Marisa and I hit the open road towards the middle of September. Farming in the Texas hill country has taken its toll in more ways than one. Working outside for the summer with more than 70 days in a row over 100 degrees definitely wasn't a highlight. Texas hill country hadn't seen such a brutal summer since 1929. Lucky us. Neither of us were particularly heart broken to find our selves untethered. It wouldn't be polite to get too far into it. However, I will say this, the farm we were employed by has become far uglier in reality than it appears in photographs. We loaded our poor 95 Subaru legacy to the brim with everything we own. A sewing machine, 3 re-curve bows and arrows, half a dozen finished and unfinished art projects, our little cattle dog Maggie Mae, a big box of fabric, boxes and boxes of books, cookware, bags and bags of clothes and camping gear. First stop was my good friend Mikal's in Austin for a couple days to pay our respect to an amazing city and say goodbye to some friends. We partook in some authentic Mexican food and imbibed a few Lone Stars for old times sake.
The car handled like a tank with all the extra weight. We spent most of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama listening to old "This American life'' episodes and trying our hardest to ignore the random grinding, popping and clunking sounds coming from the front wheel on the passenger side. It sounded worse in the early hours of the trip. I glanced at Marisa to see if it woke her up, then told myself that if it wasn't loud enough to wake some one up it probably wasn't bad enough to worry about too much. By the time we got past Atlanta and into South Carolina the noise was unmistakably something that had to be addressed. We were on our way to Iron Station outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where Marisa's friend Therin has been living. The basic game plan at this point is to move somewhere in North Carolina but the details are still to be determined. Neither one of us had ever been to the Southeast and all we know is the farming is good, the Appalachians are amazing, the outer banks are awesome and Asheville is a nice place for people like us to hang out.
Twenty-seven hours after we leave Austin, we roll into Therin's driveway, relieved that the car didn't break down in the middle of our journey. It feels great to straighten our backs again and get outside of the car. I'm amazed that our wheel didn't fly into a ditch in Georgia with everything else close behind it. Therin takes us out for dinner in Charolette. We do laundry for the next 2 days while watching 'Top Chef" marathons and commencing a general regrouping. Things we need to do:
a) Get the car fixed
b) Locate a town to live in and a house in that town to occupy
c)Get jobs
Sounds simple enough. We figure we have a couple hundred miles left on the axle before the sound manifests itself into a roadside tragedy. The decision is made to go check out the scene in Asheville and get the car fixed there. We unload everything into Therin's crawl space. The idea is to get settled in somewhere then promptly return for our stuff. We bring enough cooking and camping supplies to spend a couple nights around Asheville. At the last moment we grab our social security cards in case some one feels obliged to hire us immediately and some contact info for an honest mechanic we looked up on the car talk web site.
The drive through the mountains is gorgeous. The trees are just beginning to change into their fall colors and even the interstate rest stop is breathtaking. We pull into Asheville and it's a lot bigger than it was in my head. I was expecting old timers playing banjos on unpainted wooden porches on every corner. For lunch we found an all you can eat Indian buffet. It was delicious. The characters downtown and in the restaurant seemed all to familiar; like people we'd met in Austin or Portland. The couple dining next to us even asked if I was the guy that had moved next door to them a couple weeks earlier. I guess I looked familiar too. Where are the accents the boiled peanuts and shirtless overall wearers? Ashville is what some of our friends refer to as a circuit town, meaning a city that attracts people that are drifting from state to state. Places where misfits fit in and it's completely acceptable to have face tattoos and ask for spare change outside any locally owned coffee shop in town. For example: Austin, Athens, Arcata, Boulder, Madison, Eugene, Portland etc...Asheville is fun and beautiful, but we were feeling like we had been on the circuit a little too long. It is nice to not be the only long hair in sight, but this just wasn't what we were searching for. Problem is, we didn't know where we were looking for.
We explore the surrounding landscape and settle into a state park outside Brevard for the night. Falling in love with Appalachia is easy. I saw 20 different kinds of wild mushrooms in the first day. It was so nice to get out from underneath the cruel Texas sun. This little corner of North Carolina seemed fitting for us on a scenic level. Marisa really appreciated the change of atmosphere and being back in proper woods. The air felt like it had more oxygen in it, like being back in the North West.
