I feel an odd sense of relief when I walk in. The shelves around me filled with a plethora of diabetes inducing munchies and the beer cooler making me look twice to see if there is something there I haven’t seen before.
But not now, no its 4 AM and I am just glad that Dan is there to keep the door open for me. Without Dan I can’t say without a doubt that I would even make it down the winding road filled with kamikaze deer and headlight choking blackness. I must have my coffee and Dan is the facilitator of caffeine goodness. Dan is the graveyard shift mgr at the creepy old gas station.
This is where the journey always begins. In the creepy old gas station where the smell of cigarettes and poorly sanitized pizza cooking equipment permeates the nostrils. Where the coffee filters are probably a little moldy and the coffee grinds themselves most assuredly are reused. The same shelf houses my morning breakfast next to the protein bars and in between the Twinkies and the bear claws. The floor is always being mopped and the lights are always flickering a little more than normal, because hey, not many people come in at this time of night/day/morning, what time is it anyway?
I feel comfortable here because I know what this means. It means that I am all alone, on the road, driving like a mad man to beat the invisible adversaries who are going to beat me to the hole i want. The hole on the river. This is what a creepy gas station can mean.
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