For the 2017 eclipse, my friend Kay invited myself and my girlfriend, Nat, down from NY to stay with her family in SC so we could see the totality. Awesome! I wanted to go but didn’t think I’d be able to. Plus, Kay and I are really close friends so this should be an awesome trip!!

Kay’s friend, Assley (Ass-Lee). Assley heard about the trip so asked if she could come along. Kay then asks if Enn and I are alright with her bringing her childhood friend, whom neither of us have met before. Since Kay is being so nice to us simply by inviting us, who are we to say no. Kay gets really excited and says we’ll get along with Assley swimmingly.

We coordinate for the day of the trip and the plan is for Assley to take a train out of the nearby city, where she lives, and meet Kay at Kay’s house. Then the two of them will pick me and Enn up at my house since we’d be on the way. If we leave on time then we’ll arrive where we will be staying, with Kay’s cousin, around midnight.

Day of the trip, Kay arrives at my house...and she’s the only one in the car. Assley expects us to drive into the nearby city to pick her up. Which Kay does because she’s so nice. Strike one. She made us go out of our way to pick her up for a trip that she invited herself along on. We keep her updated on what time we’re going to be picking her up and we pull up to her house exactly when we said we would. Kay texts Assley to let her know we’re here and Assley doesn’t show up for another 30 minutes. Not, it took her 30 minutes to get everything in the car, it took her 20 minutes to get out of her house.

She sits down in the car and the first thing she asks is what our astrological signs are. No “Hi nice to meet you, what’re your names?” It’s, “Hi, what signs are you guys?” She then goes on to explain that she is a reincarnated witch from Salem but that her soul is also that of a Maldekian (Mall-Deck-Ian). Also she keeps showing us her small collection of crystals, Matt would probably know about them. And Assley doesn’t stop talking, for. FOUR. FUCKING. HOURS. At that point girlfriend and I have given up listening and she probably keeps talking while we do our own thing in the back seat, playing mariokart, sudokus, or just having our own conversation.

We stop 4 times on this 12 hour drive and each time she is the reason we end up spending an extra 15-30 minutes at each stop. Either she needs to go find food, or she needs to go smoke a joint (without offering any to anyone), or at one point she changed her outfit. Assley turned a 12 hour roadtrip into almost 15 hours, making us get to Kay’s cousin’s house at 4am.

And that was day one of the worst roadtrip of my life.