re: TulaneLSU's review of Love's Travel Stop showers

Finally, ten minutes later, I made it to a body of water. It was not what I would call a running stream. Instead, it was a muddy, stinky bog. Still, I was willing to give it a go. I was dehydrated, hot with friction burns on my thighs and lips salty from the pizza and the loss of electrolytes from the hike.



I removed my shoes and socks and cautiously approached the water’s edge. That was when I sank knee deep in foul smelling mud the likes of which you smell and feel while crawfishing in the Bonnet Carre Spillway. It was disgusting. At this point, I knew I could not enter the bog, as it would be even muddier there.

So here I was. My lower legs completely caked in a methane-rich mud. My body unclothed, I could not put my clothes or shoes back on, lest I ruin them with this mud. So I walked back, carrying quite a load, barefoot. My fragile, soft feet were already blistered from a week of over 35 miles of hiking and 15,000 feet of elevation gain. Thankfully, Mother had packed my bags with a hidden supply of moleskins, which became quite useful, even though on the packaging it says do not use on active blisters.

Barefoot, I walked painfully over the rocks the host had laid on part of the path. My return took 30 minutes as I gingerly navigated the sharp rocks on my poor feet. Exhausted, I made it back to my shack, looking, knee-down, like a swamp creature. It took my backup 24 count 16.9 ounce Great Value bottled waters to remove this caked mud, which I did outside, in the nude, praying that the host would not bother me.

Exhausted, I went to bed, dirty, angry, and uncivilized. I imagined, “This is what it must feel like to be a college football fan waking up after passing out from inebriation – humiliating and debased and disgusting.” I prayed that night for purity of body.

The next morning, I arose at 3:30 and was gone from that unfortunate experience by 3:40. I drove in the dark to I-5, where I came across Love’s Gas. There was a large illuminated heart that lead me there and not one of the other three gas stations within a stone’s throw of it. The gas, at $4.63 a gallon, was also the cheapest I had seen all week. There was no denying it – God led me to Love, the greatest of the gifts, according to Paul, if you read One Corinthians, as some biblical illiterates might call it.



While I cleaned my luxury sedan, rattled by that rough road, the overhead advertisement rang through the area. “Truck drivers, come get a hot shower to refresh. Currently there is no line.” God had answered my prayer. I hesitated not one second and marched into the store.

There was a Cinnabon station to the right, which is better food than anything Bucee's has. There are very few, if any things, I can say positive about Bucee’s. It is a mockery of a gas station that discriminates against our truck drivers and drives the easily influenced to purchase junk either made in China or made to clog the arteries. If I had the inclination, I would write a Top 10 reasons Love's is superior to Bucee's. But I have more important things to do than compare gas stations.

“Give me one hot shower,” I said to the cashier, smiling from ear to ear. It was 4:30 and both of us were already full of cheer.

“Are you a truck driver?” he asked.

“No, I am driving a sedan. It is that black one out there you can see on your video.”

He responded, “I am sorry; you cannot use the showers. Truck drivers only.”

Hopes dashed and thoughts of making the five hour drive to Astoria filthy, I pleaded with him. That did not work. I then stood there and bowed my head, to clear my thoughts and pray.

“Eureka! I have a CDL!”

“You do?” The man was quite surprised.

“Yes. I am in the late stages of starting a tour guide service in New Orleans that I call TulaneLSU’s Poorboy Tours of New Orleans. Right now, I lack a vehicle, but I carry a CDL just in case I ever save enough money for a new Ford F350 tour bus. Here it is!” I plopped my card on the counter.

The cashier seemed genuinely surprised and happy that he could sell me a ticket to one of the six shower stalls. It was $18, a bargain at that time. I would have paid $100. The receipt carried a shower number and a code.

At the door, there was a security pad with numbers. I typed in my code and I was officially part of the Love’s shower club.

Luxurious does not begin to describe the comfort I felt upon entering the bathroom, or should I say, the spa. To my right were a private toilet and vanity. To my left was a tiled bench. Just beyond was that morning’s piece de resistance: the shower.





There were two levers: one to control the force of water and the other to control the temperature. But for a few moments, I stood there, gazing all around, admiring the tiling and the strips of backsplash, the fire alarm, the fan, the stool for obese or those with a handicap. I said a prayer of thanksgiving to our benevolent, guiding God.





And then the water flowed. Normally, my showers last two or three minutes. But this was my time, and I divulged in the steaming shower. I washed my hair with the delightful soap that doubled as shampoo, not once or twice, but three times. Using the washcloth provided, I rinsed every crevice with the precision of a surgeon cleaning his hands at a scrub sink. It felt like a new baptism. The old and concreted mud washed away. The new and lovely purity was here.

Drying myself with their brown towels, I wondered if these were made of the finest Egyptian cotton. It mattered not. I have stayed at some of the finest hotels and resorts in the world – The Ritz, The Grove Park, The Plaza, The London Lodge, The Fairmont, and more. None of them has ever given me a shower experience as beautiful as Love’s.

May we all, in our own way, find such a cleansing experience, a moment or a string of moments, where our dirtiness if washed away by the redeeming love of Christ. Or as Paul says:

quote:

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If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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Faith, Hope, and Love,
TulaneLSU