Hasta La Vista, South Carolina!

We left Spartanburg after being there for over a week and enduring the stifling heat. We know it’s time to move to cooler climates when the vegetables rot in a day, the bread is gooey warm and not in a good way, every time we open the fridge a stream of defrosted water flows around our toes, and even the Governor flees South Carolina to blow off steam in the mountains of a state with way less moral propriety than his own (just like the other 48).

But whenever we find ourselves actually tolerating the weather (sweating bullets, making ourselves nearly sick), I think how far we’ve come in adapting to our ever changing environs. Being from South Carolina, none of us would have ever said before the trip that it’s okay to live not even outside, but inside a heat-trapping vehicle sitting in a parking lot! I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

Before we left Spartanburg, we gave Alex, Betsy, Jonas and all the residents gifts of the assorted prints we made, including this lovely garment that Bob made. It was inspired by a (perhaps intentional?) design error in the promo material the resident artists made for an upcoming event called the “Make-a-thon.” The flier pictures a crab scrawling something with a red pen that looks an awful lot like “Make-a-thong.” Seth was a trooper and modeled it for the camera.

So we packed up the bus and left the graffiti wall that our bus looks really cool against, and took a cue from our Governor and headed to the mountains of Asheville through the Saluda grade. Man, the air is so much cooler here! We had some difficulty scoring oil as we rolled through town, but when we changed our oil filters, they didn’t leak when we put them back on, which was AWESOME—never happens! I told everyone to thank Tootsie, who is our oil goddess, just so you know. (You might say a word or two each night to help us out.) Yes, we’d already been turned down by several restaurants with “contracts” whose oil containers were chocked full, but marked by the ubiquitous Blue Ridge Biofuels sticker, but our luck was changing. I wasn’t worried.

Finally, we scored a full tank, not marked by Blue Ridge Biofuels, and headed to the Wal-Mart for easy access facilities and sleep. In the morning, we all bought ourselves some new digs: shorts, tees, nicer shirts for me since all mine look terrible. Next, laundry. Next, heading to the Flood Gallery and Art Center where we were greeted with serious Southern Hospitality.

Flood is a collective gallery, studio, and residency space that also houses (what do you know!?) the Blue Ridge Biofuels operation! What a coincidence. Nice folks at Flood. They’ve got so much going on, biodiesel making, glass blowing, sculpture, blacksmithing, artist residencies, exhibition spaces, a library, writing workshops and readings, and a haircutting salon where I will tomorrow chop all my hair off. There. I said it. Now I have to do it! I was thinking something like this:

That way my ears won’t sweat.

Anyway, we’ll be in Asheville for a couple of days parked at Flood, another place where our bus looks cool, and will report soon with information about our whereabouts and all the new stuff you will soon see in our Transit Antenna shop.

Until next time…Jamie