#for those not aware hes supposed to be my replacement service dog

[gar-a-ash]

Now that he's ten weeks old I tested his reaction to the cane. I think he's going to do just fine :)

[ecodweeb]

EV Rentals with Turo and Hertz: nope, never again

As you may be aware, I justified the purchase of Karen the Kona based on Albert the Audi being out of service for a drivetrain replacement and my husband needing to rent a car to visit his father for his birthday on a weekend I was supposed to be out of town for work. Needless to say the rental experience made him very, very glad that I bought a second car.

This all started out with optimism: he was going to rent an Ioniq 5, which was a potential candidate as “next car” whenever that time came. He rented the car on Turo from a lady who apparently had a fleet of cars with a “driver” who delivers the cars to the renters. This person doesn’t follow directions, as my husband was detailed with photos as to where the car needed to be parked at his work and which charger to plug it into. They ignored all of that and plugged it into a Level 2 charger in the wrong part of the parking lot, meaning the car wasn’t charged sufficiently for him to immediately hit the road when he got off work.

Not like that was going to happen -- the car was delivered with a flat rear tire and he spent over 20 minutes in fleeting daylight to photograph every wheel on the car which had massive curb damage, every scratch, wrinkle, and tear. This car had just over 30,000 miles on it but looked like it had triple that in wear. He was so late coming home to get the dogs that I called him afraid he’d been in an accident of some kind. When he gets home, he plugs the car into our ChargePoint Home Flex 50A charger so it’ll soak up as much power as possible before he hits the road. I got our Ryobi hand held air compressor out and aired all the tires up to the factory spec. The rear tire was over 8lb underinflated -- not good for tire life.

So after rushing about to install the dog cover in the back seat, harness and load the dogs (remember we have a quasi-geriatric who needs help getting into and out of cars and is prone to puking), and load up all his stuff.... he kissed me on the forehead and said goodbye, walking out and leaving his dad’s birthday card and present on the pool table. Oops. This, however, wasn’t going to be the worst of the weekend. He had to stop twice on his way up to put air into that rear tire. The trip is only ~180 miles so every 90 or so he’d have to stop and air it back up. His consumption was low 3′s - which is poor for this vehicle as it should get over 4 on a trip like this - and he rolled up with 6% state of charge (he left with around 90%) and a low tire warning.

Now, on Saturday - the day after he left - I bought the Kona and had every intention of driving it up to his parents house and dropping off the birthday present, however the whole locking the keys in the car at the Greensboro charging stop derailed those plans. He did look at the car and found that it did indeed have a nail in that tire, and had asked us to bring him a tire patch kit - which we couldn’t do. I felt terrible about this, in fact, I moped about it for days.

He did the smart thing and ignored the car until Monday, when he took it to a tire shop. Turns out this thing didn’t have one, but two punctures in it and it was filled with slime where someone used the roadside kit on it already. There is no way this car should have been handed off to him in this condition. This is where things get ugly, fast. He had been calling the owner multiple times and only getting voicemail. He was messaging her in the app and could see that she read his messages but wasn’t responding. So he called Turo and Turo refuses to replace the tire, saying they’d reimburse him if he did it. The tire shop refuses to let the car drive away with that tire on it. Eventually - after about two hours of calling - Turo agreed to send a roadside tow truck to tow the vehicle back to the Raleigh dropoff/return point. John now needed to rent another car to get home.

HIs mom went to the tire shop and picked him up, she’d intended to take him to Enterprise (which he worked at in college). On the way he saw Hertz and that Hertz had a Tesla Model 3 sitting right in front of the lot, so he asked his mom to pull in there. The Tesla actually needed to go back to North Carolina, so they were delighted that he inquired about it. I was less enthused, because I knew he was going to utterly hate the car but at least he could say he’s driven one on a real road trip and could form his own opinion. He loaded up the pups and headed towards home. I called him at one point and it sounded as if he was talking to me in a tunnel, the audio quality of the Tesla was horrible - worse than the Hyundai, our Audi, or really any vehicle we’ve owned with a factory handsfree system. He said that I, too, sounded like I was in a tunnel to him. I’d say perhaps it was a bad connection, but all calls I made were at home over Gigbit Fiber (T-Mobile Wifi calling for the win). I asked him how he liked the car and he said “on paper I thought I’d love it, but it keeps emergency braking in the middle of sweeping bends on US220 and the last time it threw the old dog against the back of my seat, so I can’t use the cruise control system at all.” Well, that’s both unfortunate but also what I expected. We have a friend who lives out that way and is currently stuck with a Model 3 (intended it to be a 3-6mo purchase then flip for $$$ until the used market for Teslas dropped out). He told me that his does the same thing, and that he’s just accepted that he has to manually drive that section of 220 to get to Roanoke. 

When my husband got home, he didn’t say he hated the car... but he did say we’d never buy one. We’d ridden in Kyle Connor’s 2018 model on I-95 and both complained about the wind noise, he said that this 2020 model was just as bad as the 2018. He also said that the trim that goes around the passenger seatbelt in the B-pillar would squeak/rattle - and I said hold up now, that was an endearing trait on your Volvos (the “volvo squeak”) and he said yes but that wasn’t loud and border line ear piercing. He then went into the common complaints -- the touch screen is annoying to use, nothing about the car was intuitive, and that the minimal interior was too minimal for him.

He didn’t plug the car in, and I asked him why. He told me that Hertz told him so long as they could move it around the lot that he didn’t need to charge it. I told him we should plug it in because I recalled reading an article from Reddit that Hertz (or someone else renting EVs) had modified their return policy so that if you brought it back with over 70% charge there wasn’t a fueling fee, 30-70% there was like a $50 fee and below 30% was a $100 fee. He wanted to argue that “They said,” and I said “It’s Hertz, do you really want to chance this?” So we plugged it in and let it charge until it was over 75% charged to return it. While we waited the owner of the Ioniq 5 messaged him - not called, messaged - that she’d so sorry, she just got off a 16-hour international flight and wasn’t able to respond. John’s exact words were to her were “If you’re going to be renting vehicles and know you’ll be out of touch on a flight, you should have someone to manage this for you.” He was much more polite than I would have been.

We dropped the Tesla off and didn’t think much about it until a few days later when John was dealing with Turo about being reimbursed for his trip interruption. Turo finally agreed to refund him the cost of the Hertz rental, but they wouldn’t refund anything on the actual Turo rental. He flat out said he’d never rent from Turo again. He then checked his credit card and sees an additional $75 charge from Hertz for his rental. He calls Hertz and they tell him it’s because he returned the car without charging it. He argues, no I did. They’re confused. You used a Supercharger, so that’s why there is the fee. He said no, I plugged it in at my house and charged it above 70% before returning it, keeping in line with the online policy. This call gets escalated, and ultimately they’re told the office issued this charge and that he’d need to take it up with them.

So we have a friend who works at the office we dropped the car off at, and she told us that no his rental was closed out by corporate and gave him a number to call. The person who answered again said well you supercharged it, and he said no I charged it at home. The agent couldn’t seem to understand this and I couldn’t help but grin when he said “Madam, we own 6 EVs and three charging stations at home. I charged it at home before returning it, I did not pay to use a supercharger or anything else.” They say they need to send him to a Tesla specialist, that person again wants to argue that he charged at a Supercharger. Well, after standing his ground they come back and say “oops, sorry, yeah, we’ll reverse this charge.” 

At the next run club he saw our friend who works at the office. She said she poked around and saw that the office never closed the rental out when he returned it and had rented the car back out to someone else who did charge at a supercharger and it billed to my husband’s rental. Ultimately this was a comedy of errors that only we could experience.

So, will we rent a car from Turo or Hertz again? Turo’s a hard no - when they were RelayRides I had an account and cancelled it after the Liz Fong-Jones lawsuit. I named their treatment of this vehicle host as the reason I was closing my account, as a result... several years later after they rebranded to Turo, I re-opened my account to rent my BMW i3 to my best friend who took it on a 2800+ mile excursion to Florida before he moved to Colorado. I had to fight because my account is permanently blacklisted from renting card on their platform. I went through many avenues to find out why - it’s not Turo policy to explain why they do things - and the NC Attorney General’s letter to Turo got a written response that was forwarded to me stating that I was deemed high risk due to comments made to customer service and not due to my driving record.

Will I rent from Hertz? Well, we did notice they have Kona Electrics as rentals and since we own that model I’d gladly rent one. However, I’d make sure that I return the car during business hours (we dropped off overnight while they were closed) and ensure my rental is fully closed out and that I do not owe any additional fees. My husband has said he simply refuses to go by car if it’s not his Audi.

[doberbutts]

This is one of the reasons I don't love the prevelance of the "if you get a high energy/high drive dog just teach it to settle in your house and everything will be fine" attitude I see so often in dog training circles.

I understand 100% it's backlash from far too many shock jockey adrenaline junkie types harping about how their dog is THE MOST BADASS WERKIN DAWG and no one could ever possible handle their dog etc etc and these people *are* really annoying don't get me wrong.

But I also think that. Sometimes dogs just have higher needs than some people can provide. Ironically this isn't even a "working lines vs show lines" debate because Phoebe is my third doberman yet my first pure working line dog and she's actually been the EASIEST to own out of the three and the best house dog and couch pet. Skoll was all [euro] show lines and Creed was 3/4 euro show 1/4 euro work.

When I was put on furlough Creed became very agitated. He became destructive for the first time in his life. He stopped listening to commands. He conveniently forgot all his house rules. He even snarled at me once when I removed him from chasing some manner of large predator (bobcat? Coyote? It was very fast to leave the fence and it was also dark) from the yard. His absolute worst behavior of his entire life. Why? Because he was BORED. During my car accident recover he was also bored but he was also injured and healing (and thus moping because his shoulder hurt) and once he recovered my roommates were taking him on walks or rotating him as a service dog with their own SD for their own disabilities. But during the Pandemic Summer Lockdown, we did nothing, because we were supposed to do nothing. And he was A W F U L.

This dog DID know how to settle in the house, that was like one of the first things I taught him because he was a wild puppy. But after several weeks of nothing when he was used to working every day, he'd had enough of "do nothing" and decided to make his own fun. By being a shit, mostly.

