After being home for a few days short of 7 weeks, we embarked upon a new journey to the West at 1:30 in the morning in typical fashion. We only drove about 30 minutes before Kyle was passing out behind the wheel. We ended the night in Central Jersey. We slept in the back of our vehicle without moving any of our bags to the front. For anyone that hasn't seen the car with all the stuff in the back, to give some perspective, our dogs can barely lay in the back comfortable with all the stuff. Piggy decided that she wanted to sleep on top of me and since we weren't sleeping under the covers, I let her stay. Mongrel was smart. She slept in the front all by herself not bothered by anyone. After sleeping for about 4 hours, I woke up all allergied up, covered in hair at 6 AM and we began our journey to the Road Kill Cook-off in Pocahontas County, WV. We drove and drove tired as hell and finally arrived at around 3 PM. When we arrived, a lot of the food was gone, but we still got to try ground hog stew, and some meatloaf that had bear, oppossum and like 3 other random animals. It all tasted pretty good.
After a short while, Kyle and I took off for Jolo, WV. In Jolo, WV, there are several churches that believe in handling poisonous snakes. A couple months ago, on the day that Kyle and I planned on going to the church, the pastor was bit by a snake and died a pretty tragic death. Unfortunately, due to procrastination, Kyle and I weren't able to make it to this service. This taught Kyle that procrastination makes you miss out on...awesome opportunities... pretty sick and twisted.
Anyway, this time we weren't going to miss it. We drove to Jolo which is so far the most backwards place that we have been on our year long travels. These people don't even know that slavery was abolished. So we drove and drove around the non-existent town looking for the church. We found a church that was having a service at 8:30 on a Saturday so we figured we were at the right place. Upon arrival, my first observation aside from the lack of snakes was that the pastor was wearing a blue leisure suit and jet black combed over hair. I felt like I had returned to the 1970s.
Kyle and I quietly sat in the back discussing if this could be the snake handling church. We were greeted by the few people that attended the service. We asked if this was the snake handling church. Someone pointed to a man sitting not too far from us and told us that this was the pastor of the snake handling church. Really? Why is he at this service? We were encouraged to speak with him. He told us that he was in fact the pastor and that his church wasn't having a service. This was extremely hard to understand as these people barely speak English... and they complain about the Mexicans...
Anyway, over the course of about an hour, the pastor told us that another church was having a snake handling service the following day and that we could sleep in the parking lot of the church overnight. He also offered his own church and said that we could sleep in the church since it had heat and a bathroom. For fear of loose snakes in his church, we opted to sleep in our car.
The following morning, we attended the snake handling church. The service began with the most hick bluegrass dancing and singing that you could ever imagine. There was probably a total of ten teeth in the whole congregation. About twenty minutes into the service, Kyle began feeling sick...what a buzz kill... He left the church and began vomiting on the church steps. He came back in a told me that he didn't feel well. After a while of him being outside, I determined that this wasn't just a passing sickness so I came out to see what I could do.
In between throwing up all over the church parking lot, the pastor's wife walked over from her house and saw us sitting outside. She said that I should bring Kyle into the church and everyone would pray over him. I respectfully told her that I didn't think that would be a good idea. She insisted, but I told her that I was going to bring him to the hospital instead.
The pastor's wife walked into the church and Kyle proceeded to vomit and rocket yoo-hoo crawling zombie style. It was not a pretty site. Kyle wanted to go into a bathroom so he could get a hold of himself and wash his hands and all. He went into the bathroom and he could hear voices screaming and the pastor shouting, "The Holy Spirit is your armor!!!" I guess this was the snakes part...
He came out and told me absolutely nothing except that the bathroom was poison. He wasn't exactly talking at this point, he was so sick. He later told me that the water was polluted with coal. These people are washing their hands with poison on a regular basis. I got Kyle in the car and started driving towards civilization with my map in hand, periodically stopping for Kyle to throw up. After driving for what seemed like forever, I crossed the state border into Virginia. I kept driving cuz I still had no reception. I finally arrived at a town with reception and learned that the hospital was actually right next door to where I had parked. I brought Kyle into the hospital. They made me fill out some information. Every second that I was delayed from seeing Kyle, I was terrified that someone bad was happening because Kyle was incoherent and this place was still pretty backwards. Finally, I was allowed into the back after pushing the buzzer for like 5 minutes. The doctor was talking to Kyle. They decided to take blood and pump him with fluids. They took 7 viles of blood. For anyone that hasn't gotten blood drawn for something simple like a stomach flu, seven viles is way too much!! This place is definitely selling his plasma. After a couple hours of being pumped with fluids, we left the hospital. This concluded day 3 of our travels.
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