I’ve Got Nothing

Sorry, folks. After hours of thinking it over, I’ve been able to come up with nothing significant to say about today. Maybe it’s that I’m becoming progressively more tired each day, as I stay up later and later to write these things (which does not bode well for next week when classes start again). Maybe it’s that spending time with another person in the car means that I’m spending the driving days having actual human interaction, instead of the kind of pure reflection that tends to produce the best posts here (although when I make the last 2 legs of the journey alone tomorrow and Monday, I’ll have plenty of time to myself). Not that I’m complaining – I’m sure this trip has been better than if I had taken it by myself. It’s just that it may not lend itself as well to blogging.

Even the details of today aren’t all that enthralling: After several wrong turns and a period of misreading Copina’s symbol for railroad tracks as a state border, we did eventually manage to cross into Mississippi, where we took this picture and immediately turned around.

From there, we set our sights on all-you-can-eat sushi in Indianapolis for dinner. Anything that might endanger that spectacle was left behind. So although we drove through Nashville, we didn’t exactly take in the city’s culture. We did manage to stop at the world’s most authentic Cracker Barrel though.

Eventually we encountered the trip’s third and final first-time state – Kentucky. I already had an affinity for Kentucky after it featured so prominently in my group social justice project this year for having some of the most progressive bail and pretrial release programs in the country. That fondness only grew today. Just along I-65 we passed the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the National Corvette Museum, Mammoth Cave National Park, and the apparently-bustling city of Louisville before reentering Indiana. I hadn’t considered what we might pass in Kentucky when planning this trip, but now I think it would probably be possible to spend at least a weekend just exploring that small slice of the Bluegrass State. Even its topography is interesting. Whereas Tennessee was mostly farmland with some rolling hills, Kentucky has mountains and forests and much less of the ugly scrubby stuff of so many other states this week. None of it would have looked particularly remarkable if I had tried to take pictures of it, but trust me, it was a welcome change nonetheless.

A quick hundred miles after crossing the Ohio River, we reached the Sushi Club and began our dinner odyssey. Through careful pacing (the same strategy that – as I was taught this year – someone at a bar employs to prevent the night from ending badly), we managed to get far more than our money’s worth, although I always go into those places expecting to eat $75 of sushi, so I’m always a little disappointed when I’m limited to the capacity of a normal human stomach.

And now we’ve returned to Terre Haute. Tomorrow I continue on the return journey alone, before stopping back in New Jersey to pick up a new quadruped travel companion for the last leg of the trip home. And in those 2 days, I promise to do my best to think of something, anything, profound to say.