We’re good until the batteries run out
411: Virginia, almost to North Carolina along state highway 17.
Listening to: The imaginary sound of hobos trying to hop the train.
Note: this is an entry from earlier this fall.
My friends are getting remarried.
They foolishly asked me to record the video for the ceremony. No problem. I spent the morning learning how to work the camera and doing my best “I’m crushing your head!” Kids In the Hall impression. By 1pm I figured I knew how to work the thing, and if I didn’t, they’d be off on their honeymoon boinking like rabbits too much to care anyway.
During our time in an enormous rented beach house I got to know the bride and grooms extended family and personal network. Anybody can have a tribe, or a friendster network, but ask your family and friends to drive 5 hours into the middle of nowhere over a major family holiday, and that will tell you who really loves you. THAT’S friendship.
I’ve been looking forward to this for a while now. I don’t get to see Sarah enough anymore, and we’re going to get a long stretch of unstructured time together. I even called her and left her a voicemail in Boston that must have sounded like a lovesick teenager. “Baby I can’t wait to drive five hours with you and no homework to distract you,” I crooned to her machine.
The reality of driving on I-95 on Thanksgiving eve is much less romantic, with 25mph traffic (when you even move) all the way to Richmond. Thank god we’ve got music.
On the way out of town Sarah and I hit the new Best Buy in Northwest DC. We’re both iPod freaks, and we don’t feel like riding around with headphones on. And it’s unsafe. We picked up a little $35 device that broadcasts your headphone jack on 88.1 FM. This is awesome. We’ve now got a jukebox with thousands of songs available to us on the car radio. For a thirty foot radius around our car is an Excellent Music Zone. If you were driving next to us you’d think you found the best radio station in the world. Of course, you’d lose it the minute you sped up, slowed down, or left our space.
While I drive Sarah plays DJ. She’s really good. The set she produces has me banging my foot on the floor and screaming the music. We’re sitting in a rental car full of luggage and way too much clothing on a two lane road behind a panel truck driving way too fast.
Anyone who’s been to Burning Man knows this feeling. All we’re missing now is the experience of getting pulled over and searched for drugs.
It’s a good two hours into her set before Sarah informs me that there’s a masturbation theme in the mix she’s created. She’s been bursting to say it and when I didn’t realize it from Billy Idol’s “Dancing with myself” she concluded that I was too dense to ever get it.
All this fun comes to an end when we hit a small town and this train. What do I care? I’ve got a DJ rocking the car out and my now constant companion, a bag of trail mix. When we’re really hungry we’ve got a salami that we gnaw on because we don’t have a knife.
Life is good.