Bon Voyage

After arriving back in Charleston I returned to work with Joe. Knowing now that my bus had what it takes to travel long distances I starting noticing a distinctly itchy feeling on my proverbial feet. For the first week back in Charleston my life was relatively stable. During my second week back in town my roommates at Beaufain street informed me that I had to get a move on away from my spot behind the house. It appears that the landlord was not enthused to have me living behind the house, and they gave me three days notice to vacate the premises.

Some good friends of mine had recieved similar news recently, and they were in the process of vacating their apartment on Rutledge Avenue, a fourth floor apartment lovingly named "The Rut". The owner of the house had begun major renovations on the roof and gave my friends a month's notice that they had to move out. They had found a new apartment on Spring street, which I lovingly termed "The Spring", which at least metaphorically made the move seem more positive and less inconvenient. The new apartment was supposed to have a good deal of off street parking and my friend Charlie invited me to park my bus with them when they moved. The timing was perfect and by the end of the second week of October I was living behind The Spring.

This lovely setup was disrupted rather quickly when my friends were informed that they did not in fact have as much parking as they initially believed. I had to high-tail it out of downtown after three days at the Spring. Luckily, my good friend Wray was more than welcoming to me, and offered me a place to park in front of his house on James Island. While all of this was happening, my job with Joe was undergoing some changes as well which got me thinking about hitting the road in a more permanent way.

For months I had been discussing the possibility of traveling northwards to Maryland, where I could stay with my close friends Nathan and Danny, at their house in Germantown, where they lived with Nathan's sister Meredith and their friend Mark. Work with Joe was slowing down, because on our current job, a major restoration project on a thirty-six foot tri-hull boat, was taking on a new life of its own. Joe was taking on the role of apprentice to a very experienced boat builder, Dave, and so my role as Joe's apprentice was in a state of flux. I took a look at my finances and decided that it was time to go to Maryland. Nathan and Danny had both completed the Recording Industry program at Middle Tennessee State University, and Nathan had been expressing interest in working on an album together for some time. I have wanted to record an album with Nathan ever since before I left Middle Tennessee State University at the end of 2006, and now it seemed like the time had come to take the leap of faith and drive north.

So, I parked my bus at Wray's house for a couple days before leaving Charleston for points only somewhat known. Before leaving I was able to spend some quality time on Wray's BP(backporch) where we discussed magic, volkswagens and the Florida house music scene of the 80's and 90's among other things. Wray got me in touch with a friend of his in Greenville who is a VW mechanic extraordinaire. He was willing to take a look at my bus to allay my fears of some undiscovered mechanical issue that could cripple my plans. So my tentative route fell into place: Charleston to Columbia, Columbia to Greenville, and Greenville to Germantown.

So on Saturday October 16th I left Charleston. In my next post I will record the journey and hopefully bring this blog up to date. Did I make it to Maryland? Did my bus explode? Will I be able to stop the ticking time bomb and save the city from the evil Dr. EvilBadBad? All this and more, next time on this blog!

Radio Silence Lifted

One thing leads to another, thats for sure. It has been almost a month since my last post, so I have alot of ground to cover, because me and my bus have covered almost two thousand miles since I've published anything. I guess I will start where I left off, making brief description of what has been a whirlwind of experience this past month.

The road trip I was on when I last posted went swimmingly. From Beaufort I drove southwest to Alma, GA to visit my grandmother. There I spent an evening talking with my grandmother and walking around the town, listening to the quiet noise of a small town. The next day I drove to Atlanta to visit my brother and his wife and my two nephews, Ollie and Stein. There I was confronted by the loud noise of a bustling city. Slept in the bus because there was no room in the inn(a.k.a. my brother's house which is packed to the brim with him and his wife, their two kids, two dogs, and two cats. It was nice to experience the feeling that I was staying with family, but able to provide my own comfort zone in the form of the bus. I got to sing songs with my oldest nephew Stein, and I became infatuated with my younger nephew Ollister's deep blue eyes, which look as if he knows some grand wisdom that his little developing mind can only share through the look in his gaze.

After staying with my brother I traveled to Columbia, taking back roads that led me through a beautiful pasture-land in eastern Georgia that I had never seen before. In Columbia I caught up with my brothers from other mothers, Jake and Jeff, and saw my parents. It was the next day that the fun really began. Basically the entire east coast had been experiencing a long dry spell which ended the day I left my parent's house to drive to my Grandfather's house in Lumberton, NC. The bus doesn't have working windshield wipers, and I didn't think to buy some RainX at the time (I have since), but I was able to get my headlights working. So I spent a good four hours driving through various degrees of downpour, on the back roads of North Carolina at night.

When I crossed the state line into North Carolina it was already raining pretty steady, and as I was driving I passed a parked police car. Soon after passing it I noticed its blue lights flashing behind me. I knew I hadn't been speeding, but I also knew I was driving the all-time-greatest icon for certain "counter-cultural" movements, so in a sense I expected to be pulled over eventually anyways. It turned out that one of my tail lights was out, and after proving to the cop through my words and actions that I was not a threat to the traditional moral and civic fiber of America, he sent me on my way with a word of encouragement to get my tail light working.

After getting lost for about an hour I made it to my Grandfather's house, somewhere around 10 o'clock. My uncle Josiah is staying with my grandfather now, and he welcomed me, albeit sleepily and I settled into the bus for an all-night rain storm. This was the first and only rain storm where I left the pop-top up in my bus, and a lesson I did learn. It didn't allow significant amounts of water into the bus, but it took quite a while to get the bus to not smell damp and dank after that.

I visited the next morning with my Uncle, and I saw my grandfather only briefly, though the moments I shared with him where exceedingly meaningful. My grandfather is now ninety-four, and I am blessed to have been able to spend the time I have spent with him when he was even just a couple years younger. In 2006 I spent a day with him, talking about what he had seen in his life (he lived through WWI, The Great Depression, WWII etc.) and I learned a great deal from him. On this road trip though I realized that my grandfather did not have time to tell me any stories from his youth. Indeed he has entered into a new phase in his life. I would describe it as a process of fading. While i visited with him on this trip he was napping 90 percent of the time I was there, oddly similar to the way my youngest nephew Ollister lives his life right now.

Speaking of Ollister, I made a most enthralling observation when I looked in my grandfather's deep blue eyes. I felt as if I saw the same wisdom that I saw in Ollister's eyes, a real example of "you have your great grandfather's eyes". I don't know what that means, but I found it to be encouraging. My grandfather is by no means sickly, and instead I would describe him as "fading softly". He naps in the house where he raised a family, on the land where he raised crops for most of his life, and he wakes to dine on fried chicken and rice that my Uncle prepares him. He didn't say more than four things to me while i visited. The first thing he said was "I love you". The second thing he said, was "How are your parents?". The third thing he said was to Uncle Josiah, asking him to fill out a check for him as a present to me. The last thing he said to me was "I love you", just before I left for Charleston, and there's not a bone in my body that doesn't ache with joy when I think of my grandfather, drifting off into a deep slumber, slipping away from us space cadets here on God's green Earth.

Well that brings us up to my return to Charleston from Lumberton, a harrowing journey through rain, over bridges and swamps, which brought me safe and sound back to my house/parking space on Beaufain street in downtown Charleston. I will pick up from here very soon, perhaps later today.