C3Q II Daily Dispatches From The Road- 10/11/26

6 States: 43) North Carolina,  44) Kentucky,  45) Virginia, 46) West Virginia,  47) Maryland,  48) Delaware 

We woke up in South Carolina and headed towards North Carolina. Once we crossed the state line we stopped at a gas station via the usual routine of getting receipts by refuelling, acquiring witness log signatures and spray pasting. Only this time I broke this trip's record of 6 posters to 8 in one site at the gas station marquee sign. We left to drive through Tennessee to get to Kentucky which took five hours. We drove through the Cumberland Gap Tunnel that leads to the Cumberland Gap Historical Visitors Center featuring historic exhibits about frontiersmen and Native Americans. I decided to continue the trash motif by spray pasting  a back leaning trash can near the entrance using it as a foreground to the welcome center's sign.  When I finished and began to document the site, an elderly man approached the poster to read and make sense of what he was seeing. I then interjected that he was in my photographic and video view and he backed away and asked what this was about. I proceeded to tell him about the 48 state trek, the book and the record and he became at ease. After a few words he left the scene satisfied that no permanent defamation of a site was occurring. 

We left to head north and drove and it took 5 fours of driving through Virginia to get West Virginia. Towards the end of Virginia we were running dangerously low on fuel but luckily we made it to a Sheetz gas station  where I got a refuel receipt, witness signatures and posting at one of the gas pumps. At this point, so late in the day our best bets were welcome centers and gas stations with minimarts. We arrived at a Wawa at midnight and we got another gas station trash can, receipt and signatures. By 12:45 we arrived in the downtown civic center of Maryland where I spotted an interesting building with a spray painted X on the door which seemed to suggest that this was the spot for my next posting. There was a mural on both the left and right side with the words “inspire and explore” with a colorful background. I proceeded to spray the poster on the glass surface just below where X marked the spot. After acquiring a gas station receipt and  witness signatures we proceed, ironically, to the “The last state" in our titanic trip: Delaware “The first state” 

But before that final threshold I had to take a break at a service plaza center due to extreme exhaustion. Zoraya administered my 7th straight day shot of insulin which I never have had to do before. The trip was getting to be very taxing on my health. Luckily she was by my side as my primary caregiver and moral support to get me through it. However, even the insulin that was proving to be ineffective to bring down my blood sugar form 400, the danger zone. Either because of its reduced effectiveness over the past weeks or loss of potency despite being refrigerated in a traveling cooler. 

I tried to nap but I woke up within thirty minutes due to anger that I felt  that I was falling short and quitting  prematurely. I thought to myself, what if the estimation is wrong? What if we are off by twelve hours? What if the deadline is 4:30 am, not 4:30pm? It is 3:30 am so how could I possibly sleep through the time of expiration? These possibilities nagged me and irritated me to the extent that it alerted me to wakefulness So I told Zoraya, “Lets go. It's time to finish this. I can't fail this close to finishing.” We pushed ahead at 3:30 am with about 30 plus minutes to reach Delaware. When we finally crossed the Delaware state border which became our finish line, we quickly looked for a gas station to do the final posting, get a receipt for fuel and witness signatures at a gas station located on Harmony Road which was what I was finally feeling within myself now completing his tumultuous task. And so the final posting occurred at 4:29 am. If we were off by twelve hours that would mean that instead of the deadline being at 4:30 this afternoon it would be 4:30 this morning, so worse case scenario, breaking my old record by solely one minute. (Talk about gone in sixty seconds in my case “gone BY sixty seconds.”)