The cool, calming female voice on the other line did not reflect the gravity and/or urgency of the situation, at least as I saw it. ‘Due to the threat of weather, all trains to Florida will be cancelled until September.’ Fuck. With two cell phones up to my head, Fatimah on one line and the Amtrak sales agent on the other, we tried to figure out something.
Fatimah, also double fisting cell phones, was telling me train 97 had seats, my sales agent was refuting this; my sales agent was telling me train 91 was my best bet, no one even told Fatimah this one existed. All the while Jack was beeping in but, in fear of losing the connection with the Amtrak people that I had waited 20 minutes to talk to, I ignored it. After 3 different sales reps we finally had tickets, on separate trains, at different times, with an added caveat: we had to make it 100 miles South to Columbia (with a ‘u’), in the next few hours.
We scrambled to pack our bags and took a ride with Jack’s parents down to Columbia (with a ‘u’). They dropped us off at 10 pm for a 1:30am train. Fuck. But then, like a bald, black, shining angel from the sky, James walked in, and with infectious enthusiasm asked the station attendant where he could grab a cold beer. ‘I wouldn’t know sir, maybe those gentlemen could help you’ as she pointed to me and Jack, who had just entered the station. We dropped our bags off behind the desk and set off to wet our whistles, so to speak.
I’m not sure whether James was bigger or friendlier. He was about 6 and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders that peeked out of his cutoff tee. He was from Kentucky and had a bit of Southern drawl, but no African American twang. He wore thin rimmed glasses and he either shaved his entire body on a bi-daily basis or had Alopecia. He was a military engineer and helped design fighter planes. After a victorious battle with colon cancer, James went into early retirement and bought up foreclosed homes in North Carolina and Florida, and turned them into his retirement palaces.
We found Thirsty Fellow, a bar down the road from the train station, and stopped in, it had a classy ambiance, with high drink prices to go along with it, but pints were on special for 3 bucks, so we had a few high gravity brews.
Within about 10 minutes I had a completely sloshed young lady tugging on my shirt to start up a conversation. She was quite upfront and pretty interested in me, or Jack, or both of us. She invited us to her apartment to ‘watch tv or something’ about 4 minutes after our first words were exchanged—and this has never happened to me before, for the record. A few minutes later she flagged down the barkeep and began ordering tequila shots like they were going out of style, my most conservative estimate would be in the realm of 60 over the course of two hours for her, her friend, our trio, and people that happened to be walking by during her ordering sprees.
2 hours later, it was time to leave. We exchanged good byes, thanked her for the BAC fortification and stumbled back to the train station. The 3 of us were clearly too rowdy for the sleepy, cranky crowd in the station so we went out to the platform. The train was a similar experience; we were quickly asked to go to the lounge car. The night slowly faded into waking up the next morning atop each other, thanks to the bottle of fine whiskey we brought along to supplement the buzz of the high gravity beers and free shots from earlier.
We met up with Fatimah in Orlando and decided it was best to not stay at the airport for 36 hours. Somehow we also came to the conclusion that we should walk the 11 miles to the airport hotel, in Florida, in August. About 2 hours into this Suburban hike, we decided to call a cab.
We waited for an hour on a corner in the hot Florida sun, and finally, not a yellow cab, but a Lincoln Town Car (read expensive ass cab) pulled up. 25 dollars for about 5 miles seemed expensive, so we offered him 15 and he drove off, flinging an upset arm out in our direction. Oh well.
We saw a girl walking her dog and asked her where the closest gas station was, she said just down the street. We walked on opposite sides of the street about 3 blocks before she reared her head up and asked “where are you guys going?”
“The airport, but the taxi was charging 25 bucks so we are just gonna walk.” I said to her from across the street.
“Well I can take you over there for some gas money!” Sweet, and come to find out she was a traveler of sorts herself, and while she was spreading the gospel and we were spreading US dollars, at least we had a common topic of interest to talk about in the 10 minute ride to the airport hotel.
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