{"id":4200,"date":"2014-03-04T18:51:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2014\/03\/04\/the-24-hour-road-trip-the-way-it-began\/"},"modified":"2014-03-04T18:51:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T18:51:00","slug":"the-24-hour-road-trip-the-way-it-began","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2014\/03\/04\/the-24-hour-road-trip-the-way-it-began\/","title":{"rendered":"the 24 hour road-trip: the way it began"},"content":{"rendered":"
  • Rent the St Pancras Clock Tower Guest Suite on AirBnB<\/a>.\n

    \n
    \nSurgically Altered Ceramics by Beccy Ridsdel<\/a><\/div>\n

    The invitation to Seattle arrived while I was in the middle of helping put together a six person dinner. “The onesie-themed birthday bar crawl rides again tomorrow!” It was already 9 o’clock at night. The chicken had been cooked, people had food on their plates. Wine was being poured, conversation crackled through the room, but I knew I had to start planning. I deeply regretted missing it last year, so how could I resist? I had less than 24 hours, but Seattle isn’t that far, not really. It takes as long to drive as a good film. Ah, but only if you’re driving. The bus schedules are another matter and I had unshakable plans for Sunday afternoon. A volunteer shift, a piano lesson. And I had no car. <\/p>\n

    So I sent out feelers; I posted to Facebook, I messaged some friends. I worked to the soundtrack of verbal jousting, of new people crookedly thrown into a room together. I twanged the strings of the web while the dinner party continued until late became early until around 4 o’clock in the morning, my efforts delivered. I had a borrow car. I could drive to Seattle and come back the next day. It was just as much success as I needed, no more, no less. So I went. I took a quick nap on Claire’s couch, then I collected the car, popped home for overnight sundries, and left.<\/p>\n

    The right rear tire exploded somewhere just past Mt. Vernon. The weather had been inclement, rain and sleet and dry flakes of snow that swirled above the highway like a mystical fog<\/a>, so I had been extra careful of the road. No matter, there was a bang and the car jumped, sliding a little like it had been pushed by a giant hand of strong wind. The white car behind me flashed their lights as I slowed, looking for a safe place to pull over, then came up beside me and rolled their window down to shout at me at 70 miles an hour. I looked over at the driver as we rolled out windows down. “You’re in my way!” I thought, “I need that lane to pull over!” But I turned off my music to hear him better over the wind of our transit anyway. “Your back tire blew!” he shouted. “Thank you!” I shouted back, equal parts glad that he took the effort and amused that he was blocking my only path to safety. <\/p>\n

    Thankfully there was an exit near with a visible gas station, so I limped the car into their parking lot, examined the shocking damage, and began to text people. “Can you send me the address of a tire shop?” It wasn’t repairable. A significant chunk of the tire had come off like something huge and vicious had taken a bite out of the black rubber. There were practically teeth marks. It smoked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Rent the St Pancras Clock Tower Guest Suite on AirBnB. Surgically Altered Ceramics by Beccy Ridsdel The invitation to Seattle arrived while I was in the middle of helping put together a six person dinner. “The onesie-themed birthday bar crawl rides again tomorrow!” It was already 9 o’clock at night. The chicken had been cooked, … Continue reading “the 24 hour road-trip: the way it began”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1691,399,1030,419],"class_list":["post-4200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adventures","tag-driving","tag-roadtrip","tag-seattle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}