Sunday January 14, 2007

Paul walks by around 10 and asks if I am still interested in going to town to park in a lot and use the Internet for a bit. I jump at the opportunity.

It’s another beautiful day at Jeff Busby and I am once again wearing sandals, since I am riding in the back of a motorhome, not riding on a motorcycle.

We go to Dollar General and I carefully spend four of the eight dollars I have in my pocket on shampoo, ramen noodles, instant oatmeal, and 3 cans of veggies. It fills me with fear, but I do need to eat. Where’s Alice’s Restaurant when I need her?

Then we ferret out some free Internet and try to use it. It is fast at first, then slow, slower and slowest. Then once again fast for a minute or two, the slow, slower and slower. It is incredibly frustrating.

I try to catch up on NAMI. I try to get into my blogger account to post. I try to get into yahoo. None work well, few work at all. And my bank site is not working either so I can’t see what’s happening.

Then a guy pulls up and starts to talk to Paul. He talks and talks and talks about the surrounding area, what to see, where to go. It was interesting, but he kept on talking. And talking.

While Paul and Wendy are sharing a conversation with him I am trying to clear out my yahoo and namimail accounts. It doesn’t work.

We sat there for a bit longer trying to find out if the signal is giving us problems or if it is something else when I try to surf over to http://www.weather.com and I find out that there is a heavy rain followed by an ice storm coming in tomorrow. Now I am down to four dollars in cash and probably need to get a move on. But I need the food, too. What a mess.

The next free park is 150 miles away and I am tired and frustrated by this turn of events. What to do, what to do? To reiterate, I have four dollars, a lighter that doesn’t like to work, heavy canned food, a real lack of motivation to spend another day in the rain and I really like Jeff Busby Campground. Who knows what the next one will be like? The chances are good that it will be nice, but this one goes beyond nice.

I think about the fact that if I had some cash, I could head up to Tupelo and look around, finish off that section of my dream, but right now that can’t happen.

And yes, I could hole up at Jeff Busby and make it, but in Mississippi there aren’t a lot of ice storms. With all the trees around there would be a lot of falling branches as these trees don’t really have a chance to get tough.

They say Mississippi closes down during times of snow and ice. That wouldn’t bother me, but getting hurt or dying from a tree branch while trying to pursue my dream isn’t a great thing either.

I could leave now and miss the rain, but once again it is dark and I can’t face that many miles in the dark. I will have to move on in the heavy rains that are coming tomorrow.