but of course before I can return to school I have to make the obligatory trip up to Kentucky to visit my mom's dentist (she's picky) and buy me some Ale 8. (Yea, I'm from Winchester, get over it.) The drive up was uneventful until we reached the middle of Tennessee...and everything was covered in icicles. Now, maybe it's just me, but icicles tend to envoke images of cold and snow and the entire reason I am a student at Valdsota State is because the brochures showed people always in shorts sitting under palm trees...20 minutes from the Florida border isn't too far when the education is free...anyway, the point of that was, I don't do well in the cold, and Kentucky is even farther north than Tennessee...I was not happy to have to deal with that~I only brought a scarf and hat for fashion's sake...they don't really keep me warm! Thankfully we get into Richmond and see none of that white stuff, so all is good while I wait for Adam Clay to pick me up. We are staying with family friends about 30 minutes from Lexington, but I had plans to go to dinner and a Clay bball game with some friend in "the city" that night, and AC was wonderful enough to come collect me, with a promise to return me before the SUV became a pumpkin. (His mom works at EKU, just up the road from where I was staying, so the child claimed he was familiar with the area.) About 20 minutes after we expected Adam, he called me to reconfirm the directions...he was in Poosey Ridge, about the farest place out the country in the wrong direction that you could get, and surprisingly he saw a cousin of his...gotta love Kentucky. Ten minutes later, when my mom, our friend Judy, her daughter Sarah, and I were all standing out in their front yard, Adam turns onto the street and into the driveway...across the street. And he sits there...and he waits...and then my cell rings, and when I answer laughing, the poor lad backs up and comes into the correct driveway. I promise my mom I'll do all the navigation back into town (which if you talk to Natalie or Lynsey or anyone is rather hilarious...their favorite story is me getting lost coming to my house...oops) and we go on to the evenings adventures. That means we must first stop in to visit the universal Mom and Dad. For non-Herny Clay kids, those are Adam Clay's parents...known and loved by all, shamelessly mocked too, but that's all out of love. After teasing AC's brother, and trying to hack into Adam's laptop with help from his brother (I only wanted to leave you a note...I swear...), I had a quick discussion of Winchester and Ale 8 with Mom (it's all the poor people in that county know, but it's a damn good source of caffine) and headed on our merry way. Dinner and the game were uneventful for the most part, but when we walked out of the high school gym, we were warped into a winter wonderland...or the makings of one. The cars and parking lot were dusted with almost an inch of horrible white crystals, causing me to have a heart attack about going back to Richmond (okay, so first I "ice skated" to the car and drew pictures on the windows in the snow, but a heart attack was a close 3rd on my to do list). My hero assured me he could return me safely to Judy's house, so we kicked on the 4-wheel drive (boys like to show off their toys...) and tackled Alumni Drive...and turned off of it 25 minutes later. Just a quick note here, that distance should take 3 minutes on a slow day...we were never getting back. We fought this snail pace, with no visibility and completely white roads until the second we crossed from Lexington into Richmond....and I mean the second. All of a sudden, there was no more snow, not on the ground, not falling from the sky. The ground was barely damn, and I'm almost positive the temperature rose a few degrees just to make my tale of near death getting home seem even less believable to my mother who had been in Richmond all night. We reach the house in one piece and I bring Adam in to say goodnight to everyone, thinking that without Danny Lynch in the state the young lad would be safe...that man is good, he spent 30 minutes on the phone to the dad of the house I was at filling him in on Adam Clay and plotting the deception of the night. AC barely escaped without filling out a questioneer and taking a blood test, but he's a great sport to deal with my dad again and again. Thinking the drama was done, I went to bed, only to be awoken the next morning hearing school is cancelled for a snow day! Woohoo! Or wait...no, I'm not in school yet...or even in school anywhere that even knows the color of snow. All I got from it was the pleasure of scraping 4 inches of wet, freezing powder off the car at 8 am...I hate winter...I vowed to never again return to Kentucky between November and March...too much trouble can happen in those months..