Anyway his breeder never sold to "pet people" because she was aware that she was producing exactly this dog and that exactly this dog is really annoying for people who do not have a plan to provide for those needs. "Just teach settle and leave it" does not fix the problem when your dog is literally quivering with anticiption for their release cue on their bed, trying their hardest to perform "settle" when everything inside of them is screaming to do something, anything. He was a dog with high needs, and until those needs were met at best he was going to be annoying to live with.

Teach settle. Teach leave it. Play brain games and give enrichment toys. But also meet your dog's needs, because all of those things do not replace some dogs' need to go out and do things.

The longer I train, the more I realize that a destructive dog is usually just a dog with an unmet need. You can add more structure and train leave it all day long; but until you make room in your life to meet that need, the dog will just revert back as soon as they get the opportunity.

[mxstyassasxin]

Day 20 - Drarry

Harry is well aware that Draco is pissed off at hime for some reason, he just doesn’t know what that reason is. Also available on AO3 and FFN. Short oneshot inspired by Whoa, Mama from Bright Star.

Whoa, Mama

Harry knew he’d done something. Draco’s behaviour over the last 24 hours or so was proof enough of that. The problem was, he had no idea what it was that he had supposedly done to piss his boyfriend off.

They had been perfectly fine at dinner last night. He’d cooked cottage pie, a throwback to their time at Hogwarts, and they had followed it up with a treacle tart that Draco had bought on his way back from Gringotts. It had been a wonderfully normal evening until they’d curled up together on the couch.

Draco had grabbed a book as he usually did to read while Harry went through the case notes of his still active enquiries. He was currently into true crime stories, finally something that Harry found interesting as well, rather than regency era dramas or Shakespeare. Harry had even picked that one up off the coffee table earlier in the day, getting thoroughly engrossed in the retelling of the horrific crimes, worse than most of what he had dealt with as an Auror.

It was when Draco opened the book, already curled into Harry’s side that things changed. Draco had moved as far away from Harry as was possible to do so on the sofa and, when he looked to see what was wrong, Draco had replaced the contentment on his face with his old, sharp Malfoy mask, refusing to come out of it.

“Is everything okay, Draco?” Harry had asked, puzzled.

“I’m sure somebody thinks it is,” Draco had muttered back, flipping quickly through the pages of his book, smoothing down the corners of all the pages.

“All right then…” Harry had stared at his boyfriend a moment longer, unable to pick out any hints in his face, resolving to let Draco work through whatever it was and come back to him.

Except the mask had stayed in place even while they got ready for bed. The only words Draco had spoken were “Somebody needs to do the laundry tomorrow,” when he walked out of their bathroom before climbing into bed.

“Sure, love,” Harry had said, rolling onto his side to wrap around Draco’s slim frame.

But Draco had scooted away from him with a grunt and refused to open his eyes, even though Harry knew Draco had felt the bed shift as he leant up on an elbow to look confusedly down at his boyfriend.

“Somebody has an early meeting with the Minister tomorrow,” he had muttered, and Harry knew he would not be seeing contented Draco again before they went to sleep.

“I know, love,” he had sighed, placing a kiss on Draco’s temple and rolling over.

In the morning, despite Harry being the one who had an early meeting with Kingsley, Draco seemed to have already left the house. Although not without leaving a few notes.

“Somebody drank all the milk yesterday.”

“Granger is still waiting for somebody to rsvp.”

“Ginevra says somebody still owes her a Firebolt.”

Harry had put each of them in his pocket and remembered to stick the laundry in before he flooed to the Ministry.

He didn’t hear anything from Draco all morning and, when he hadn’t turned up to see if Harry was free for lunch, Harry had given it half an hour before walking down to the archives to see where his boyfriend was.

An older fellow called Kirk was on the service desk and disappeared into the dark rows of shelves to look for Draco when Harry had asked for him, only to return with a frown on his face.

“Sorry, Sir. He said, ‘somebody else should take the initiative for once’”. Harry’s mouth gaped open as he comprehended that Draco was still pissed off at him. He turned slowly to go, still half expecting Draco to show himself, but Kirk cleared his throat before he could step towards the door.

“He also said, Sir, that ‘somebody should have pressed that shirt’.”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Harry had thrown his hands up in exasperation, not caring that he looked like an idiot when he shouted into the gloom, “Draco, I’m sorry for whatever the bloody hell I did, alright. Please just talk to me.”

He waited, holding his breath for close to a minute before letting out a frustrated groan and marching back up to his own office. Not long after he’d found the focus to start working again, a violet memo floated through the gap underneath his closed door and up onto his desk.

“Somebody should already know what they did.”

Harry screamed to his empty office and faceplanted his desk, pressing his glasses painfully into the bridge of his nose.

When he got home from work, later than he should have, Draco had already left another note in the kitchen but was nowhere to be found.

“Somebody still hasn’t replaced the milk.”

“Well no shit, Draco,” Harry grumbled to himself.

It was the last straw. He couldn’t take the silence and the snide notes for one more hour. He was going to have this fixed before they went to sleep.

Before Draco got back from the shops, Harry was going to draw his boyfriend a bath, light those candles he knew he liked, and bring a bottle of the Cotes du Rhone Narcissa had gifted them up from the cellar.

As soon as he heard Draco finish putting the groceries away, Harry lifted him up bridal style, a squeal of surprise breaking through the mask Draco had put in place the night before, and carried his boyfriend upstairs to the candlelit bathroom.

“For you, love,” he said, kissing Draco’s temple before setting his feet down on the floor and handing him a glass of the wine. “Relax, please.”

He walked out of the bathroom, smiling at the astonishment he could see on Draco’s face.

While Draco was in the bath, hopefully doing as he’d requested and relaxing, Harry went about lighting the candles in the bedroom and bringing Draco’s favourite chocolates up from the secret stash he kept behind the pan draw in the pantry.

When he heard Draco start moving around on the other side of the bathroom door again, Harry knelt on the bed so that the first thing Draco laid eyes on when he opened the door was him, naked and apologetic, palms placed facing upwards on his thighs, green eyes pleading and sorrowful as they met silver.

“Well,” Draco drawled, smirking as he stalked towards Harry, stroking his cheek with his thumb. “I suppose this will do.”

Afterwards, as they lay stroking light fingertips over each other’s chests, pressing feather-light kisses to shoulders, jaws and closed eyelids, Harry sighed and asked what he needed to know.

“What did I do, love?”

Draco just chuckled deep in his chest. “You read my book.”

“Am I not allowed to read your book?” Harry enquired, lifting his head to study Draco’s face, both of them quirking an eyebrow.

“Not when you’re a brute who cracks the spine and dog-ears several pages, you’re not.”

[firepiplup]

How do i say no to people

You know that analogy about people with adhd having spoons for energy management or whatever? My spoons are on backorder from like 2 months ago and more got on that list now

The problem is that all of the things I'm being asked to do are Very Important Things

I have to feed my diabetic cat. This in itself is not a problem, however she's needs to eat at a specific time (12 hour spacing) and my current sleeping situation along with work do not allow this to happen consistently. Currently trying for 7:30, we'll see how it goes

My apartment has bedbugs, and there's no way in fucking hell I'm sleeping on my living room floor until my scumlord landlord actually gets the guy to come back to spray because he did spray but I'm still seeing adults and i "need to give the spray time to work" it's been fucking 2 weeks i don't know how is supposed to work but i feel like after 2 weeks whatever spray you did isn't going to get any stronger i just want to sleep in my own bed it's been like this since fucking March

With that part explained, I'm sleeping at my mom's house on the other side of town. This in itself isn't much of a problem, however as "payment" i have to take care of her dog in the morning, to practice because she's going on a week long vacation in October and none of her dogs can just be taken care of like normal dogs. He needs to wear a diaper to leave the room while i pick up his shit and soiled weewee pad and mop the floor, give him some time to be out of his room, and then feed him his special food mix. The other dog has allergies and probably will get into something he shouldn't, then not use the bathroom outside even though he literally has a doggy door that has constant access to the backyard. Neither dog get along with each other, which is why they are separated. Thank fuck the cat is just normal, this is why i prefer them

Now with THAT explained, it's difficult to take care of my own cat on time in the morning. But as the legendary Billy Mays says: But wait, there's more!

I just got rehired at my job working in a local understaffed pizzeria. My friend, ego also works there, is on vacation (good for her, she deserves it, absolutely no negativity towards her) so i have acquired her hours. So i now work 6 days a week, kinda sorta clopen but i guess it's more of opelose. Or a combination of both? Idk. The point here is, I'm then dealing with essentially running half a restaurant alone 6 days a week, with it not being 7 purely because the owner himself ALSO has the same work schedule as far as I'm aware, and wanted to give himself a day off, and since we are so understaffed it would be impossible unless we literally closed. My tasks include answering the phone, washing dishes, making sandwiches, making dinners, folding pizza boxes, and cleaning the tables/equipment on that side of the restaurant. So essentially everything except making pizzas, cleaning the pizza area, mopping in general, and driving. We generally close at 9, 10 on Friday and Saturday. Guess who was explicitly rehired to close those days? Guess how that's going to work with me having to be home around 7:30 to take care of my own cat? I have no idea either. It's only for about 3 weeks, but my mom, whom i have not asked for any additional help with anything, won't feed the cat while i have work, even though there isn't a guarantee that i can leave on time to THEN RETURN to close, because again I'm the only one on that side of the building. I understand the fear of the bedbugs, so that's probably it, but it still fucking sucks because the kitchen is on the other side of the apartment from the bedroom and there is literally no reason to go there to feed her. But i get it

Did we get to where i can do my own ADLs? Of course not. My neighbor is in the hospital, and her husband is blind. This is a new development that was only discovered an hour before starting this post (about 3:30 am for me). She's ok, it's for mental health reasons, and that's her own business about that. Her husband being blind is not a new development however. And he needs help taking care of the pets, specifically the birds. Which is fine, they just also need to eat on their own schedule. 8am, around lunchtime, and 8pm. Guess who's still at work? One of the birds is special needs because her beak got injured and needs to be essentially spoon fed. Which the blind husband can't do at all. Fairly simple task, but just adding to my obligations that are Very Important because they involve making sure things don't starve to death while my neighbor is in Crisis

Ok let's see, that's 4 Very Important Tasks/Obligations, and only one was originally my own voluntary one. Still not at taking care of myself yet, but i have my shelter, i have my job ("part time" minimum wage, hurray. Part time because even with me being there 6 fucking days a week open to close it still isn't technically enough hours for the state to recognize it as full time), and I'm taking care of *counting* about 8 pets for the next week. Will unemployment give me my money that I've been claiming since March? No? Will they let me claim with my new working hours that makes that while process even harder? Technically but it'll take over an hour for it to process and it doesn't even do that in the end? Well fuck, guess i have to wait to get paid on the books in cash and beg for a hand written paystub and have my hours worked written down. Glad i earned $100 this week, i hope now that my hours have increased i get some more

Next on the list, appointments. Because I'm a dumbass who can't remember shit if it isn't consistently recurring, i overbooked myself for next week. My much needed therapy appointment with my therapist that I've only met once and is the replacement for my much better therapist that i actually had a relationship with is supposed to have a session with me on Tuesday. Will i remember to do it this time? Possibly since i actually remembered it's on Tuesday. Will she send me the reminder text with the zoom link? Probably not. Wednesday, my one day off, thank fuck for that, is the main problem with the scheduling. My med appointment is for 11:30. Cool, can do. Driving lesson at 12. Oh, that's a little close, but i can manage that probably. I only average 1 lesson per year and a half, so it's fine, it's "healthy" to be nervous about operating a death machine powered by explosions. Have to go to social services to pick up, or attempt to, a new food stamps card. They probably close at 5, and add a Non Driver, i need to rely on someone to take me. The sooner the better, but it can't be during the lesson. Don't forget to take care of the creatures before and during all of this.

