DAY 9-10 – RICHMOND, VA/WASHINGTON D.C.
We left the hotel in Asheville early, stopped at a coffee shop for a couple hours so I could finalize the previous days content on the site, and hit the road. It was a bit of a drive to Richmond but some of the scenery was absolutely stunning. I had never been to, or driven through the Blue Ridge Mountains until this trip. There really isn’t much to say about the drive besides that so I won’t say anything. If you’d like to see the skyline of Richmond click this sentence. We didn’t explore Richmond in any way. We went straight to my friend Nic’s house and stayed there the entire time, aside from a brief excursion to the grocery store. He lives in a bit of a run down area, not a big deal for me, I’ve certainly lived in a few.
Now this visit is a bit unusual seeing as I hadn’t seen Nic in 13 years. I knew him in High School before he moved away, and hadn’t seen him since. It was by a random occurence that he messaged me on Google Plus about a month ago and said something about my website mikebuckius.com, which is just a portfolio of stuff I have done. I told him that if he was ever in Arizona he should come by. This was before this road trip was even a thought in my mind. A couple weeks later when it became apparent that this was actually going to happen I hit him up and asked if I could crash at his pad. He said sure and that was that. I really had no idea what to expect when I got there or who was going to greet me, but I thought who gives a shit, I’d always liked him, let’s throw some caution to the wind.
He was pretty much the same person I remembered, even looked the same. It was strange to think that 13 years had passed and we even briefly discussed this later on. He is a bit odd, which is good because I’m a bit odd, and I think he’s a great artist. His house, yard, and several open sheds were filled with art or works in progress. It was quite cluttered but again, I’d lived in some cluttered places before, so I was comfortable. Josh was a bit taken aback by the scenery and the weirdness but after a while he settled in and we made some food on the grill and just hung out. Nic’s friend Jenna stopped by too, it felt good to meet and interact with some new people, which we hadn’t done much thus far on the trip. Josh went and slept in the car, which was parked in front of the house, around 11 or 12 since there wasn’t really a comfortable place for him to sleep, and I stayed up until 4 or 5 and just talked and jammed.
The John D short that we shot in Asheville.
Nic had this amazing Lowrey Genie Organ that he picked up at Goodwill for fifty bucks that I just could not stop playing, the sounds coming out of it were fantastic. I gave Jenna a Barista P shirt in exchange for one of Nic’s pieces and at some point we attempted to make cookies with ingredients that were around which included but were not limited to pez, brown sugar oatmeal packets, and pineapple. What we got were equivalent to mutant muffin scones, which, incredibly, were quite delicious. After eating some of those and talking a bit more I headed out to the car to get some rest, as I couldn’t really find a comfortable place to sleep either.
We awoke in the morning, bid Nic farewell, and were off. I was so grateful for this experience, for Nic’s completely random hospitality, and for the chance to see him and catch up after all these years.
It began to rain in Richmond late the night before, and this rain continued almost the entire drive to DC, in DC, and on our way to Fenwick Island. It was at times torrential, but made for an interesting experience. The main downside was that it slowed us down. We parked in DC upon arriving, found coffee, and then tried to find a place to buy umbrellas. We then had to find parking again, closer to the museums, and by this time it was 4 o’clock. We spent a half hour in the American History Museum and saw things like The Count and the Gunboat Philadelphia, a half hour in the Natural History Museum, where we saw a T-Rex and other bones of interesting dead things, and that was it. Kind of a bummer. We were completely soaked and I was a bit ornery, which I felt bad about. Josh wanted to spend some more time here since he had never been to DC so I swung around to the Lincoln Memorial before we left down so he could at least check that out. I turned into the taxi only lane to get close and just sat in the car while he went and snapped some photos.
As we left the city it continued to rain. This part of the country around the Chesapeake Bay is very picturesque, and Josh managed to grab a terrific photo of the Bay Bridge as we crossed. Off to the beach…