So, I am currently in upstate NY, sitting in a trailer in a rather remote trailer park next to the black river. The trailer park is not quite the banjos-in-the-distance kind, but it's close. I am a bit bored at the moment and am making a post via my father's laptop and his slow-as-hell cell phone connection.
Friday afternoon I snuck out early from the hellhole known as my work and clambered in my mothers car for the first eight hour leg of the journey. We ended up in some seedy days inn in one of the Carolinas… I forgot when one. I was cramped from the car ride and fell asleep rather quickly due to my lack of sleep over the past few days.
The next day was another eight or nine hours of car travel. We were a little ahead of time So we stopped in south of the border where I visited a few of the many junk-shops housed there. I bought myself a hat for when I go tromping through the woods, and took a few photos of the delightfully cheesy statues they had in there. I even stopped in the 'Africa' shop which housed African carvings, masks and…for some reason… pimp hats. They had some stuffed animal in the corner that had been sitting there for probably decades and I was horrified to see most of the face had rotted off, leaving a moldy grinning skull peeking out from underneath. I delightfully snapped a photo.
Then it was more time in the car. I was annoyed to find that the book I had picked up turned out to be fantastically boring. I spent most of my time staring out the window or nodding off.
The second night we landed in Virginia in a quaint little hotel that was actually the nicest hotel I have been in a while. It had a dvd player, a whirlpool tub, coffer and snacks, and for some reason samples of oil of Olay. I squirted some of that on to my one sunburned arm, but it did not seem to provide much relief.
That night when I stepped outside my non smoking room for a cigarette, I was delighted to see hundreds of fireflies winking in and out in the night. It would have been a tranquil site if not for the fact the methane for a billion cows in the land around me made me feel as if I was inhaling a giant fart.
The next morning it was off for another eight or nine hours of travel. This time we cut through the mountains. I kept nodding off on the way down the mountains and I would blearily crack open my eyes to see a long road slanting downhill in front of me and I would suddenly start wide awake. I have not driven on hills in a while, at least not the kind sloping off a mountain, and they made me a bit nervous.
Finally we made it to old forge and the trailer my dad is living in until the cabin is built. I amused myself by wandering around the river; a wide fast streak that is covered with molders and rocks. Giant boulders that were deposited there millions of years ago by glaciers. The rocks abound with fossils; I saw a few fish and plants and shells, but nothing small enough for me to haul home. Most of them were etched into the side of giant rocks.
Currently it is nightfall. My folks are out-front talking to some 67 year old geezer who lives in the trailer next door. I think I breath faster than this guy talks, and he just keeps going and going, prattling on in only the way old folks can. It bored the hell out of me.After a while I might crawl into the corner of the tiny trailer and have a snooze.
Tomorrow I am supposed ot be going off to the land where the site is being cleared for the cabin. I am not exactly sure what is going on, but I think my folks are dumping me off with my tent and driving away. I'll have to convince then to let me stop for provisions beforehand. Then.. well, I do not know what is going on. We'll see.
2026 Update
Punching in July 2007: Ed escaped work, rattled through the Carolinas, and wound up with a tent and a rotted stuffed animal.
Nineteen years on, this post is a museum of inconvenience. You were tethering your father's laptop to a sluggish cell signal just to post one blog update; now we carry supercomputers in our pockets and still rage if the café Wi-Fi wobbles. DVD players and whirlpool tubs as hotel luxuries? Those have been steamrolled by streaming and overpriced minibar poetry. Even the old neighbor droning in the dark has an heir: he’d be live-streaming his opinions to thousands while everyone half-listens through earbuds. You were bored, Ed, and I miss it. You actually sat in a trailer next to a river, hating a book, watching fireflies through cigarette smoke, and chatting with no one. Now we’d all be doomscrolling through glacier facts while the methane settled. At least your fossil boulders are still there—unmoved, eternal, like my grudges against modern connectivity.
“2007 Ed, why did you snap a photo of a rotted-faced stuffed animal but pass on buying it? Do you think it would have made a better road trip companion than the boring book?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, that's a fair question. I snapped the photo because that thing was a masterpiece of decay, the kind of thing you show people back home to prove you saw something weird. But buying it? No way. It smelled like an old attic that had been farted in for fifty years, and I had to share a car with my mother for the rest of the trip. She would have made me leave it on the roof. And no, it would not have been a better companion than the boring book. The book was dull, sure, but it didn't have a moldy grinning skull staring at me every time I nodded off. I've got enough strange dreams without that thing joining in. Plus, I already have three cats and a guppy tank. I don't need a fourth pet that's dead. The photo was the perfect souvenir. Take that, foul book.