After a night in the woods, we headed back to Asheville to suck it up and deal with our car problem and spend another day walking Maggie around downtown. The nice lady at the front desk refers to customers like us as gypsies. The people that don't have an address to write down on the form or a work phone number. She didn't seem too surprised by our predicament. We weren't the first drifters to break down on this part of the circuit. There were a few hours to kill while the car got worked on. Our first stop was the local library to take a glance at Craigslist, just to make sure there weren't any amazing job opportunities in the area we should jump on. Next, we searched the area for a slice of pizza and a couple locally made beers. Fortunately, we found a brew pub that had an 'all you can eat slices' deal. Asheville seems to be the home of the killer lunch buffet. Who knew? The waitress called us out on being out of towners. Maybe it was how long it took us to select our I.P.A' s.... She offered us her back yard if we wanted to pitch a tent until we found a place. She also gave us some tips about a national forest nearby where we could camp for free.
Dark clouds filled the sky as our cell phone rang. Our car was ready, thankfully. It was five o'clock on a Friday and I'm not sure what we would have done if hadn't gotten fixed before the shop closed for the weekend. It cost us around 800 bucks to silence the Subaru and ensure our own safety. The credit card took its first major blow since we got it, but at least we were racking up frequent flier miles! As we where heading south to our new potential home in the woods, the sky grew darker and darker and the rain came along with it. We cautiously cruised down the forest roads that were more mud than dirt at that point. I cursed the crappy windshield wipers and made another mental note to replace them soon. It was nice not to worry about the wheel falling off out on those country roads. Marisa and I discussed the possibility of setting up camp for a couple weeks while we figured out what we wanted to do. The camping was free so maybe we could cut our losses from the mechanic bill. Finally we found an open campsite about 10 miles down the road. It was perfect except for one thing; it was downpouring so hard we couldn't imagine putting up a tent.
The sun set and the rain started to come down in buckets. We busted out our battery powered lantern, a deck of cards and the cribbage board. The rain let up a little bit around the time Marisa beat me for the second time. I made my move quickly, setting up the tent, putting on the rain fly and getting our thermarests and sleeping bags in, all seconds before the rain came back in full force. It was trampling down on me by the time I got back to the driver's seat. I could tell by Marisa's expression that she was having her doubts about our new living arrangements. Even Maggie had a look of discontent in her eyes and on her muzzle. I reached into the back seat and grabbed a newspaper off of the stack of free press we had been accumulating to start camp fires. I was in the midst of explaining my new idea to Marisa when I reached the weather section.
''I was thinking since we don't know exactly where we want to live in North Carolina anyway, maybe we should explore the rest of the state. Maybe find somes town where it's not raining like this."
I think she could tell by my face when I looked at the paper that the news was bleak.
''Well?'' she said.
''Well, paper says heavy rains all across the state until Tuesday and it looks worse on the coast than it does here." Imagining losing a hundred more cribbage games while being a prisoner of this car for 4 days didn't sound great. Not to mention most of our food has to be cooked and Marisa will never let me use the stove in the car.
''What about Virginia?" I asked
"Paper says it's not raining in Virginia."
We looked at each other, nodded ever so slightly, raced into the pouring rain to take down the tent and then hit the road for Virginia.
The car handled like a tank with all the extra weight. We spent most of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama listening to old "This American life'' episodes and trying our hardest to ignore the random grinding, popping and clunking sounds coming from the front wheel on the passenger side. It sounded worse in the early hours of the trip. I glanced at Marisa to see if it woke her up, then told myself that if it wasn't loud enough to wake some one up it probably wasn't bad enough to worry about too much. By the time we got past Atlanta and into South Carolina the noise was unmistakably something that had to be addressed. We were on our way to Iron Station outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where Marisa's friend Therin has been living. The basic game plan at this point is to move somewhere in North Carolina but the details are still to be determined. Neither one of us had ever been to the Southeast and all we know is the farming is good, the Appalachians are amazing, the outer banks are awesome and Asheville is a nice place for people like us to hang out.
Twenty-seven hours after we leave Austin, we roll into Therin's driveway, relieved that the car didn't break down in the middle of our journey. It feels great to straighten our backs again and get outside of the car. I'm amazed that our wheel didn't fly into a ditch in Georgia with everything else close behind it. Therin takes us out for dinner in Charolette. We do laundry for the next 2 days while watching 'Top Chef" marathons and commencing a general regrouping. Things we need to do:
a) Get the car fixed
b) Locate a town to live in and a house in that town to occupy
c)Get jobs
Sounds simple enough. We figure we have a couple hundred miles left on the axle before the sound manifests itself into a roadside tragedy. The decision is made to go check out the scene in Asheville and get the car fixed there. We unload everything into Therin's crawl space. The idea is to get settled in somewhere then promptly return for our stuff. We bring enough cooking and camping supplies to spend a couple nights around Asheville. At the last moment we grab our social security cards in case some one feels obliged to hire us immediately and some contact info for an honest mechanic we looked up on the car talk web site.
