No phone, postal system, and North to Alaska!

At first there was a little panicky feeling. I can’t call anyone. What if something happened? Also my phone is the only thing that always has the right time. I mean, I have not a clue what time zone the van clock is in. It says 5:30 now, but is it 5:30 in California or New York? Or is it totally random from the time the battery died?

Then I thought maybe this is the universes way of telling me I really don’t need a phone. There are only a couple people that I use it to keep in contact with, almost everyone else has internet and I could email with them. But those people are mostly other dancers that I network with to keep up with the money. You know like, “Yeah it sucks in SD, but it was pretty good when I was in ND last week, maybe I’ll go back there.. how is it in Idaho? Really, it’s that good? And there’s a bike rally this weekend? I’ll drive straight through and be there tomorrow, thanks.” So that seems relatively important and worth the ten dollars a month and whatever it costs to get a new phone.

My phone is on my mom’s account, cause she got this offer to add me for ten bucks a month and I get unlimited calls. I call her from this other dancer’s phone, she goes to the phone company, and they tell her there is nary a cell phone store in this state where I can get a new one. Fine. She gets me one up there and I tell her to overnight it to me here.

A few hours later this dancer comes up to me and says, “your mom left this really wierd message on my phone, at least I think it’s your mom, what’s your real name? Anyways she wants you to check into a hotel on Tuesday or something? You should call her.” Sooo… it turns out that the post office won’t mail things with batteries in them (my mom is a chronic rule follower), so she has to fed ex it, and she needs an address. The very nice waitress who used to live in Alaska and is getting a degree in wildlife biology offered her address. Fedex takes four days to ship to this town though, and the money here does not justify staying here that long (death of The Perfect Club. It was so fleeting.) But the DJ was calling me on stage so I was like, whatever, mail it tomorrow I’ll stay here.

I was a little offended. How DARE the postal system in this country be so fucked up that I can’t get a phone from Alaska to the midwest overnight? I mean, this is seriously complicating my life. Then I thought maybe it’s the existance of the postal system at all that’s complicating my life. If there were no post office there would be no bills either, and I would never be stuck in towns waiting for my mail to catch up to me. We might be a lot better off without mail. We would still have the internet, of course. I mean, who can live without the internet?

I woke up this morning not wanting to stay here at all. I emailed her and told her to please keep it and not mail it. I walked up to a stranger at the Co-op and said, “hey, do you happen to have a phone in your pocket I could use for a second? I dropped mine in the river..”

He said, “that’s understandable, I lost mine off a cliff once,” and handed me his phone. I called my mom five times in a row and got her voicemail every time. Finally I left a message, “please don’t mail the phone, I’ll just drive up there. Email me and let me know if you got this before you mailed it.”

Then I went out to my van and curled up in bed, still feeling sick. I read a book. Bro got to defend the van from a rambunctous puppy who accidentally jumped on him (he was laying in the bushes). I took a nap. There was a big storm that killed the wifi. Then the wifi worked again and guess what?? She didn’t mail it! I’m off for Alaska!

The world just feels better when I’m pointed North…