Category Archives: Humor

When our trip goes well, it more than makes up for the frustration and aggravation, and money spent on car repairs. And right now, it’s going well. The scenery is exquisite, the weather is stunning and the sound of the waves lapping on the shore of our campsite is incredibly serene (we’re right on the shore of the lake).

We’re back to camping again, after a week off with a few days in Elkhorn City, KY at Pat’s house and a few more days in a hotel in Mentor, OH. The hotel was unique and beautiful. As I’ve mentioned, Best Western is my preferred hotel, and this one was the Lawnfield Inn.  The hotel is built onto an historic home, which is filled with lovely antiques, including a Victrola (which is clearly marked with a “DO NOT TOUCH” sign, much to Jeff’s chagrin). We stayed in a king suite at a very affordable rate (did I mention Best Western is my preferred hotel???). I would definitely recommend this place to anyone staying in the area.

The drive to our next destination wasn’t a long one, and we made it here without any car problems. We do, however, have to go back to Cleveland at least one more time because Jeff and his brother Brian are going to fix the muffler. Jeff thinks it was damaged during one of the tows, but it’s old and probably needs to be replaced soon anyway. At least that is one repair we don’t have to pay a garage for.

It’s a good thing we’re going back to Cleveland, too, because one of the stops we planned on the trip was to Noce Pizza in Chardon, OH. We ate there last summer and it won a place in my heart, with their Greek pizza. OMG, it is sooooooo good. We drove through Chardon on our way to the campground yesterday, but they are CLOSED ON MONDAY!!!

I’d be surprised if you couldn’t hear my heart breaking all the way from here because I’ve been looking forward to this pizza for about a month, since I knew that our itinerary would take us through Chardon.

Chardon is an adorable little town, with lots of nifty things to take pictures of, so we wandered around the town square and snapped a few before getting back on the road.

We picked up some firewood, for a great price, from someone’s front yard. They were selling it on the honor system. Put your money in the coffee can and load it on up. Gotta love the Midwest.

After setting up camp, we took a ride on the motorcycle to cool off. This is where I learned one of the most important lessons (for me, anyway) of this trip: never go ANYWHERE without the camera. We saw a momma and baby deer, a groundhog, and a whole bunch of other picture worthy things. Lesson learned.

But I still got some amazing photos. In fact, last night Jeff called me out of the tent after I had already gone to bed to see the moon. It was rising over the lake (did I mention our campsite is right on the shore of the lake?) and it was bright orange. The reflection rolling across the black water was mesmerizing. The song Black Water, by the Doobie Brothers, took on a whole new meaning for me. We sat in silence for at least an hour, allowing it to transport us to altered states of consciousness. My camera doesn’t take very good nighttime pictures, but I tried anyway.

This morning, Jeff got up before dawn to rent a fishing boat, so we had coffee and watched the sun rise over the lake. It was all pinks and baby blues and lingered a looooong time.

It felt like my favorite scene from the movie Bedazzled, where Elliot is the most sensitive man in the world, crying over sunsets. “When will that doggone sun ever set?”

So far the only mildly unpleasant event of this leg of the trip was last night when I was awakened by loud clanging and banging outside of the tent. I knew it was an animal (or a murderer???) going through our stuff, so I did the obvious. I woke up my husband.

He threw on some pants and ran out of the tent to investigate. It didn’t take long for his macho demeanor to change once he realized it was a skunk. He told me this morning, when I asked him how he chased it away without getting sprayed, “I didn’t chase it away as much as I patiently waited for it to leave. By the way, we need to buy more hot dog buns because it ate them.”

If that’s our greatest problem today, I have no complaints. The fresh air, the sunshine, the lapping waves of the beautiful blue lake … this is what this trip is about.

Hey, wait a minute. The old man in the campsite next door is emptying his black water tank ten feet from our tent! I don’t think that’s the kind of black water the Doobies were singing about.

And here’s you another dog.

I haven’t blogged in a couple days because I needed some rest. Plus, we spent a large portion of the past few days recovering from the royal screwing we received from the garage that fixed the latest in a series of car problems.

