UGH, my hair is so thick and it's low/medium porosity, so naturally it takes eons to dry. It also probably doesn't help that I put gel in it

With gel, it takes about 3 hours to get to a decently wearable stage -- it looks crunchy because it's wet, but it's by no means bad. I guess it kind of likes to chill at that stage for a while because it looks basically the same for the next 2 or so hours. And then, randomly, it just poofs out and is dry! Too weird! My hair pretty much SOTCs itself. And then I am left with big swirly wurls that took five hours to show up.