TheBanyanTree: Scenes from a Road Trip

[Monique Colver]

We stopped at a gas station after we left the hospital, the gas gauge being
perilously close to empty. This is Oregon, we reminded ourselves, where
we're not allowed to pump our own gas. Instead, we must wait patiently to be
waited on, a sacrifice we're willing to make. The gas station we've
carefully selected has been carefully selected by a dozen others at the same
time. We know that it is good to eat at the places where others congregate,
since the food must be good in order to draw a crowd, so perhaps it's the
same for a gas station? We don't know, and our careful selection method
consisted of, "Look! There's one!"
	Robin positions her jeep in line, and we debate the merits of
various options. If we go to another line, and back in, we may get faster
service. If we go to yet another line and wait patiently, we may get faster
service. (All the options end in the same result: possible faster service.)
There's one attendant on duty, apparently, making his way from car to car in
some sort of frenzy. At last Robin decides to move to another pump, certain
this will speed the process. 
	And indeed it does, for we're stationed at the pump for only minutes
before the attendant breezes by and says, "Please move your car forward," as
he heads to another car. This wasn't the type of service we'd hoped for,
since a few spoken words constituted one entire turn. He headed to other
cars, taking credit cards, starting the gas, and then on to the next car,
taking the nozzle out and handing over a receipt, then on the next. If
someone handed over cash and needed change he'd have to go inside to the
office, unlocking the door on the way in and locking it again on the way
out. Eventually he got back to us, collected Robin's credit card, ran it
through, handed it back, and started the gas, before darting off to his next
target. 
	I watched the numbers on the pump turn over. Once seven cents was
reached, which happened rather quickly, with the attendant still within
several feet, it stopped. And just like that, the attendant was gone. We sat
there and wondered what would happen if one of us left the vehicle and
restarted the pump, then quickly discarded that crazy idea. We were in
Oregon now, and we certainly didn't drive all this way to pump our own gas.
We could do that back home. 
	So we waited, and we watched the attendant make his way up to the
front row of cars, the side nearest the street, and then slowly make his way
back. Very slowly, but that wasn't his fault. It was all the cars that stood
between him and us. 
	When he did finally reach our pump again, his hand raised to remove
the nozzle because he knew that by now it would be done, one of us said, "I
think we need more gas," and he looked at the display and said something
slightly unheard under his breath, then restarted the pump. He headed off to
the next car. 
	We watched the pump again and this time it proceeded past the seven
cent mark. In fact, it kept going and going and going. When the attendant
stopped by again to check on our progress it was still going, at least until
he had turned his back and took off for the next waiting car. Then it
stopped, naturally, and we waited for a gazillion other cars to be attended
to before our attendant came back to us. 
	When he did, he told us an amusing story of another patron he'd just
had who was so impatient she actually got out of her car and stood by the
gas pump, as if that would somehow make him, or the gas, go faster. We all
laughed about crazy impatient people, and then we wished him a good evening,
at which suggestion he rolled his eyes, since he seemed to have even more
customers than when we'd arrived, and away we went.


The beds in the hotel were modeled after Mt McKinley, I believe, and I took
one look and wondered how I was supposed to scale the mountain. The first
time I launched myself at it and climbed up, hand over hand, and once
perched atop it I realized that I would have to get down, somehow, then get
back up again, before I could properly go to sleep. I delayed that for as
long as possible. You see, my leg is not quite right. Launching myself the
first time had been quite traumatic, and I wasn't enthusiastically
anticipating the climb back down. But brushing my teeth in bed just really
wasn't feasible, so eventually I attempted a rather graceless slide off the
mountain. Whenever my leg, particularly from my knee down, goes in a
direction it does not like, which just happens to be any direction at all,
it screams at me using the most foul language you can imagine. Or perhaps
that's me using the foul language; we're so closely intertwined that
sometimes I'm not sure who's screaming at whom. (Or is that who?) Anyway, my
leg was most decidedly unhappy with me, but I limped off to the bathroom. 
	Robin was quite enjoying the limping and screaming from her own
little mountain. I'm not sure how she got up there, but she'd managed, being
a rather resourceful sort.
	I went back to my mountain and regarded it skeptically. My leg was
letting me know that any attempt to manipulate it would not be well
received, and I wondered if there was any way possible I could scale the
mountain and get myself into bed without bending my leg. This really didn't
seem possible, but I launched myself at the bed and crawled up it while
attempting to keep my right leg from moving too much. I was rather
unsuccessful, and my leg let me know by unleashing a torrent of profanity.
Or perhaps that was me. Eventually I dragged myself, and my recalcitrant
leg, into the bed, and I listened to it gripe about how mistreated it was,
how I never took care of it properly, how I abused it unmercifully. My left
leg, on the other hand (My God! A leg on my hand! Wouldn't that be a good
joke?) was well behaved and quiet, it having no issues with me. Fortunately
the right one had enough issues for all three of us. 
	After squirming into some sort of position that I'd hoped would
placate the irritable leg I found I was mistaken, and the leg continued to
scream at me in a profusion of profanity for quite some time. I apologized
and begged its forgiveness, but the leg was intractable, and kept me awake
for what seemed like hours.
	In the morning the leg allowed me a bit of relief, and I was able to
descend from my perch without wishing I could just cut the damn thing off
(the leg, not the perch), which is a nice change, though I did give it a few
profanities of my own as it grumbled and whined. 
	Robin let herself off her bed cautiously, backing off into the
darkness below. The ground did not meet her feet, as she expected it to, and
she let herself down further, and the ground was still not there, and she
let herself down further . . . and at least the ground was there beneath her
feet, and all was well. We had survived a night on the twin mountaintops of
the Red Lion.


We stopped for breakfast at Elmer's, and had realized, prior to getting
there, that we were indeed starving, as if we hadn't eaten in a week or two.
This was obviously a deceptive feeling, but it was still a feeling. We were
seated and told we could use our rolled up utensils as light sabers, a
suggestion which pleased us both. Perhaps if we hadn't been so fixated on
food we might have, but since we were preoccupied we instead attacked the
individual serving packets of jam. I tried a raspberry, which I first
mistakenly identified as blackberry, while Robin tried a strawberry. We ate
the jam out of the little packets with our spoons, and pronounced them quite
satisfactory. I then had a blackberry, and pronounced it a real blackberry,
unlike the raspberry, which had been raspberry and not blackberry at all.
Our waitress wandered by and said her only rule was that we not have any jam
fights. This seemed a logical request, so we continued to devour the jam
instead of tossing it at each other. I think she then ran back to the
kitchen and insisted that our food be rushed out to us, for we were
obviously so hungry we were consuming anything we could find on the table. 
	The food quickly disappeared from our plates, Robin's first, and
when she left me alone for a few minutes, her empty plate sitting across
from me, the busboy stopped by and asked if I was done with the other plate,
and then asked if I was alone. 
	My initial instinct was to reply that yes, I was done with the first
breakfast, and was almost done with the second, but that I was sure I'd be
asking for a third momentarily, but I squelched that impertinent reply and
told him I was most certainly not alone. He seemed a bit confused, since
there was no evidence, other than an empty plate, that I wasn't alone, but
that really wasn't my problem, was it?
	After he wandered off I thought to myself, "Self, you probably could
eat another breakfast, if you wait just a few minutes for the first one to
to be assimilated, and if they bring some more jam for an appetizer."