The drive from Elkhorn City to Cleveland was relaxing and fun, albeit loooooooong. It took us about 12 hours to get here—the longest drive on this trip yet—but that includes the time it took to call AAA and get the car towed again. Yes, we broke down again. But I’ll get to that.

Our first stop on the trip was in Pikeville, KY, because we simply had to stop at the Dairy Cheer (home of the Smashburger) to get … what else? A Smashburger!

Sure, it was only 10AM, but we may never pass this way again, so we stopped. And, yes, you can order a Smashburger at 10AM at the Dairy Cheer.

Personally, I found nothing remarkable about the Smashburger, other than its name, but Jeff thought it was a particularly tasty burger. I think the only reason for the unique and humorous name is that they smash it after they make it. Mmmm … I bet that adds flavor!

I was more impressed with this sign that we saw at the rear of the parking lot, at the entrance to another business.

We have no clue what that business was, because we couldn’t find any other signs, but apparently it has something to do with helicopters. Or not. We don’t know. We didn’t see any signs of helicopters or landing pads or anything to do with aviation. It looked like a big ol’ junkyard.

We took an unexpected side trip along the way into Van Lear, KY because we saw a sign on the road to “Loretta Lynn’s Home Place.” We knew she was from the area, but didn’t know it was on the way from here to there. We followed the signs through a labyrinth of twisting and turning roads, so much so that I was honestly concerned that we might not find our way back to the highway. I have a great sense of direction, but this was like closing my eyes and spinning around, it was so disorienting.

We finally gave up the search because the roads were taking us down some very narrow paths and, since we’re towing a bike trailer, we weren’t sure if we would be able to turn around to get out of there if it got much worse. So we never did end up seeing Butcher Holler and the home she grew up in, the one featured in Coalminer’s Daughter.

Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful drive. We just cruised along at a fair clip and looked forward to getting to the hotel at the end of the day.

Crossing the Ohio River

We thought we were home free when we finally got to the last hour of the drive. We were in Cleveland and had just made one of our last interstate exits onto 271 near Medina when the car just stopped running. Jeff pulled over onto the shoulder and opened the hood to see what he could see. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong, but I mentioned that there was a small amount of smoke coming in the vents, so he poked around the firewall. He still didn’t see any visible signs of problems, so he told me to turn the key. The car cranked right up, so we pulled back out onto the road.

We made it about another mile when it backfired and died again. Jeff got out and tried to repeat whatever it was that he had just done to get it to start, to no avail. We had to call for help.

I got on the phone and called AAA. (Thank God for our prepaid Net10 phone. I don’t have a regular cell phone because we don’t need it enough to get a contract with anyone, so the prepaid phone is a great emergency option, even if the minutes are not unlimited.)

Before we left on this trip, I had renewed our AAA membership which expires on September 1. I knew it would be unwise to head out without it, so I made sure to do this. We did, however, decide to not renew Jeff on the account because it was pretty expensive to do so and, since I would be on this trip, we didn’t need us both on there. The woman at AAA told me, at that time, that if we need service before September 1, to use Jeff’s card because we might as well use up all of his allowed service calls.

Apparently she was the only one at AAA to know this, because during this service call they told me (after eating up about 30 of my precious minutes) that his account was cancelled and they wouldn’t be able to provide service for us. Exasperated and frustrated, I tried to be calm while I told him to just use my name on the same account and I’d take care of that mistake in the morning (which I did and she agreed that Jeff was still on the account until next week. Grrrrrrrrrrr!).

Anyway, long story short, we waited for the tow truck while Jeff and I unloaded and reloaded the bike trailer (we can’t get the bike off with all the stuff on there). My AAA account apparently doesn’t include towing a trailer and fortunately we weren’t too far from Jeff’s brother Brian’s house. Brian agreed to come and get the trailer with one of his vehicles and take it home with him. Jeff followed the tow truck on the bike, which I rode in with the driver, to the hotel.

