Raleigh + Beyond

Raleigh was incredible. We met awesome people. We had good screenings. We did fun stuff. I'll share a few fun stories.

Story 1: The Graveyard. So we got back to the house we were staying at in downtown Raleigh, with our friends from Vintage 21. None of them were home. Locked out. It was 8 pm. The house was on a street called Bloodworth - creepiest street name I've ever encountered.

We were waiting around the house, in the van, wandering, wondering what to do. Then April and I remembered that we had seen a graveyard across the street. Why not visit it, we thought. So we cruised over. The entrance was ominous - black rod iron gate, all bent up and gnarled, one single light illuminating the old cobblestone driveway. The sign told us of the history, "Raleigh City Cemetary, 1798."

We walked through, looking at graves marked from the 1700 and 1800's. The tombstones looked almost theatrical - like the ones at Disneyland's Haunted Mansion - bent over, cracked and broken, corroded from years of weather. We met the famous families of Old Raleigh - the Pooles, the Polks and others.

As we ventured further into this place, the light grewer dimmer and dimmer, the scenery creepier and creepier. We saw more and more broken, slumped and dilapidated grave markers, and above ground catacombs. April and I were beginning to walk closer and closer to each other. I could try to come to a climatic and scary conclusion here...but I'm not feeling it. It was pretty scary, bottom line.

We revisited the graveyard at least 3 more times, taking new friends there again and again as we met them and wanted to bond over a good scare.



Story 2: Our Accident. We were driving from our house in North Raleigh toward Chapel Hill for a screening at a high school in the morning. We were merging onto I-40 from I-540. I had to get over to the right lane. I swerved quickly to avoid almost missing the ramp. The line of cars came to a quick and abrupt halt. I slammed on the brakes and nearly hit the car ahead of us - trust me, a 15 passenger van full of people, luggage and merchandise does not stop on the dime. Luckily, we were in the clear.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked in the mirrors to check our surroundings. Then I saw it - the truck behind us screeching and jerking to a halt...or at least he was trying. He did stop, with the help of our rear bumper. We pulled over and I checked the damage. It wasn't too bad. We conversed with the two cement workers that drove the truck, called their office, exchanged info and took off.

We seemed to be in the clear, just needing to replace the bumper at some future date, nothing immediately urgent. We pulled up to the school, ready to unload and start the screening. We were running - the accident had set us a bit behind schedule. I ran to the back, laid my hand on the back hatch handle, pressed the button and pulled. Only the door didn't open. I looked down and saw that the bumper had been bent up in such a way that it blocked the door and we couldn't open it at all.

I began to run to the side door, thinking that I would just grab the merch and equipment through the back. I halted after a step, realizing the impossibility of what I was planning. We had built cages in the back of all the vans to hold the merch in place. Our merch was trapped, literally imprisoned. We could see it. We could even touch it through the grate, but there was no hope of getting it out.

Luckily the high school had all the equipment we needed to show the film, and they had requested that we didn't sell merch that day. I spent the day calling body shops, driving between them to get estimates, asking about removal and disposal, and communicating with the cement company office and our office. I ended up finding a shop that could yank on the bumper and adjust the mounts, to liberate our back door. Problem solved.



Story 3. Mud. The accident happened the morning after our night of all out fun. Going back to the house, I made a wrong turn (which happens quite often). I so went to flip the van around by pulling a few feet off the road in the grass. The grass looked deceivingly firm and supportive. The van begun to spin and the wheels dug in. We were stuck.

Lisa, Alex and I began forraging in the forest for sticks and logs to wedge under the wheels. After constructing ramps, we made multiple charges to pull the van out. We only dug in deeper and deeper. Seeing into the future a bit, I thought it might be a good idea to call AAA as a safety net. Alex called me a quitter and a pansy. I continued with the call. They gave us an estimate of 1 hour till a tow truck would arrive.

Though help was on the way, we went back to work to get the van out. "Might as well," we thought. We gathered rocks, broken asphalt and more logs. We made more and more attempts to get out. We appeared to be making progress little by little, yet we didn't appear to be getting out of the ruts.

Then I saw the flashing lights of the tow truck pulling down the road. "Let's try it one more time!" Alex and I yelled in unison. We had wedged rocks down under the tire by now and made a pathway of branches to support the behemoth vehicle.

"GUN IT!!!"

I gunned it. And we pulled out, right as the tow truck had pulled up. "Sorry," we said. But we weren't we were excited with the sense of achievement and victory. We were laughing and giving high fives. We had defeated the mud.