Ok. Great. There's an hour before work. Time to shower, because it's so fucking hot I'll be sweating like crazy by the time i get around the corner to the pizzeria, with me literally getting out and dressed and then walking out the door. Glad i finally did still to take care of myself. Eating? I might have something i can heat up quickly while the cat eats and so i can take my own meds. Dishes? Those are going to have to wait, i hope the heat wave doesn't get too bad, but it's been like this for a while, still slowly chipping away at them. Sleep? Severe insomnia. I partially blame the bed, my mattress is so comfortable, i hope the bedbugs like it because i can't fucking use it right now. I'd be sleeping so fucking soundly if i were in my own bed, and yet here i am. Maybe i should take the Trazodone now. I just hope I'll wake up on time. Oh look I'm exhausted, can't afford to buy comparatively better prepared coffee from Dunkin, so i guess my shitty at home coffee is going to have to do. Black because i don't have any creamer or milk or lactose free milk in my house. Just the way i hate it. Gonna have to deal with that i guess, maybe I'll learn to like it

The coffee pot lives in my fridge now. I'm worried to put it with the other dishes because if it sits there, not being washed like everything else, then i won't even have the option of coffee. It's just water and ground up beans, I'm sure it's fine

Maybe i can find some kind of coping skill/hobby to help me through my limited me time. Let's see.... I like to crochet, and that helps me get through the dishes by letting me alternate between them and a row/round on one of my many started projects. What? It's in a giant garbage bag with a bedbug treatment stick because of the damn ass bedbugs? Can't open it for at least another week and even then there isn't a place to put the yarn safely? Well fuck. I found that really helpful with keeping me grounded. Umm, well looking online, i should *checks notes* buy new yarn in the meantime and keep it somewhere safe. Uh, well, i can't afford more yarn now and i have nowhere to put it. Videogames it is maybe? Oh fuck now I've hyper focused too long on pokemon, rhythm heaven, and whatever daily games i do, i think i have 5 of those of varying lengths of time spent on them

Did i remember to brush my teeth? No. Do i remember that i should and then when i get out of the shower so i forget to actually execute? Yes. Have i gone insane? Probably

How many spoons is a person supposed to have per day? It takes more for me just to get through the day in general. Why does everyone need me to do their Very Important Tasks? Why is there never anyone else? Can my neighbor just not buy more birds when she gets home from Crisis?

I just want to have good mental health, why is this so hard

[jed-thomas]

Debt and Unreality at a British University

Most of the time, when journalists or researchers ask students in Britain about their “concerns” and their “experience”, they’re not looking for answers like: ‘I don’t feel real.’ Because, well, what do you do with that?

A friend of mine sat on a stiff leather couch in the hallway, tiredly scrolling. She’d just clocked out. For nine grand, we were getting about 7 hours of teaching a week. The rest of the time, of course, was supposed to be devoted to reading all the material we’d be discussing in seminars or attending lectures on. But she was working part-time at a Pizza Express. The maintenance loans only stretch so far, especially with rent around here. And you have to catch a bus to get to campus. Lots of us, our parents helped out. But if the ‘rents can’t or won’t pay, you’re a little stuffed.

In 2019, it was reported that over half of young people are now attending university. These figures represent the fulfilment of a target set by Tony Blair at a Labour Party conference in 1999, during his first term as Prime Minister. In July of the year before, Blair’s parliament passed the Teaching and Higher Education Act, introducing tuition fees for universities across the UK. In 1990, around 25% of young people stayed in some form of full-time education beyond the age of 18. Today, most young Britons will have experienced the presumption that they’re a university student and frequently, the expectation.

Yesterday, the University of Warwick’s official Twitter account shared a link to a blog post on how to ‘relieve intense stress in 60-seconds.’ The post was written by a current student.

In 1962, towards the end of Harold Macmillan’s Conservative premiership, “ordinarily resident” students were exempted from tuition fees and made eligible for a means-tested maintenance grant. Shortly after the Teaching and Higher Education Act of 1998, maintenance grants were replaced with loans. In 2004, the cap on tuition fees rose to £3,000 and by 2010, it had risen to its current rate of around £9,000. There were protests over that last increase, of course. The protests were in 2010 and I went to university in 2017. I now owe the British government around £27,000 for tuition and around £10,000 for maintenance. If you’re going this year, you’ll end up owing roughly the same - more, if your family earns less than mine.

You hear things. “Oh, they’re antidepressants.” A friend with a weird flatmate who never leaves their room. Oddly intense desperation eking out of drunk students from some corner of a smoking-area. Vaguely recognisable names and their time of death. “Honestly, just couldn’t be bothered to get up.” An acquaintance from your course drops out and moves back home. Barely concealed frustration in your professor’s tone, hushed rants in faculty corridors. And you notice other things. Admissions of 'suicidal ideation' and life-crises on a FaceBook page which is supposed to be about students sending anonymous messages of romantic interest. Sarcastic tweets about ‘mental health dogs’ and ‘mindfulness seminars’ have become cliché. A routinely empty chair in your seminar room. Strained eyes staring into the middle-ground, silence attending the teacher’s question. Dysfunction as normality. Your diagnosis in your bio next to where you go to uni.

In 2014, it was reported that one in seven full-time students also work full-time. The same report put the proportion of full-time students working part-time at a third. A number of reasons were given as to why they were doing this. I wonder, when they look at their bank accounts, or their accommodation, or their text on sociology, on Latin American history, on virology, existentialism, do they feel they have a handle on things? "I’m a full-time barista, full-time student." "Hello, I’m an impossibility."

For students, the British university is an experiment in unreality. Am I a customer or a pupil? Am I demanding a service from a business or being educated by my elders for my own good? Will it be my fault for selecting a ‘non-applicable’ degree or their fault for selling it to me? Everything is optional, even when it isn’t. You spend all week pouring over the text but feel embarrassed to correct or question the people who clearly didn’t because the professor doesn’t: “Don’t worry if you haven’t done the reading.” Next time, you just put in a sentence or two to fill one of the many silences, improvising off of what others have said, pretending you read whatever it was. Then, of course, coursework is set assessing your knowledge of the curriculum. You spend a couple of days stressed out, hoping to turn your lack of knowledge into a scholarly tone of caution and hedged bets. You go to a careers fair, a student union election, a party, a debate. Nothing sticks, tomorrow is the same day. Your teachers are devotees of a faith but you have to fill the ranks of their picket against the Church. The protestors mass, fill the campus with tension and noise, and then, in a couple of weeks, you’re sitting in the same seminar room with the same professor doing the same thing. You have to think surprisingly hard to remember that past, fugitive now in an opaque present. The only thing that changes is that a few new buildings emerge from their shells of scaffolding. When you miss almost five weeks, there is an email or two. One time, because of your chronic truancy, you get some mark or something, some strike against your name. Nothing happens. In fact, you find it incredibly hard to even find the place where that warning is actually recorded, displayed. You graduate with a First.

Recently, there has been a steady trickle of data, news items, and reports, gradually exposing the rate of suicide in higher education in the UK. It came to a head last week, as a Conservative peer, Lord Lucas, called for a bill which would give British universities a duty of care in the mental health outcomes of their students. Lord Lucas’ plea represents the mainstream of a movement by aggrieved parents of young people who took their lives whilst at university. One of these young people was Benjamin Murray, a 19-year-old in his first year studying English Literature at Bristol University. Shortly before falling to his death, Murray was told by the university that he would have to leave. A local newspaper reports that, according to sources at the university, his attendance was ‘sporadic’ and he had ‘failed to hand in expected work’. Discussing interactions he had with Murray which revealed that the undergraduate was suffering with an anxiety disorder, senior tutor Ben Gunter remarks that: 'A large number of students we see have varying levels of anxiety.’

I mean, look at it this way. You’re saddled with a debt, a sizeable debt. It makes you nervous just looking at all the zeroes. But this moment of selling your soul was planned, it was expected from the beginning. And there are voices all around you that keep coming up and whispering in your ear. It’s just a tax on spending after education. No-one’s expecting you to pay it back. It all gets forgiven when you hit 40. What’s a person to do in that situation? The same government that portrayed the national debt as an existential threat is the same government that turns around and says: Don’t worry. Does debt matter or doesn’t it? Is this real or isn’t it?

People are screaming, again. It's 5:35 in the afternoon. Earliest you’ve heard it this week. They’re really drunk. Or on something. You’re only dimly aware of it, really. It’s ubiquitous, it’s ambiance. Dimly, you wonder if they realise how loud they are being, how obvious their public intoxication is. You perk up when you recognise a few voices. People on your course - you’ve got an essay due tomorrow at noon. Down the ages, goes the cliché, students are drunk and reckless with deadlines. But you’ve been wondering whether it really matters if you get a 1:1 instead of a 2:1. Don’t they inflate the numbers, anyway? And besides, it's experience that matters on a CV, everyone’s got a degree these days. I’d just be another idiot with a 1:1. Your flatmate drunkenly knocks on your door and you seriously consider going back on your refusal to go out tonight.

