Day 3: Travel Day
Nau mai
Yesterday we travelled from Los Angeles to Asheville.
It was a 5:45am lobby call that we were treated to, an early start designed to get us to the airport with plenty of time to check in our bulky pieces of musical cargo. Los Angeles was still cloaked in darkness as we carefully stacked our cases into the back of a pair of taxis and began the journey along the quiet freeways to LAX. The airport’s horseshoe shaped access road was uncharacteristically empty (a piece of infrastructure known for causing incredible congestion) and our driver didn’t waste this opportunity, speeding around like it was a NASCAR ring.
As we found our smartecarte®s and began loading into the terminal the sky was slowly lighting up with with handsome indigos and purples. We disappeared into the fluorescence of the terminal and began the process of reasoning and pleading with the airline staff to take our oversize baggage aboard with the minimum of fees.
The breakfast selection at the American Airlines terminal was not incredibly diverse. The options were Starbucks or a cold $15 sandwich. I chose Starbucks. An egg, pesto, and mozzarella sandwich graced my first white paper bag, closely followed by an impossible breakfast muffin.
We left the beautiful sunny LA morning and flew to North Carolina, four hours in the air that were spent at a comfortable cabin temperature with fine views to take in through the window.
Departing from LAX.
It was windy and raining when we landed in Charlotte, but the pilots handled the touchdown beautifully. Our baggage also arrived with us on the same aircraft, which is always something to be grateful for. The baggage handlers at Charlotte Douglas Airport were courageous and discharged all of our large pieces of luggage through the carousel, a fact we found out when our guitar cases came crashing down as they failed to make the sharp turn from the feeding belt.
We met our new bus, an impressive green coach named Lavonda. Lavonda picked us up from the airport and drove us to our hotel in Asheville. I’ll want to spend a long time introducing the many fine features of this bus so I’ll start off today by showcasing the sink and faucet, a masterpiece of design that shows that you don’t have to sacrifice form for function.
It was too overcast to get a nice photo of Lavonda but luckily the bus’s TV has a channel on which you can view nice photos of the bus.
The evening was ours to spend. We had dinner at a pub and met our friends from the band Phoebe Rings, who had just completed their own arduous journey to the east coast of the United States.
Here we are at our favourite Asheville dive bar, another attempt at the candid selfie.
And a final word from art corner, a suggestive piece found at the Hilton Garden Inn Asheville Downtown that could be interpreted in so many ways; an empty table, the image of the viewer, a reflection of the painting on the far wall, and a collage of mysterious words. The art is there to be found.
