane of traffic. I quickly changed lanes, but the dumbass driver of a semi in front of me decided to hit the ladder head on at about eighty miles an hour, causing it to explode across four lanes of traffic in a storm of shrapnel. Cars in every lane swerved madly, but luckily there were no accidents. I ran over several sizable chunks of ladder myself but survived without any flat tires or scratches.

Later, in the scenic foothills of southern Virginia, I hit a five mile stretch of fog, where visibility was literally about seven feet in front of the car. It was just me and several commercial truckers (of the standard aggressive Virginian trucker mold), and it was quite surreal to have landmarks like bridges suddenly appearing overhead without prior warning. Six hundred and eighty-miles into the trip, and just thirty miles from Blacksburg, Virginia's finest deputy sheriff awarded me a speeding ticket, which can luckily be of the pay-by-mail variety. Of course, after giving me the ticket, he made small talk about my major and college.

Life in Blacksburg is about the same as it was when I left. The bowling alleys are a little posher, the roads are a little more confused, and everyone's still taking forever to graduate. I got called out of page-turning retirement to assist in a rendition of Handel's Messiah tonight, so I'll be donning a borrowed tux and too-large dress shoes for the occasion. Tomorrow morning (bright and early as always), I'll be heading back up to Northern Virginia and giving my old roommate and cat a ride home for the holidays.