Here we are loading our van at stupid o'clock. I made SVC and DAM walk to my co-captain's house because the weather was nice and it seemed like a more auspicious prelude to our adventure to walk through the hushed city streets. Also, more importantly, I didn't want to lose my step count streak on a travel day:
We then drove down to DC to pick up Runner 7, Runner 10, and Driver 2, and from there continued to West Jefferson NC, with a brief detour to Enterprise Rent-A-Car in order to get Driver 2 authorized to drive one of the vans. During this detour, I wandered around the strip mall complex because, again, I was trying to maintain my step count streak. I found a Nepalese clothing store that was disappointingly closed (otherwise I would probably have bought something) and went to a Dunkin' Donuts where I bought absolutely the worst bagel of my life. It tasted like an electrical fire and somehow sprayed melted fake butter past my back (?? it's like the butter jet went through me) onto the rental van seat.
cool
These two shops back-to-back were certainly... something. Taking "Reading" out of "Terminal Market" really changes the vibe.
Around this point I started getting really carsick and would lie down on my seat with my feet up against the ceiling to make it go away. Brian kept thinking he'd left me behind somewhere and then he'd look back and see my feet where my head should be. He thought this was peculiar, but I think it's weird more people don't ride like that.
We stopped near JMU for lunch. These are the fortunes that three of our team members got:
Then SVC got one that said "In February, a new romantic horizon will open."
>:(
Outside this restaurant, a bunch of slightly weedy cornstalks were growing on a steep slope that went down toward a train track. I gleefully scavenged an ear of corn before realizing that it wasn't wild, but an extremely amateurish garden probably being maintained by one of the employees at the Chinese restaurant. I felt pretty bad about inadvertently stealing this person's corn but honestly, given the condition of the garden and the fact that they had a bunch of rotting cherry tomatoes lying around unharvested, not that bad.
We got to the party house around 4-4:30 or thereabouts. It had a "Live Bait" sign above the hot tub, a bunch of Jesus birds around the house, and a phenomenal master bathroom feat. a gigantic porcelain soaking tub with a sheepskin rug in front of it, and a massive shower with FOUR showerheads in it (two wall-mounted directional ones, an overhead rain fountain one, and a detachable one).
It also had a ton of beds. There were four bunk beds in the basement like in a submarine, four beds in the attic, multiple other bedrooms and couch beds, really just an ungodly number of beds in this house. The Airbnb description said it slept 19, which seems right. I assume it was constructed this way from the begnning because I don't know how you fit that many beds into any normal house.
The walking trail right outside of it was gorgeous though. DAM and I went for a short walk and it was glorious, all piney fresh air and butterflies and wooded trails lined with tall yellow flowers.
Then we got to a neighbor's unmarked house and were afraid we'd get shot for trespassing because it wasn't clear where the trail went from that point, so we just went home.
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