We pick up today still on the road, driving to a Planet Fitness to take a shower. It’s still super hot, which makes the air conditioning inside the gym so much better. We shower, and while I’m waiting for Kyle to finish I took a chance to run on the treadmill (weird to do after the shower but still). I mostly just did walking and did just one kilometre before Kyle was ready to go.
After that it’s a straight shot to the next capital, Columbia, South Carolina. We got there during golden hour, around 7pm, and found parking a block away from the capitol building which was free after 6pm. We parked right in front of a ramen restaurant which we decided we should go to after we visit the capitol.
The capitol building itself was nice, and there was a really nice light shining through the trees in the surrounding park as we walked through. We had to wait for someone else to take their photos, but once they were done, we got ours, admired the statues and city streets around it, and then headed back to the ramen restaurant by the car.
The ramen restaurant was surprisingly cheap, only $30 for both of us including drinks and a tip. We hung out there for a bit, enjoying the food and discussing what to do next. We settled on doing some DoorDash in Columbia before heading to the next rest area on the way to Virginia.
Driving in Columbia is a wild experience, within the first 5 minutes I saw, no exaggeration, 7 red light runners. People are all over the place, and you never know if someone is actually going to stop or not. It’s a great place to practice defensive driving though. While we were driving, we noticed a lot of fire trucks and police cars going down the main road with lights and sirens on. Later, we came across 3 police cars next to the train tracks sitting and waiting for something. Further on, we found a number of police cars scattered around seemingly waiting or searching for someone. We tried to find out via a police scanner, but couldn’t get any good information.
When we finally decided to call it a night and head to the rest area, we pulled over in a parking lot to check the tire pressure, which was way too low, around 20psi. We got the pump out and got it set up, but it didn’t start up. Upon closer inspection, the little nubbin at the end of the 12v adapter had been pushed in or fallen off, and as much as Kyle tried, he couldn’t get it to power up again. We drove a block away to a gas station to fill up with air, and then checked how close to our rest area the next O’Rileys is for the morning so we can exchange it, which turned out to only be a few miles.
We headed to the rest area where before bed, I took a further look into how to vote in the Canadian Federal Election from abroad. Because I’m a visitor, I can call a Canadian embassy and ask them if I can ship my ballot to them, and provided they’re okay with it, I can then go pick it up from them, fill it out, and give it back to them to ship to Ottawa. The nearest embassy/consulate is in Chicago, where we’re going anyway, so I plan to call them tomorrow and sort that out.