‘Viewing’ at 10 am, funeral at 11 am, lunch at noon, Tommy leaveth at 12:15/30-ish to pack for tour, drop off his car and meet the band. They are scheduled to leave at 2 pm. I do various funerarily related things w/fam until arriving home around 5 or 6 pm at which point I can do nothing but stare at a computer screen and attempt spider solitaire whilst listening to the new Farewell Continental album Hey, Hey Pioneers! stream off the internet. It’s very good – and I don’t just say that ‘cuz my darling is in the band. Current favorite song on it – A Story from the Bottom of the Sea. With about an hour and a half left before my roomies drive me to my overnight bus to Chicago, I decide to repack but departure is threatened by various happenings – one roomie has allergic reaction to soy that might require an emergency room visit, we experience hail the size of golf balls, and a large tornado-ish cloud passes overhead with alarms sounding, so we do spend a few minutes the three of us plus cats in our bathroom. FINALLY, I re-pack, roomies deposit me at the megabus, I claim the best seat (front of the top level of the double-decker), and after a few disjointed phone calls w/Tommy in the middle of his packing-up of equipment after their Wisconsin show whilst getting pics taken with fans, I fall directly to sleep at about 11 pm.
(view from seat on Megabus, 10:30 pm)
MIDNIGHT MEETING –
To give some background…the reason I am on a bus at all here is that the direct flights, even those with stops from Mpls to NY were all $450+, and since I’d already spent $250+ getting back to MN for the funeral, I was not about to spend double that to get back on track w/my trip. While I was flying back from Indianapolis Friday, I was reading the book my former pastor Tom Robbins had written and given copies of to Jamie and I – The Day I Was Blessed With Leukemia. Spurred on by his faith while reading it, I quietly prayed that I would find a way back to NY for under $300. Back in MN, I had no luck finding a flight for that much. I was between a 35 hour train ride for $160 and a 3.5 hour plane ride for $420. I did not think I could survive a 35 hour train ride. I mentioned this to my roommate Charis and she suggested taking a bus to Chicago and flying from there to NY. I found an overnight megabus ride to Chicago for $35 and a flight from O’hare to JFK for $235 – Score!!
As mentioned, I fell asleep around 11 pm. At 1:30 am we stopped in Boston, WI? The driver told us via intercom to go the bathroom there so the bus WC would not overflow. I complied, about as delirious as one could be. Zombie-like, with not the slightest attention to my appearance, I followed the crowd of bussing strangers toward the gas station. In the middle of this haze – “Christy!” – someone called my name. I turned. Inexplicably, Tommy Rehbein, my dear one, in all his rock tour glory, was emerging from a van, whereupon in complete disbelief I went over and received/gave a mammoth hug. He’d seen the megabus and had said to the band, “I bet Christy’s on that bus!” For the first time I met the FC band as a whole as he introduced my still-very-asleep altho’ slightly self-conscious about my disheveled-pigtailed-self self, and I think I mostly smiled a goofy smile and did not have much to say, dazed as I was. I recall Josh said I should jump in and come with them, which I at least had the presence of mind to say no to, seeing as I still need to make it to NY for the wedding Thursday and they won’t be there ‘til Saturday. It was rather tempting, tho’.
That quick, it was over and they returned to the road, making their way through the night to Cincinnati. I had a strange specific urge to buy a Coke – those of you who know me know this is extremely rare – and did so before returning to the bus. Once there, I bawled a bit. I don’t know why…I mean, I guess it had just been a REEEAAALLLYY long day and a hug from my honey in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night was the most perfect gift I could have asked for. Wow. It was one of those moments that is so cool you have to tell someone. So I turned to the guy in the other ‘best seat in the house’ across from me and told him. He was an Indian guy named Manish (ma-NEESH), also a big traveler-type who lives in Minneapolis, and he gave me a name of a possible salon that might do henna for hair and advised me to check out Bombay Bistro when I asked where he thought the best Indian food in Minneapolis was. Tommy and I loooooved Darbar in Uptown so I think more Indian food may be in our future. :) Anyway, Manish and I talked for an hour or so and then drifted out of conversation and back to sleep eventually. Thus ends Day 10.
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