The tow truck driver was a fascinating guy who is married to an equally fascinating woman. He told me how the two of them ride their motorcycles around the country to tour haunted prisons. He also told me that he is from Chagrin Falls (the location of my novel Be Careful What You Witch For!) and that there is a fascinating story about the Underground Railroad involving one of their landmarks, which I’ll tell in a later blog, because we spent yesterday (Saturday) in Chagrin Falls.

The next morning, we had to call for another tow (this one wasn’t covered by AAA because they won’t tow twice for the same incident) to get the car to a garage. After making a lot of phone calls to find someone in the area who could fix a ’79 Volaré, Jeff had it towed to the Firestone garage at the Great Lakes Mall. He told them that he suspected the timing chain, but he wasn’t sure because he’s not a mechanic.

Oh, by the way, there was also another flat tire on the car when we woke up. Don’t ask. I don’t know how that happened.

Sometime later, we got a phone call from them saying that the total would be in the mid $800 range. Shuddering at the huge expense, we both realized that we don’t have a lot of choice. We’re half a country away from home, and Firestone is a major chain, so we knew they would do good work (or hoped they would, at least) so Jeff okayed it.

That afternoon, they called and said the job was done but an interesting thing happened. When their mechanic was trying to start the car, he noticed that the ignition wire was loose. He jiggled it and it started right up. The man on the phone said, “You might want to be careful about that while you’re driving because if you hit a bump in the road, the car might stall.”

I wish I could spell the sound surging through my mind right now just thinking about what he said, and the sound that was likely going through Jeff’s noggin at that moment. We had just been charged over $500 for a timing chain that we didn’t even need! (Some of the $800 total was for the flat tire, the tow and some other small things he had tweaked, but the timing chain itself was $450 plus labor.) And they didn’t even fix the loose wire, just told us to be aware of it!!!

The loose wire was, apparently, the reason we brought the car in to begin with, and they had no intention of fixing it!

Jeff calmly asked them to fix the loose wire and told them we’d be in to pick up the car shortly. When we arrived, the person he needed to talk to about this clusterf*ck was already gone for the day. The cashier simply pointed to the paperwork that said “Customer requested timing chain replacement.”

This was an incredibly expensive lesson. When taking your car to a garage, NEVER express your opinion about what it MIGHT need. Just tell the mechanic to find what’s wrong and fix it. All it needed was a bolt tightened. Jeff’s brother Brian, who has been a mechanic for decades, freaked out when he heard this story. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that what should have happened is that they would have seen that there was nothing wrong with the timing chain and called us to tell us that.

They didn’t do that. Instead, we now have to cut the trip short because that was the last cushion in our travel fund. We’ll head home later this week, when we’re done camping at the next place on our itinerary (it’s prepaid, or we’d head home tomorrow). We’re not going to get to go to Washington DC, or camp on the beach in NC, as we had planned.

Once again, however, we’ve passed the Zen test. We could have both been much more distressed about this than we were. Yes, it was upsetting. Yes, we both were a little steamed in the beans. But we both agreed, at dinner that night, to let it go and reboot. We lifted our glasses in a toast to releasing our anger and moving forward.

Now we just hope the car will cooperate and get us home.

(Written Wednesday, posted Thursday, due to lack of internet connection) Since I wrote a very long and emotional blog yesterday, I thought I’d spend today posting some of the pictures we’ve taken here in Elkhorn City, KY, with some light commentary. This really is a wonderful place. You wouldn’t think a coal mining town would be where you’d want to spend your vacation, but Jeff and I are both having a terrific time seeing the sights and meeting the locals.

The people we’ve met have been SOOOOO nice, and most of them know and admire his dad. I just adore the eastern Kentucky accent. I wonder what Jeff and I must sound like to them. Have you ever seen the movie Coalminer’s Daughter? The people here talk just like Loretta and Doolittle Lynn. She was from this part of the country, about two hours north of here, from Van Lear, KY in an area called Butcher Holler. We asked Dave, our neighbor here (and also a friend of Doug’s), what a holler is and he explained that it’s where two mountains come together and make sort of a dead-end valley. You know, it’s holler (hollow).

