On the evening of June 20, 2007, I drove from Orlando to Tampa to get my friend Joseph. We were going to leave the following morning to drive from Florida to New Jersey because I moved back in with my parents (they live in NJ). Joseph and I were roommates a few years ago and I knew that we would have a super time in a car for two days, with nothing more than ourselves to keep ... ourselves ... entertained. We decided to keep a video diary of our journey: we'd shoot a video every hour, on the hour, and also shoot videos for anything interesting that happened along the way.

So I got to his house Wednesday night and we were too excited to sleep much (this will come into play later), so we took a bunch of photos on my MacBook. Click here to view these. It doesn't work if you're not lucky enough to be my MySpace friend though.

We awoke on June 21st at 5am, and by 6 we were ready to hit the road, but not before a reference to one of our favorite movies of all time:

So we headed north through Florida. Here's the 7:00 am update, wherein we explain (and subsequently break) the Rules of the Road, according to my father:

Having consumed only energy drinks and Combos at this point in our trip, I was still feeling AWESOME and was ready to perform one of my favorite songs. I have done this at karaoke before, and it was pretty incredible, as was this:

8:00 am update! Here I listen to Brooke Hogan, one of my favorite artists!!!! Ask me about my time spent working on Hogan Knows Best! Here we're heading into northern Florida, and beginning to encounter cities we had never heard of before. Here we also start a rather alarming trend of apparently having no concept of grammar, pronunciation, or spelling. You will notice this pattern throughout the trip. I promise that we are both much smarter than we appear in these videos. Really.

Really. Anyway ... then we had to reference yet another one of our favorite movies:

By then it was already 9:00 am and we stopped at a McDonald's near/in/about Jacksonville to pee:

Ok this was so weird. We passed a billion UPS trucks near Jacksonville, so I'm guessing they have some sort of hub there. As you will see, this happens again on Day 2. Using our investigatory journalism skills (Zoolander reference #2), we are able to figure out where the UPS trucks are coming from:

Then "Maneater" by Hall and Oates came on and we decided to snap, cause it seemed appropriate. We were nearing the Georgia state line and totally saw a watermelon on the side of the road, it's there! You can see it if you try really hard.

At 10:00 am(-ish) we crossed the Georgia state line. We were really excited about this. "Step off the train" is from the song that is playing in the background, "Missing" by Everything But the Girl (A few years ago, we tried to use it in place of things like "oh no you di'int" but sadly, it never caught on). Our road trip playlist was so awesome, you guys. Go here to see what was on it (in handy PDF format). If you ever plan on taking a long road trip, this is a great mix. Anyway, this was also the first time we said something offensive about another state. This happens a lot too. Sorry?

Here's yet another video where we're singing something! This was a really popular song for all of us in college. We really love Gillette (HOLY CRAP SHE HAS A MYSPACE!!). I mean, how could you not? I saw her live at the Parliament House once, it was incredible. There were 4 people in the audience and all of them were my friends who I rode there with.

This is great. Joseph didn't realize what song this was, so I decided to capture his actual, genuine reaction to hearing the chorus to "Physical" by Olivia Newton John. Classic stuff right here, kids:

Here's where things start getting completely dumb. It was now 11:00 am and we decided that our radar detector (thanks, Dad!) needed a name. Joseph decided that it was somehow Darth Vader-like, so it should be Darth Radar. Get it? I'm not sure you do, cause this is really highbrow humor here. Anyway, here's an introduction to the 3rd member of Team Road Trip:

The dumbness continues for real right here. So, we were in Georgia? And we wanted to have lunch in Savannah? And then suddenly we crossed the South Carolina state line? Um ... I'll let Carly and Joseph of the Past explain:

So. Then we were all, "let's have lunch in Hilton Head, SC!" But then after consulting the map, realized it was way far from 95. So on our way to Hilton Head, we ended up heading back into Georgia right towards Savannah! How lucky! So we listened to some Destiny's Child and crossed a huge-ass bridge into Savannah. Joseph is apparently scared of bridges (I think he was lying and just wanted to create drama for the camera) so this part was really fun for me:

Savannah was lovely, really it was! Adorable (photos here!). We passed the SCAD campus and were trying to find a place to park to have lunch and it was virtually impossible. This is also our 12:00 pm update:

1:00 pm update! This is where we had lunch in Savannah. I had a chicken Caesar salad and Joseph had a chicken salad sandwich (say that 10 times fast). It was lovely. Simply lovely.

