By: Sarah Madden, Senior Writer
I was born in the land of salty and buttery foods, and I’ve been there ever since. When I moved from a small town in deep-south Georgia to Winston Salem, N.C. in 2006, my neighbors sincerely meant it when they said, “y’all are gunna become regular Yankees!”
Turns out the Mason-Dixon line is NOT the border between North and South Carolina.
For spring break this year, partially because I had no money for travel and partially because I was invited, I went home with my roommate Lauren. She invited her boyfriend Richard to join us, and “the Tricycle” was born.
I packed every warm-ish piece of clothing I owned, unsure of how to dress for such an unfamiliar climate. We drove. I’m not sure why I agreed to sit still for that long… though everything went wrong as we journeyed, so at least things were interesting, right?
Richard thought it would be funny to fly a confederate flag from Lauren’s Jersey-plated car, but that idea was unanimously vetoed by the remaining wheels of the Tricycle. Two and a half hours into the trip—I drove first, because comfort zones are a thing and Northerners make for terrifying peers on the highway—we were forced to stop because Lauren had a dreadful nosebleed and very quickly depleted her napkin stash.
It was the first of many bad omens: My left leg fell asleep, we almost couldn’t afford the $16 in tolls we paid in a six-minute span and Lauren spilled coffee on her shirt, right next to the bloodstain from earlier. We were sitting at Panera when it happened, and Richard and I laughed heartlessly deliriously. So did the guy at the next table.
When we crossed the Mason-Dixon line—the real one—Lauren was ecstatic. Richard was terrified. I was just thrilled to have an ally in experiencing the North for the first time.
Richard’s fear made him see things: “Is that person unloading a body?”
“That’s the last time I bring you to the North,” Lauren scoffed. Subsequent conversation led Richard to bet that he could refrain from making fun of New Jersey for the entire week. He was the only wheel of the Tricycle that thought he could.
“Until I get back to Wofford, I will not make fun of New Jersey,” he declared at 12:37 a.m., soon after we crossed into Pennsylvania. He lost the bet before lunch the next day, and now he had to cook dinner for Lauren. I just got to make fun of him mercilessly for everything he said all week.
Some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever had came from Lauren’s father’s kitchen… the South might need to step up its game, y’all. Other food highlights: the Tricycle ate New Jersey diner food in a converted train car, and then afterwards we drove past a large tombstone near Lauren’s house. “The guy who’s buried there stole a train once,” she said. I wondered if he’d stolen the car in which we’d just eaten.
We also ate Philly cheese steaks in Philly—I stood in the exact spot where Sylvester Stallone once stood while filming “Rocky,” according to the bronze plaque. One night, I ate braised short ribs with Lauren’s family while the other two wheels went on a date. By far the best food I ate in New Jersey, however, was the chocolate brioche French toast waffles that Lauren’s dad made us. That’s right: chocolate brioche bread. Made into French toast. Made into waffles. It was sinfully good, y’all.
Because the weather was so stinkin’ miserable all week, we spent a great deal of our time sleeping in, eating, visiting coffee and book stores, playing Bananagrams and watching Scrubs. Once, we walked from New Jersey to Pennsylvania for the heck of it.
Eventually, the Tricycle ventured into the City. We ate gourmet grilled cheese and wandered through the Strand Bookstore, where I sat on the concrete floor and cried tears of English major joy as I stared at 18 miles of books in shelves that surrounded me on all sides. That’s about all we had time for that day… oops.
We almost died at Richard’s hand twice. The first was at a stoplight, when Richard almost rear-ended someone because he was KISSING HIS GIRLFRIEND instead of paying attention. Never gonna let that one go. The second was driving from the city back to Lebanon, New Jersey at 5 o’clock on a Friday via the Pulaski Skyway—affectionately known as the “Pulaski Dieway”—and Richard narrowly avoided running over an entire car bumper that had been left in the lane. (We were actually quite safe most of the time. Good job, Richard.)
Eventually we had to come back to dear ole Dixie, and things went drastically better for the Tricycle on this leg of the journey. We avoided more tolls, and this time Lauren avoided spilling coffee. (Unfortunately, there was a repeat nosebleed, but we were prepared this time.) The guy at Dunkin Donuts gave me 12 munchkins for the price of 10, a gesture that sustained me through many hours of staring blankly at my computer screen.
Aside from my computer dying six hours into our 12 hour journey, I got a considerable amount of work done. We got to see lots of horses, sheep, goats, cows, donkeys, crops and snow-covered hills on our 330 mile trek down 81 South—it made the farm girl in me smile.
When we pulled into Wofford, highly caffeinated and covered in doughnut glaze flakes, Richard remarked that he’d never been out of the South for that long before.
“How’d you like it?” Lauren asked.
“Well, I’m alive,” he answered.
In all honesty, I’m totally going back. There’s so much we missed—mostly food and book related. The Tricycle will ride again.