My favorite example of the accent comes from my trip to the post office. The incredibly sweet and friendly woman at the counter decided I needed some fancy stamps, since I was mailing cards. She said, “I lahk puttin’ purty staymps own cards. Here’s yew a dowg.” (Here’s you a dog.) And then she put a dog stamp on my envelope. I’m still grinning, hours later, just thinking about how cute that was.

I digress. Here are the pics. Some of these pictures tell their own story. For example, this one needs no explanation:

This is the main intersection in Elkhorn, at Route 80 (also known as Patty Loveless Drive. She apparently grew up here, before moving on to seek fortune and fame in the recording industry. She is also apparently related to Loretta Lynn.).

You can see the back of the Rusty Fork restaurant, where I have to go for my Wifi internet access to post these blogs and check email since Virgin Mobile doesn’t give us a signal here.

See? I told you! Patty Loveless Dr.

If you come down the hill, this is the view from the parking lot of the Rusty Fork, right next to Patty Loveless Dr.

And if you go inside, you’ll see one of Patty Loveless’ signed record covers, next to pictures of New Jerusalem and the Dowden Sisters. Kids, records were what we old people used to play on a turntable when we wanted to listen to music.

Across the bridge and down Main Street, you’ll find the Elkhorn City Railroad Museum. Once again, this picture explains itself. The museum is small and quaint, of course.

When we went inside, there were a bunch of old timers sitting in rocking chairs, chewing the fat, just like an episode of Andy Griffith. They recognized Jeff as “John Doug’s boy” and welcomed us like we were family.

This is just a really pretty picture of one of the RR bridges.

Around the corner from the RR museum, you’ll find this mural painted on the wall.

And up the road, on the way to Pikeville (pronounced Pahk-vuhl), which is the place you go when you need to buy more than the basic necessities of life, you’ll find Belcher, KY.

But back in Elkhorn, you can still buy good bread.

We saw thousands of birds on these wires. The camera couldn’t even cover the whole scene without being too far away to tell that they were coated with birds.

This morning we took a motorcycle ride to Breaks Interstate Park, across the state line (only about eight miles away) in Virginia. Along the way, you will see this.

We, of course, had to take a couple of pics of us, since we both look so snazzy in our leather jackets.

We enjoyed a gorgeous drive in gorgeous weather and saw some gorgeous deer, which ran away too quickly for me to get a gorgeous picture.

Look! The sign says there’s a Farmer’s Market here today!

I guess no one told the farmers.

You can rent a spectacular cabin at the Breaks, but I mostly coveted these amazingly huge rocking chairs. You can’t see how big they are in this picture, but you could probably fit two average sized adults in one of these. I’m not saying it would be comfortable, but you could do it.

We stopped at the Stateline Overlook (elevation 1760 feet). This is where Pa’s ashes were scattered (read the previous blog for that story).

It’s kind of hard to tell, from this picture, what you’re looking at from the map photo above, so I’ve added some visual aids.

The yellow line on the right is Route 80, and the one on the left is the train tracks that you will see in the next picture.

While we were there, an enormously long coal train came by. We estimated it to be over a mile long.

It had two engines pulling and two, at the end, pushing. We wondered if it took all the coal in the cars just to power the train for this mighty job.

A nice lady offered to take a picture of both of us, and since she didn’t look like she’d make off with the camera … or if she did, we could take her … we posed for a pic.

Back down the mountain in Elkhorn, here is another bit of local history.

Here is the local grocery store. You can get pretty much everything you need here, including cans of pork brains in milk gravy. Mmmmmmmmmm … them’s good eatin’!

They have some interesting elections here.

Vote for Jesus, or vote for Fuzzy Keesee? Or just vote NO!

Just for the record, that Vote NO sign has been there since last year. NO won. This is now a dry county.

We saw the Hatfield McCoy Car Wash, ironically enough, while listening to a debate on the radio about the “Ground Zero Mosque.” Can’t we all just get along? (The Hatfield/McCoy feud happened near here.)