A survey of undergraduates in seven universities in England reportedly found very high rates of dangerous drinking, with 41% identified as ‘hazardous drinkers’. It also considers that one in five students were likely to be diagnosable as alcoholic.

Every weekend students give in to the unreality. I know what you're thinking. Of course, young people have always experimented with substances, acted like they were invulnerable, ignored consequences. But many of the young people before us were unfamiliar with this level of unreality, this level of confusion. So the recklessness intensifies in those claustrophobic spaces that remain open to us.

I have deadlines, right now. A few days to go. I’ve been looking at the news, all the statistics on internships and jobs falling through for graduates and young people, in general. The worst hit. I’ve been talking to my friends, moaning about the job hunt, the rejections and the no-replies. Anecdotes tumble down the grape-vine of graduates from respected universities not even being able to get a part-time job at a supermarket because of the number of applicants or whatever. A couple of my friends are intermitting due to mental health problems. When I was home, before the most recent lockdown, a number of my friends and I worked at a pub. I’m back at uni and they’re still there. Class of 2020, all of us. Of course, they like it, it’s fine. But where do we go from here?

Don’t ask me, mate, I’ve got deadlines.

[crystaldwightsworld]

Adam, post surgery, on medical leave...

So... I’ve got this whole, weird, crazy, obviously non canon idea in my head for something I wanna do.

It’s obvious that Adam is struggling even after the 6 months of medical leave Sarif has given him but what’s been on my mind is, what’s he been doing in the 6 months prior?

Surely, drinking up a storm, smoking and eating massive amounts of cereal to try and manage to cope but I can’t imagine the amount of pain he must have been in in adjusting to his augmentations. I mean, severe pain, agony and anguish. Not to mention the clear breakdown he has the first night he gets home from the clinic. I’m talking a severe breakdown, crying, beating on the wall of his shower, wailing, angry and pained tears. It’s all he can do on most days other than get out of bed. He’s fallen to the bottom pit of a depressive state that he can’t even be bothered to clean up after himself (i.e. the piles of empty cereal bowls strewn about counter tops and tables, unpacked belongings, etc), let alone look at himself (the first broken mirror). Adam loathes his augs, suffers greatly with body dysphoria now that more than half his body is gone and replaced with mechanical limbs he never consented to but on top of all of it, his ex-girlfriend is gone, whom he was really good friends with even after the break up. Even his dog is gone.

He’s become aware of how serious his neglect is getting. As much as he’d like to handle it on his own and as much as he prefers being a loner, there’s a big part of him that knows he can’t, especially when he has more days where he just wants nothing more than to lay in bed. So, he hires somebody. A maid in such words but she’s more like a house sitter but also called on to be a caregiver for Adam, to Adam. Her name is Adley and even though Adam isn’t quite sure at first with how young she is (she’s 24, yes, major age difference, if that bothers you, then I understand) she adheres and abides by his politely requested rules in keeping his apartment tidy and kempt following in keeping an eye on him, his health and his daily exercises in adjusting with his augs. It’s a long, grueling six months for them both but she’s been better than he would have ever asked for. She’s extremely mindful in keeping his privacy in mind, knocks on the door before entering, doesn’t touch anything she’s not supposed to or rearranging his possessions, keeps his extensive collection of cereals in stock, makes sure he takes his medicine and eats all while being even as quiet as he is, unless she’s playing music that she politely asks to play while she works on her surroundings, trip-hop she called it, some bands he’s never heard of, massive attack and unkle (to which he’s caught her on more than one occasion dancing to while she worked, and yes, he finds it rather cute). He appreciates her but doesn’t quite know how to show or tell her. She does more for him other than provide a service.

Adley, on the other hand, likes Adam, has grown to admire him. Like, really likes him although it’s something she’d never admit to anyone. She genuinely cares for him and his well being and has shown it to him, even in his supposed unawareness of it (i.e. covering him with a blanket after he’s fallen asleep on the couch or in his bed, closing the door and hardly bothering him on days where his pain levels are too much to handle, chatting with him in the early hours of the morning through messenger or skype when he can’t sleep, sending him memes she knows he’d find funny). Adam’s augmentations don’t bother her but when she shows up one afternoon after Adam’s taken off to an appointment at a LIMB clinic, she discovers just how serious his self loathe really is when she finds the mirror in his bathroom shattered to pieces, cracked and broken with one perfectly shaped impact of what she thinks is his fist. It’s not hard for her to put two and two together. Adam hated himself and would rather destroy a reflective surface than catch a glimpse of himself in it. It breaks her heart, especially since she found him more than attractive, augs or no augs, she’d feel the same. She’d worked hard to gain Adam’s trust and now that she has it, she feels that she might be jeopardizing it by bringing up concerns.

It bothers her immensely to the point where her bother shifts quickly in worry with a desperate need to tell him, to show him that he shouldn’t... when he does. She brings it up after he arrives back, genuine concern laced in her voice when she questions him about it.

“The mirror... did you- did you break it?”

But, alas, the stoic that he was, he brushes if off immediately and claims that it was nothing. Claims that he’s fine. Retreats to the confines of his room with nothing more than a peep uttered, leaving Adley to her thoughts, confused and conflicted. She knows better than to push him on it.

It’s the third one he’s broken. He hadn’t meant for her to find it. Had forgotten completely that it was one of those days where she made her routine visits. But even then, the mirror still would have been there, she still would have noticed it. He spends nearly the rest of the evening, glaring and gawking at his handiwork, reflecting on the force of his punch, the anger in what was left of his veins, the ache still hiding behind his steel heart (literally). He doesn’t realize just how long he’s been sitting there lost in a daze until she knocks on the frame of his doorway, announcing that she was about to leave for the evening and asking if he needed anything. That was Adley. Always so sweet and kind, worried about him way before she’d be worried about herself. With shoulders still slumped and his back still to her, he finally manages to speak, the first words he’s spoken to her in hours.

“Adley, can I talk to you for a minute?” His raspy low voice asks to her. There’s absolutely no lilt or fall to his tone but her heart nearly sinks to her feet, so certain that this was going to be the last time she’d ever see him, that he was going to fire her. Either way, she steps into the room and makes her way over to him, standing a few feet away from him in waiting for his dismissal, her fingers anxiously fidgeting in her nervousness.

It’s a long, empty and barren silence between them before he finally turns to match her gaze. There was no point in ignoring it any longer.

“I broke the mirror.” He admits. His confession surprises her.

“You’re not firing me?” She asks, to his surprise.

“Of course not, why would I?” He asks, genuinely confused.

“I thought I- I-I don’t know, maybe I had over stepped a line or something.” She brings up, her voice breaking and cracking. She’s nervous, Adam senses. “Why did you break the mirror?”

Adam inhales and sighs heavily, stretching his lengthy legs out in front of him and combing his fingers through his hair. He takes one last quick glance at his destroyed mirror before reminding himself not to look at it and shifting his gaze back to Adley. She’s not expecting it when he retracts his eye shields. She’s never seen him without them.

“Because... because I hate these fucking augs, I hate looking at them, what they make me. They’re apart of me now and there’s nothing I can do about it. I almost died on that table, Adley. They say they saved my life but... with what they had to do to do it, with what they gave me... sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off dead. Should have let me die there. I can hardly stand to look at myself because that’s not me, that’s not... Adam. I- for fuck’s sake, I can’t even jack off, cannot get my goddamn rhythm back- I-” He pauses, realizing what he just said with his mind running rampant with thoughts, he hadn’t even thought twice about what he was saying. Adley still stood there, waiting and listening to him although was now doing a horrible job to hide the smile that had appeared on her lips.

It’s faint, hardly there at all but even in the dim light seeping through his blinds that was the Detroit night, she catches the grin that appears just ask quick as it vanishes, watching Adam close his eyes against the embarrassment.

“I-I’m sorry Adley, I’m sure you don’t wanna listen to me vent and rant.” Adam breaks the awkward silence.

“N-no Adam, it’s okay, really. I don’t mind.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep you, if you need to leave-”

“No, I don’t but... Adam.” She says, her gaze lifting towards the bathroom where his broken mirror resided. He catches her glimpse. She has no idea how to put it into words, that his augmented limbs didn’t scare her, how much she adored him, how much she pondered and thought about him, immersed in fantasies and scenarios that would never happen...

“Can I try something? I mean, show you, I don’t know.” She asks him, wanting his permission. He nods. She wastes no time in making herself comfortable in front of him, between his now pulled up knees and... on hers before him. This is, this was highly, highly suggestive but he waits for her, enamored in her tiny frame in the darkness of his bedroom.

Her lacquered fingers lift cautiously and reach for his alloy plated hands. Augmented hands didn’t sense touch the exact same way skin did but either way, he could still feel her hands in his, her flesh chilled but cradling his carbon black fingers with a tenderness he had all but forgotten. She has no idea where this new found confidence was coming from but with her trust that she held with him, she’s not afraid to let her hand explore his forearm, letting his other touch her face as she pushes her cheek against his palm, almost lovingly all the while a gawking Adam stared at her, mouth slightly agape, his heart, artificial or not, thudding rampantly against the steel wall of his chest cavity. She... had no idea what this meant to him, what it felt like to be touched again. He’s so overwhelmed and fixated on her hands on him that he has to remember to tell himself to breathe.

“I don’t see the augs, Adam. I... only see you. Yes, apart of you may be gone, may have been taken from you but... this is still you, this is the Adam I know. Augs or no augs, I’d feel the same way. Trust me when I say that I don’t let just anybody near me like this, let alone touch. I don’t see a machine, a product. I see you, a man, my um- well my friend, I guess, if I’m being honest.” She tells him. Of course if she were really being honest, she’d tell him he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, that no one compared to him.

He may not show the emotion on his face but it’s written well in his eyes, glimmering in the low light and contracting in taking her in. They’d been close before but nothing like this, nothing intimate. Her hands move to his face, her skin grazing against his and goddamn, he could almost melt with the tiny brushes of her pinky fingers invading into his hair line.

“I can’t change the way you think or feel Adam but... next time, come to me maybe? You know I’m always okay to talk if you need to. A three in the morning skype call has never stopped you before, don’t let this stop you now. Not because you’re paying me but because I want to. That’s what people do when they care for each other. They help the other.”

