Asheville: Hippie Hillbilly Chic
Where the party’s at
We stopped in Asheville primarily to visit Dayna’s cousins and because it was on the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I’m glad we got a chance to spend some time here.
The entire populace of the town is imbued with a sort of hippie hillbilly chic, and one gets the feeling that everyone they meet, from the gas station attendant to the fast food cashier, will be playing a digeridoo or the bongos in an amazing hillbilly jam band later that evening, and will be mounting an expedition into the Himalayas later in the month. Not to mention the fact that the town seems to have public space specifically dedicated to hacky sack, and I massively respect that.
I’m afraid we spent most of our visit in Asheville at a Laundromat. It didn’t take that long to wash our clothes, but I made a profound mistake while we were there that detained us for quite some time.
I decided while our clothes were in the wash to ‘fix’ the passenger’s side door of the van. It had lately developed an ailment that made it impossible to open from the inside. The idea of performing the hooptie reach around for the rest of the trip was very distasteful, as both Dayna and I were very eager to avoid giving the ‘living in a van down by the river’ impression. So I decided the pop open the door and fix whatever was wrong, despite the fact that we were to meet Dayna’s cousins as soon as we finished with our laundry. “How hard could it be?” I thought. “It’s a purely physical mechanism”.
The door after I fixed it
Four hours later I’d fixed the door by making it impossible to open from both the inside and the outside, and homeless people were seriously invading my personal space to point our various mechanisms within the door and give inane advise like: “You see that metal piece there below the doodad – it needs to move man, it needs to move: know what I’m saying”. Dayna’s cousins were waiting, but we couldn’t leave because I knew that if I shut the door in its current state I might not be able to get in open again.
I finally realized that if I left the door partially disassembled we’d be able to open it by fiddling directly with the lock mechanism, and we traveled in that fashion to Dayna’s cousins’ house. The wind roaring in through the door and rattling throughout the cabin, Dayna checked her seat belt and asked: “Is it safe?”. I of course had no idea, but I think I lied well enough to reassure her. We finally met up with Dayna’s cousins at 11pm.
Our very warm and wet welcome party
Despite our extreme tardiness, we were greeted enthusiastically and warmly by Dayna’s cousins and their two St. Bernard’s. Being greeted enthusiastically by a St. Bernard is rather like being greeted enthusiastically by a warm fuzzy slobbery avalanche – not necessarily unpleasant but a bit overwhelming.The next morning, Dayna toured a local park with her cousins and I fixed the door for real.
