Bye Bye Bottles

April 26th: On the way to Asheville N.C., with all my worldly possessions stuffed into a ’99 Toyota Camry, disaster struck on highway 54 outside of Carrboro N.C.

When I merged onto the highway I noticed that Valeria (Also to be referred to as The Valkyrie, or The ’99 Camry. Valeria because of the previous owner, Valkyrie because she clearly exudes a female’s warrior spirit, and ’99 Camry because she is…a ’99 Camry) was seriously struggling. As I tried to get up to 55mph Valeria’s RPMs had reached 4 and were steadily creeping towards 5.

Apparently I had accumulated enough “stuff” to weigh down even the fiercest of female warriors. For some reason it did not seem surprising that the majority of that weight belonged to my beer bottle collection.

I didn’t have a choice; the bottles had to be jettisoned to save the Camry. After 4 or 5 miles of creeping along the highway I made it to a BP gas station where I unloaded the trunk of the Camry which was filled to the brim with bottles. The BP attendant was less than amused when I asked her if there was anywhere I could get rid of the bottles around the area.

“Maybe the dump on Eubanks would take em, but seeing as it’s a Sunday, they won’t be open.”

I could tell there was no more help forthcoming and started heading out the door when the guy in line behind me asked what I was keeping all the bottles in.

“I have them in a big Tupperware and a couple bags.”
“Well let’s have a look and see if we can’t throw em all in my truck.”

There was plenty of space in the guy’s truck bed so we tossed all the bottles in the back. He asked me if I had an address that he could ship the Tupperware. I told him I was heading on a road trip to visit breweries and wouldn’t need the Tupperware.

“Sounds like a nice trip. I used to work for Anheuser-Busch.” He says as he points to his bicep where there is a big Anheuser-Busch logo tattoo, bald eagle and everything.I told him that it was a pretty awesome tattoo, and thanked him for his help.

“Not a problem,” he said and, chuckling, added “It will be pretty funny if any of my friends see me, seeing as I’m an AA member. If I do see em, I’ll just say I fell off the wagon real damn hard.”

I couldn’t think of a better way to get rid of a bottle collection, or to start a road trip.

I long not for the perfect but for the complete

"I long not for the perfect but for the complete, and there is something incomplete about a life that is dedicated to escape from life."
- Tom Robbins