He’s speechless, has absolutely no idea what to say but he words have touched him somewhere deep down in the wallows of his broken mind. And her hands on his face, he had forgotten what it was like to be touched again. As much as he’s fighting to hold them back, he can’t help the stray tears that roll down his prominent cheeks, Adley’s skinny long fingers brushing them away as she still cradled his face in her hands.

It’s quiet for some time between them, nothing but the sound of Adam’s breathing filling the empty silence. She’s not expecting anything, especially from Adam, he’s always been so guarded and blocked off and she’s more than used to it by now. It nearly knocks the breath out of her lungs when he pulls her to him, his arms hooked underneath her shoulders as he clung to her. She’s more than happy to reciprocate the hug, her arms wrapped around his waist and holding him close, this moment, she had played over so many times in her head yet it had never went this way. Adam was quiet as he held and hugged her to him but she doesn’t mind, even when his hold on her tightens. She’d stay there for as long as he needed her to.

“Stay with me.” His low voice whispers to her in the pregnant silence. Her eyes widen at his request. “Stay with me tonight. Please?” He pleads, his voice longing and desperate.

“Adam, I- I don’t have any clothes with me.” She reminds him.

“You can wear mine.” He offers. She smiles.

“I-I need to shower as well, I should really get going.”

“You can use my shower.” He assures her. Again, she smiles, huffing out a laugh. He pulls away to look at her, his fingers tangling and intertwining with hers. “Please, stay with me. I don’t want you to go.”

She can’t say no to that.

“Alright, Adam. I’ll stay.”

As much as he preferred being alone, he felt comforted to know that she’d be there in the morning with him. Maybe they could cuddle in bed together until noon, get up and make breakfast together. Well, she could teach him, at least.

“Well, if I’m gunna be staying here, we need to figure out the food situation. I don’t know about you but I’m starving. You wanna order take out?” Adley suggests, pulling away and standing.

“What, no cereal?” Adam chides.

“Adam, I am not eating cereal for dinner!” Adley whines as she makes her way back out into his kitchen.

“Why not? It’s good!”

“Adam!”

He joins her back out in the kitchen, looking and searching through the massive collection of restaurant menus he had stockpiled. It’s the happiest he’s felt in months. He couldn’t wait to wake up next to her in the morning.

[deputyrhiannonhale]

Nodus Tollens Chapter 1

(A/N and ooc) ok everyone, here is my first chapter to my Far Cry 5 fic with my OC Rhiannon Hale. I've worked really hard on this character and I hope everyone enjoys her and her adventure!

I will add trigger warnings for each specific chapter, but the general triggers are: toxic relationship, canon-like violence, and mentions of abuse.

Also, if you want to be added to the tag list, just let me know!

*****

Two years. That's all the time that had passed since Rhi left Hope County, to go back to Billings to settle her affairs and continue her training to become a police officer. Two years isn't long, especially not long enough for what Earl was telling her about how much had changed.

When she was recovering from her injuries and her step brother Deeter's death, she knew there was a, for lack of better terms, cult settling in the county. She had only had the one run in with a religious zealot, trying to tell her that her loved ones were in a better place, and now she's learning there had been plenty more and they had now been kidnapping people, buying up land, basically taking over.

Right now, she was even watching a video on her phone that got leaked of a "sermon"-Rhi uses that term loosely-where the leader gouged out the mans eyes who had been recording this video.

The streaming video started to buffer and finally cut off and Rhi made a frustrated sound. Earl tapped her knee, an amused smile on his face.

"I know, Unk, no service." Rhi stated on a scoff before he had the chance, as she put her phone back into the depths of her pocket. It was one of the things she didn't care for in this part of the state. Spotty cell phone service, and at the same time, it made her more uneasy this time around. She shook off her anxious feeling, assuming it was just first job jitters.

Rhi looked out of the helicopter, seeing a giant statue of the leader himself; Joseph Seed. 

"Wait...what is his last name?" Rhi asked, her head turning back so she could look between Burke and Earl.

"Seed?" Burke answered, his tone overly confused, and Rhi's blood ran cold causing her to shiver.

No, that had to be just a coincidence, right? Was Seed a common last name? Certainly John wasn't a part of this? He couldn't be...how could he have hidden something like this from her for literal months? Rhi shook her head again. Of course it was impossible. 

She looked down at her right forearm, her gloved hand tracing along the momento mori tattoo her John had given her back during those months. He's not related to this crazy man, she thought to herself, completely galvanized in her decision.

Rhi watched the ground as the helicopter slowly descended towards it, everything suddenly seeming surreal. A religious cult? It's something she'd only ever heard of when watching documentaries, never something she thought she would actually be face-to-face with.

She followed along behind Earl, Burke and Hudson, her head on a swivel, watching all of the Project members sizing them up. Rhi jumped when a dog began barking, causing her to curse under her breath. 

"Goddamnit, calm down!" She commanded herself, even though she had every right to be on edge, the air was thick with tension. Quickening her pace to catch up with the others at the church doors, Burke and Earl were still bickering as Joey touched Rhi's shoulder.

"You'll be fine." She encouraged, Rhi gave her a small lopsided smile before taking a deep breath and walking through the double doors.  

Rhi's heart was pounding, not really from nerves now, but from adrenaline, as the Project members slowly turned in their seats, eyeing the trio as they walked by. Rhi's body tensed, ready for a fight if needed, her eyes scanned the small room, taking it all in and that's when she saw him. Her body had NOT been ready for that.

John.

It had been her John all along. She felt her heart sink to her knees, her stomach was in knots, stinging of tears threatened however a more familiar feeling washed over her: anger.

He seemed just as taken aback to see her waltzing into the church dressed as a deputy, however, John quickly regained his composure, looking away from Rhi, which caused her anger to rise more. Why was he looking away from her? Acting like he doesn't know her? She watched as he moved to stand behind Joseph. She gritted her teeth, her tiny fists clenched at her sides, not even hearing what was being said anymore. She was fully aware of the tension building all around them as the church members gathered, she could hear the voices raising and she could feel her body temperature elevating, her cheeks were warm, her heartbeat was thumping loudly in her ears. All she was focused on was John though.

How the fuck could he lie to her about his involvement with this? Why the fuck did he hide this from her? What the fuck was the reasoning behind it? Or even his approaching her to begin with? The gears were turning a millions miles a minute as she began connecting dots.

John approached Rhi a day after her run in with who she now realizes was Joseph. She was mad and hurt about Deeter's suicide, and she was being irreverent towards Joseph trying to use religion to help her feel better.

Of course.

"John, what the fuck?!" Rhi's outburst was unexpected, causing Earl and Burke to look at her wildly, as she stepped forward, not even looking at them, her hazel eyes only glaring daggers at the youngest Seed brother. She felt Earl place a hand on her shoulder, not understanding how she even knows John Seed personally enough to speak to him like she has. She could see the tall red headed man-he had to be Jacob-flanking on Joseph's right side give John a confused glance, but John didn't take his eyes off Rhi, her nostrils flared at his silence.

Rhi twisted away from Earl's touch, shooting him a quick, don't touch me look, before turning her attention back over Joseph's shoulder to glare at John once more. 

"How could you not tell me about this, huh?" She shouted, waving her hand around, gesturing towards Joseph and the church. "Was it all fun for you? Did you guys have a good laugh at the poor girl who was dealing with her step brother's death?" Rhi continued, her hand on her hip as her free hand was still motioning around wildly. Joseph looked over his shoulder at John, a clear frown on his face, he didn't approve of whatever was going down here between them.

"Rhi…" Earl's voice finally broke through her anger and she turned her glare onto her uncle, but seeing his face, which was a mix of confusion, disapproval and disappointment in her actions, the wrath left her veins immediately replaced by embarrassment over her scene. "Do you want to just cuff him, rookie?" Earl's tone was enough to get Rhi to focus back in what they were here for. Joseph's arms were still extended out to her, her outburst happening so quickly, no one really had a chance to fully process it.

"God will not let you take me." Joseph promised, and Rhi scoffed before she squared her shoulders and cleared her throat, as she grabbed the handcuffs from her belt and clicked them onto Joseph's wrists all while keeping eye contact with John. She could see his jaw muscles flexing and bunching as he witnessed his brother being arrested by the woman he had grown so close too. Jacob looked over at his brother and quickly shook his head, and John lowered his eyes to the floor as Rhi pushed Joseph out in front of her and placed her hand firmly on his shoulder and led him out of the church.

"Sometimes the best thing to do...is walk away." Joseph whispered softly, Rhi just rolled her eyes, and forcefully pressed her hand on his shoulder.

Rhi was so furious at John she barely paid attention to the members surrounding them as she paraded Joseph to the helicopter, she was muttering to herself, as if she was still fussing at John.

"You've grown close to my brother, my child?" Joseph's voice broke into her train of thoughts and she glared at the back of his head.

"Don't call me that." Rhi snapped, rolled her eyes, and she heard him chuckle, tightening her grip on his shoulder. She didn't want his eyes on her again. That intense stare really unnerves her. "Like you don't fucking know." She muttered under her breath, putting emphasis on her lewd word just for him. 

"I had sent him to you, yes, to bring you to us. I could see in your eyes you needed a family to love you unconditionally." Joseph admitted, softly, and Rhi's breath hitched in her throat at his words. 

"Yeah, well, he failed. Now shut up and just walk." Rhi retorted in lame attempt to sound tough, but he had hit a nerve. How could he have seen so much in her? Was she that easy to read? She had spent so much of her life building a wall around herself, she hated to know she was still so transparent, even if it had been noticed during her time of mourning.

It wasn't until they nearly made it to the chopper and a rock being thrown at Burke brought her back to her senses. It all turned into a blur of screaming and Rhi being forced into the helicopter with Joseph and the others.

All she could focus on was the creepy way Joseph was singing Amazing Grace, was this song supposed to be comforting? Maybe it was just his calmness in this distressing moment, she realized then he fully believed God would stop this.

Rhi's body was being jostled around as she tried to hurriedly fasten the safety belt around her waist after shoving away a woman with a shaved head, other project members throwing themselves at the helicopter, trying to pull Joseph out, trying to bring the chopper down? Who knew at this point. Rhi was beginning to panic just as the alarm bells started sounding off as the helicopter lost control as she grabbed a hold of her seat and they all braced for impact.