We went back to the cemetery after our trip to the Breaks to check on our work from yesterday (ya know, make sure we didn’t leave anything there, pat ourselves on the back for all the hard work, etc.) and wandered around looking at all the gravestones. What a fascinating place! It became very obvious that one either lives forever in Elkhorn, or not long at all. Please note that the cemetery is named after William Ramey, the founder of Elkhorn who was mentioned in the first picture I posted.

In case you forgot, he was the town founder.

His parents were buried here, too. Those brown stones were the original grave markers. You can’t see in the photo, but they are carved with names.

Neither condoning, nor condemning … it is what it was … the Rameys apparently cared enough about their slaves to bury them in the family plot.

Those river rocks are the servants’ graves.

Many families used river rocks, back in those days, as you can see all the way up the hill.

Here is a clearer photo of Jeff’s dad’s stone. I didn’t post a close-up yesterday.

And here is Doug’s Uncle Log. Yes, his name was Log (pronounced Lowg).

Here are some river rocks marked with the names of Jeff’s uncle and twin aunts, who died as children. Life must have been very hard back then. You’ll note that Mary Lou died the day she was born (or was stillborn?), Betty Sue died at two, while their mother was pregnant with Jimmy. Jimmy died just a few months after his first birthday. Jeff’s dad was born in 1938, so he never knew these siblings.

This one tells a fascinating story!
Rebecca Tacket, wife of Levi Sykes.
Born August 24, 1878.
Shot March 14, 1908.
Died March 16, 1908.

The inscription reads:
Oh Becca, how it grieves our heart,
From you, so suddenly to part.
But trusting in the God that’s true,
We hope to dwell in heaven with you.

It looks like this place has a drainage problem. Here are some more interesting headstones for which we don’t know the story:

Paw’s Little Girl was not so little when she died.

This one we know a story for. Apparently Margaret Record Biggs Coleman was 16, and the mother of a small child, when she was electrocuted getting out of the bathtub. She slipped and instinctively grabbed a light fixture (probably a bare light bulb hanging on a wire from the ceiling) to break her fall, but was killed by the electricity. At least, that’s the story they tell around here.

Well, that’s about all I have time for today. Maybe I can get an internet connection here at the Pike County Library (I couldn’t yesterday, but maybe today it will work better). We’re packing it up to leave in the morning, when we head to Cleveland for a few days. Meantime, here are a last couple of pictures from our trip.

Fresh produce from the neighbor’s yard … they may not look purty, but them’s tasty vittles.

Every writer’s dream: A typewriter, a pencil sharpener, and a quart jar of moonshine.

And here’s you a dog.

(Written Sunday night, posted Monday afternoon) Well, I’m finally dry and indoors, but now I can’t get an internet connection so I’m going to have to go elsewhere to find some Wifi to upload this blog post (even though we paid a pretty penny for Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go service). But, hey, I’m indoors and dry, in Elkhorn City, KY, where it’s not raining. We’re staying for a couple days at a friend’s house. A huge plus is the porcelain toilets. After five days of using a portapotty, I will never take indoor plumbing for granted again!

Yesterday, while we were still camping in Asheville, we intended to take the motorcycle for a ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway because it is supposedly an exquisite ride. Unfortunately, rain was in the forecast again (it eventually poured buckets—go figure), so we ended up in Black Mountain, a really cute little town east of Asheville. On our way, we discovered that biking (bicycles, that is) is a HUGE sport in Asheville. This is just a small group of the bicyclists that were blocking the road and creating an enormous line of cars behind them. The signs say “Share the Road,” but I don’t think they think it means them, too.

Along the way, we saw this interesting sign. Who knew?

We made it to Black Mountain just as the skies began to open up, so we ducked into this caboose museum.

The door was open, and Jeff loves trains, so what the heck? We had no idea that doing so would greatly upset a little boy. He, his mom and his brother came to the door while we were looking around inside, and he just about had a cow because we were in his caboose. Eventually, we learned that this museum is usually locked and if you want to go inside, you have to go next door to the gift shop and get the key. His mom had done that for them, but then they left and came back without our awareness of this fact, so he felt extremely territorial about his caboose and enormously bothered by our presence in it!

