Off to the Mountains

My darling friend Jan has finally left Texas and is living at her house in the mountains. As she was fully vaccinated ages ago and has been all alone at her house in the mountains for over a week she thought it would be safe for me to visit. She invited Russ and Shay, but only Shay was free enough to make the trip with me.

I was so excited to pullout my suitcase this morning, even though it was very dusty. For all my adult work years I had a travel job. Then when Carter came along and I wasn’t working I had the free time to travel. This last year of not traveling has been hard so I was so excited to be off to the mountains.

Shay and I got in the car in Durham after lunch and went west. Our only stop was to Drive though Sonic so I could get a diet Cherry limeade, the ultimate road drink. Jan’s new house is in Todd. She told me to call her when I was in North Wilksboro since that was the last place I would have cell coverage to give her my eta.

I did that just before I started to climb the big mountain on the outside of town. Waze said I had an hour to get to her house, but if I looked at the map it looked like it was only about nine miles. It is amazing what how long windy roads make the trip take.

Soon after heading up the mountain I realized I might have missed my opportunity to use a restroom. It was only an hour, I could wait.

After many hairpin turns up and down valleys and hills I came to the turn off for Jan’s house. There I was met with a gate with a “no trespassing” sign. A gate? Jan had not mentioned a gate. I tried to phone Jan only to discover no bars, not even that tiny little dot of a bar. I looked at the map to see if there was another way to get up to her house. Nothing.

I pulled my car over to the side of the gate road and Shay and I got out and walked around the stone pillars that held the gate. Shay took this opportunity to use the bathroom as I jumped up and down in front of the electric eyes that open the gate from the inside. Apparently I am not as big as a car, but this was not a comforting time to learn this.

I put Shay back in the car and I waited to see if any cars came by, perhaps someone else might be going in or out of her neighborhood. Not one car for fifteen minutes, not even on the main road. That being the case I decided it was safe for me to go down closer to the river and go to the bathroom.

As I squatted behind a group of trees I prayed that now not be the time for a car to come because I had waited so long to use the bathroom there would be no way for me to stop. I think the last time I did something like this was on my way to homecoming at Dickinson my first year out of college when Hugh Braithwaite and I drove up to Carlisle and stopped to go to the bathroom at an apple orchard. I got my car stuck on a fence post and I swore I would never stop to pee outside ever again.

Seeing no other solution I turned the car around and drove back the way I came looking for phone signal. Nothing for five miles. Not just no phone signal, no people, no stores, no nothing. Eventually I came to an intersection and saw a volunteer fire dept. No one was there. Then I saw a sign for a Post office. I pulled in and saw that it was open for ten more minutes.

The tiny post office had a lobby where the mailboxes were and another door to go in to see the postmistress. Another customer was standing in the six foot area by the postmistress talking to her. They talked and talked. Being Covid times I waited patiently out by the mailboxes, but in full sight of the customer talking. She eventually finished her conversation which had nothing to do with Mail or stamps and left. I came in and the postmistress had already departed the front desk. I called out to her. “Excuse me, do you know if there is pay phone anywhere?” She came back to the counter and I explained my predicament. She kindly picked up the cordless phone on the counter, cleaned it off and handed it to me.

I called Jan, who was horrified she had forgotten to tell me about the gate and the code. I drove back and got in no problem. It made for a very adventurous trip.

Getting to visit Jan at her beautiful home is well worth a slight detour and peeing outside. An added bonus is I am getting to sleep in a bedroom with an antler chandelier. I feel like I am in Beauty and the Beast as Gaston uses antlers in all his decorating. They didn’t have cell phones in Beauty in the Beast either.