On the one hand, I sort of missed Chelsea and Beau – we only got to hang out with them for a couple of waking hours this time around, but on the other hand, Heather and I somehow very RARELY take the time to explore our locales, and it was nice to get a chance to wander. She makes the heat worthwhile. We found tonnes of miscellaneous metal and random washers, screws, beads, ceiling wax and kings for Heather’s jewlery project. Even found a discarded zip disc. It seems like not so long ago when those 97 megabyte cartridges were the epitome of storage. And now they are nothing but dismantled plastic in Richmond alleys.
Oh my God. Richmond was beautiful – we wandered Carytown for a couple of hours, hunting beetles and relief from the heat. Today I discovered the wonder that is Minute Maid Limeade. We scrounged steel from the streets, and pawed through antique shops and found keys and wires and kittens. In good spirits, we packed up the car and headed to Hell.
The AC didn’t kick on. Maybe a bit of cool air for a moment, but it evaporated in the summer oven heat of the Saturn interior. Gasping for breath, we wrap Heather’s headscarf around the steering wheel so that it can be touched by human hands. Two blocks later the scarf has screwed so far into the steering column that Heather can barely park at the 7-Eleven. Shredding the fabric with my knife wrests control back from the scarf, but fifteen minutes out of Richmond, the car is over-heating. We balance the engine temperature by watching the guage and switching from AC to HEAT depending on what will drive the temperature down at any given moment… The venue that we plan to play in Raleigh doesn’t open until 9pm so we can’t get through to them on the phone to confirm anything. Upon arrival, we find that Pantana Bob’s is now a private club and doesn’t allow outsiders in. We search for food and get caught at every stop light in the city as the car creeps to redline….
I’m almost in tears as we eat a Lovely Quizno’s dinner, and then I realize that the place we’re crashing tonight isn’t in Raleigh after all, but in Durham.
Shit.
Though the car’s temperature remains semi-stable, we leave the AC off so as not to worry ourselves, discover that the exit we need to take has been closed, miss a turn during the detour, and pull in to Durham only to realize that we’ve left our gas cap in Nashville.