For lunch, we found My Father’s Pizza, the restaurant voted “Best Restaurant In The Valley 2010.” We had to wait a long time for a table (which I usually refuse to do) but it was raining really hard, the line was indoors, and the view was really pretty, so we waited.

It was worth the wait! I had spinach lasagna and enjoyed every bite. Jeff had a meatball sub and had to practically fight me off, because it was pretty doggone tasty, too.

We then discovered why they are called the Smoky Mountains. Check this out. Those are some pretty amazing clouds. I got a boatload of pictures, but these two are the best.

In typical roadtrip fashion, we met our camping neighbors—a really nice family—the night before we were fixing to leave.

L to R: Bella, Katherine, Tristen and Eddy, in front of our tent

They had the most incredible tent I’ve ever seen. It looked like a cabin, and Eddy told me that he has a woodburning stove inside! He used to be a hunting guide in Colorado, so he had everything he needed for a perfect camping trip. He was there for the fly fishing, but because of all the rain (did I mention it rained almost nonstop??) the river was like chocolate milk. (I hope I spelled their names right. Jeff wrote them down, and I don’t know if he asked for the correct spelling … he’s not much of a detail guy.)

We got up this morning and packed up all of our rainsoaked gear, and headed north for Elkhorn City, KY, a former coal mining town where Jeff’s dad was born and raised. On the way, just across the Tennessee border, we saw smoke coming out of those Smoky Mountains, but this was real smoke.

An RV was on fire on the side of the road. This isn’t a very good pic, but we were going 70 mph in the opposite direction.

The road into Elkhorn City follows the Elkhorn Creek. All of the houses are on the other side of the creek, and they all have these amazing-scary bridge/driveways. It’s kind of hard to see them in this picture, too, but remember we were driving and it’s hard to get a good angle from the front seat of a car.

We planned to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant once we got to Elkhorn, but were dismayed to find that it had burned down, too!

We ended up eating at the Rusty Fork, an Elkhorn City tradition (and the only other restaurant in town).

We were also going to eat at the Road Kill Kafe while we’re here, but they aren’t there anymore either! A lot can happen in a year, apparently. But hey, at least it’s not raining. And I’m indoors. And the toilets aren’t filled with a funny smelling blue liquid (and other unmentionable funny smelling stuff).

Life is good.

Today we spent the day wandering around Asheville. The only thing we had on our itinerary was to eat lunch at the 12 Bones restaurant, where President Obama and the fam ate while they were in town recently.

Beyond that, we just found whatever was in our path and had a fantastic day!

When we arrived at the 12 Bones at about 11:30, there was no line.

By the time we left, well, you can see for yourself what it looked like.

Then we strolled through a few of the artist studios in the River Arts District and I absolutely fell in LOVE with this piece by Fran Welch. If anyone out there truly loves me and wants to make me happy, please buy this for me. I WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT this.

After we’d had enough art, we found our way downtown to all of the really cool shops (Lexington Street is the best!) and discovered that we were in the neighborhood of the Basilica of St. Lawrence.

I left Catholicism behind, long ago, because while the rituals and incense are beautiful, I wasn’t able to hang with the sexism and homophobia. But this Basilica was breathtaking and reminded me that there is a lot about the Church that is good. We spent a lot of time there, and I feel like I’ve had sort of a religious healing, where there was once a deep wound.

However, when one is hanging out with Jeff, it doesn’t stay serious for long. Right across the street from the basilica is the Civic Center, where he was accosted by a statue.

Speaking of Jeff, I forgot to mention that he bought some pickles made by “Reverend Rick” at that same fruit stand where we bought the Chow Chow. These pickles were labeled as being blessed, and look at the result! Talk about a spiritual conversion … these pickles make a man walk on water!

Okay, I’m back at the tent now, laundry all done, rain stopped (for now) and I actually have a few minutes to just sit and type a little. See the red chair there? That’s where I’m sitting right now.

I’d like to talk about some of the cool things we’ve seen, instead of just bitching about the bizarre conditions we’ve encountered so far. One of the reasons we’re taking back roads as much as possible on this trip is so we can see the sights that you don’t find on the interstate. Our first surprise was in Eatonton, GA. We were driving through on our way from Macon to Athens, and discovered it’s the home of the Uncle Remus museum! Who knew?

Well, everyone who lives in Eatonton, obviously, but neither of us knew. Did you?

We got out of the car and walked around for a while, and found Eatonton to be a charming little town! Unfortunately, photography isn’t allowed inside the Uncle Remus museum, but all the really interesting sights aren’t in there anyway, like these bathroom doors.

Jeff had a brilliant idea and took a picture of me giving this Brer Rabbit statue bunny ears, but he’s a shitty photographer and it came out blurry. Grrr! How often does one have a chance to do something like that?

Here are a few other fun things we saw, signs and whatnot that we’ll probably never get to see again:

What are you lookin' at? No, what are YOU lookin' at?

???

This sign had no reference to any specific law, so we're not sure what that's all about. Apparently no matter how heinous your crime, the max penalty isn't very severe.

The camping trip, while off to a rocky start, has turned beautiful. The weather, when it’s not raining, is exquisite. The temperature is just right, the breeze off the French Broad River is cool and light, and Jeff is having a great time fishing, tubing, and generally being a boy.

He mentioned, this morning, that he was impressed by what a trooper I was being (read the previous blog, about the shit-filled portapotties and extremely rustic conditions, like no hot water in the single shower, which is about a mile away from the tent sites). I told him that outward appearances are deceiving. If he could hear what’s happening inside my head, he’d tell a different story.

But now that it’s calmed down a bit, and we’ve gone almost an entire day without car problems, I’m really enjoying myself. Plus, they emptied the portapotties while we were gone at the Laundromat. ‘O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ I chortled in my joy.

We met a really interesting girl at the Laundromat. She was about 29 years old, and she was camping, too, but she is hitchhiking across the country. She was doing laundry because she also got soaked out of her tent, like we did. She showed us a huge gouge in her hand, where she hit it with a hatchet, so I gave her our spare first aid kit. Last we saw her, she was riding off on the back of someone’s motorcycle. I don’t know where her camping gear was. I guess they were going to make two separate trips.

After that, we had a GREAT lunch at the Chapala Mexican restaurant in Weaverville, NC. If you’re in the area, we both highly recommend it!

Now, I think I’m going to stop writing for a while and enjoy some nature. And in case you’re wondering why all of the pictures are of Jeff having fun, remember Brer Rabbit and his blurry bunny ears.

I’m not going to be posting many pics on today’s blog because I don’t have a lot of time to write and do all that right now. As we speak, I’m in what is quite possibly the shittiest laundromat I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve seen some shitty laundromats!). [NOTE: the pics in this blog were added later in the day.]

After Jeff and I left Cordele, we thought all of our problems were behind us, but alas we were incorrect. We got as far as Macon when the engine overheated again in a spectacular display of hissing steam, completely obscuring our view out the front window.

Fortunately, we were close to a garage, where they replaced a heater hose and the fan clutch. After a few hours, we were on our way again, but the delay made us late to arrive at our campsite. We didn’t have time to do much more than set up the tent and grab some dinner at a local Mexican joint, north of Athens, GA.

Wednesday, we headed off to Asheville, where we plan to spend a few days. About 30 miles south of there, the car suddenly began to reek of gas, so we pulled over and saw gasoline spewing out of the fuel filter onto the engine. It was shooting out at such a rate that I’m amazed we didn’t blow up. Once again, we were fortunate to be a couple blocks from a garage, where they replaced the fuel filter.

We finally made it to the campground we were looking forward to in Asheville, but they turned us away because they had “low water,” whatever the hell that means. So we ended up at another campsite.

It’s a gorgeous place, truly rustic … a little TOO rustic for my taste. I don’t mind roughing it, but this place only has portapotties, and they haven’t been emptied since the Bush administration. The pyramid of feces and toilet paper inside them has been a bit of a deterrent.

Suffice to say, I’m not drinking a lot of water because there aren’t enough trees to use during the day.

