on the road, again.

Bus rides and beer. (part 1)

After walking the short trail that leads out through the small patch of trees, we headed for the street.
The Orange Blossom trail. Or as they call it, the 'O.B.T'.
I lead the way as we crossed the street to the other side.
Traffic on the O.B.T. wasn't to bad this time of day but later on it usually gets heavy.
Once we crossed the street we had to walk down 6 or so blocks.
Lori started talking first.
"We need to go to the office at the other end of the mall where they do the surveys at. They owe me $40.00 for the survey i did with the hotdogs. They also got to give me another $20 for the cigarette survey." "Do they pay you with a check?" i asked. "No they pay you in cash", she said, "which is what i like about it." "That's cool." I said. "It will definitely help our financial situation. For now all we got to do is get to my moms place up in Putnam County." "No problem." Lori said with a smile that made me smile too.
We walked the rest of the way to the Florida mall without talking.
When we got there, after walking through the malls giant parking lot, we entered through one of the expensive department stores at the end of the mall.
The mall is a big place and has a lot of people in it going about their shopping and business and daily lives and not really paying attention to a couple carrying there big heavyweight backpacks through here. I got to admit, this woman, Lori certainly can hold her own carrying her full pack and all her stuff. She's what a person would call petite. Maybe even bordering on skinny. Probably 105lbs soaking wet. But she's strong, and determined too, I can see that. I just know she can manage all her stuff throughout this trip. I hate to have to carry more stuff. Especially if it ain't mine.
When we got to where the offices of the surveys where, i decided to wait out in the corridor on a bench for her to go and do what she needed to do. She left her pack with me. I figured it would be awhile until she was done so I just started rearranging things in and on my pack which needed to be done. Things weren't riding right in the pack where the weight didn't feel right. It needed to be shifted to the other side to balance it out. I was done before Lori came back out but i didn't have to wait long after that because she came out of there with a big smile and money in her hand.
After putting our packs back on, she said, "lets get out of here." "Good idea." I said. "Now we just go and wait for a bus. We need to catch the bus going downtown and then we get the bus from there going north to Sanford. We'll have to start hitchhiking from there." when we got to the bus stop, I pulled out a schedule from my pack to find out just when the next bus was coming. "Do you think we'll have enough time to go over to that little store across the street and get a 40 oz to split?" Lori asked. I knew she needed a beer real bad, she is an alcoholic in the first place. myself, I could take it or leave it, it don't make a difference to me. "Sure" I said. "It says in this schedule here that we got around 45 minutes so that will surely give us enough time. We'll just have to keep it on the downlow. We don't want to get put in jail for open container before we even get a chance to get out of town. So I waited here at this bus stop while Lori went over and got our 40 oz. After she got back across the street with me, we just sat there waiting for the bus nonchalantly drinking our beer when we had the chance to and there was no cars or people coming.