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… I ended up staying up another hour last night, getting a grand total of 1 hour of “sleep” before hitting the road.

When the alarm went off at 4:45am, I actually still felt pretty wide-awake and since Yoshi was in no condition to drive, I ended up making the entire 5 hour drive up north.

We departed at 5:07am and it took us almost exactly 5 hours to arrive, but that was including one gas/potty break and also a brief stop at a gas station when I had to kill a spider in the car. For the record, I was driving (near the Grapevine) and I saw a small spider crawling down the front windshield. Seeing that the wipers didn’t rid of it, I realized it was INSIDE the car and I got an instant case of the heebie-jeebies. I could have sworn I felt the windshield spider (or one of its cohorts) crawling up my leg, up my arm, and into my shirt.

I began to freak out and woke up a very sleepy and groggy Yoshi, who did not see it and probably thought I was going to drive off the road out of sheer panic over an imaginary spider. When I safely got off the freeway and into a rest stop, I opened the door, jumped out and danced around making sure any spiders (real or imagined) would fall off. Then I tried (unsuccessfully) to find and kill the real spider, which by now had hidden itself in the crack between the dashboard and windshield. I threatened to stay in the rest stop to kill the spider before continuing the drive, but I could tell that Yoshi was ready to unleash an entire colony of spiders (ok, I know spiders don’t live in colonies, but you get my point) on my head if I didn’t just buck up and keep driving.

So I did. An the instant the car went into motion, the spider showed its creepy little self back on the windshield. I pulled over, but my fingers were too big to get to it. I grabbed a napkin and a pen in a valiant effort to kill it so I could keep driving… but it went back into hiding and I never saw it again.

Of course, I’m sure that didn’t stop it from sending me its evil little spider voodoo because I was itchy for the rest of the trip up. Damn arachnid.

For the record, I would have gotten us up faster than five hours (regardless of the spider delay) but there was traffic due to several oversized trucks carrying giant boats up the 2 laned interstate highway. And we could’ve saved even more time if the gas/potty break didn’t also include a stop at the mini-mart to buy a can of Sugar Free Red Bull (they don’t sell Diet Rockstar) and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper (wasn’t in the mood for Diet Coke).

My inner speed demon was good this morning. And I know there was no black ice to worry about.