Read At Your Own Risk. Seriously.

I’ve never had a hangover or a one-night stand, but this must be what it feels like.

My teeth are furry, my stomach is churning like some kind of vicious medieval cauldron and I look like Medusa.  I feel like I could attack someone.  I also feel like this van and I just had the most distasteful and unsatisfying rendezvous ever known to man and vehicle. 

I slept in the fourth bench seat – it’s the longest.  After a really long day yesterday and another hour and a half of moose-patrol to go before reaching home, I counted my losses and pulled over to get some Zs at a rest area.  I had mistakenly left my fleece jacket in Amy’s car on the way to the dealership (biggest regret of the day, period), and therefore was only wearing shorts and a tank top.  So I did the only thing a person with moderately impaired judgment does in a dilemma like this:  I blanketed myself with a reusable nylon shopping bag and tried to doze off.  Honestly, I was uncomfortable before I even considered sleeping in the van, because unfortunately - since I was downriver yesterday - I used the opportunity to fill my gullet with all kinds of unhealthy, processed foods (such as the sausage, egg and cheese croissant and bucket of fried vegetable chips that was my 9pm dinner – a black magic spell for dysentery, I’m sure).  I pray that you never make the same mistake.

It turns out that if you lay in the right direction and are comfortable sleeping in the fetal position, bench seats are not so bad.  My only fear was to be discovered back there, curled up under a Hannaford shopping bag, my B.O. wreaking like a rotten Vidalia.  The last time I stopped at this rest area, there was a drifter tenting in the woods, and I woke up every other hour last night imagining a mangy, suspicious-looking face pressed against the window.

(This was probably an AT hiker in all actuality, but it could have been a drifter, right?)

Driving into work this morning felt like the ultimate walk of shame.  I smelled like I had just returned from being plucked out of the Amazon after spending the previous 6 weeks wandering around and soiling my only pair of clothes.  Plus, I don’t think I’d washed my hair in 4 or 5 days.  Our shower causes me to identify a little with Buddy the Elf during the period that he still lived in a miniature chalet with Papa Elf, but was clearly a large, Will Ferrell-sized adult.  The camper's tub makes me feel a bit like a giant elf-man in an tiny shower, tossing water left and right, minus the cone hat.

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As if all this wasn’t enough, I hit a bird with the windshield on my way back to camp.  I hate hitting stuff.

At least I wasn’t riding a motorcycle.  There's always a bright side.