~~

Rhi groaned and slowly opened her eyes, hearing different voices that were distorted, like she was hearing them from underwater. She was looking around trying to get her bearings, the others were knocked unconscious still, and she touched Joey's neck to make sure she was still alive, she was met with a steady heartbeat and she sighed in relief. Rhi fully snapped to her senses, realizing everything was upside down, and finally looked to where her safety belt was the only thing that was keeping her from being on the upper part of the helicopter. It was cutting into her and she fumbled with it, trying to unbuckle it when she heard Nancy calling over the radio.

"Nancy!" She called out hopefully, reaching out in vain trying to grab the dangling headset before her. "Oh come the fuck on!" Rhi growled out, her fingers were nearly on it when a hand grabbed her wrist firmly. She screamed in surprise as Joseph's visage came into view, his blue eyes focused on her hazel ones intensely as he grabbed the headset for himself. 

It was almost as if static was filling her ears, she couldn't believe what she was hearing as she listened to the exchange between the Father and Nancy...she was in on all of this?! That fucking traitor. Rhi's blood began to boil again, as Joseph leaned in closer to her face.

"No one is coming to save you." A chill shot down Rhi's spine at his soft spoken promise, and she watched him as he was climbing out of the helicopter.

Rhi began to scramble, trying to undo her safety belt but it was jammed. Panic caused a bad taste at the back of her throat as she periodically looked back to the cult as Joseph was babbling about starting some reaping. 

The group came back towards the chopper, grabbing everyone in it, Joey began screaming, trying to get away, as Rhi grabbed onto her leg trying to save her, but it was a worthless attempt.

"EARL!" Rhi shouted, as her hands went back to the buckle at her waist, watching helplessly as her still unconscious uncle was dragged away from her. "UNK WAKE UP!" She was on the verge of tears, as Burke got her attention.

"We gotta get outta here!" He shouted to her and she growled.

"Nah shit!" She spat at him as she continued to struggle, watching as he got free and just ran, her jaw slackened by the fact that he ran off without trying to help her.

A rush of adrenaline got her focused and she finally got herself free and she crashed onto the top of the helicopter hard. She grunted, holding her elbow tenderly before that little voice in her head yelled 'RUN'.

Like a bolt of lightning, Rhi shot out of the chopper, stumbling slightly as she ran towards the wooded area where she had seen Burke disappear.

She had no idea where she was going as she heard bullets whizzing by her head, she ducked and weaved through the trees, her lungs burning as she willed her legs to pump harder. Rhi was putting as much distance between her and her pursuers as she possibly could. There were so many of them and only one of her. 

Rhi came to a drop off that landed her in a small pond. The water was cool against her flushed skin from her run, but she didn't give herself time to enjoy it before she was out and jogging again.

"Hello, is anyone there?" It was Burke's voice on her radio, she pulled it from the clip on her belt, and was about to chuck it into a tree out of pure spite against him for leaving her for dead, but the logical side of her brain told her that he may be her only way of getting out of this mess.

Rhi listened and followed where he gave his location.

Instead of unloading onto Burke all her thoughts of him, she just stewed in it as she ran to find the trailer he was talking about. How could he have left her for dead like that? He better have a damn good reason behind it. Maybe she should have told him she was on her way?

That thought came a little too late as she opened the door and Burke attacked her.

"Hey asshole, it's me!" Rhi shouted, swinging back at him out of instinct, and he made an audible noise and backed off.

"Rook, oh god, it's you." He said relieved and she rolled her eyes, straightening her jacket back out.

"Yeah, it's me. Fuck dude." Rhi understood why he'd attacked her, he did send a message out over the radio, probably an unsecured line and yeah she also realized that she should have told him she was coming. They were both a little at fault here.

Rhi checked the rooms as Burke explained that there was a truck outside and that they needed to get out and back to Missoula before coming back and saving the others. Rhi wasn't 100% that they should leave the others behind right now, but what choice did she really have?

"Ok, I'll guard at the window and if any of those Peggies show up, I'll cover you while you get the truck going." Rhi agreed as she picked up the nearby rifle, checking to see if it was loaded. 

She watched as Burke left the trailer and she shattered the glass with the butt of the rifle, positioning herself comfortably at the window, looking through the scope, she began firing on the cult members that emerged from the woods.

Rhi ducked down from the opening to reload her gun, taking a deep breath to clear the thoughts from her head. She was so worried about her uncle, she knew he could take care of himself, but she just couldn't handle the thought of another family member being hurt. Rhi kept hearing Deeter's voice in her head: 'Just relax. Picture the gun as an extension of you. An extension of your arm. Imagine the bullet as part of you, straight from your arm until it lodges into the target.' She was zoned in when she lined her shot back up, taking a few more out when Burke finally blew the truck horn to get her attention. After popping off a few more rounds to buy herself time, Rhi left her position, breaking another window, she hurtled herself out of the house and into the truck with Burke.

"GET THE FUCK OFF US!" Rhi screamed as she leaned out of the window, firing more shots at the tires of the trucks following them, trying to get the cult off their tail.

"Fuckin' Nancy…" She heard Burke mummer under his breath as she finally sat down in the seat. Rhi took several deep breaths, getting a moment to relax. "Damn, they've blocked the road!" He shouted and Rhi scoffed, wiping the sweat off her brow.

"Of course they fucking have. Just bust the fuck through it!" Rhi demanded, leaning back out of the window, spraying bullets and watching the Peggies scatter to take cover as Burke sped the truck up.

"There's dynamite in the back! Use it!" He screamed at Rhi, who nodded and grabbed several of the sticks as gently as she could, she leaned back inside long enough to get Deeter's lighter from her pocket, lit the first stick, and chucked it into the cab of the truck closest to them.

The Peggies in the truck cursed and bailed from the vehicle moments before the dynamite exploded and Rhi laughed, before a light above her got her attention, she rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated growl before flipping back into her seat, placing the lighter lovingly back into her pocket, patting it before turning to face Burke and pointing out the back window at the helicopter hovering them. 

"Oh fuck me running! They have air support too? What the actual fuck man?!" Burke looked into the rearview and cursed loudly, slapping the steering wheel hard. 

"They're in front of us too!" He pointed out, and Rhi looked in front of them as they were getting ready to cross the bridge that would lead to their freedom. Rhi once again leaned out the window, shooting the man who was manning the mounted gun, but she knew they didn't stand a chance when the bridge exploded and Burke jerked the wheel to the right and they plummeted from the bridge into the river below.

*****

Tagging: @ja-crispea @returnofthepd3 @dieguzguz @shelliechen @f0xyboxes @ramadiiiisme @hopecountygazette (lemme know if you dont want to be tagged)

[easyfoodnetwork]

Food, It Turns Out, Has Little to Do With Why I Love to Travel 

It’s the people that make a place — but these days, human interaction is hard to come by

I used to love to travel. I’d wander through new cities for days on end, eating and drinking (but mostly eating) in four-seat izakayas, farm-driven pizzerias, southern seafood halls, and boat noodle cafes, talking to locals and walking for miles. Restaurants have always been my joyous entry point to a place and its people. The food, I thought, was what made me love to explore the world.

That slowly fading memory — what it felt like to discover a new city, stomach first — is what excited me about going out on the road again, which I did a couple months ago, driving from Los Angeles to Corsicana, Texas and back, stopping to eat in places like Albuquerque, Amarillo, El Paso, and Phoenix.

Let me be clear: I absolutely would not and do not recommend frivolous travel. In my case, a looming publishing deadline on The Bludso Family Cookbook is what sent me on the long, not-so-winding road to Texas in the midst of a global pandemic, where I would be staying with my longtime friend, mentor, colleague, and big brother Kevin Bludso. Once there, we would be cooking, writing, recipe testing, interviewing, living together, and, in all likelihood, drinking a fair quantity of brown spirits at the end of each night (please, someone get that man a Hennessy sponsorship).

I’ve spent the better part of the last 15 years working in the food industry in one capacity or another. I’ve been a bartender, server, chef, culinary director, restaurant consultant, cookbook author, and food writer. My plan since last year had been to continue writing and consulting on the side, but also to finally open my own restaurant. Nothing extravagant. Something small and intimate. A humble, comforting place of my own — clean and well-lit, a true neighborhood restaurant where people can get to know each other, where the food and the service is unassuming and genuine, something with no desire for expansion or duplication. I consider myself unbelievably lucky that I didn’t open a restaurant right before the pandemic hit.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several months at home, making a quarantine cooking show with my wife called Don’t Panic Pantry. It’s been a good distraction, but I thought a work-related excuse to drive through the American Southwest and its expansive desert would be a cleansing, meditative, soul-resetting break from what I’d begun to think of as perpetual purgatory.

I took every precaution. A nasal-swab COVID test right before I departed. I also hopefully still had antibodies (my wife and I both had COVID-19 way back in March). It was, at the very least, the polite thing to do: Get tested before joining someone in their home for two weeks.

I had planned on driving straight through Arizona from LA, avoiding anything except gas stations until I made it to New Mexico, surviving on a sturdy mix of cold brew and air conditioning to keep me awake. I’d never been to New Mexico before. I’d pored over Instagram photos of chile-drenched Southwestern Mexican food, enchiladas oozing with melted cheese, their red and green chile sauces popping with Instagram photo-editing exposure. My usual pre-trip Google map was loaded with thoroughly researched restaurants along my route. In earlier times, I’d have peppered each map point with essential info like hours of operation and must-order dishes; now, I was looking up intel like outdoor seating, takeout quality, and, most crucially, whether or not a place had managed to stay open at all.

I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger.

I left with a bullish heart. But each stop to fuel up took away a notch of my optimism-fueled excitement and replaced it with caution. Each person in a mask made me a little more depressed; each person without, a little angrier.

Ten hours in and I had made it to New Laguna, New Mexico. I stopped at Laguna Burger, an iconic mini-chain inside of a gas station. It’s a fast-food place to be sure, but according to old photos online there used to be stools set up against the counter, and even a couple of tables and a few chairs. Those are, of course, gone now — pushed to the side of the room and leaving in their place a vacuous emptiness, even for a gas-station dining room. The staff was nice but appropriately wary. I did not partake in the self-serve Kool-Aid pickle jar. I got my food and then sat in my car, emotionally deflated and no longer very excited to eat my first-ever green chile burger — something I had wanted to try for years.

