Johnson City Thinks I'm Pretty

The drive to Virginia is a familiar one. It's the same drive I did my four years in Syracuse, the same as my one year in Rochester, and now the same as my three years in Asheville. It's seven hours. It's a roundabout number. I'm throughly used to the seven hour drives alone down I-81. I've been doing them for ten years.

And so this drive was to be no different. I got out of work an hour late, got on the road a half-hour after I would've liked but on the road I got. I only had about a quarter tank but I didn't fill up, eagerly waiting the cheaper gas across the border in Tennessee or Virginia. I was being thrifty.
45 minutes in: there's a black bear. Standing on the side of the interstate. Just watching traffic. Like ya do. Duly noted.

Just north of Johnson City, TN I realize I have to stop for gas. I had wanted to make it all the way to Bristol in VA but this will work. I take the exit for Tri-cities airport and stop at the BP there. First gas pump takes over five minutes to pump about a gallon. This isn't going to work. I painfully wait through $10 of gas ($2.46 gal for mid) then pull around to another pump to try my hand there. Same speed. Apparently this is the gas station from interstate hell. I was just driving at nearly 80mph; I want my gas at that speed too, you bastard. I end it at $12. I can't stand to wait any longer, this just took a half hour. I start my car. It doesn't sound like my car. It sounds ill. My car isn't ill. I stutter across the parking lot to the McDonalds there, so I can use a restroom that isn't attached to a gas station. I come back out, start my car and realize things had gone downhill. I realize this when my car keeps stalling. Or acting like its stalling. Even when I'm revving it like I want to race.

Curse word.
Double triple curse word.
Apologize to God.
Beg his forgiveness.
Promise him my first-born if car is magically healed.
Try car again.
Still coughing like it has auto emphysema
Well too bad, God cuz I didn't plan on kids anyway so HA!

I pop the hood and stare. Go to trunk, pull out tools and Haynes manual. Dismantle air filter, check it. Looks a-ok. Check connections on spark plugs. Check idle. You get the idea. I'm stuck in the parking lot of a McDonalds in 88 degree Tennessee. I'm in jeans. I hate everyone. Nice guy stops by with a slight beer belly, a trim strawberry blond beard and a receding hairline. He's the kind of guy one knows works construction before he confirms it. He offers whatever he can. We agree it's probably my fuel injectors. He works in town but doesn't live here and starts calling his buddies to find a good auto parts place. This is also when he starts telling his buddies he's met “some cute lady who's got her own tools. And a Haynes manual. I'd ask her out if she twern't headin' for a weddin' up in Virginia. Hold on. (turns to me) How ol are ya?” Then drops the phone and asks if I wanna go to the lake with him and forget my car for a while. Oh lord. I am in two different colored wife-beater tanks, my hair looks like it has been subjected to windows down driving for over an hour (it has) and I'm rapidly collected Johnson City crud between my toes. If this is what it takes to look cute around here, I am gonna win. I politely decline and reluctantly the nice bearded guy leaves to meet up with his friends. I head to the gas station (who sold me the stupid gas in the first place) and ask them if they know of any auto parts stores or mechanics.

Guy behind counter: I dunno. I don't live here. I lives in Kingsport.
Me: But you work here. And you haven't seen anything?
Guy behind counter: Nope.
Me: (to woman standing there): Do you know anything?
Stringy haired chain smoker: Naw. I lives in Johnson City.
Me: Well then where am I? What town is this?
Guy behind counter: Beats me.
Me: But you WORK HERE.
Guy behind counter: Well YEAH.
Me: And you don't know what town this is.
Guy behind counter: They don't pay me to know that stuff.
Me: Do you have a phone book?
Guy behind counter: I thinks so.

I borrow phone book, use it and the GPS function on my phone to figure out I'm in Grey, Tennessee. Because homeboy behind counter isn't paid enough to know the name of the town in which he works. Well done; he's gonna go far it life. I then use the phone book to call and plead with two mechanics to help me, who both tell me that it's too close to closing and that they're booked up for the rest of the week. Drat. I call a third. His name is Ed. I crank up the southern accent. I dial into my inner helpless woman. I throw hints about loving Jesus and being from out of town. Ed sighs. I tell him my problem. Ed understands. Ed gives me advice. He says its probably bad gas, I should get some specific fuel injector cleaners and try that out. And just in case, he'll have calls forwarded to his cell phone if I'm still stuck. I decide that first born no longer goes to God, creator of the Universe, but to Ed, polite auto mechanic.

