Lyme Disease, Storms, and Car Troubles—it's all one crazy fit of laughter.

***Originally Published July 22nd, 2023

In the past couple weeks I’ve had chiggers, lyme disease, a flat tire, a speeding ticket, 2 parking tickets, and a storm demolish my canopy and rip a hole in my tent.

The tarp has a weak stop where it collects water, and while I was gone it rained so much the thing finally buckled and launched the legs 15 feet!

But as I think about it all I feel like the luckiest bastard in the world. 

Lyme Disease

I had Lyme disease last week—to be more accurate the past two weeks—and I’ve been on antibiotics so it doesn’t really feel like I do anymore, but it shut me down hard at first. 

I don’t know where I got it either. I mean from a tick, yes.

But when or where I got the tick I have no idea. 

It started out with the chills and a cold sweat one night. I’d been a little groggy for a couple days but attributed it to the awful humid heat that felt like a damp cotton blanket. 

But once I knew it was a fever I buckled down for the sickness.

The next four nights I wrapped myself up as tightly as I could in sweatpants, sweatshirts, my sleeping bag, and a fuzzy blanket, sweating myself near to death. 

I just had to flush it out of me.

Ah oh lord did I do some flushing. 

To give an idea of how successful a sweater I was: one morning I woke up and drank a Gatorade (one of the bigger ones too), my entire 48 Oz water bottle, another 10oz from my other one, and then peed a trickle of iced tea. 

I had lifted the day I felt the fever come on, and still felt sore from climbing at Rumbling Bald and a couple days earlier.

My body was wrecked.

Getting out of my tent felt like doing 80% of my max. 

I’d drive out to get water, food, and shower, then come back to lay gratefully back in my tent.

It was a strange time. 

Hazy, sweaty, ghostly. 

I’d lie in my tent for hours doing nothing but listening, waiting, and grumbling angrily at the dog that’d been barking for hours with no end.

One family left their dog at the campground when they left for the day. It played its rough woofing on repeat with no remorse.

When my neighbor's generator was running I’d listen to that and the special flavor of thoughts that played with it.

When all was still it was the quiet rushing of the river and the changing patterns of birdsong that pattered against my ears.

Listen, listen, dear

The river has something to say

Under the generators

My joints didn’t start breaking down until the fifth day. My jaw hurt to move and I could only open it halfway.

But earlier that day a rash had appeared on the inside of my left knee. It looked like a rug burn but instead of scraping the skin off, it was like the skin had been dyed.

It didn’t hurt or itch at all, but my mom told me to see a doctor about it and I am glad I did. 

A negative COVID test and a quick look at the rash had me prescribed Doxycycline less than 10 minutes after I was seen. 

The antibiotics worked their modern miracle on Lyme disease, and after only a couple days I felt good enough to travel again.

Columbus

I visited Columbus to see some friends, pick up a gas pizza oven I had ordered to a friends house there, and load up on Cannabis. 

It’s a four hour drive from Summersville to Columbus and one that I was especially looking forward to. 

With new spark plugs I not only had more delicate control over my car but a smoother acceleration.

And after hours upon hours of miserable solitude sweating in my tent, I craved the cool solitude of a long drive.

Especially one through West Virginia where the highways follow the natural ridgelines of the hills. 

They wind up, down, and around the rising forests. 

There’s little pockets of civilization at the highway exits that get further apart as you drive in the wide empty spaces between the bigger cities like Morgantown and Charleston. 

There also aren’t very many cops on the road.

I whipped my little Toyota hatchback at 90 down and around curves with no music but the wind raging through my window, the growl of the engine (like an angry Chihuahua), and the hum of tires on asphalt. 

And of course, about 20 minutes after crossing the bridge into Ohio, I got a speeding ticket for going 82 in a 55. 

The road was easier to speed on than anything in WV–it was flatter and straighter–but as my wise friend said: “Gotta remember where you are.”

The parking ticket I got in downtown Columbus: the easiest city in the world to find parking in but apparently the most nitpicky if you do it wrong.

I got the first ticket at 9:29pm, 31 minutes before parking would become free.

Whatever, my fault I guess. You can only pay for 3 hours at a time and I let the last hour go without paying.

The second one I got while I had paid for the spot, for not displaying the proper registration sticker on my license plate. 

And suddenly nowhere was safe.

