The next morning we attempted to eat lunch at the venerable Prince's Hot Chicken Shack (legend has it that their spicy fried chicken is the result of a girlfriend's personal vendetta against womanizing founder Thornton Prince: she sprinkled copious amounts of hot pepper onto his chicken in an act of revenge but he ended up loving it and told all his friends about the recipe), but it was closed on Mondays so we instead met up with old UM friend and Nashville native Laura Miller and headed to Mitchell's Delicatessen, where we enjoyed a decidedly less greasy and palette-burning meal than Prince's would have offered us. We stayed up for another couple hours and giddily enjoyed our triumph. We "toot toot too-too toot too-toooooooooooot"-ed into Florida without a single transmission slip and reached Nick's apartment in Orlando by 2:00 AM. Nick entered a meditative state with the excitement of (possibly) heading home, I drifted in and out of sleep, enjoying the cool breeze and setting sun, Matt did much of the same and listened to the Arcade Fire's Funeral and Neon Bible, Luke read The Watchmen by flashlight, and Paul finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude by the light of his cell phone, having to press a key every ten minutes in order to refresh the light. No one said a word for the first 5 hours. The oracle said we'd have no chance of making it an hour to Athens, so we said "Ha! Let's make a run for Orlando! It's only 8 hours away and the worst that can happen is breaking down in the middle of nowhere at 2:00 AM, having to get towed, finding a cheap motel, and waking up without transportation! Yeow! Wagons-ho!" So we did it. At this point Athens was out of the question (sorry, Laminated Cat, maybe we can share a bill in the future.) but how were we getting home? All of the rental car offices were closed and we had decided against spending thousands of dollars for the repair, which left us with one choice: we had to go for it. Transmission, scrapping the van in that parking lot and renting another for the last few days, and attempting to drive DeathVan while also driving a back-up rental van alongside it in case of a breakdown. We discussed a handful of options: paying thousands of dollars to Mr. He had a vision of a Code 1870, a vision of a torque converter slipping. The oracle told us to stay, that certain failure would befall us before we even reached Athens. As a side note, Matt had just created a Facebook event for our Miami show with the tagline " most likely our conversion van will make it back to Miami without suffering irreparable mechanical failure." It seemed our recently "topped-off" transmission fluid was actually too full, or volatile enough to trick the dipstick. Mere mortals, we had no choice but to exit the highway and seek the advice of a vehicular oracle. Where were the Gods of Transmission today? Olympus? Nashville (the Athens of the South)? Athens (the unofficial other Athens of the South)? They certainly weren't in rush hour traffic 20 miles outside of Atlanta where we sat, sweaty without AC, feeling our van slip gears. Next we dispersed and ambled past Ybor City's many bars, cafes, and cigar shops (from 1900 until the Great Depression Ybor City was known as the "Cigar Capital of the World"), and while Luke enjoyed coffee and air conditioning at Starbucks and Nick, Paul, and Andrew tackled Tekken 5, Police Trainer, and House of the Dead 4 at Gameworks I sauntered into an awesome vintage store called Jezabelle & Her Wandering Gypsies ("Where Trash Becomes Treasures and Treasures Become Keepsakes!") where a small child was constructing a bug mansion and where I bought a copy of Thomas Pynchon's postmodernist epic Mason & Dixon for six dollars. Our first stop, on a tip from friend and Tampa native Trent Watkins, was Mema's Alaskan Tacos (not a misnomer - their menu is based on the owner's Alaskan grandmother's recipes), where we gobbled down beef, turkey, and gator tacos that fully lived up to Trent's ardent recommendations. With our "You'll never make it to Orlando" van still inexplicably running smoothly, we headed to Tampa's historic Ybor City neighborhood to play our last non-Miami show, at the New World Brewery.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |