Having escaped the vibrant Washington – more elated by the novelty of the earthquake than actually shaken – the next stop was a less historically and scientifically taxing stop-over in Radford, VA... three nights with Petunia. Or rather, 3 nights that turned to four, to five and then to six.
Hurricane Irene, having been buffeted about the Atlantic with nothing to do for a good while, opted to vent her frustration on the east coast. Making land-fall in North Carolina, power lines dropped with trees, and the wind and the flooding caused damage from NC up to NYC – downgrading from a category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm along the way. As the days passed and the certainty of severe disruption became ever more clear, the phone calls to the next stop (Melissa in Greenville, NC) became more frequent and more tenuous: “It’ll hit on Saturday”, “The power’s out, it’ll be back in 12 hours”, “Power’s still down in Greenville, I’m in Goldsboro”... Radford is too far west to have been at risk so we stuck it out as the plans shifted.
At the fifth morning, at the assurance of Greyhound that services had resumed we rose at 4:00 AM to be at the bus station for the 5:30 bus. At 5 o’clock, the signs weren’t good: a couple of hopefuls were still waiting for the 1 AM bus and the office was closed. Petunia, having made it back to Radford after dropping us off, had just enough time to fall asleep before being roused by my call for advice, and later for a pick-up. At about 7 o’clock Greyhound phone lines finally opened and confirmed that services weren’t resuming until the next day. I love you Petunia, 2 hours and 40 minutes of driving before 9 AM is quite a lot :)
Before the eventual continuation of the epic journey through these United States, we did manage to fit in a fair bit of fun. There was a winery nearby, $5 for a talk and a sampling through some of the wines and a free pricelist. I’m not one for whites normally, give me a good Merlot any time, but there was an ice wine that deserves the price for a couple of bottles... I have a feeling that should I live anywhere near there in the future that I’d have to exercise a lot of self control to avoid drinking myself to oaky-with-a-dash-of-peach-cherry-and-blackcurrant oblivion on a regular basis.
There was also the frozen yogurt place and dinner and cocktails at Macado’s, but the majority of the time we spent reclined in various arrangements on the air mattress (parallel, cross-hatched and every once in a while, stacked). One of Petunia’s best friends, another Nicole (the fourth so far), enjoyed having ‘The Brits’ to stay... there are only so many times I can say ‘Willy Wonka’ before I burst out laughing. Since she never stopped asking, I spent most of the time she was there laughing. Hence, I’ve now adopted it as my response to “Your from England?!?! Say something!!” .
The other reason that a three-day delay didn’t bother me is that after a week or so on the road, having a hurricane mandate more time with your girlfriend there really is no downside. So, err... thank you Irene for that one grace. I suppose it illustrates that even in the most destructive of tantrums there remains the chance that a storming child, by sheer accident, might manage to knock two ornaments into a more pleasing position while destroying all the others.
So, after lots of cooked meals, cereal with milk, hugs, kisses etc., and a lot of attempts to catapult Barry off the air mattress through coordinated airstrikes, the journey continued via the 05:30 bus out of Radford, Virginia.
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