Then, as I was moving my car to find a spot in a nearby parking garage, I heard a terrible screeching as the car turned up the corners: my front left tire was utterly flattened. 

It didn’t pop or anything. All the air just let out. 

The lug wrench I had in the car didn’t lock onto the nuts so I couldn’t even take the tire off to get the spare on. I am certainly incompetent at anything mechanical, but I do think this was a tricky one.

After yelling “FUCK” and smoking a cigarette, it became tomorrows problem. 

The next morning AAA sent a couple of guys to help me put the spare on, and after looking at my tire he goes:

“You were driving on that tire? Damn, man.”

It was literally busting out at the seams, that’s why all the air let out without pop. And the tire on the other side was basically the same, just still hanging in there.

I was not only driving on it but I had been turning corners at 90+ mph just a couple days before. If one of those things had popped back then…

I feel pretty fucking lucky it happened in that parking garage. 

I went to a place these guys recommended for a couple of new (used) tires, $50 a piece.

And while waiting for it to open I had some fire Chilaquiles at a Mexican restaurant open nearby. I really gotta start taking pictures of my grub. 

Columbus has a lot of Mexican and Ethiopian food; if you’re ever there those are the cuisines I’d recommend.

Being back in Columbus felt strange.

It was a pretty hasty thing I did that made me live the last two months out of my car instead of spending another Summer working at Portia’s in Columbus. 

I kinda felt like I knew already what that summer would’ve been like. 

Of course I don’t really know, shit happens especially in the Summer. But I had already done it, ya know? 

And visiting back was a little reminder. 

I love all the people and coffee and food and parks and memories (sad, happy, all of it) that are in Columbus for me but damn I am glad, grateful and gifted to have spent this time in the wild.

Just being; scared and alone; in a strange place without help.

The beautiful thing about help is it always pops up at the right time and reminds me all over again about how kind and beautiful people are.

Coming back Home

I didn’t get my tires aligned in Columbus. It was approaching 7 at night and I wanted to rush and sleep in my tent that night. 

So on the four hour drive back to Summersville my car engaged the four-wheel drive because the front two tires were too wobbly to comfortably control the car. 

Although even after aligning them a couple days later the problem was still there. Maybe $50 tires weren’t the best idea.

I got back a little bit before midnight to my campsite.

I found my canopy gone, two new tents put up near mine, and the canopy cover draped over my tent.

Apparently while I was gone it had stormed mad. 

I had figured it had rained pretty hard, because as I drove in I met a thick fog as I got closer and closer to Summersville. 

At points it was so thick my high beams just bounced off of it right back at me and decreased visibility. It usually does fog after a rain here, but not so far away from the river and with such density. 

After hearing about the storm I almost wished I’d been there to see it. 

My canopy was completely wiped out and had hit my tent somehow that was sitting 15 feet away, ripping two holes in the rain cover. 

I had also left my sleeping bag, blanket, and pillow in my tent. I was hoping to go right to bed without having to set anything up when I got back. 

It was wet and muddy everywhere. 

And of course, everything in my tent was completely dry!

Dry!

My neighbors had not only grabbed my tent as it hurled downhill in the wind to stake it down, but had been taking my stuff out to let it dry when the sun was out. 

I then worked with one of my neighbors to duct tape the holes in my rain tarp and set it back up on my tent.

So with a grateful and deep love for humans, I crawled back into my tent to that familiar smell of sweat and must I had spent so many lovely hours developing. 

It was my sweat. 

The smell filling that small cozy space I had slept in for two months brought a primal feeling of comfort and home to my soul magnitudes more powerful than the sweetest scent of laundry detergent or fabric softeners could ever hope to.

It was a comfort and familiarity earned from pain, sweetness, and sadness, and joy all together. 

What a lucky bastard I’ve been. 

Conclusion

I could’ve avoided Lyme disease by checking myself for ticks more rigorously. 

I could’ve avoided the flat tire by buying new tires months ago when I was recommended to.

I could’ve avoided my shit getting rocked by the storm by packing it up and taking everything with me to Columbus instead of leaving it there. 

Sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring for my success: or at least in favor of my not dying. 

Maybe I’ll learn from this and start properly preparing. 

Being more careful, not waiting until something breaks to replace it, that kind of thing.

Or maybe I’ll learn from this and give even less of a fuck.

And just keep doing whatever and trust that it’ll work out somehow.

Only time will tell.

Stay safe out there!
-Andy