There's something about being in the South that makes me want to neglect my work and instead sit on the front porch watching traffic, sipping iced coffee, and shooting the bull with the locals. But, if I neglect my work, I neglect you, dear Readers, and it has already been more than a few days since my last post.
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Thursday, October 9, 2008 - Richmond, I Take It All Back
The only other times I have seen Richmond, VA, has been moving at highway speeds on my way either up or down 95. (There was one time I did get within city limits, for those that recall the famous phone call,"I'm three miles outside of Havre de Grace. ... I think I'm in Virginia!" from my younger and more vulnerable years. Therefore, I don't know what I expected Richmond to be: cigarettes and industry, maybe.
Richmond, I owe you and apology. At first, finding the apartment of our Couchsurfing host, Richmond looked exactly as I expected it would, like the outskirts of Baltimore. I felt this way until I pulled onto Monument St. and saw a monument--promising. By the time I had pulled in front of the apartment and walked in to the three-hundred year old house, my opinion was 85% changed. It was charming. To top it all off, our host, B., was baking cookies for Skip and me.
Later that night, our host and her roommate K. took Skip and me down to "The Fan," where we spent several hours at a hipster bar called Helen's. It was then that I realized I owed Richmond a full apology.
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Friday, October 10, 2008 - Next Thing You Know, Shorty Got Midlo, Lo, Lo, Lo...
It was a surprise to my old rugby coach and good friend, Little Joe, when I showed up at his house a second night in a row---this time to tell him that his beautiful wife, Sara (superhottie), had invited Skip and I to couchsurf their home for the night. Joe and Sara have two beautiful little angels (they take after their mother), M. and A., who are four and two, respectively. (I will tell you: if I wasn't on this journey, and I wasn't committed to graduate school, I would have liked to stay on as M. and A. manny.) They are the first little ones I have had a chance to spend any amount of time with since Camp, and I really needed a dose of their innocence, imagination, and energy at that point in the trip.
After reading M. a story before she went to bed, Skip, Sara, and I stayed up to watch My White Trash Wedding on CMT. Both Skip and I consider that hour and a half time well spent, "research," if you will, for our sojourn into the South.
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Saturday, October 11, 2008 - The Road to Wellville
Most of Saturday was spent as a quiet traveling day that afforded me the opportunities to read in my car, and later in front of a general store name Sydnor's, in Mannboro, Virginia, where the help behind the counter resembled a young James Dean: clean shaven, spiked hair, sleeves rolled, collar up, blue jeans, boots. He had the accent and all the manners of a polite southerner, and allowed me to read my book in his rocking chair outside the store, for which I am grateful.
Skip finally caught up to me sometime in the evening, and we dined outside of the store on pizza, pickled eggs, and taters. He wanted to push on a few more miles, so I told him that I would drive ahead and set up camp for the evening. Several miles down the road I found a small, white Baptist church. After walking around the perimeter for a bit, listening to hound dogs and gun fire in the not-so-far off distance, I found a dirt access road partially obscured from the paved road, right next to the church, and I figured it would suffice for the evening. I backed my car in and set to work--I was losing daylight--on making a fire. In the woods I found a rusted out mailbox, the unfortunate victim of mailbox baseball, that served as my fire pit for the evening. I lined the mailbox with a cinderblock I had broken over a rock, and set to work on making the fire. With the help of a cardboard box from the car, I started the fire relatively easily. Once the fire was going on its own, I laid down my tarp, content to sleep under the stars for the evening.
I was dozing off to sleep when a pickup truck pulled into the access drive. Although my car was between me and the truck, one of the headlights was at just the right angle to catch me as I was sitting up. I realized that I had no protection: no shotgun, no buck knife, nothing. If worse came to worse, they were going to have to face Jack Johnson and Tom O'Leary (holds up fisticuffs). The guy in the passenger seat hops out holding a beer can. I ask him if everything is alright, shielding my eyes from the headlights. After he asks me what I was doing, and I threw out the "non-profit charity worker" line, he tells me that it's alright if I stay there the night, just not to let the fire get out of hand, because he had 50 acres behind me. Fair enough. I wished them both a good evening and watched them reverse back out onto the road. They drove away, and I went to change my pants.
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