Down & In, in New Orleans

O naivete!  O vainglory! O great stupidity self-broadcast for my limited social network to witness in a blazing speed resembling Real Time!

The Gray Lady was fixed all right, new spark plugs and a bug's motor converted and welded into her engine.  The mechanics were pretty adamant about taking a crack at the carburetor, but the issue was idling and I already knew the trick.  Just keep her in gear and feeding gas, even at a stop, and she'd be fine.  Besides, interstate travel does not involve many stoplights or -signs and a couple stalls here and there are pretty harmless.

She met her match on Highway 64, or mile 120, the very morning after retrieving her from the mechanics in Manteo.  I had her floored and 50 mph seemed to be a bit elusive, and after that pause for Waffle House she wouldn't even turn over.  Could be the carburetor.  Might be the fuel injection.  I am pretty much fucked.  With a travel companion already four days late for her appointment with Dear Father, there was no option but to bring my credit card up to the water line and spring for a rental.  The good people at Enterprise took my money and gave me a brand new minivan with satellite radio, space for my limited belongings, and the ability to exceed the speed limit.  The difference between the two driver's seats was forty years and felt like double that.

For those keeping score at home, by this point I am:
1. broke
2. several hundred miles away from my vehicle in Rocky Mount, North Carolina
3. feeling more than a little foolish
and 4. just about to arrive to my new home in New Orleans.

And it was a lovely approach.  Highway 90.  I had satellite radio, remember, so there was a particular stretch of wind-bent magnolias fighting against the morning fog to the soundtrack of The Doors' The End.  Bridges without visibility of the water below.  Obsolete petrol stations.  This was the entrance foretelling years of mystic adventure.

And then I got to my landing pad to find that the landlady was more than a little acerbic, answered to the name Otter, and owned thirteen cats.  The place is clean enough in the afternoon, when she's in the middle of her cleaning rounds, but come morning those felines have had a full ten hours of unadulterated opportunity to shit in every nook and cranny and they have been remarkable in their ability to seize them.  There was a moment, not worth a full recount, involving a pre-shower towel slung over the shoulder and the witnessing of an orange tabby not quite making it to the litter box before a wet and juicy one.  If there has been a lower moment in my life, and to stress that this was not my diarrhea, I cannot truly recall. 

Projecting a Happy Ending is still a bit of an audacious call, but I'm not entirely done either.  I found a new abode for the new month with a balcony and no dander.  The bus should be fixed any day and I haven't given up hope that it can make the second leg of the journey down here.  There's still the credit card to worry about, and food, and gas, and the fate of my employment, but I'll be goddamned if it wasn't over 60 today with a full, bright shining sun.