Oh, did I mention the rain? It poured and poured and poured and poured and poured. Lightning and thunder, lots of rain, arks floating by on the river, you name it, we got it. But the tent doesn’t leak, and we did manage to build a campfire between storms where we roasted hot dogs on sticks and had a chance to sample some of the “Chow Chow” (onion relish) that we had purchased in Georgia, at a roadside fruit stand.

I have a lot more to write about, like the Uncle Remus museum we stumbled upon and some other cool stuff, but I think my laundry is done (we had to wash a load because everything is covered in mud and rain). I’ll post some pics later, too.

FYI, I’m not complaining, just reporting. It’s been quite the eventful trip and I’m maintaining a fairly zen attitude, but I’m ready for some smooth sailing. Okay, God? Thanks. Yer a pal.

Jeff and I left this morning for our own Epiphany Quest. I knew it would be nothing like my trip with Vicci, and I was right. It took us almost 12 hours to make what would normally be a five hour drive. But it ended in a really cool way. Here’s how it went:

Hour one: tire blow out on the bike trailer

Hour two: overheating radiator

Hour three: continuing overheating and removal of thermostat

Hour four: tire blow out on car

Lunch

Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly timed like that, but we seriously didn’t make it 15 minutes from home before one of the tires on the bike trailer exploded into a thousand shredded pieces.

We had to limp along the side of the road to several tire places before we found a place that sells tires that size. We finally ended up at Walmart, where they sold us the tires (we went ahead and replaced the second one, because it was just as old as the flat one, and why take a chance?). They weren’t legally allowed to install them for us, so Jeff had to do it himself, in the Walmart parking lot.

Not too far up the road, the car began to overheat, so we pulled over and Jeff filled the radiator and reservoir with coolant and water. A few miles more up highway 75 we realized it was overheating again, so he pulled over to a shady spot and removed the thermostat.

This seemed to fix the problem, but as soon as we got comfortable that all of our disasters were behind us, the front tire on the car blew out! Unfortunately, the tire iron that Jeff had just used a an hour ago to fetch the radiator cap from the engine, where it fell when he removed it earlier, apparently bounced off the bike trailer and is now living in the middle if I75, somewhere north of Brooksville, FL. So we had to call AAA for a mechanic to help us change the tire.

Fortunately, not too far up the road in Gainesville, we found a place to get a new tire. We also had lunch at a really cool McDonald’s, one of those old fashioned ones.

We spent the rest of the day catching up on what was supposed to be a fairly short drive for Day 1 but what actually ended up being a very long drive, but at least we saw a rainbow and a giant cow.

Finally, around 8PM, we checked in to a Best Western in Cordele, GA. We were planning to camp in Cordele for the night, but we were both too exhausted to deal with a tent and since Best Western is my preferred hotel, and they are offering an incredible deal for a really nice room ($59 per night and it’s a NICE place) we went ahead and got a room.

Jeff, while wandering the neighborhood, discovered that we were right across the street from a hookah bar. I’ve wanted to try one of those since my daughter Kristina posted pictures of herself at a hookah bar in Turkey (she was there with the Air Force, at Incirlik AFB) so I jumped at the chance, even though we’re both exhausted from a long, sweaty day of car problems.

What a great time we had! We both had a cocktail and relaxed with a fabulous hookah and a glass of wine at the Café Harike. It’s a family run place, where they go out of their way to make you feel welcome. I was amazed at how incredibly smooth the smoke was. I quit smoking cigarettes many years ago, and still miss it.

I expected the hookah to be like smoking cigarettes, but I was so wrong! My very first hit of the bowl was a big surprise. I didn’t feel any smoke going in, so I didn’t think it was burning. It didn’t hurt. But when I exhaled a huge cloud of smoke, I was amazed! Jeff and I sat for over an hour enjoying the smoke and the wine, on a beautiful Monday Georgia night.

Now, however, it’s time to get to bed because we’ve got another drive ahead of us in the morning. I wonder what Tuesday has in store for us!

We’re leaving next week on an extended camping trip, and I’m practicing a little with the blog here, to see about uploading and posting photos. So here is my first effort. We are driving a 1979 Volare, and towing a trailer with our Honda Silverwing.