A Trip to Georgia

         It was September 11th the morning my mom had decided we were going to Georgia. She and I had both been anxiously watching the news, and though I ultimately supported her decision, she was still unsure of whether she wanted to leave our house. My younger brother definitely did not want to go; he believed we were overreacting and did not hesitate to let us know as much. It had been quite a stressful night trying to explain to him why it was necessary for us to leave, especially since he had refused to assist in preparing the house for what was to come. In the back of my mind, I was hoping he was right, that we were overreacting, but knowing the possibilities of what could happen, I knew it was best for us to go.
         We stopped to recruit my grandparents, who, predictably, were not ready to go. I was extremely upset by the fact we had to help load their vehicle, knowing that by the time we were done that the traffic would undoubtedly be atrocious. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t prepared their trailer ahead of time like everyone else—why would you wait until last minute, the day and hour you planned and were meant to leave to pack and put things away? And even afterwards, they stood and talked with my mom and smoked—all while I sat fuming in my car with my little brother, still incredibly upset by the fact we were leaving to stay indefinitely with a family member he didn’t know, and two dogs who were unfamiliar with car travel and were quite verbal about their discomfort being away from home. It was further infuriating to learn that my grandpa, infamous for his terrible driving, would be leading the way.
         “I’m not comfortable leading; I go too fast,” my mother explained.
         And throughout the drive, my mood did not improve much. My grandparents frequently took wrong turns, resulting in us going in circles or pulling into gravel roads to turn around, and rather than staying on the interstate, the fastest route despite the influx of traffic, we wound up taking winding backroads. There was, notably, an amusing moment where we found ourselves stuck behind a truck with a funnel cake booth hitched to the back. We followed behind it for quite a while, and it brought amusement and distraction until we turned left and it continued on forward—my little brother was upset that it continued without us behind it.
         There wasn’t much talking that went on in the Jeep—for the most part, I was left to my own devices, in charge of driving my brother and the dogs safely, following behind my grandparents, and keeping an eye on my mom who followed close behind us. My brother occupied himself with Doom on his Nintendo Switch, while I tried to keep myself calm as I drove—I’d never driven such a distance before, from Stella, North Carolina, to Augusta, Georgia. And I’d never worried about losing my home, either. My family had sat through hurricanes before, and even driven through them to get to Dairy Queen before (which was open still for some reason during Hurricane Hermine; I remember we had a close call, though, driving home, as a branch flew directly into the windshield as we were driving and it had scared us all half to death), but as everyone now can tell you, there was something different about Hurricane Florence. It was scary. The uncertainty of what could happen, and what would happen, was just frightening, and I had to switch to the music on my phone to avoid hearing about what might happen while we were gone.
         We had been driving since about nine in the morning and stopped to eat at about four in the evening at a Subway. We hadn’t stopped but one other time for my grandpa to go to the bathroom, so I was incredibly tired and hungry; the mini muffins my mom had packed weren’t exactly filling, so a sandwich wasn’t something I was going to complain about being able to eat; though because I was tired, I did order wrong, not that I didn’t like what I’d gotten, I just usually order a tuna sandwich with mayonnaise, not mustard. We also had to let the dogs out to stretch and go potty and drink water, however, they are used to free-roaming at home, and didn’t take kindly to being on leashes, and quickly got stuffed back into the car.
         When we got back on the road, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Many roads were under construction, resulting in stagnation of traffic, and our car squad being broken up quite a few times. I often relied on my brother to call my grandparents and our mother to figure out where they were and found myself going forty-five in a seventy-five waiting for them all to catch up, and when we were paused and unmoving, the dogs assumed they were getting out and became anxious and noisy, which took quite some time to quiet. At some point, it began to rain—as in a torrential downpour—and my dog, Beauregard, became absolutely terrified due to the booming thunder outside and attempted to climb to the front seat to hide, but eventually settled with hiding in the pile of food stashed in the foot area in the back seat. My car, at that time, began to drive off, and considering it is a 2007 model, I assumed something was, again, wrong with it, and began to panic, yelling at my brother to call my mom and tell her something was wrong. Upon further inspection, though, I found that my car had been put into manual rather than automatic, presumably from Bo bumping the gearshift; it was a quick fix, and I was rather embarrassed by how I had reacted.
         It was beginning to become dark, and it was about eight o’clock at night when we finally arrived in Georgia. It was such a relief to know we were so close, about fifteen minutes, from being able to finally rest after such a long, stressful drive—I couldn’t believe how badly my neck hurt from sitting in the car for so long—and my dogs were ready to get out of the car; Bo hadn’t moved from his spot since the storm, and my brother and I had gotten worried that he may have been stuck down there, as it was a rather small space with all the junk crammed down there for the drive.
         I won’t be forgetting the sound of gravel as we pulled up to my Great Uncle Bill’s house and stepping out of the car onto the orange Georgia clay. It was dark out, but he and his wife were there to greet us and help us get everything into their home. And though it was great that we were finally done with the drive, the cloud of uncertainty still loomed over me—I was tired, I was anxious, and I didn’t know if I was going to have anything to go back to once Florence ran its course through our home. At least, for the moment, I knew that I and my family were safe, and that was what mattered.