Ordering a burger at a place like this was supposed to be a tiny gateway into the culture and personality of the place, however small that sampling was going to be. There is an emotional atmosphere, a vibe, that’s specific to each and every restaurant, and I had perhaps never been so truly aware that such a thing existed until I noticed it had been zapped entirely from this one. In its place was a blanket of nervous, sad precaution — added to, I’m sure, by my own nervousness.

So I sat in my car with my sack of food, gloomily disappointed even before the first bite. They forgot to salt the fries and it felt oddly appropriate. In this moment, to no fault of the restaurant itself, the food didn’t matter. It couldn’t have. I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger, wanting it to justify a 12-hour drive and to somehow soothe an anxious mind. But the food, it occurred to me, wasn’t what I was after at all.

Later on, in Albuquerque, I picked up a four-pack of beer from Arrow Point Brewing and received the now familiar and appropriate treatment: measured, cautious polite gratitude. It was a transaction, appreciated by both sides, but with a higher degree of precondition from both sides as well. I followed it up with a takeout bag of enchiladas and a taco from the beloved and iconic Duran’s Pharmacy, taking them back to the motel room I checked myself into earlier. It was 5:30 p.m. The enchiladas had sloshed in the bag. I took a bite and understood: It was comforting, but not nearly enough. Like being single and reconnecting with an ex, only to both immediately discover that there’s nothing there anymore — two empty vessels with no connection beyond a memory.

I took a sip of beer and fell asleep for an hour. When I awoke the city had turned dark and I knew there was no point in going anywhere. The world felt dystopian and deflated. I’d left my redundant, loving, comfortable bubble to experience life alone on the road, and all I wished was that I was right back there with my wife and my dog.

When my wife and I had COVID-19, we lost our sense of smell and taste for a bit. It was, as my wife put it, “a joyless existence.” Now I had my taste back, but somehow the joy of eating was still gone.

The enchiladas, in a box, alone, on the floor of my motel, were just enchiladas. Because here’s a thing I’ve come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother’s — or that one you had on that trip to Italy — for it to remind you of it even a little. A rack of smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind from a roadside smoker. I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

So as it turns out, when it comes to my lifelong love of food and travel, the food might not have mattered — not to the degree I thought it did, anyway. Not without everything that goes along with it. The surly bartender in the dark room who fries your chicken behind the bar at Reel M Inn in Portland while a guy two seats down makes fun of you for being from California is a huge part of why that might be my favorite fried chicken in the world. The friend of a friend who abandoned his family (thanks Marc!) to drive a stranger, me, around Toronto for two days and show off the city’s outstanding versions of goat roti (from Mona’s Roti) and bún riêu cua (from Bong Lua) makes me realize that yes, the food is outstanding, but that it’s the people — excited to show off their hometown, its restaurants, and their community — who make travel worthwhile.

Would Tokyo be my favorite eating city in the world if my now-wife and I hadn’t befriended two total strangers in a six-seat dive bar, knocking back cocktails until we both threw up, only to come through to the other side fully bonded over late-night grilled pork skewers with another stranger who gave me his business card and said that he had been eating in this stall for over a decade? What is a bar without a bartender? It’s just, well, being home.

The restaurant business can be both horrible and wonderful. It pays poorly, it requires incredibly long hours, and in many instances, you are going broke while making food for people who complain that it’s too expensive. But it is, as Anthony Bourdain often said, the Pleasure Business. It has always been a place for camaraderie, human connection, and community. Those were the things that made the nearly unbearable parts of our business worthwhile — and that connection, when you can have a genuine one between staff and customer, is what I think everyone really, truly wants out of the transaction. Those things still exist, I suppose, but all at arm’s length, or across an app.

I still eventually want to open my own restaurant. I think. But maybe I just want to open my memory of what it would have been in a different, earlier world. I don’t want to be a dinosaur, yearning for the good old days. But I also don’t want to live in a world where a third-party tech company stands between the restaurant and its customer. I don’t want someone to visit my city and think that a robot delivering them a sandwich is the best that we have to offer. I don’t want to have to download an app to order a cup of fucking coffee. Human connection, it turns out, is essential too, and we need to find a way to make it a part of our essential businesses again.

So what, in the midst of a health and humanitarian catastrophe, can we do? Well, we can decide where we spend our money. We support human connection and small businesses. We pick up takeout with our own hands from the places and the people that we love (safely, responsibly). We know that it is just gauze pressed against an open, oozing knife wound, but we try anyway.

So we travel because we have to, whether for work or as a needed break from monotony, and we reset our expectations, we open ourselves up to receiving that connection, we seek out the places that are adapting and we smile through our masks, and ask each other how we are doing, if only to show that somebody cares.

When I eventually made it to Corsicana, Texas, hoisting a large bag of dried red New Mexico chiles, I was greeted with an engulfing hug by Kevin Bludso; it was the first truly comforting thing that happened on the whole trip. I melted into the arms of my friend. I was back in a bubble, connected to something.

I spent two glorious weeks in that bubble, taking turns doing Peloton workouts and then drinking vegetable smoothies, before recipe-testing dishes like Fried Whole-Body Crappie and Ham Hock Pinto Beans; researching Kevin’s family history and then, true to form, sipping rye (me) and Hennessy (him) before I had to head home. Kevin’s food was outstanding, but it was made all the better by the time spent together cooking it. So when I readied myself to get out on the road again, my expectations had changed. I knew the food alone could only do so much.

This disease has been a reflection and amplifier of all of our weak points — and the restaurant business is certainly no different. This industry was already ripe with flaws. It has been teetering on the brink of a seismic shift for years — COVID-19 just accelerated it, and all the platitudes, Instagram stories, and false optimism won’t fix anything. But there have always been bad restaurants as well as good restaurants. I suppose it’s no different now. Yet it is maybe just a little bit harder to give and to be open to receiving the human connection that makes the whole experience worthwhile.

I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

I hit the road early, and after about 10 and a half hours, fueled by caffeine, Christopher Cross, and Bonnie Raitt — with one depressing pit stop in El Paso at the famed H&H Car Wash, where an old curmudgeon out front insisted I take off my mask before going inside �� I arrived in Las Cruces, at La Nueva Casita Café. I called ahead, hoping not to have to wait so I could just grab my food and get back on the road. My guard was still up, but then the woman on the other end of the phone was so charming and kind that I was immediately disarmed. She graciously steered me toward the chile relleno burrito (“it’ll be the easiest one to eat in the car”). A few minutes later I came inside to pick up my food and the two women behind the counter were, frankly, a delight. I paid, and was promptly handed my food and thanked with genuine, casual appreciation for coming in. The burrito was excellent.

Bolstered by the kindness of strangers, I drove another five and a half hours into Phoenix. As a bit of an obsessive pizza maker (I had the tremendous fortune to train with Frank Pinello of Best Pizza in Williamsburg, and also had a hand in helping to open Prime Pizza in Los Angeles), I was here to try the new 18-inch New York-style fusion pie by the great Chris Bianco at their Pane Bianco outpost on Central.

Just as at La Nueva Casita Café, the staff was friendly, genuine, helpful, and kind. In retrospect, it took so little but it meant so much. When I expressed a need for caffeine, they sent me next door to Lux Central for a large iced coffee, where the barista talked to me from a responsible distance, wished me a safe drive, and gave me a free blueberry muffin. Even eaten in my car, Chris’s pizza was truly outstanding — crisp, thin, and pliable, successfully pulling off the New York-modern Neapolitan (ish) fusion that, in lesser hands, turns into an 18-inch bowl of soup.

I drove the last six hours home, finding myself encouraged by these final two restaurant experiences, excited by what the best in our industry are still somehow capable of in spite of everything. It was, frankly, inspirational to find genuine interaction, care, and kindness in this new reality.

It reminds me of my mother, actually. I remember when I was a kid, she would pick up the phone to call a restaurant, or Blockbuster Video, to ask them a question. I would always hear her say something like: “Hi Randy! How are you today?” and I would say, “Mom! Do you know him?” and she would shake her head no. Then she would say, “Oh that’s great to hear, Randy. Hey listen, what time do you close today?” My brother and I used to make fun of her for that — for forcing this connection with someone she had no real relationship with beyond an exchange of services. Now, I plan to do exactly that, whenever and wherever I can.

Noah Galuten is a chef, James Beard Award-nominated cookbook author, and the co-host of Don’t Panic Pantry. Nhung Le is a Vietnamese freelance illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34Oc66Q https://ift.tt/34RJ8TD

It’s the people that make a place — but these days, human interaction is hard to come by

I used to love to travel. I’d wander through new cities for days on end, eating and drinking (but mostly eating) in four-seat izakayas, farm-driven pizzerias, southern seafood halls, and boat noodle cafes, talking to locals and walking for miles. Restaurants have always been my joyous entry point to a place and its people. The food, I thought, was what made me love to explore the world.

That slowly fading memory — what it felt like to discover a new city, stomach first — is what excited me about going out on the road again, which I did a couple months ago, driving from Los Angeles to Corsicana, Texas and back, stopping to eat in places like Albuquerque, Amarillo, El Paso, and Phoenix.

Let me be clear: I absolutely would not and do not recommend frivolous travel. In my case, a looming publishing deadline on The Bludso Family Cookbook is what sent me on the long, not-so-winding road to Texas in the midst of a global pandemic, where I would be staying with my longtime friend, mentor, colleague, and big brother Kevin Bludso. Once there, we would be cooking, writing, recipe testing, interviewing, living together, and, in all likelihood, drinking a fair quantity of brown spirits at the end of each night (please, someone get that man a Hennessy sponsorship).

I’ve spent the better part of the last 15 years working in the food industry in one capacity or another. I’ve been a bartender, server, chef, culinary director, restaurant consultant, cookbook author, and food writer. My plan since last year had been to continue writing and consulting on the side, but also to finally open my own restaurant. Nothing extravagant. Something small and intimate. A humble, comforting place of my own — clean and well-lit, a true neighborhood restaurant where people can get to know each other, where the food and the service is unassuming and genuine, something with no desire for expansion or duplication. I consider myself unbelievably lucky that I didn’t open a restaurant right before the pandemic hit.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several months at home, making a quarantine cooking show with my wife called Don’t Panic Pantry. It’s been a good distraction, but I thought a work-related excuse to drive through the American Southwest and its expansive desert would be a cleansing, meditative, soul-resetting break from what I’d begun to think of as perpetual purgatory.

