Tales from the Trail #15: Just another god named Jeremy …
And it was relatively soon thereafter that I found myself walking & walking & walking through another increasingly muggy afternoon (a mugginess brought on by temperatures that were for whatever reason not one bit diminished by the steady rainfall that gently soaked me for the first hour or so of that day’s journey). In truth, by the mid-afternoon things were getting so uncomfortable and heat-riddled that I started feeling a bit dizzy as I went along, and soon thereafter began to desperately look for anywhere to get inside & away from said atmospheric oppression. And yet there wasn’t much to be found on this particular stretch of the roadway, and what little there was to find in the way of roadside businesses were all closed up tight for the day …
And yet then, just after I had passed a highway construction site that had proved to be a bit dicey to circumnavigate, I glanced to my left and saw a storage facility not too far down a side street, and decided to amble down to it in the hopes of finding solace from the heat. And find that solace I most certainly did, for even though the establishment itself was locked up tight like all of its other nearby compatriots, its tiny welcoming auto-entry vestibule was indeed both wide open and delightfully air-conditioned. So I thankfully entered the same, disrobed to a modest degree, blew up my travel pillow, and lay down on the cool floor there to revel in the blessed chilliness; “prayditating” aloud my heartfelt gratitude for the solace the place had provided.
Amusingly enough, it wasn’t long at all (I was indeed still “praying” my thanks aloud at the time) when a voice “from the heavens” rained down upon me from an until-then unseen loudspeaker mounted on the vestibule wall; a voice that quite calmly stated “Hello, this is Jeremy from Storage Express. Can I help you with anything today?” I immediately laughed out loud (I couldn’t help myself) at being “caught out” during my open ramblings to “the Divine”, and after apologizing for possibly startling him on the job, I briefly explained what I was doing with my Walk and that I was ever so thankful for being granted some solace at Storage Express from the incredibly hot day. Jeremy then told me he hadn’t been startled at all (“No worries about that”) but that there could be no loitering there that day, and rather than explain to him that I was doing anything but “loitering” at the place, I simply thanked him for his kindness, got my things together, and made my way back to The Road.
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