I again use phone book to find auto parts store. I enter it into my GPS, who tells me in a polite voice that the closest store like that is .7 miles away, down the four-lane divided road that is Bobby Hicks Highway and so there I go. Along my walk two other guys stop to ask if I need a ride, or they can be of service. This would be a nice gesture if I hadn't just watched “Monster” and if they had been looking me in the eyes. And if my serious case of back sweat hadn't been so uncomfortable. I again decline the offer of a ride and keep on my trek to Advance Auto. I make it, I find what I'm looking for, I ask the guys there what they think and they say I'm probably spot on. Walk the .7 miles back along the highway that has no sidewalks, dump one in my gas tank, sputter around the parking lot a bit then say to hell with it and get back on the interstate.
I immediately feel that I have to pee.
But I won't stop.
Not for another four hours.
I'm going now, dammit I won't get delayed again.
So a seven hour drive turns into nine hours with the addition of $22 in dreadfully slow (bad) gasoline, 3 sketchy ride offers, a 1.4 mile walk along a highway named after someone who probably drove moonshine, $8 in fuel injector cleaner and one free phone book.

And no more bears.

Plates

I bought my little Subaru five summers ago and happily moved the license plates from my POS Tempo to my new upgrade. I've had the same plates since two weeks after 9/11 and through my six moves in four years, they were my constant. I kept my car registered to my father's address as he was still a co-signer on my title and I moved so often it wasn't worth the money to change them with me. And so there they were, a little piece of Virginia no matter where I was; proof I had a place to go home to.
Today I finally got around to switching my car to North Carolina tags. I avoided it; North Carolina doesn't issue a front plate and that drives me crazy. But I needed to and so I did.
I picked up my lone little plate at the DMV office inside a mall that looks like it was shabby and mostly empty even when it was built in 1985. I took it out to my car and, sitting in my driver's seat, I burst into tears.
I love where I live; I believe that this is the closest thing to a sense of home I've ever had. But that simple act of switching two plates for one was an admission that I was one step farther from my father's house.

And really, he is what I know of home.

Gods of Gasoline

* I manged to get Rashard Mendenhall just as I found out Willie Parker is out this week. Whew. Also: just heard that Buress is suspended for the Week 5 game and guess who has him as their star WR...the team I'm playing Week 5. Obviously Fantasy gods smiling on me today. I did break my "never draft a Cowboy" rule this week and picked up Felix Jones because of all the Byes. I hope he sucks. I deserve it.

* All of AVL is out of gas...station after station has blank signs and pumps covered in bags. In the parking lot of the local grocery store I saw a worn, 1970s RV with a hand-panted sign in its window, searching for gasoline. "NEED GAS" it said in green marker. I drove by a dry station with a man just parked at the pump, waiting for the truck to show up, hoping that it actually does.
It's like we've suddenly developed an intense faith in the gods of gasoline; that they will provide in our time of need.
I wasn't alive during the gas crisis of the late 70s but this has a feeling akin to that. Part of me thinks, "Well, we deserve it," and I believe we do. But the other part of me worries how I can get to work, to the store, get to anywhere in a country where the infrastructure is built with the sacred emblems of Detroit in mind, in a town where incline is king. Thankfully this week I'm housesitting just three miles from work (with no way to bike there safely).
* My father sent me an email saying "they" were coming to visit next week and had rented a cabin an hour outside of town and inviting "us" out for a night. I don't know who "they" is. I'm kind of afraid to ask.

Drivin' Miss Spooner

For 6 of the past 8 years I have lived an average of 7 hours away from my family; I-81 has become intimately familiar to me during those long solitary treks to and from the homestead (incidentially I have driven all 846 miles of I-81, from Knoxville, TN to the Thousand Islands, NY, just not all at once.) I haven't been home since Christmas and my family has not let me forget it; for this I am grateful. I'm glad to feel missed and loved as I am. Next Wednesday I'm hopping into my little Subaru and once again doing the great seven hour exodus back to LoCo. If my past trips are any indication, this is what the drive will look like:

9:22am: Plan to leave by 10am. Swear I will be out fo the house by 10:15am.

10:45am: Leave house, be very proud of myself that I left in such a timely fashion.

10:50am: Top off my gas tank, believe this is the trip where I will only stop once.

10:58am: Be bored with the drive, put something loud on the iPod which will probably involve Jay-Z.

11:38am: Begin game of guessing to the exact mile how far it is from my house to my parents house and what my gas milage will be for the trip. Forget my bets in about an hour.

12:04pm: Pause iPod, start making phone calls to whomever I can think to call. Get 9 voice mail messages straight, hate everyone for not answering their phones to chat with me at noon on a Wednesday. Realize I'm ridiculous. Keep calling people.

12:44pm: First pee break. Curse my bladder and coffee consumption, consider pulling a crazy astronaut and buying diapers.

