Day 3 of susanz and dolapo head south and things are going awry. Most pressing is that we seem to have forgotten some camera equipment in our hotel room in Durham. Wait. Some?? Okay, a 24-70 f/2.8L, a 10-22 f/3.5-4.5, and a speedlite 430ex. We’re not sure that we’ve forgotten them at this point - 1.5 hours from the hotel - and I’m convinced that it must be in the trunk.

That location, the trunk!, had become my default for anything that we couldn’t find within 2 minutes of looking in the car. It had to be in the trunk right? With my bike taking up a significant amount of space in the back, it was pretty tricky to poke around back there without getting your sleeves (or purse) all greasy. In my defense there were all sorts of curious things in the trunk, including 13 bags of Senegalese dried shrimp I was transporting across the country for my dad. Dried shrimp that had the amazing property of filling any space with that smell. Oh, that smell.

Anyway, at this point the mood is light, spirits are high. We’d just purchased this hat after all! The hat represents everything this trip is about. Taking in the local flavor. Making random decisions along the way. Buying hats! Not to mention that we’d just decided to skip Charlotte, NC all together and spend some extra time in the smoky mountains (A decision that would later lead to a scary, but awesome hike). Something responsible kicks in and I swerve on to the shoulder to double check that the camera bag is actually in the trunk. It isn’t. Shit!

We had been staying at a dodgy roadside inn in Durham and were convinced the cleaning staff would just take the equipment. I usually have a little more faith in people, but there was a drug deal taking place outside our window the previous night. Okay, I can’t actually confirm that it was drugs, but there was a strange man in a car for the better half of 2 hours who was periodically visited by people in other cars. Strange cars. He certainly wasn’t selling puppies — at least I didn’t hear any puppies, but it’s very possible that they were sleeping.

Why didn’t I triple-check the hotel room before leaving? Was I afraid of touching those bed sheets again? Perhaps the feeling of urgency to get on the road to Asheville? I hate forgetting things.

Searching for a solution we do the only sane thing I can think of - find a convenience store and buy some sugar babies. Fueled by 32 grams of sugar we manage to schedule a fedex pickup and delivery to our hotel in Atlanta. We’re at this point feeling relieved and ready to get on with the journey. 20% of the mood change is of course due to the sugar babies. They’re delicious. I can’t stress this enough. The other 80% belong to Candy - the clerk at the convenience store.

Candy was unexplainably sassy for the middle of the morning on a random weekday. Clearly she was hopped up on something. Perhaps something purchased from our dodgy inn buddy from last night? Or maybe just life? In addition to letting us take a lot of pictures with her, she let us in on all the hottest party spots in both Durham and Asheville. I wasn’t really sure what kind of party I was looking for so I couldn’t answer that question, but she dropped some names anyway.

My only regret on this trip* is not getting a chance to check out these parties. Perhaps in the future, with more time.

*Um, only regret other than spending an hour taking “olde time” photos in New Orleans. Bah, who am I kidding, those photos were awesome!