After reaching the great rural hillocks and forests of Sadie's hometown, we woke up and promptly began to pack. And pack. And pack some more. All in all there was a huge amount of things Sadie took with her, and being that she took some very large stuff (such as the queen bed and a couch) the truck filled up in no time. When all was said and done, me, her, her mom, her brother, and even her dad (whom she rarely sees) were loading stuff into the truck. We had to shift things about left and right, up and down and securely fasten all we could before taking off. It was a pretty brutal affair but in the end the team managed to pack it all in. After this grueling affair, Sadie's mom invited us over for dinner. I debated this invitation for the simple reason that Oklahoma City, the day's next destination, was a very, very long ways from Clarksville and the sooner we got on the road, the better. However, I figured this gave Sadie a chance to spend one final afternoon with her family, so we went and partook in the tasty meal (which was pasta I believe). Soon afterwards, we went back to get the truck and that's when disaster befell us. I was not, for the life of me, able to maneuver the damn thing back to the road. The problem was getting the truck out of her grandmother's field. You see, we had to back the damn thing in through the grass in order to park it in front of the house and load it up. The problem came with trying to back it out, and not because of the truck itself, but the trailer Sadie's vehicle was loaded onto. I tried for a solid hour, or even two to get it freed, but I could not do it. In the end we had to ask her dad to maneuver it out for us, as he had lots of experience with that kind of thing. Thankfully he didn't have a problem with it, and we got on the road well into the evening.
The journey through the rest of Tennessee was not problematic; clear skies and clear roads on into sunset. Even driving through Memphis was a relative breeze. We crashed through the border and began our incredibly long, tedious, and winding journey through Arkansas, battling a wicked storm front all the while. The beginnings of our Arkansas journey were nothing to write home about, but the storm, which hit shortly after passing through Little Rock was cause for concern. Visibility was poor. Lightning was frequent. Winds were high, and I was driving a damn moving van with a vehicle strapped to its ass. I pulled off the road a few times to regroup with Sadie, relieve myself, and regain my composure before setting off once again into the hellacious tempest. Eventually, after hours of mind numbing driving, we reached the Oklahoma border.
You may be tempted to think "oh, the border, OKC can't be too far off now, but let me tell you that's a huge pile of lies and fetid horse shit. It was dark, it was still storming, and the City was nowhere near the border. In fact, if you check a map, you will see it is damn near the center of the state. That meant a very large amount of continuous driving for us before we could finally rest our weary heads. We trucked and trucked and trucked on, with little noteworthy happening between our border crossing and destination reaching. I believe we both were suffering from sleep deprivation and highway hypnosis by the time we arrived, as all I could see was Sadie driving my car in front of me, swerving from time to time and bringing me to nearly soil myself every time. We had a pair of walkie talkies we began using when leaving Tennessee, but by this point of the drive they were long past dead and we relied on eye contact to keep us together. At least it wasn't hard for her to see the giant yellow Penske in the distance, even in the dead of night. We mercifully caught wind of an exit to a little known place called Oklahoma City due to the friendly guidance of a little green highway sign. I waved to it, and sped with all my might to the road, eventually finding the hotel with our life-saving beds waiting for our extremely tired selves. It was 5AM by that point, with a hotel checkout of 11AM. The cats were freed for a brief period as we checked into the hotel and I tried in vain to sleep what was left of the morning away. I managed at least an hour, possibly two, of restfulness, and fully awoke, somewhat ready to begin the next section of our odyssey.
