The Passenger

Day 6, Travel Day 3

Since my last post I decided that two nights in DC was clearly what needed to happen. I'm learning to more fully embrace my intuition, which I think I've decided to call conservative impulsiveness. And that is not what it is now that I think about the results it yielded.

I was warmly welcomed with a handle of Jim Beam, which gave me my failsafe liquor before beer starting line for the evening. Landing the blog entry in an escalated state, I was given assurances that everyone was going to be awake when I got back from Adams Morgan. It was still fuckin fuckin fuckin cold so I ran uphill from Dupont Circle to Adams Morgan where I met Danny at Dans Cafe. It sounded like a place we belong.

This place is a shithole. I arrived, and as seems to be the case whenever I enter a room, a vast majority of the women in the place cleared out. The disappointment was mollified by the fact that Danny was standing there with a highball glass full of rum, a bucket of ice, and a coke on the table, in what seems to be the bar policy of "make your own damned drink." The next thing we ordered was a ketchup bottle full of whiskey ginger, something I enjoyed because it made me think for a second that I might want to douse someone in the eye or something with a squirt of whiskey ginger, then reconsidered and pissed it into my glass.

Two blond girls stuck out there and seemed unapproachable by any of the merchants there at that sausage festival. Danny began to describe to me a tactic of going up to give a girl a quarter, to which they normally react with nervous laughter, a confused thanks, and probably a generally put off attitude. Implementation of this strategy takes balls, but I went up to them and got shot down for free. Maybe it was the horrific scars on my face (probably not, too dark in there) but they didn't even buy my "just traveling through" line. I think it's a good line. It usually doesn't result in nervous laughter, or confused thanks', but only a generally put off attitude. Going for an edge here, yeah?

Change of venue to Toledo Cafe, chill, kitchy, southwesternish, peak organic ipa bottles, three. Danny gets recognized and we sit down with these kids and burn our time out 'til what was a surprising three am last call, not two. Cab back to Tacoma Park Metro, and everyone was in fact still up, but about to be down. Great timing.

Strugglin to make it happen the next day. It took 4 hours to get out of the house and do something worthwhile. In attempting to catch a Metro train, Nina (who lives with Teddy) and I watched the timer tell us there was one minute until the
Metro arrived as I struggled to find my Metro card. Where is it? Not this pocket, not this pocket. Think back, boy, where would you have drunkenly put it last night?! the train disappears from the information screen. It's here! No! How could that minute have possibly passed?! Where is the fucking card, dude? Man, we missed it. All was lost. And then, found! Enter, run, stairs, doors closing, score! Most dramatic train catching I've ever had, and it was all to make it to the Museum of American History, yawn. But actually it was totally worth it. We only had about two hours there since it was closing, but that was about all we could take before we needed rebound beers. We walked up from the museum to Chinatown and saw Danny rolling by, scored a quick ride to RFD, and scored Danny another ride in the exact spot we were dropped off.

"We were wondering how much this is," said perhaps slightly inebriated girl interested in going a block or so with her friend.
"For you," Danny said, evaluating his fair and likely customers, "a quarter." Presumably he would give it to some other girl later.

The reeeal joint was this place "The Passenger" on 7th by Massachusetts Ave. It caters a bit to hip-chic sort of kids, but when we rolled in on saturday at around 8 pm to an emptyish classy establishment, we didn't realize we were first on the wave, because that place filled up. With classy chicks no less. The best part was that up front there was the bar, some tables for 4 or 8, and towards the back there was a nook. A nook, I say! It could fit 8 comfortably at the two tables, 10 or 12 if you were ambitious enough to want privacy for 10 or 12, but it was cozy and made the priciness of the beers more worth it. And as a party of four, it afforded conversational opportunities with the passers-through. A few rounds later, we all split for parties, hotels, homes.

Dragged ass so hard the next day that I didn't get on the road until three hours after I wanted to. It turned out to be crucial in a hand of God sort of way, and my drive ended up slightly better for it, though I had anticipated company-plans change, flexibility is key. Nice 7 hours drive, listened to football all the way down, lefty on the wheel controlling Longshot, righty on the radio dials, adjusting frequency and volume depending on where I was and which local tower was broadcasting Westwood One. Disappointing games, emotional, and both of them somehow gratifying. Not a huge angering disappointment this year, they played their hearts out, my Green Bay Packers.

The freak out of the trip happened when I thought my car was slowly dying. I was doing 75, which is now her favorite speed, and suddenly I'm decelerating and don't know why. So the path of thoughts you take when you begin freaking out is really a marvelous observation of the tendencies of your own mind. for me it went like this: What's going on? Why am I slowing down? I have enough gas. The engine is running so cool that it's barley piping heat into my senior sedan. What the fuck! It must be dying. OK, now I'm flooring it and it's not going faster. I spent all this money of this fucking thing and it dies on me in North Carolina. Oh son of a bitch. This fucking sucks. I'm going to have to give up on this trip so early and ship everything out. why did you buy such a stupid piece of...

You idiot. You've been going uphill for 10 minutes now. downshift.

I had forgotten all about the Appalachian Mountains actually being mountains.

Safe in Asheville. Longshot did great on the drive. Big confidence booster.

Statistics:

480 miles from DC to Asheville
$45 or so in gas. (tank and a half)
$23 in cab rides
$4 on bacon
5 (I think) facebook friends
17 degrees when I woke up this morning
0 heat in Kirsten's apartment this morning
1 shower I took in the dark (she also has a blown fuse.)

Beers since Friday. This segment does not have me feeling very good about myself because it was proper tied on this weekend, but strangely proud that the Boston College tradition was upheld. Sigh. Here we go.

Day 4-Teddy, Sharif, Danny

#17 Shot of Jim Beam from handle @ Ted's
#18 One half of a Duvel bomber. (split with Teddy, obtained from my cooler)
#19 Lakefront New Grist
#20 Yeungling Black & Tan
#21 & #22 D.I.Y Rum 'n Cokes @Dans Cafe
#23 & #24 Half a ketchup bottle full of whiskey ginger
#25, #26, #27 Peak Organic Ipa @Toledo Lounge

Day 5-Nina, Danny, Paul, Teddy

#28 Big Daddy Double Daddy IPA @RFD
#29 Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
#30 Double Daddy
#31 Gouden Carlolus Hopsingjoor @The Passenger
#32 Oskar Blues Gordon's Imperial IPA
#33 Steel Reserve can
#34 Steel Reserve can
#35 Presidente @Ted's
#36 Presidente on the walk to this party, Adams Morgan
#37 Can't remember-it was bottled
#38 Budweiser can.

Day 6-Kirsten, Asheville, NC

#39 Green Man IPA @Jack of the Wood
#40 Stone Ruination
#41 Stone Ruination-pretty ruined from the night before...

I'm staying another night in Asheville, then off to Jacksonville tomorrow via Charleston, maybe? I'm just gonna start driving ad see what happens tomorrow, wherever I get tired/lazy/thirsty after 6 hours of driving, that's probably were I'll stop.

No MVP this stage, everybody was fucking awesome.