One of the challenges of perpetual travel is getting laundry done all over the world. Once you’re in a place for a few weeks or months it’s an easy routine. But when you’re in a town for a night or two you have to take your chances with whatever you can find. When you’re in Charleston, West Virginia it’s an adventure.
After finding the first address I pulled off Google Maps was a boarded up joint in a distressed area, we moved on to the second address. When I pulled up two employees were standing outside discussing – I’m not making this up – how you get to the methadone clinic. And not in the philosophical sense of ‘how does one end up at a methadone clinic’. It was in the sense of ‘what Charleston streets have less traffic so you get there sooner’.
After she leisurely finished her cigarette the methadone fan ambled inside to see why I was waiting at the counter with a bag of clothes. To have laundry cleaned perhaps? She informed me that to get it done quickly she would have to “not put it on a ticket” and that it would be $15. I agreed knowing that she was in all probability keeping the proceeds for herself and her dealer.
I returned in two hours to pick up the laundry, paid the money but did not realize the full price until we opened the bag the next morning. Apparently, in order to get the task done so quickly, she needed to dry our new Fall clothes in a kiln, blast furnace or other industrial device that reduced my clothes to the size I wore in elementary school and Connie’s to a size Misses 4.
So we’ll be fine in Europe once we replace two or three hundred dollars of clothes. And to be honest, right now I could use a little methadone myself.
