The Continued Adventures of Brandon Coots – Richmond
After a solid day of work, I left Harrisonburg, Virginia at around 5:00 PM and head east, toward Richmond. My flight is scheduled to leave Richmond in the morning, so I decided to stay here for the night so that I can just pop into the airport in the morning. Seemed like a good enough plan, but as you will see, it got sketchy real quick.
I-64 slices from East-to-West in Virginia, and is an incredibly scenic drive. The highway cuts through mountains, valleys, and forests that are too dense to see through. I’ve never seen such a rural area, and I kept wondering, “are there not fucking towns out here?” I seriously went for like 50 miles without seeing a gas station…just forest. And i mean that literally. Forests. Then, just east of Waynesboro, VA, there is a place where you can pull off of the road and look out over part of the Shenandoah Valley. A picturesque, Leave-It-To-Beaver town sits at the bottom, and it is an incredible sight. I took a picture to prove it.
Go ahead and click on that pic, and then zoom in. It’s super hi-res. Pretty amazing, right?
Ok, so I continued on in my journey towards Richmond, all the while using my iPhone4 to navigate. I’m lookin at the map, and I’m like, “keep going down 64, take a right on Labaruner…got it.” Of course, I fucked it up, and ended up going through downtown Richmond. Not too bad, not crazy, but…i was way off of the beaten path, and I ended up having to go through a pretty bad part of town. It was crazy, and i REALLY didn’t wanna get carjacked because I have a SHIT-TON of electronics on me at any given time. That’d be horrible. But, i got through it unscathed, and finally made it to my hotel, only to find that the goddamn Fire Department beat me to it. This was the scene as I pulled in from my two-and-a-half hour drive:
Yeah. All I wanted was to check into my hotel and relax, and what do I get? THIS bullshit!?!?! Some joker probably just pulled the fire alarm…i never really figured out what happened, but I just chalked it up to MY life. Whatever. So, i get into the hotel, take the elevator up to the third floor, and i’m already starting to question this hotel’s reputation. It’s literally 87 degrees in the hallway (I saw the thermostat), and there’s a funny smell in the place. I get into my room, and it’s super sketchy: the TV is an old tube tv, and the color is all fucked up, there are weird paint marks on the wall, and the air ducts look like somebody took them off and slid a briefcase of 2 million dollars down the shaft. And plus, it’s got “2 double beds!” The closet door is off the rails, and the showerhead in the bathtub comes out of an unsealed hole in the wall.
Whatever. This is my life. Haha…always an adventure.
I later went to eat at TGIFriday’s, which was an adventure in itself, and afterwards stopped at the SUPER-sketchy gas station (complete with bulletproof glass around the cashier’s area) to grab a Crusher of Coors Light.
Then I blogged alone in my sketchy Richmond hotel room.
So that’s Richmond.
Where in the World is Brandon Coots?: The Land of Virgins!
As you probably don’t know, I find myself in Virginia, The Land of Virgins, for work. Harrisonburg, specifically. I had never been anywhere near the East Coast before this week, so I was unsure of what to expect when I got out here. I didn’t know if the street signs would be green, red, orange, or whatever. I didn’t really know what the countryside would look like, or how much urban sprawl there’d be, or if there would be any at all. I just plain ole’ didn’t know what to think.
But now I know, and I’ll be happy to share.
But First…a re-cap of my weekend.
On Thursday afternoon (7/14), I left Austin (West Austin, a very beautiful place) and made for College Station. It was about a 2 hour drive, and it was pleasant enough. I arrived at Aggie Station to visit with my good friend Garrett. I was under the impression that I’d only be seeing him for a few hours before he departed for his “fishing trip,” but I was mistaken. What follows is a recap of our conversation:
“Soooo…you know where we’re going fishing, right?”
“No…the ‘river,’ I assume?”
“No. We’re going…to Port Aransas.”
“Ohhhhh myyyyyyy Gahhhhh…”
After Garrett insisted (and I began to feel somewhat obligated), I succumbed to the calling of my Sonly Duties. I threw in with his lot and ventured south. Two hours later, my party stopped at the Dairy Queen in Schulenberg, Texas, where I discovered that I would be without my wallet all weekend. Two hours after that, I burst through the front door of my family’s Ingleside, Texas home, much to the surprise of my brother and mother. I made good on my Sonly Duties.
After a busy weekend of traipsing through 361, seeing HPATDHP2, playing peacemaker, and sneaking into Bernie’s in Port Aransas, my merry band and I headed back north, toward College Station. Then, 3 hours later, I went back to Austin, where I slept at Kurt Barker’s apartment for approximately 3.5 hours, woke up at 4:00 AM, and departed for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
And that all happened BEFORE Virginia.
I mostly dominated ABIA and Atlanta’s Airport (where I hung out with Greg Maddux and Ludacris), and had a convo with a pleasant Virginia native who asked me tips on how to decorate, Texas-style, because her brother is “looking into opening a Country-Western bar” in downtown Atlanta. Also, I saw some good clouds.
Finally, with tired shoulders and an achey bladder, I landed in Richmond Virginia, a city that has a “slightly higher than average crime rate per capita than the national average,” and promptly headed up I-64, in my sweet Party Car, all the while trying to calm my upset mother, who was upset about…something.
So anyways, here are pics of Virginia.
Virginia is, from what I’ve seen, rather lovely.
Harrisonburg, home to James Madison University, is the seat of Rockingham county, and an extremely pleasant little town of about 50,000. It’s set in the beautiful Shenandoah valley, which before this trip was just a term from my history books, but is now a very real place to me. Clouds hang just above the old, rounded mountains, and fog creeps in as the night cools down. It’s warm in the day, but not Texas-warm, and it feels fantastic at night. Hills roll everywhere, and it’s GREEN. GREEN. Everything is GREEN. It’s just totally, totally All-American. At one point, I walked up a hill and saw the burial site of a Civil War General, and took a photo from the hill. A very neat little place, and I was very ok to learn that I will be here all of next week and the following week too.
And for the record, the road signs look just like they do in Texas (even though they only have streets signs on like half of their streets).
If there’s ONE downside to this place, it’s this: I honestly haven’t even SEEN an attractive woman in this state.
But, other than that…cheers to The Land of Virgins!
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