It all started one Wednesday night during the Bible study I go to every week. Todd, the guy in charge, invited everyone to go to the regional fall conference at the end of September. Last year, I skipped the conference to stay at school to attend a college football game. When I realized my school was playing on the Thursday before that weekend, I signed up eagerly, looking forward to finding out what this conference experience was like.

My parents recently purchased a new used car for my brother and I to take to college, so I volunteered to drive myself and two fellow attendees to the conference in North Carolina. Little did I know that the drive there and back would be so eventful. To start off, one of the guys got out of class an hour later than he thought he did. Instead of leaving school at 1 PM Central as planned, we left at 2:30 PM Central. This fact was awesome when I missed the connection back onto I-85 from the I-285 bypass around Atlanta in the middle of 5 PM rush hour traffic. Needless to say, that not-so-scenic detour added about forty-five minutes to our journey.

On the way there, my car agreed on two frustrating points of travel. First, many roads have too many names. In my book, more than one name is too many for a road. Seriously, how am I supposed to know where I am going if the road signs list up to five different highways and byways? Less seriously, what is a byway? The other thing we observed was that major roads through South Carolina have little in the way of places to exit and eat. It seems that travellers through that land sustain themselves with goodies obtained at the rest stop vending machines.

We saw a lot of weird things on the way to North Carolina. For example, there was some sort of car dealership type place that was called "El Cheap O's". Also, we ate dinner at a Subway with a drivethru, where Hoover football was being shown on ESPNU. As if it isn't bad enough that a high school team is able to get on a national cable television station, they were playing a team from Louisiana. The Louisiana school, which Google cites as being five and a half hours away by car, was represented by a large contingent of fans. You must be pretty crazy (or a football player's parent) to drive that long to watch high school football.

There are towns in North Carolina called Swannanoa (which I prefer to pronounce Swannan-an-an-anoa) and, believe it or not, Bat Cave. I'm still a little incredulous that Bat Cave isn't just some natural tourist attraction or the location of the real-life Batman's secret hideout. However, the words Bat Cave did appear on a road sign typically reserved for real towns and cities. Wikipedia is telling me that Bat Cave is named after a nearby mountain, which is named after a cave it contains. Wikipedia and I talk very often.

Anyway, when we finally arrived at the complex where the conference was hosted, we went up a very long and winding road which featured scary straw people every now and then. Thankfully, the mountain people did not jump out of the bushes and drag us away never to be seen again. Instead, we found our rooms, and I promptly went to sleep. The conference was pretty awesome; there were workshops on different topics during the day, and a worship service/guest speaker message at night.

The way back was significantly less eventful, though we did see a grocery store chain called Ingles which had the words "American Owned" on the front. I thought that was kind of ironic, since "ingles" is a Spanish word for English. The other guys in the car said the name of the store was Ingle's, but that's not nearly as funny. We followed one road through a very scenic area of South Carolina, which was neat. About five hours later, we arrived back at school.

In conclusion, I went on a great trip that unfortunately ended late on the night of the first of a month. That is why the October update was late. The end.

From the Man Himself,
Tito Crack, the Mack Attack

I still don't forgive you for the late delivery of the October update. Did you even write that epic about your summer in Vermont yet? I'm gonna go check the index. You're dead meat if I find out you didn't.