Location: Camille’s Sidewalk Café, Raleigh, North Carolina
Accelerated regularization does not apply exclusively to bars. Having spent two consecutive mornings at the same place, I am already recognized by at least some of the staff. “Back at the office?” one woman asked me today. Yesterday she had asked whether I was getting a good wireless signal. When I was leaving around noon today she asked, “On your lunch break?”
“See you tomorrow,” I answered.
It’s a nice enough place to spend a few hours, sipping tea and presiding over my media empire. There’s no easily accessible electricity there, which is probably a good thing, because the Internet is there, and that means I’m in constant danger of spending more time farting around than actually writing. Yesterday the discipline was good, today not so much. The media whore had to be appeased.
Now it is tomorrow, and I am back here. As I walked in the door the woman behind the counter said, “Tea?” even before I reached her. I think that makes me a regular, in only three days. Not bad. I wonder if they’ll miss me when I’m gone.
A V of geese just went by outside, heading south. It’s getting colder here—last night I even wore long pants. Leaves are falling, pushed in restless swirls by aimless breezes. There are pumpkins on doorsteps and the corn fields are brown and dry. It seems appropriate that my trip is also in its autumn. The summer of Jer is coming to a close, turn, turn, turn, and all the leaves are brown.
Went out to a bar last night and watched the baseball game while sipping Old Speckled Hen. A darn fine beer, I assure you, and good conversation to go with it. I haven’t had a chance to just hang out with Jesse for a long time. Jesse’s is a good place to end the tour, talking with an old friend about what this whole adventure has done to me and for me, and talking about the road, the journey, and the destination. Jesse’s much-better-rounded education gives him lots of interesting things to contribute, and his natural creativity leads to interesting jumps.
That’s about it for today; I’m concentrating on a nonfiction piece that I will be submitting for publication if I can get it to not suck. There’s also a couple of bugs in Jer’s Novel Writer for me to fix, and a pacing issue in the final confrontation scene in The Monster Within. If you’re pining for more words from me, I suggest you go back and reread The Cowboy God. I’m pretty happy with that one, despite its warts.
Past Lubbock, as it started to get dark, the land started to roll a little bit. I rolled with it, cruise control set on exactly the speed limit, along with everyone else. A few people were going a wee bit over the limit, but there were no flagrant violators that I saw. Nevertheless I saw two drivers pulled over by cops. We got law and order in this state, son. It was a relaxing drive, however, as the road was nearly empty after 8:30. They also have early bedtimes out here. The night was dark. No moon and few lights left me imagining what the terrain was like outside the splash of my headlights.