weed hounds southern tour, pt 2 – charlottesville
so part II… charlottesville, va. at this point i was already confused as to where we were headed on what day. i didn’t know that charlottesville was even in virginia until a day later when we passed out of virginia. the drive wasn’t too bad but the heat when we got out was rough. surprisingly enough it was 102 degrees in nyc. we got out of the van and began walking to the venue, which was called the box
pat and i stopped off for some free peanuts and peeing at five guys. the fellow behind the the counter got wise to our schemes so we walked outta there
when we made it to the box we noticed a cool little poster announcing that girlfriends would be arriving in town with us as supporters, it was a really cool little poster. i think the photo was from andy’s friend’s parent or something? anyway we had a whole mess of hours to kill so we walked through “the mall” where laura purchased some stuff at urban outfitters and i got a two for one gatorade deal at cvs
we were told by the bartender at the box that we were entitled to some free fried rice whenever we wanted it so we came back and got our fair share. the food was incredibly tasty, especially because it was free. i had the tofu and covered it with hot sauce. it was delicious
oh and they had an enormous painting of mr. miyagi behind the bar. unfortunately the light in the bar did not allow for the depth of field i had hoped for, but here’s a blurry vision of him… you get the drift
in an effort to waste more time we went to another bar that had billiards and played a best of three tournament.
i forget the outcome but i was on lc’s team. i think we may have won? the only reason i assume this is because during our third game the strangest dude came out of the woodwork and introduced himself as randy (a drawing was made in the tour notebook which i may try and scan later) randy proceeded to ask if he could play the winner of the game, but because it was two on two it made it hard. he didn’t quite get the drift that we were happy playing on our own and we told he we guessed he could play whoever won. he then told us he was originally from new york… new jersey, ny. and then he started doing what i think was supposed to be some sort of brooklyn slang and kept saying “‘three fingas’ …am i right? hahaha. ‘gimme three fingas’.” and we were quite lost. add in some awkward conversation attempt to laura with an aversion attempt by me, a completely pointless story about his father’s death being “one week to the day” from september 11th and some weird praise for the connection he felt to us and you have the factors that lead to us filing out one by one.
pat was the first to go just on his own, followed by (or nick and i thought) laura, then nick and then via phone call / “something important is happening!” me. nick and i hurried back to the safety of the venue and expected to find pat and laura, only pat was sitting alone. laura had simply walked off to the restroom without the knowledge we left so when she returned she apparently saw randy on his own staring into a mirror. she tip-toed outta that bar and made her way back
the pool game was fun while it lasted at least. we asked the bar tender back at the box if there were any cool parks with rivers or creeks and she gave us a general direction of how to get to one. at first we followed her exact instructions and ended up in private property, but then by scoping out a sign marked “one lane bridge” we came across this really amazing park with a river running through it.
the landscape was beautiful. we took our shoes off and headed it, because there were already a few others bathing so we knew it was ok to not die in
the light was really amazing as it passed through the opening of the brush. i kept trying to capture the others as they mingled in the right spot.
the river bed was rocky, but well worth the stop. laura had sandles so her feet were ok
this was definitely one of the highlights of the tour for me, stumbling across something like this. being from long island you really don’t get to experience rivers so i was really looking forward to these type of findings
at this spot the light was really amazing. too bad my scanner kind of sucks right now
nick scaling the high peaks off the river
the one thing about the 6 is the focal range on the lens is just over arms length so any arms length self portrait is bound to be out of focus, unless you’re a long armed basketball player or something
we made our way back to the venue because girlfriends let us know they were approaching. i got some really delicious and messy ice cream from a mom an’ pop store
the show got started pretty late, around 10 or so, but to our surprise adam and cousin ari made it out again with a few friends. they rule. we were introduced to his local friend maureen. she offered to let us all crash at her place which was perfect
we went on, then girlfriends went on. we both played well i think
i took a few 3200 shots with the new camera, but was surprised that i still had to shoot at a relatively slow shutter speed for some reason. normally i can get away with something a bit faster
it still yielded some cool, art-crappy looking fotos. i kid, i actually like them
especially this one of jenny. we were headed to winston-salem, nc the next day and the drive wasn’t supposed to be too bad so we headed back to maureen’s to hang and eventually get some sleep. i did well on my loaner air mattress (that chuck d provided me with). however, this was the first night i learned of the southern sweat-night-heat-chills. no one really calls them that, but i made that up right now. the phenomenon i am trying to describe is that when you go to sleep it is so damned hot you are drenched with sweat, then right around 5 am to wake up freezing without any blanket or coverage and you have to change you shirt or whatever you got on. this would happen to me almost every night for the remainder or the trip and would become the reason i lost a lot of sleep. the next update will be from the true best city in america, clemmons.