2:00 pm update. I am now driving and we're heading through South Carolina. The alternate title for this video would be "Why we hate South Carolina." Sorry, South Carolina. We do not like you. This video also introduced our new catchphrase for the entire weekend, "get your shit together." We also talk about our horrible experiences with South Carolina:

Yet another singalong. This one is really moving, powerful, and emotional. I think it is a metaphor for the trip as a whole. When we began this trip, Joseph and I were girls. And by the end ... well, you know:

3:00 pm update time! Here we expose an interesting trend in advertising campaigns in South Carolina, and then I make the most ironically appropriate error in speaking ever. Also, Joseph really doesn't know what an adjective is. We were playing MadLibs in the car and he pronounced "adjective" as "objective" on two separate occasions (and not on purpose, no matter what he says).

4:00 pm update. Here we passed South of the Border, which we didn't stop at because there wasn't enough time. Then we crossed into North Carolina. How exciting! Then Joseph solicits all of the truckers in this great country of ours:

5:00 pm update. I woke up from a nap to shoot this, and it's a good thing I did, because i got to interview a local North Carolina resident! Fantastic! How did he get in the car? (Note: Topless Topless is an actual topless bar that we passed on 95. It's so nice they named it twice!) This is also another video where we offend an entire states-worth of people. Again ... sorry.

Ok. Here's the story behind this. Back in college, Joseph and myself and our other friends were involved in the GLBSU, which is the gay group on campus (shocking, right?) Anyway, once a week we would sit outside of the Student Union at a big gay table with a big rainbow flag draped over it and try to spread the good word of the gay community to the campus. One day, this girl -- who was totally a doppelg?ger for the aforementioned Gillette -- came up to our table and said, "Do you's likes to party? I know you's likes to party" in this phenomenal Jersey accent, and tried to convince us to all book cruises on some party boat or something. After we (regrettably) turned her down, Joseph and I decided that she was, in fact, Gillette, and that we should totally go party with her. Alas, we never did. Here is our tribute:

I think this is when we noticeably started to lose our collective minds. Here, Joseph tries to make me stop at both an outlet mall and the Ava Gardner Museum in North Carolina, but I was exhausted and not having any of that mess.

We stopped at several rest stops on our trip, but this one in North Carolina was definitely the best:

6:00 pm update. You can really tell, here, that our moods have changed significantly from 12 hours ago when we embarked on this trip. Seriously. We were so insane at this point, as you will see.

When I lived with Joseph we would listen to "Lollipop" by Precious all the time. He would do this dance to it (you can see it in the video) inspired by Mugatu in Zoolander (Zoolander reference #3 [Someone actually re-edited the scene I am referring to and posted it here. Fantastic!]). Oh, and we're 2 miles from the VA Welcome Center, yaaaay!

Oh, this was so sad. We had to turn off Darth Radar because we had crossed the Virginia state line, and it's illegal to use them there. Poor guy.

We ran out of ideas here. 7:00 pm, I really like Jimmy Eat World.

Finally we made it to our hotel. We stayed just outside of Richmond, VA. We got some food, watched some Planet Unicorn (search for that on YouTube if you haven't seen it, it's amazing, haaaay), argued about gullies, and made this final video of the day at 9:43 pm.

Now, onto day 2! Click here to see it. To leave us fabulous comments on this (seriously, please do), go to my blog (or leave comments on the individual YouTube pages for each of the videos).