Rocky Mount, NC

6.29.09
15:35 (EDT)
(Time of scheduled departure, 15:13)

Got here at around 2:30, train was delayed by 25mins, so we decided to keep up with our quest and went out in the mad heat to find something to drink.

This town is dead.

It's bigger than most towns, like super wide and really long; so long you can't see the end. Another way it's different is that only like one in twenty shops allow you to look through their windows, let alone enter the shop, because everything else is shut down.

We go into this antiques place and were greeted by the deafest man in NC, with the worlds most disgusting voice. This dude EATS cigars. After looking through his junk and being refused the one thing either of us wanted to buy, Alex asked where we could get a drink, so we head out.

It's still so hot, but we walk two blocks and find a Café.

It was shut.

"They're never open on Mondee's." Thanks Jarvis.

We amble back, now dripping with sweat . Alex spys a Pepsi machine, so we run across this huge road... only to find it's out of order. We give up and walk back to the station. Oh, by the way - bear in mind we've been lugging our full suitcases this whole time. But no matter, our salvation is found beneath a Jamaican flag - there's a restaurant across the tracks. This looks promising, all the signs and lights are on.

But of course... it's shut. Oh wait, it's shut DOWN. This town is a joke.

Alex asks this old black dude if there's anywhere in town to grab a drink; he responds in a way greater than anything I could have wished for:

"Awwwwwwwww S**T!"

*spits his tobacco*

"Drink!??!... Not in this town!"

Sums it up really.

We walk back to the station and a young lad asks if we're waiting for the 79, because it's been delayed until 4. We were. One last desperate attempt we ask if he knows anywhere to get a drink. He musters a sympathetic musing face and says no, but politely informs us there is a drinks machine back at the station we started at...

I just had an orange soda.
It was terrible.

It's 15:55, our train will be arriving in twelve minutes.

Thanks Rocky Mount. You are as dead to me as you are to everyone else.