Road trippin' Doujicon- pt 5 (the hillbillies have horse eyes)

Once in town we headed to discount cd place because Owen wanted discounted cds. The ones he wanted weren’t to be had so he left with one cd. I was tempted to buy the Definitive Monkees but well…I didn’t. We went to Minotaurs again and ran into Practice Cactus. Mark wrote in really to the point short sentences. We left to go to some art store, who’s name I can’t remember but it doesn’t matter because it was closed. Nike Town was next and it was kind of lame, I’m more of an adidas kind of guy, so I sneaked into the Adidas store and wasn’t impressed either. I’m not too enamored by the whole Adicolor stuff. We caught the tram back to the car and while Dan spoke to interstate line dancers we made last minute changes and headed off.

We stopped for petrol and my favourite hangover food, mcdonalds. I love cheeseburgers, they’re like comfortable edible shoes; they look shit but they go down easy. I was seated in the middle of the backseat, so quickly my large arse was sore from being of the lump that usually runs down the middle of the seat. Jing had sat in that possie for the entire trip to Melbourne but her small arse was sans straddle it. I also refuse to sit behind the driver because I don’t like seeing myself in the rear view mirror.

We all took turns driving, except for Sarah who doesn’t drive. By about 5, I was riding shotgun while Owen drove. It was getting dark and rainy. The road was slightly bumpy and every now and again the car would slightly ‘slip’ when it hit road markings. This made things fun. Whenever I hit the high-beams the rain would get illuminated and it would appear to be falling sideways into the car. It was cool.

On the way to Melbourne Dan mentioned that the Fuel gauge goes from half to empty real quick. ‘Yeah yeah yeah, Dan, that’s the case with most cars’.

So it caused much shitting of my pants when I could actually see the gauge move and when the ‘E’ light came on it was a matter of “oh fuck”. We were in the middle of nowhere.

“hey the light’s come on, the fuel light"
“we’ve got about 20kms”

Well we had about 20km to the next town, so we drove on, trying to coast down hills like it would make a difference. We took the exit of the highway and drove into some 6 house town. We followed the fuel signs to a conveniently closed petrol station. Backtracking I stopped at a pub and scampered in.

There were about a dozen people in there; 3 hard core barflies and the rest were watching a lass do White Stripes covers on an acoustic guitar.
“Hi, where’s the closest petrol station”
The barmaid (its a country pub, I’m not going to say bar attendant) smiled
“Mt Barker, about 20km”
Shit
“You going to make it?”
“the lights on, so I dunno”
“what kind of petrol do you need?”
“let me check”, I scampered out and through the rain, asked about petrol and scampered back in
“I need unleaded,”
“you might want to ask if anyone’s got some at home” She then moved to one of the barflies, I’m going to assume because he would be the most helpful bloke. I’m going to call him Slurry McSwearer

“You got any petrol at your place?”
“Ohhh yeah”
“would you be willing to get some?”

Slurry looked at me, giving me the horse eye, he looked like he was going to say something, his pause made think it was going to be ‘no’ so I butted in

“There’s a six pack in it for ya” I turned up the ocker in my voice a bit.
“Fuckin’ six pack? Fucking. Fucking think I’m cheap? Fuck. You seen how much fucking petrol is?”
At this point the barmaid made a step back away from Slurry. Slurry’s mates were giving me the eye too. I felt uneasy, probably because of the previous jokes about being eaten by hick cannibals if we broke down. But, yeah, Slurry was getting way to agitated and i don't like inconveniencing people as it is

“oh yeah, mate, I’d pay for the petrol on top”
“fucking hell, have to go home, fuck, …"
“Its alright mate, she’ll be right”

I thanked the barmaid for trying and quickly made my way out of there. I’m guessing Slurry is still bitching about the city fella.

Through force of will, the car went another 20kms to Mt Barker. I ended up putting 53.5L into the 55L tank (when I took the cap off it made that cool suction sound). It was a relief.

We meandered back into Adelaide and dropped owen of first. Then it was me. I trundled down my drive way loaded with stuff. Em was watching the Great Gatsby so I showered, had left over pizza and wine and crashed.

Commercially, it could have been better; each of person from Adelaide had about 4 titles on offer and we all sold about 50 books (in total; 10 per title) each. That’s not really that great, but with our location and the clientele (we weren’t selling manga) its understandable.

Socially, it was really great, though it would have been better if more Melbourne creators socialized after the event, it was still heaps of fun.

So well done Avi, great job.