The drive through the mountains is gorgeous. The trees are just beginning to change into their fall colors and even the interstate rest stop is breathtaking. We pull into Asheville and it's a lot bigger than it was in my head. I was expecting old timers playing banjos on unpainted wooden porches on every corner. For lunch we found an all you can eat Indian buffet. It was delicious. The characters downtown and in the restaurant seemed all to familiar; like people we'd met in Austin or Portland. The couple dining next to us even asked if I was the guy that had moved next door to them a couple weeks earlier. I guess I looked familiar too. Where are the accents the boiled peanuts and shirtless overall wearers? Ashville is what some of our friends refer to as a circuit town, meaning a city that attracts people that are drifting from state to state. Places where misfits fit in and it's completely acceptable to have face tattoos and ask for spare change outside any locally owned coffee shop in town. For example: Austin, Athens, Arcata, Boulder, Madison, Eugene, Portland etc...Asheville is fun and beautiful, but we were feeling like we had been on the circuit a little too long. It is nice to not be the only long hair in sight, but this just wasn't what we were searching for. Problem is, we didn't know where we were looking for.
We explore the surrounding landscape and settle into a state park outside Brevard for the night. Falling in love with Appalachia is easy. I saw 20 different kinds of wild mushrooms in the first day. It was so nice to get out from underneath the cruel Texas sun. This little corner of North Carolina seemed fitting for us on a scenic level. Marisa really appreciated the change of atmosphere and being back in proper woods. The air felt like it had more oxygen in it, like being back in the North West.
After a night in the woods, we headed back to Asheville to suck it up and deal with our car problem and spend another day walking Maggie around downtown. The nice lady at the front desk refers to customers like us as gypsies. The people that don't have an address to write down on the form or a work phone number. She didn't seem too surprised by our predicament. We weren't the first drifters to break down on this part of the circuit. There were a few hours to kill while the car got worked on. Our first stop was the local library to take a glance at Craigslist, just to make sure there weren't any amazing job opportunities in the area we should jump on. Next, we searched the area for a slice of pizza and a couple locally made beers. Fortunately, we found a brew pub that had an 'all you can eat slices' deal. Asheville seems to be the home of the killer lunch buffet. Who knew? The waitress called us out on being out of towners. Maybe it was how long it took us to select our I.P.A' s.... She offered us her back yard if we wanted to pitch a tent until we found a place. She also gave us some tips about a national forest nearby where we could camp for free.
Dark clouds filled the sky as our cell phone rang. Our car was ready, thankfully. It was five o'clock on a Friday and I'm not sure what we would have done if hadn't gotten fixed before the shop closed for the weekend. It cost us around 800 bucks to silence the Subaru and ensure our own safety. The credit card took its first major blow since we got it, but at least we were racking up frequent flier miles! As we where heading south to our new potential home in the woods, the sky grew darker and darker and the rain came along with it. We cautiously cruised down the forest roads that were more mud than dirt at that point. I cursed the crappy windshield wipers and made another mental note to replace them soon. It was nice not to worry about the wheel falling off out on those country roads. Marisa and I discussed the possibility of setting up camp for a couple weeks while we figured out what we wanted to do. The camping was free so maybe we could cut our losses from the mechanic bill. Finally we found an open campsite about 10 miles down the road. It was perfect except for one thing; it was downpouring so hard we couldn't imagine putting up a tent.
The sun set and the rain started to come down in buckets. We busted out our battery powered lantern, a deck of cards and the cribbage board. The rain let up a little bit around the time Marisa beat me for the second time. I made my move quickly, setting up the tent, putting on the rain fly and getting our thermarests and sleeping bags in, all seconds before the rain came back in full force. It was trampling down on me by the time I got back to the driver's seat. I could tell by Marisa's expression that she was having her doubts about our new living arrangements. Even Maggie had a look of discontent in her eyes and on her muzzle. I reached into the back seat and grabbed a newspaper off of the stack of free press we had been accumulating to start camp fires. I was in the midst of explaining my new idea to Marisa when I reached the weather section.
''I was thinking since we don't know exactly where we want to live in North Carolina anyway, maybe we should explore the rest of the state. Maybe find somes town where it's not raining like this."
I think she could tell by my face when I looked at the paper that the news was bleak.
''Well?'' she said.
''Well, paper says heavy rains all across the state until Tuesday and it looks worse on the coast than it does here." Imagining losing a hundred more cribbage games while being a prisoner of this car for 4 days didn't sound great. Not to mention most of our food has to be cooked and Marisa will never let me use the stove in the car.
''What about Virginia?" I asked
"Paper says it's not raining in Virginia."
We looked at each other, nodded ever so slightly, raced into the pouring rain to take down the tent and then hit the road for Virginia.
Wow! I can't wait to see where you land. Tell Therin I said hi.
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