How to Move to a New Town with No Car and No Friends

The Hermit

My first failed attempt at moving to a new town wasn't without a vehicle and I did manage to have one friend in town. That was when I made the trek out to Colorado. First I had stayed with an old roommate for a couple of weeks while I got my feet on the ground. Once I found a job and a place to stay, I thought I had it made. Until I realized I couldn't find a new place to stay after the lease ran up in two months and the only person I was living with, since the cool roommate left for the summer, was a coke addicted attorney with no license.

Note to Self: Do not try to move to Boulder if you plan on renting with college kids because they all leave after May.

So I did what any normal sane person would do and quit my job to move out to Washington State. The State of Utah did not think so and killed my car within fifteen minutes of crossing the Wyoming/Utah stateline....

Lessons learned from this whole incident:

- Do not impulsively quit your job if you can't find a place to live.
- Do not quit your job so you can take time off to go to Bonnaroo.
- Do not think it's a good idea to move with no money.
- Do not try to travel long distances without checking your oil levels first.

After $600 dollars in UPS shipment costs, a night at a cheap motel, a haircut, a few low alcohol beers at a dive bar, and a twenty plus hour journey across the country, I had returned back home to where my parents lived, in South Carolina.

The Greyhound across country and that gave me flashbacks of middle school where the 'cool kids' would sit in the back and act up.

At one point, the Greyhound bus driver stopped the vehicle and threatened to kick people off, just for making fun of him. I had to make sure that I hadn't inadvertently traveled back a decade...

 A few months went by until I could save enough money to move out and I had tried my hand out west again, this time in Texas!

I lucked out by finding some awesome roommates online and also by moving in October, not April. (Beginning of the school year, not the end)

I decided that I didn't need a vehicle, either, because it would just get me into trouble and I didn't have enough to get anything other than a clunker, anyway. My first weekend in Texas was fantastic, I got a chance to volunteer at Art Outside, which was a great way to jump into the waters of a new town.

Who cares if I had to sleep near fire ants under a pecan tree inside of a one person sleeping bag tent that was too small for me?

My new roommate hooked me up with a volunteer position so that I could enter without a cost, and I took this as a way to force myself to interact with individuals. Upon arriving, I discovered that this was just an extended family from what I had been used to in Asheville. Instead of hedonism being the operative word, however, I discovered that performance was the preferred method of expression.

The name, as it implies, is centered around Art in all it's various forms. The forms that it chose to take were that of fire breathing ironwork sculptures that could easily be misinterpreted as a dragon, given the right amount of psychedelics.

Canvas and dancers littered the spaces throughout the land. My first thought upon watching the movement masters is that they would have to be really, really good if they were on any sort of illicit substances. My god, the things these people could do with their bodies. The amateurs that would watch and try to emulate but their mind-body connection would fail within the first minutes...

Walking through I nearly get run over by a radioactive green vehicle sporting several dozen eyeballs on top and rows of teeth that surrounded the outside edge as it was attempting to shuttle people to their sites.

A loud THUD comes from behind me, and as I turn to see a group of humans dressed in construction attire and mouse noses, it is a life sized version of the game Mousetrap.

Upon sitting in an open field area after having worked for a few hours signing in people and giving them wristbands, I ran into the girl who was working with me at the welcome booth. She seemed to be flirtatious but I wasn't sure if it was the alcohol coursing through her that made her approach me. I knew it was for sure when she decided to stand inside of a cage surrounded by a massive Tesla coil.

The whole event seemed like one massive carnivalesque experience. One that had died out hundreds of years ago but was revived by technology.

There were no exploitation freak shows because everyone here was a freak and it was a celebration of the freaks. Those who make artwork that isn't landscapes that you find in hotel rooms. The artists who use their body to move and glide in the air, held only up by a long piece of cloth. The artists that spin around FLAMING WEAPONS.

There were no real carnivals rides because the experience itself was one long giant ride.

I knew at that very moment that we were doomed as a species. Nothing this good could last forever and it didn't, at least not for this writer. The last day of the festival, I had to get up early, so I left the festivities in order to go back to the sleeping bag tent contraption. All the others in our camping area were off partying, but I had to call it an early night. As I looked up at the big, clear Texas night sky, I was at least grateful for at that moment, I had found a group of people I could call friends.