Back in Asheville, taking it one flush at a time

First of all, thank you to those who read my previous post, who checked in on us afterward, and who have donated to any of the organizations supporting Western North Carolina in the aftermath of the hurricane. The quotidien needs like electricity, internet, and water are slowly improving in the area, although it’s impossible to ignore how much infrastructure including roads, houses, and business will need rebuilding long after Asheville stops being on the front of newspapers and instagram stories. One step at a time though.

My last post left us in Savannah, where we went to escape the chaos for a few days. Savannah was cool! The city is littered with colorful old houses, niche local storefronts, and simultaneously majestic and ominous trees draped in Spanish moss. It reminded me a lot of Charleston, SC but in the way that Philadelphia could remind people of New York City: similar energy but just a tad more run down. For anyone who’s planning a trip there soon, take a look at the porch ceilings as you stroll through neighborhoods: almost every single one of them is colored light blue. We learned that blue porch ceilings were believed by the Gullah Geechee people of the 1800s (and, evidently, the modern day Savanahans) to repel ghosts, who would be tricked into thinking the ceiling is water or the sky. Pretty fun stuff.

Our hurri-cation soon came to an end though, and last Sunday we found ourselves driving back north, slowly re-entering the land of little cell service and big gas station lines. Asheville looked largely the same as we’d left it, although soon after we arrived, our internet was restored, which meant that we’ve been able to resume working from home without any issues. This has sealed the deal for us; as long as we continue to have internet and power, we will stay through the end of October as planned, even if it means many trips to water distribution sites.

And, let me tell you, it has meant MANY trips to water distribution sites. For those of you who don’t know, you need about two gallons of water to flush a toilet, which is a lot more than I ever realized. Pretty much anytime we leave the house these days we’re bringing with us our 6 empty gallons of water to refill at one of the sites and earn us three more days of flushes. And that's just for the toilets.

What about showers, you ask? Well, on days where we don’t feel like leaving the house, we bought a camp shower, which is effectively a big bag of water with a hose that we hang on top of our shower head so that if we crouch down and alternate between turning on the water, rinsing, turning off the water, shampooing, etc., we can get two “full” showers in! It does, without a doubt, leave you wanting more, but it works. And, on our more indulgent days, we drive 15 minutes north to the Weaverville Walmart, where luxury portable shower trailers with individual showers and hot water have been set up for public use. They also have laundry trailers for you to drop off your clothes and pick up the next day, washed, dried and folded. We’re big fans of Walmart these days.

So, there are options for showers and for laundry. What there are not really options for, are dishes. Do not get me started on the dish situation. It is extremely difficult to wash dishes without running water. The approach we’ve gone with is having one bowl of soapy water and one bowl of clean water followed by the drying station. In reality, the soapy water bowl ends up dirty, the clean water bowl ends up soapy, and the drying station ends up having to do all the heavy lifting on getting the soap off. We did give in and buy paper plates and utensils, but as far as I’m aware, there’s no such thing as paper pots and pans, so we’ll be on the dirty/soapy water bowls grind for the foreseeable future. And, no, there is not a good estimate of when we will get water back, but schools in the area aren’t planning on resuming until October 28th, so if that’s a reflection of the water restoration timeline, then we may never again know an Asheville with running water.

However! We are getting to know an Asheville with lots of free food and a plethora of people with no better plans than to hang out with us! On Friday, we went to a cookout in the Peace Gardens near our house, which is an eclectic garden of funky plants and recycled art. It was nice to meet more of our neighbors and even nicer that the live band and good weather gave us more to talk about than the whole situation at hand. Obviously and understandably, most of our conversations over the last two weeks centered around the hurricane. It’s a historical event, it’s a shared experience, and it’s impossible not to discuss when you’re playing pickleball on courts with a fence that is no longer a fence and just a fallen tree. It continues to remind me of the Covid era in that way - I can’t remember how many times during peak Covid I uttered the words “this is crazy” to a stranger. Let’s just say the word “unprecedented” has resurfaced to the top of my vocabulary lately. So, as a result, I greatly appreciated that this weekend, I had several opportunities, many over free burgers and beer, to converse with people about something other than the fact that we also don’t have running water yet. I had one conversation in particular that stuck out for its unrelatedness to the situation at hand. I don’t remember what got us on the topic, but I asked the group if anyone had any million dollar ideas that they’re just waiting for someone to develop, and one of the girls shouted, “oh, I love being innovative!”

So cheers to nurturing the innovative spirit, to showering in ways you’ve never showered before, to eating free burgers every single day in a weekend, and to learning too many new names in just three days to remember them all.

Outtakes from the last week and a half below.

Xoxo,

YTP

Upon our arrival in Savannah, we went out to get a cocktail at a rooftop bar on the waterfront, and it was strange to think that just that morning we had said bye to our neighbor Mandy as she drove by, elated that she had finally been able to fill her tank with gas.

When we came back on Sunday, we still didn’t have internet, so Monday morning, I trekked downtown where I found a brewery with WiFi that let me plop down for my oh-so-important work call while they prepped free lunches for the community. They even gave me free wings. We did get internet back Monday night.

Just to give you a visual on the whole dishes situation. As you can imagine, this has also led to an abnormal number of fruit flies buzzing around. Dino has since designed a fruit fly trap, which has managed to catch exactly zero flies in the twenty four hours since its creation.

The band at the Peace Gardens cookout really did warrant conversation; they were quite good, and we’re still not sure exactly who they were! A miracle sent down from the music gods perhaps.

The conversation about innovation actually occurred at a brewery in a town nearby that has miraculously regained access to all the things (water, electricity, internet). These are all pickleball friends; we have played more pickleball in the last three days than Dino probably ever thought he would play in his life.

Today’s federal holiday gave me the opportunity to do some volunteering, so I helped out at Beloved Asheville’s sorting and distribution site. I was met by a frenzied operation and by two heroes ready to save the day. This really is the stuff of movies.