I took every precaution. A nasal-swab COVID test right before I departed. I also hopefully still had antibodies (my wife and I both had COVID-19 way back in March). It was, at the very least, the polite thing to do: Get tested before joining someone in their home for two weeks.

I had planned on driving straight through Arizona from LA, avoiding anything except gas stations until I made it to New Mexico, surviving on a sturdy mix of cold brew and air conditioning to keep me awake. I’d never been to New Mexico before. I’d pored over Instagram photos of chile-drenched Southwestern Mexican food, enchiladas oozing with melted cheese, their red and green chile sauces popping with Instagram photo-editing exposure. My usual pre-trip Google map was loaded with thoroughly researched restaurants along my route. In earlier times, I’d have peppered each map point with essential info like hours of operation and must-order dishes; now, I was looking up intel like outdoor seating, takeout quality, and, most crucially, whether or not a place had managed to stay open at all.

I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger.

I left with a bullish heart. But each stop to fuel up took away a notch of my optimism-fueled excitement and replaced it with caution. Each person in a mask made me a little more depressed; each person without, a little angrier.

Ten hours in and I had made it to New Laguna, New Mexico. I stopped at Laguna Burger, an iconic mini-chain inside of a gas station. It’s a fast-food place to be sure, but according to old photos online there used to be stools set up against the counter, and even a couple of tables and a few chairs. Those are, of course, gone now — pushed to the side of the room and leaving in their place a vacuous emptiness, even for a gas-station dining room. The staff was nice but appropriately wary. I did not partake in the self-serve Kool-Aid pickle jar. I got my food and then sat in my car, emotionally deflated and no longer very excited to eat my first-ever green chile burger — something I had wanted to try for years.

Ordering a burger at a place like this was supposed to be a tiny gateway into the culture and personality of the place, however small that sampling was going to be. There is an emotional atmosphere, a vibe, that’s specific to each and every restaurant, and I had perhaps never been so truly aware that such a thing existed until I noticed it had been zapped entirely from this one. In its place was a blanket of nervous, sad precaution — added to, I’m sure, by my own nervousness.

So I sat in my car with my sack of food, gloomily disappointed even before the first bite. They forgot to salt the fries and it felt oddly appropriate. In this moment, to no fault of the restaurant itself, the food didn’t matter. It couldn’t have. I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger, wanting it to justify a 12-hour drive and to somehow soothe an anxious mind. But the food, it occurred to me, wasn’t what I was after at all.

Later on, in Albuquerque, I picked up a four-pack of beer from Arrow Point Brewing and received the now familiar and appropriate treatment: measured, cautious polite gratitude. It was a transaction, appreciated by both sides, but with a higher degree of precondition from both sides as well. I followed it up with a takeout bag of enchiladas and a taco from the beloved and iconic Duran’s Pharmacy, taking them back to the motel room I checked myself into earlier. It was 5:30 p.m. The enchiladas had sloshed in the bag. I took a bite and understood: It was comforting, but not nearly enough. Like being single and reconnecting with an ex, only to both immediately discover that there’s nothing there anymore — two empty vessels with no connection beyond a memory.

I took a sip of beer and fell asleep for an hour. When I awoke the city had turned dark and I knew there was no point in going anywhere. The world felt dystopian and deflated. I’d left my redundant, loving, comfortable bubble to experience life alone on the road, and all I wished was that I was right back there with my wife and my dog.

When my wife and I had COVID-19, we lost our sense of smell and taste for a bit. It was, as my wife put it, “a joyless existence.” Now I had my taste back, but somehow the joy of eating was still gone.

The enchiladas, in a box, alone, on the floor of my motel, were just enchiladas. Because here’s a thing I’ve come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother’s — or that one you had on that trip to Italy — for it to remind you of it even a little. A rack of smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind from a roadside smoker. I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

So as it turns out, when it comes to my lifelong love of food and travel, the food might not have mattered — not to the degree I thought it did, anyway. Not without everything that goes along with it. The surly bartender in the dark room who fries your chicken behind the bar at Reel M Inn in Portland while a guy two seats down makes fun of you for being from California is a huge part of why that might be my favorite fried chicken in the world. The friend of a friend who abandoned his family (thanks Marc!) to drive a stranger, me, around Toronto for two days and show off the city’s outstanding versions of goat roti (from Mona’s Roti) and bún riêu cua (from Bong Lua) makes me realize that yes, the food is outstanding, but that it’s the people — excited to show off their hometown, its restaurants, and their community — who make travel worthwhile.

Would Tokyo be my favorite eating city in the world if my now-wife and I hadn’t befriended two total strangers in a six-seat dive bar, knocking back cocktails until we both threw up, only to come through to the other side fully bonded over late-night grilled pork skewers with another stranger who gave me his business card and said that he had been eating in this stall for over a decade? What is a bar without a bartender? It’s just, well, being home.

The restaurant business can be both horrible and wonderful. It pays poorly, it requires incredibly long hours, and in many instances, you are going broke while making food for people who complain that it’s too expensive. But it is, as Anthony Bourdain often said, the Pleasure Business. It has always been a place for camaraderie, human connection, and community. Those were the things that made the nearly unbearable parts of our business worthwhile — and that connection, when you can have a genuine one between staff and customer, is what I think everyone really, truly wants out of the transaction. Those things still exist, I suppose, but all at arm’s length, or across an app.

I still eventually want to open my own restaurant. I think. But maybe I just want to open my memory of what it would have been in a different, earlier world. I don’t want to be a dinosaur, yearning for the good old days. But I also don’t want to live in a world where a third-party tech company stands between the restaurant and its customer. I don’t want someone to visit my city and think that a robot delivering them a sandwich is the best that we have to offer. I don’t want to have to download an app to order a cup of fucking coffee. Human connection, it turns out, is essential too, and we need to find a way to make it a part of our essential businesses again.

So what, in the midst of a health and humanitarian catastrophe, can we do? Well, we can decide where we spend our money. We support human connection and small businesses. We pick up takeout with our own hands from the places and the people that we love (safely, responsibly). We know that it is just gauze pressed against an open, oozing knife wound, but we try anyway.

So we travel because we have to, whether for work or as a needed break from monotony, and we reset our expectations, we open ourselves up to receiving that connection, we seek out the places that are adapting and we smile through our masks, and ask each other how we are doing, if only to show that somebody cares.

When I eventually made it to Corsicana, Texas, hoisting a large bag of dried red New Mexico chiles, I was greeted with an engulfing hug by Kevin Bludso; it was the first truly comforting thing that happened on the whole trip. I melted into the arms of my friend. I was back in a bubble, connected to something.

I spent two glorious weeks in that bubble, taking turns doing Peloton workouts and then drinking vegetable smoothies, before recipe-testing dishes like Fried Whole-Body Crappie and Ham Hock Pinto Beans; researching Kevin’s family history and then, true to form, sipping rye (me) and Hennessy (him) before I had to head home. Kevin’s food was outstanding, but it was made all the better by the time spent together cooking it. So when I readied myself to get out on the road again, my expectations had changed. I knew the food alone could only do so much.

This disease has been a reflection and amplifier of all of our weak points — and the restaurant business is certainly no different. This industry was already ripe with flaws. It has been teetering on the brink of a seismic shift for years — COVID-19 just accelerated it, and all the platitudes, Instagram stories, and false optimism won’t fix anything. But there have always been bad restaurants as well as good restaurants. I suppose it’s no different now. Yet it is maybe just a little bit harder to give and to be open to receiving the human connection that makes the whole experience worthwhile.

I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

I hit the road early, and after about 10 and a half hours, fueled by caffeine, Christopher Cross, and Bonnie Raitt — with one depressing pit stop in El Paso at the famed H&H Car Wash, where an old curmudgeon out front insisted I take off my mask before going inside — I arrived in Las Cruces, at La Nueva Casita Café. I called ahead, hoping not to have to wait so I could just grab my food and get back on the road. My guard was still up, but then the woman on the other end of the phone was so charming and kind that I was immediately disarmed. She graciously steered me toward the chile relleno burrito (“it’ll be the easiest one to eat in the car”). A few minutes later I came inside to pick up my food and the two women behind the counter were, frankly, a delight. I paid, and was promptly handed my food and thanked with genuine, casual appreciation for coming in. The burrito was excellent.

Bolstered by the kindness of strangers, I drove another five and a half hours into Phoenix. As a bit of an obsessive pizza maker (I had the tremendous fortune to train with Frank Pinello of Best Pizza in Williamsburg, and also had a hand in helping to open Prime Pizza in Los Angeles), I was here to try the new 18-inch New York-style fusion pie by the great Chris Bianco at their Pane Bianco outpost on Central.

Just as at La Nueva Casita Café, the staff was friendly, genuine, helpful, and kind. In retrospect, it took so little but it meant so much. When I expressed a need for caffeine, they sent me next door to Lux Central for a large iced coffee, where the barista talked to me from a responsible distance, wished me a safe drive, and gave me a free blueberry muffin. Even eaten in my car, Chris’s pizza was truly outstanding — crisp, thin, and pliable, successfully pulling off the New York-modern Neapolitan (ish) fusion that, in lesser hands, turns into an 18-inch bowl of soup.

I drove the last six hours home, finding myself encouraged by these final two restaurant experiences, excited by what the best in our industry are still somehow capable of in spite of everything. It was, frankly, inspirational to find genuine interaction, care, and kindness in this new reality.

It reminds me of my mother, actually. I remember when I was a kid, she would pick up the phone to call a restaurant, or Blockbuster Video, to ask them a question. I would always hear her say something like: “Hi Randy! How are you today?” and I would say, “Mom! Do you know him?” and she would shake her head no. Then she would say, “Oh that’s great to hear, Randy. Hey listen, what time do you close today?” My brother and I used to make fun of her for that — for forcing this connection with someone she had no real relationship with beyond an exchange of services. Now, I plan to do exactly that, whenever and wherever I can.

Noah Galuten is a chef, James Beard Award-nominated cookbook author, and the co-host of Don’t Panic Pantry. Nhung Le is a Vietnamese freelance illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY.

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