Well, I made it back driving from D.C. in one piece, and with one car.

I haven't done this trip in 8 years back when The Man and I drove my Camry back home after graduation. At that time we had paper maps from AAA, a cell phone so that others could see if we were okay, and a laptop that required an ethernet jack to access the internet when we stopped for the night at a hotel.

This time around I had GPS, mobile internet, in-car Bluetooth and XM satellite radio. Not even mentioning the difference in car technologies, it was unusual to recognize the technological differences that the past 8 years has brought. Eight years ago still seems like yesterday, but this time never once did I have to look at a paper map; Email/Twitter/Internet was always easily accessible. Satellite radio meant that whatever station I was listening to stayed on no matter how far I drove away from cities and radio towers. When a traffic jam brought interstate traffic to a dead stop in Arkansas, I just turned off the car and caught up on emails for about 45 minutes.

The only thing that couldn't change was the distance I had to drive. Fifteen hundred miles is a long ways to drive; total time took about 25 hours over two days. My dad met me half-way in Nashville and shared the rest of the drive home with me. That second day was brutal which makes me glad that my dad offered to meet me. We left at 4:45 am in the morning and arrived back in Austin at 7:45 pm. Overall I'm glad everything went smoothly... but maybe the next time I have to make this drive again, cars will be able to drive themselves.