1:21pm: Start playing the Choose Cheesy mix as loud as possible with as many wild hand gestures as possible. Sing "Greatest Love of All" at top of my lungs.

2:23pm: Switch to "Slow n' Steady" mix which causes me to curl deep into a furrowed brow and hypothetical conversations. Quite possibly stare at nothing as I'm driving through Roanoke. Realize this is just past the half-way point; get nervous and vow to not stop for any reason. Immediately have to pee.

3:16pm: Stop to pee again. Possibly stretch. Once again bet on total mileage and time. Feel confident that I'll win. Against myself. In a fictional contest. Wave at the exit for Rockbridge. Decide driving sucks and road trips suck and driving road trips alone sucks and you probably suck too, sucker.

3:30pm: Probably start a conversation with myself. Not even probably, I will start a conversation with myself, and I will ask myself questions and answer them in turn. I will find myself charming, witty, sincere and smart. I will think I am a good conversationalist. This will be right around the time I hit Harrisonburg. That will cause me to think about all the people who went to JMU that I could give a shout out to at that moment. I'll just yell "GO DUKES!" to no one in particular. I will only partially mean this cheer.

4:08pm: Bless the inventor of cruise control, get terrible back cramp, have indigestion from questionable gas station purchase from hour previous. Be in love with the Shenandoah Valley. Listen to a random episode of "This American Life" debate whether this will keep me awake or put me to sleep. Realize I will need to fill up cuz I won't make it all the way there on one tank. Curse this fact.

4:40pm: Stop somewhere near Front Royal and fill up. Think Arbys, but do nothing about it.

5:15pm: See exit 315 for Rt 7. Cheer. Exit and feel very strange driving at 55mph. Probably break out into "Old Dominion" by Eddie from Ohio, also with dramatic hand gestures. Get a little emotional driving down the roads I've known my whole life.

5:44pm: Pull into my dad's house. Feel the whole trip was already worth it.

Car Talk

Sooo....cleaned out my car yesterday. Like not only cleaned it but vacuumed it, something I haven't done in...well...a very, very long time. I think my car is a few dozen pounds lighter.
Observations:
* I found 14 pens in various places in my car. 13 of them worked fine. I guess my greatest fear is not having a pen when I need one.
* I have something like 9 different maps in my car, and that includes my atlas (yes Robin I own an atlas), and a "Rochester and Vicinity" mapbook. Cuz I need that. Down here in Asheville.
* Even while just vacuuming my car I managed to cut myself. On what I don't know.
* Also: 12 matchboxes/matchbooks. Why?

In other news:
* Broke my old filling on a triscuit last night. I don't know what to do about it. I have no dental apoxy and/or dental insurance, so i guess it'll stay broken for a while.

Anyway, I'm housesitting on the west side til late Friday and that means regular internetting, so woohoo. And such.

Not a Mite Would I Withhold

So I got robbed last night. That's fun.

My little car was broken into through a cracked window while it was parked on Coxe Ave while I was at Quizzo. Took my 60G video iPod, my portable CD player, a $20 cigar and about $80 in spare change that I kept in a piggy bank for parking meters—all in all a little less than $500 (interestingly enough left my $120 Petzel climbing harness and my $400 Moonstone jacket as well as my bible, my EZ Pass and my “Lookin' Good For Jesus Lip Balm.” apparently not outdoorsy or into the Jesus...or drive the Thruway much). It's probably the last thing in the world I needed right now. I feel like I'm barely holding on anyway, this just made it a bit harder, like someone stepping on my fingers while I'm dangling from the ledge. That iPod has been my best friend since the day I got it (anyone who worked with me at Windy Gap knows this—it's the only reason I kept my sanity all those hours working alone) and now it sort of feels like my situation is being mocked—a “if you think that was bad, wait for THIS,” game the heavens seem to be playing these past few months. My heart and my confidence are completely shot. There is a lesson in all of this; something I am supposed to come to know. I truly believe God loves me and wants the best for me—deeply I believe this. It aches how much I believe this, even as nothing in my present situation testifies so. It is in my core that this is a Truth. There are blessings in store for me because I am loved. I have to keep telling myself that over and over, keep telling myself He will be faithful to supply all of my needs when my needs keep getting bigger by the day, get more complex and personal, get more savage and carnal. If ever there was a time for God's loving blessing to be poured it would be now. I'm ready to leave all this wreckage behind me.

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and everyday have sorrow in my heart?....
Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death...
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation,
I will sing to the Lord
for he has been good to me.” --Psalm 13

(the title of this post is taken from the hymn “Take My Life and Let it Be”...the line is 'take my silver and my gold/not a mite would I withhold/take my intellect and use/every power as you choose.' Ouch.)