Tennessee to Georgia: The Scenic Route

Since Phillip's housing arrangement will change when he returns to school after the 4th of July break, he had to bring home lots of things that he will not need at his new place. Things like a mini refrigerator, a microwave, most of his bedding, and I probably don't even want to know what else. He didn't think that it would all fit in his car, a 2000 Mazda Protege. We didn't think that it would fit either, so we figured that we would need to make a trip to Nashville next weekend to get the overflow. With some creative packing on his part (think: crowbar) he managed to get almost everything in the car. The trunk was packed so that he probably had to find the five biggest guys on campus to sit on it to close it. The back seat was piled all the way up to the roof, and the front passenger seat was piled up to the headrest. He probably had possessions under the seats as well, if there was room for any with the omnipresent mouldering french fries. I'm not sure of the beginning of the route out of Nashville, but he gets on one or two interstate highways before hitting I-24 that goes eastward between Nashville and Chattanooga and then I-75 south toward Atlanta. He was on the interstate just before I-24, in the right hand putt-putt lane, and he needed to get over several lanes to get on I-24. He was so loaded down that other cars kept whizzing past him and he couldn't get over. So he kept going south until he hit the Alabama line near Huntsville, and then called his dad while I was at the baseball game. The route he was on is very scenic, and very hilly. And his car was complaining mightily about the strain it was under. So James took off headed west toward Anniston, Alabama, and they ended up meeting just north of Anniston. James put a bunch of Phillip's stuff in the back of the van, and they headed on home. What should have been about a 4-1/2 hour trip became a 6-1/2 trip. However, the good news is that James and I won't have to go to Nashville next weekend.