Tuesday, January 25, 2011

First Day Out, 1-15-2011


After spending most of the morning packing the RV, we met at 821 Cafe for a farewell lunch with Skylar, Andrew, April, Curtis, Talia, Shony, Murty, and Michael. Squeezed in at a corner booth, we all shared jokes and stories and food like it was a regular day, so when we got up to leave it was a shocking and sad realization that we would most likely not see these friends for seven months. Leaving home, we had been distracted by all that we had to pack, organizing the RV, and securing our belongings for the bumpy ride south, but our sudden emotions about leaving our friends triggered an immediate sadness for everything else we were leaving behind: our pets, our house, our family, our jobs (we're weird), our daily routines. In short, Richmond. We really are going to miss you!

Not enough, however, to turn around yet. This despite the fact that our crew stayed at 821 Cafe drinking all day, calling us every ½ hour or so to update us on what we were missing and trying to get us to turn around to take shots with them at the bar. It's nice to think that our friends will be right where we left them, waiting for us to return home. Well, all except for Murty, who we were told (erroneously) was so distraught over our leaving that, emboldened by whiskey, he began tipping over tables and throwing chairs until the police came to arrest him. Curtis is still bugging us about the bail money.

Earlier in the week, we had planned on leaving around noon to head south, but all of our reminiscing put us behind schedule by about 3 hours. Oh, and we had to stop at Mamma Zu to wait for David to finish frying eggplant so that we could say our proper goodbyes. We don't really have much of a schedule (Austin by February 19th), but even so it is hard to get around thinking in terms of having to be somewhere at a certain time. Four days into the trip, we're still figuring this out. Basically, we had to talk ourselves out of stressing about being anywhere “on time.” Instead of worrying about making good time, we had to worry about having good times, and driving until we didn't want to any more. Which, on this first day, turned out to be Florence, SC. Not a great distance from Richmond, but on the upside, it wasn't, for perhaps the first time in history according to Tony Foresta, raining in Florence.

Since we didn't have a specific destination in Florence, Stephanie located a Walmart located to the east of downtown Florence, and we made our way there to set camp. If you don't already know, if Walmart has one saving grace, it's that they welcome motorhomes and trucks and buses to use their parking lot to “camp” in. It's not the worst business model; after a lifetime of avoiding shopping at Walmart, we ended up spending money there on supplies for our home. And for that, we decided we were also welcome to use their facilities for some evening sprucing: face washing, brushing teeth, etc. The bathroom wasn't the cleanest by far, but it was bigger than our 2'x3' compartment in the RV, and after 10 pm there weren't any customers to distract us. The next morning, on the other hand, Stephanie was brushing her teeth when a mom and 3 year old daughter walked in. “Mommy, why would somebody brush there teeth in here?” From the mouths of children... But the mom came back quickly: “No, it's ok. It's a good thing. She's got clean teeth.” Which is true, but the kid wasn't buying it.

After washing up and decorating our new home, we walked next door to the bowling alley. We're not sure what else happens in Florence on a Saturday night, but whatever it is, the bowling industry isn't bothered by it. This place was packed! The disco lights were in full swing, black light paintings were popping off the walls, and top 40 hits almost downed out the explosions of pins. There weren't any lanes, so we retired to the Southgate Lounge, the small bar attached to the alley. Anyone who was drinking would just duck into the bar to get drinks before running back to their lane, so the bar was relatively empty. Which is a good thing for Ward, who promptly made and ass of himself by looking at the football game, seeing a G on the scoreboard, and exclaiming “Damn, the Giants are killing it.” Of course the Giants are not in the playoffs, and the G stood for Green Bay. Stephanie got a good laugh out of it, and we sat down to have a beer.

The Southgate Lounge derives 99% of it's business from the convenience of it's location to each lane, and it's not surprising that they don't spend much time with formalities. The draft beers are poured into plastic cups. The Jager bombs are pre-mixed into Dixie cups. And when we overheard a man order a White Russian, we noted that he asked the bartender to smell the milk. “I've gotten chunks before,” he claimed in reaction to her blank expression. Without a word, she slowly stamped out her freshly lit Marlboro Light, put her face to the milk container, and inhaled. It would be hard to gauge the freshness of the milk from her reaction since she already had a pinched face, but we're assuming that the milk was fine, as the container went from her nose to his drink. Chunks or not, he took the drink and went to bowl. We ordered bottled Bud.

By the time we were back in the RV and crawling into bed, the temperature had dropped to 32 degrees, making it about 40 in our bedroom. So much for traveling South to warmer weather! To make things worse, the parking lot had become a center of activity. There actually wasn't that much happening, but it's amazing how noise is projected in the quiet of the night. We woke up with every noise, jumping to the window to see what was happening. Our imaginations were much grander than reality: footsteps outside of our window actually came from a guy walking 40 feet away; the scraping at our bumper was a dust pan dragging across concrete at the Walmart entrance; the gunshot from within a mile, well, that actually was a gunshot. Still, with the combination of a frozen bed and all the noise, Ward barely slept. As Tony recently told him, his inner white guy was showing.
Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)