In the morning I drove back up the mountain and back down to Hendersonville where I was hoping to run into Miriam for Thanksgiving. She was up in North Carolina with her friend Patrick having come up the night before. I checked my messages when I got out of the park and back into normal reception and found she had left me *my* number to contact her on. I parked up in town, wandered around for half an hour and just came out of the Music shop and was wondering about my next move when I heard “Mark!!” and she jumped out and into my arms for a hug. Well the move was the same as I planned and I dragged them both to the Bear Paw Café for a coffee and more importantly, the use of the restroom. Miriam was desperate to use the internet to submit some work so after only drinking half her earl grey she and Patrick ran off to the Library to sort that out, leaving me with sipping coffee and trying to automate my GPS logs a bit better. She returned about an hour later, still not having gotten online and displaying the all too familiar signs of not having any food. Patrick took her home which I didn’t object to, I wasn’t looking forward to another crisis that afternoon and I went looking for a coin laundry.

With my clothes spinning in the suds she gave me a call and said she was better but still in desperate need of net access. I asked if the people she was staying with didn’t have electricity either… Apparently the O’Malleys do, just no need for more modern amenities. How very Victorian. I got her address and promised to get her net access, since I was now rather a dab hand at stealing bandwidth across the country. First we picked up my clothes from the dryer and then with her complaining in her charming way the whole time got her hooked up within 5 minutes. The parking lot of a local realtor wasn’t quite what she had in mind but I used the time to check the freewifi.com site and see that there was a hookah bar nearby that would be a bit better. We drove a couple of blocks and after a few connection problems (solved by the reliable reboot) she got connected and finished writing her essay and got it submitted. I couldn’t persuade her to try some shisha though since she wanted to preserve her lovely voice so I just drank a coffee.

We walked back up to Main Street and I thought it prudent to make her eat something so we went for a quick bit at the local Irish pub and a pint of Guinness (mostly, Miriam insisted on stealing half). I thought it was probably best not to drink much more since I was driving of course and not sure what I would be doing this thankgiving eve. We had noticed they had Karaoke in another bar down the street, recommended by Jack the Mechanic who was sitting patiently outside in his overalls and scratching his beard as he waited. Seems he is always there, so we walked up, Miriam talking to the rather drunk guy that was heading in the same direction and giving him the usual run around as to her origins. When we eventually got the song menu we chose ‘oh Janet’ from the rocky horror picture show as a duet, I was planning on doing Frankies ‘you make me feel so young’ which was highly appropriate and Miriam put down some Phantom of the Opera song. I refused to help out since I have never seen the thing.

And then we waited and waited…. Jack came over and chatted for a while, he got up on stage for a few minutes until the host decided he would have to wait… and wait. They eventually gave up and sent for a new laptop. It looks like we were never going to sing together… and we didn’t. I finished my pint and that was the cut off point at which I would take Miriam back to her hosts. I doubt she will get another chance to hear my lovely voice :(

After I dropped her off I went looking for a place to spend the night and ended up driving back up the interstate towards where I had seen a Wal-mart previously. Well my memory of how far it was was pretty bad and after driving about 25 miles, somehow going the wrong way and not really knowing where it was I returned to Hendersonville. There were no state parks marked on the map nearby so when I eventually came to a rest stop on the interstate I gratefully drew up, made up my platform and blocked the windows. I ignored the ‘no overnight camping’ signs since I didn’t have my tent out :)



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