I always get a bit upset when I come back to school; I know it's not where I want to be and I really just want to graduate and move on with something better. (I almost wanted to take US 460 to Appomattox instead of US 29 back north.) I have few meaningful friendships and I don't feel I can really bring myself to celebrate much. I probably just need to stfu.

Ok, so at least my last day in NC was salvaged and enjoyable thanks to one of my friends who had time to meet up at NC State. I was really bummed Saturday night because here I was, in the place I wanted to be.........with nothing to do. I probably shoulda told y'all that I was going to the RDU area so I could have meet some folks.

A bit off topic, but what is up with the NC sales tax increase? I don't find 5,75% + 2% very appealing at all. Jacks up the price of some running shoes I bought . On the plus side, y'all don't charge much more for premium fuel so I made sure I topped off with some before leaving Hillsborough.

I attended my friend's birthday dinner on Friday (30 of us at PF Chang's, geez), watched the snow fly that night, kind of trekked Chapel Hill and Durham alone on Saturday, then drove over to Raleigh today before headed back. All in all, it was rather relaxing and kind of surprising to be back in a civilised place; there are far too few pickup trucks for my taste and I heard Spanish spoken for the first time in over a month. Everything is just 10-20min away, really convenient and I was wowed at the variety of restaurants. I was able to defrost today as temps rose above 8°C/47°F.

I was able to listen to the radio while in the area and heard some cool songs: This one struck a chord as I whizzed by on rural NC 86.

Just some pictures to share:



That's US 15, which I took all the way from Central VA down to I-85 in Oxford, NC. It's the pinnacle of Virginia civilisation



Sorry, that's a terrible picture since I took it while driving at speed on a single lane highway. It's the NC border sign; quite modest but meaningful because it means freedom from the state police Nazi's. God, there was one on US 360-15 that set off my V1 too late to turn it off but the V1 is undetectable for them, thank god.



Really pretty snowfall on Friday night. The roads were clear in central NC, letting us drivers enjoy the scenery on the way to breakfast.



My friend took me on a tour of the NC State campus; I'm sitting in a similar dome as my friend in the distance, about 20m away. Despite the distance, the curvature of the dome allows us to hear/talk to each other perfectly. Genius

There's a few more boring pictures in my Facebook album, mostly just road signs including the one that says Farmville. Usually when I'm having fun, I forget to take pictures.

Oh, and Dear State of Virginia: Please build your highways properly, not just half-assed bypasses that last for 3 miles and occur everytime you pass a small town. Make US 29 an uninterrupted stretch of limited-access highway. It's not safe nor pleasant to deal with traffic turning onto a road when I'm going 70mph and they're doing 5mph. And it's pitch black. In the middle of a curve. With a 15% gradient.

Oh, and learn some grammar for your signs. It's supposed to say "Reduce speed ahead".

For the statisticians out there like me:

Trip time from Charlottesville, VA to Durham, NC (southbound): 3 hours
Average consumption (southbound): 8,6 l/100km (27,3 US mpg)
Average speed (southbound): 91,2 km/h (56,7 mph)