This is the two-chapter story of Our Heroines, Caitlin and Rhyannon, as they travel to the wilds of Meridies... Chapter 1 features a long portrayal of three guys working hard to out-redneck each other in front of two city girls from up north, and a short clip of our venture out into what passes for civilization in search of breakfast (which turned out to be corndogs and fries).
This chapter includes one of the more amusing moments in the weekend, when Alan said that he didn't care what his daughter did as an adult (his example was, becoming a porn star) as long as it was her choice "as long as nobody takes her off to Harvard Law School, that I couldn't stand." Rhy says my eyes got big as saucers for a moment.
Anyway, we didn't actually eat the roadkill. The raccoons got to it after it got pulled off the fire, so we ended up with cheeseburgers. Good ones. (This out of a grocery run late Saturday that produced the following dinner items: steaks, burgers, porkchops, chicken, kielbasa. And chips. Can you tell the guys did the shopping?) Those guys can cook for me anytime. But next time I'm bringing my own groceries. Thought for the Day: What sorts of people travel for a weekend of camping with a big box of spices and cooking utensils, but no food? People who are sure that God will Provide... and he did... using the bumper of someone's truck.
Also during this time, but not bearing closer examination in print, are the guys' version of the history of the middle ages, including a long discussion about some Norman king whose queen had him killed by shoving a red-hot poker up his ass (Alan: Can you imagine what that would feel like? Brandon: It would feel like having a red-hot poker shoved up your ass, that's how it would feel.) Editor's Note: That's King Edward, by the way. One of the Kings Edward. Hey, if this was what happened to one of the early Edwards, how did anybody persuade someone to become a later Edward?
Highlight of this part of the weekend? The pleasure of being with folks who manage to pull together and have a good time even when the plan goes kinda funky, instead of sitting around and stewing and whining about stuff.
Chapter 2 is about how, on the way back from Tennessee, my transmission pulled itself to little pieces and we made it into the driveway of my old house on its last dying gasp.
We drove straight through and pulled in Sunday morning about 8 a.m. after losing the transmission of the car gradually throughout the night. We headed down there knowing that the transmission was kinda iffy. Sure enough, round about exit 200 on I-81 we lost 5th gear. Right about the time we left i-81 to head across 66, we pretty much lost 4th gear. We limped the rest of the way in 3rd (with occasional forays into 4th), with me driving and Rhyannon bracing the gear shift knob to hold the car in gear so it wouldn't pop out. Today my neck and shoulder hurt from spending a long time holding the car forcibly in gear while trying to get home.
We made it onto and off the beltway and down the surface roads to my house only hitting one red light (about half a mile out). That was when we discovered that, contrary to our expectations, we also didn't have first or second gear anymore. But we were on a downhill so we put it back into 3rd and drove the rest of the way home.
Pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition and just sat there with this terrible smell coming from under the hood... Rolled it too far down the driveway and discovered that in addition to having no forward gears, we also had no reverse.
The high point of this drive was Rhy and me making wild promises to the car, if it would only get us home instead of stranding us twenty miles outside of Buchanan, Virgina at 3 a.m. We promised that car things that we haven't offered to the men in our lives. Maybe we should try it with the men too, because the car came through for us.
We were praying to the gods of old Hondas and promising it various rewards if it made the whole trip (I pledged it a replacement trannie, she promised it a wash/wax and detail job, and we both promised to hunt up the guy that put the wrong lube in the transmission and beat him if we could find him). (Car: dying wheeze. Rhy: Baby, come on, baby, baby, just get us home and I promise you I'll get you washed, and waxed, and buffed all over with soft cloths, it'll feel so good, just don't die on us out here. Car: slightly more enthusiastic wheeze.) We missed a money-making opportunity, too, because Halloween weekend is coming up and if we'd had a tape recorder, we could have recorded the sound of the transmission tearming itself apart and sold copies as "screams of lost souls in purgatory" and made a bundle.
(Just in case you are curious... yes, I replaced the transmission; Rhy still owes the car a wax job; and we didn't find the guy and so we couldn't beat him up. Or have our friends with tattoos do it.)
Oddly enough, the weekend was fun anyway. Even Bud at Gibb's Grocery and Bait Shop "didn't mean no harm, he had the encephalitis and it just left him like that, is all." And we were a real hit with the three guys who came in looking for something to use to get "this nasty stuff" off their hands, because we had kerosene in the trunk. I don't know what is more nasty than kerosene (I'm figuring skunk, fish, or the remains of an ex-wife), but they were sure grateful.