Day 3 of 3

Day 3 of 3

                After leaving our campsite at Natural Bridge, VA (we had considered going to visit the actual “natural bridge” but it cost something like $15 to tour it and we decided we better get moving early) we stopped for gas and decided to head for the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Sam had heard stories about this place and how scenic and beautiful a ride it was for someone on a motorcycle.  I went along with them, not quite realizing that the drive would not take us in any progressive direction.  We started going up all of the crazy hills, and before I knew it I was above the clouds.  The turns were sharp, the drops and climbs were steep, and it was the only part of the trip where I couldn’t catch up to Sam and Kelly on their motorcycle.  For the rest of the trip, they rode behind me, and generally couldn’t keep up the same speed, but on this particular stretch, I became very nervous about getting lost. 

                Luckily it all ended up okay and we made the descent down from the Blue Ridge mountains and we stopped at another gas station for a quick snack before heading down through Virginia, towards Sweetwater, TN where we would finally visit the Lost Sea. 

                The drive had been going smoothly enough.  It was a nice day, we were moving pretty quickly, we had a simple stretch of road to follow without any difficult to communicate highway changes, and we seemed to really be starting our trip now.  We had settled into a rapport.  I remember stopping at a rest area that day, and Sam and Kelly wanting to go up into one of the more remote areas of elevating forestry, with winding walkways.  Sam wanted to roll a blunt and smoke it there before we continued.  I started freaking out about potential conflict from police officers stopping at the area.  I had close to an ounce in my car.  I didn’t want any trouble on that front.  This was one of my greatest fears—travelling with weed—and I had kept my car at a very reasonable pace thus far and had not attracted any attention from the flashing lights.  I turned down their activity and headed back to my car.  I think I left a while before them, so we must have stopped somewhere else not too long after, because I could see them in my rear-view mirror when it happened.

                I happened to be looking back when they crashed.  For some reason, the reality did not register.  I didn’t want it to be an impediment to our plans, so even though I was pretty sure I had just seen them lose control of their bike and swerve around and lose their bags strapped onto the back of the bike, I didn’t stop.  I kept going.  I went past Roanoke, and I passed Blacksburg, and then I got the call from Sam. 

                “We’ve had a wreck!  Wreck!  Please turn around immediately and meet us back in Roanoke.”

                I remember I had just been talking to my friend Sycamore, who had recently been taken out of work because of an emergency gall bladder operation.  As I talked to him he was recovering at Molly’s parent’s house in Idyllwild, CA.  Then Sam called and I had to turn around.

                I was upset but I was mostly concerned about their safety.  I called them when I was approaching the area where it occurred and they told me they had already been picked up by their car insurance company, Progressive, and that they were at their local office in Roanoke, and I should meet them there to find out what we were going to do next.  Also, the bike was destroyed. 

                I finally found them after a little bit of confusion due to the unplanned nature of the driving directions.  Their agent there was very helpful and kind and he told them we should stay overnight at the Quality Inn and get a rental car in the morning and that they should head back to their home.  We went to the hotel, and it was the nicest one I had stayed at so far on the trip.  The date was August 30^th. 

                It occurs to me that I must be messed up about these dates.  Earlier I stated that I arrived in Chapel Hill on the 25^th, and left New York on the 27^th, for Larchmont, and then said I spent “several days” in New York.  My mind must be confused on one or more of these counts.  I would double-check the day of the personal tragedy for verification (perhaps my calculations are off by a few days—though I remember it being the 27^th) but my internet happens to be down at the moment.  Just a note for fact checking purposes, which is no fun in the case of a confusing story across many different states.  Let me just say for the record—I am positive I was in New York for more than one day—I remember specific experiences, like not visiting one particular friend named Jill and going to visit a younger girl named Jill that I had met once before and made out with in the hopes that we would take things even further, but it ended up being a total mistake.  I just bought her alcohol (she was a sophomore, then) and smoked out of the Ghost with her and she was less coked out and drunk than the previous November and so did not like me as much.

                In any case I hope to get to the bottom of this soon.

                I think we went swimming in the pool at the hotel.  There was no mention of who would pay for the room.  Maybe the insurance company was doing that, maybe Sam was doing that out of his own pocket—I don’t know, it wasn’t mentioned.  But swimming there was fun, and we still smoked in the room, though now under far different circumstances, and I had found out that Sam had left his ¼ pound stash in a laptop case in my car and that he had been very intelligent to think to leave it there, because eventually the cops showed up at the scene of their accident and they went through all of his stuff there.  It was serendipity in one of its saddest forms. 

                Sam asked me if I could drive him to the nearby Sonic Drive-In and I said of course, anything for him at this moment, now that our time was nearing its close.  This proved to be its own mini-disaster.  We drove, and I had never been to a Sonic before, and I immediately loved it after going for my first time, and Sam and I ordered some regular food, and then Sam ordered like three or four different kinds of desserts, which we had no room for in my car, and which started melting immediately on the dashboard under the hot summer sun.  I started to get pissed off about how the cream was getting all over the dash, and the seats, and it was making it sticky and gross.  Sam did everything he could but we had just ordered too much.  As we drove back to the hotel we remarked that the town seemed like it was redneck territory.  Though I’m sure you could do much worse.

                We made it back to the hotel and Sam gave Kelly her mostly-melted desserts that he had promised.  I don’t remember what we did for dinner that night but I think we went somewhere else too.  I looked up on my computer where I would continue my next day’s drive to.  I found Birmingham, AL to be the most logical stop for the next night.  It was at a near perfect distance of eight hours away, and it was a seemingly fun town to be in for a night.  I made a reservation at a Ramada Inn there and we enjoyed a pleasant evening.

                The next morning their rental car arrived at the hotel, and we loaded all of the stuff from my car into theirs.  I had a good amount of extra cargo space now.  We said our goodbyes, with some difficulty and amazement that this had actually happened, and departed in our opposite directions.  I was alone again.