Day Four

Tennessee/ Alabama
Up bright and early although we’re all starting to look a little more beat down each day. Everyone’s still chipper and pumped up as everyone signals each morning by blowing their variably tuned horns in excitement. There’s one with the old school star trek theme tune, the Dixie horn, air horns, ‘Ahoogha’ horns, the old police ‘nee-nar-nee-nar sounding one, and your normal varied sounding bleats of a broken down old piece of steel. It’s the rally call of champions. Ha ha.
So we receive our challenge through the window once again and MAN it sucks sooooo bad. There’s a regular sized sheet of paper with 21 little boxes with pictures in them…..of mailboxes. They’ve all been tampered with on some sort of photoshop so that the quality is horrible to varying degrees. There are a few that are only black shadows on a even darker background. The challenge is to get to the road on our route for the day, and take pictures of the exact mailboxes at about the same angle to match the picture. Too bad that stretch of road has about 200 mailboxes strewn over 18 miles of road, on either side of the road. So you have to go up and down it slow enough to get the picture (the locals looooved that) and match it up to an unclear picture. It’s actually worse than it sounds. A lot of people just skipped the challenge entirely and took the route to the hotel, some tried half ass, and others went way beyond everyone else taking the road 4 to 6 times. We did very well, only taking 1 and a half sides, and getting 17 out of 21 correct. We didn’t get the last few only because our camera died before we got all the mailboxes (which I was secretly happy about so we could head on to the hotel…ok maybe not so secretly) Most people were in the single digits, so once again – we rocked it! Still not in the running for first, but we’re high up there and it’s just fun to watch.
By the time we left that stretch of road the cops were crawling all over it. I take it some of the citizens may have been a bit annoyed by the strange cars driving in less that stellar fashion on their rural route. Understandably so. Some of the teams really did need to speed up and it was an unfortunate side effect that the rally bothered anyone. A lot of people still loved us, waving and staring as we passed along the way. We kept things at a pretty good speed once I got the hang of taking quick shots from out the window. When we rolled out of town we still had a local cop tail us and finally pull us over. He ran our information and gave the tire bolted to the top of the car a good shake, saying that he pulled us over because he was worried about the safety of it….yeah right. Nice excuse. Then he asked us what all these damn cars were about and we explained that it was a rally, NOT a race, from New York to New Orleans and that there were challenges along the way. He said, “So I guess our county is just the lucky ones to get you this year huh?” We replied, “YES!” happily with grins. He turned to go saying gruffly, “Well y’all’ve been a real pain in the ass all day.” and then walked off. No ticket. At the party that night we got high fives all over the place for getting hassled by a Alabama cop and having him call us a pain in the ass. Seriously?! Party that night at a bar owned by one of the Rally cars…actually the Rally short bus. Unfortunately, their water pump randomly decided to fall of their engine and destroy a few other key parts in the process. The matador’s were there to help, but on the way to the part store they broke down. The locals banded together and called friends all over town that they thought might have such and such car in their back yard with the right part on it. Sure enough, people started pulling up with the parts needed and they made it to the party at 1 am. The south, man. Such a strand dichotomy of harshness and laying down anything to help you out. It’s fascinating. Oh, by the way. No offense to anyone from there, but Birmingham is a shit hole. Maybe I just didn’t see the ‘really great area’, but the whole place looks like a broken down piece of cement. The motel that most people stayed at was immediately dubbed “The Meth Lab”. People said, “Hey, does anyone wanna go back to the hotel and drink in the parking lot?” And a local goes, “Oooh. I wouldn’t suggest it.” The cops were already there when most people arrived and they quickly warned everyone to get anything of value out of there car since it wouldn’t be there in the morning. On the cab ride back to our hotel (didn’t feel like spending the night in an Alabama jail cell) the cab driver said “Yup this is a nice hotel, but don’t go outside the gates. Real bad area. Couple from Indiana just got shot and killed right there at the car wash last week. So don’t go over there.” Corey and I just looked at each other wide eyed. Weird.
Then the cabby back to the start line the next morning randomly said half way through the trip, “Y’all don’t eat oatmeal while you’re driving do you?”
“No.”
“Thank goodness. God help the young people.”