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.

But Do I Really Feel the Way I Feel?

It’s strange how things work sometimes. The day involving the least walking is the day when I end up the most tired. Granted, my tiredness during a given day isn’t determined by the amount of aggregate exercise done that day, unless my tiredness sensors can somehow predict how much exercise I’ll be getting throughout the rest of the day – in which case, they need to be applying that ability to the useful parts of my brain. In any event, it’s probably the cumulative effect of several long days and of staying up too late to write. So thanks, guys. This is all your fault.

None of that prevented us from having a full busy day as we journeyed from the Midwest through the heart of the South. Tonight we’re in Memphis (and yes, every time I say, hear, or think the name of this city, that song gets stuck in my head. There are definitely worse songs for that to happen with, though). Getting here took us through this trip’s first first-time state – Arkansas. 

I have no pictures of the other 75 miles of Arkansas we traversed today, mainly because the farms there look pretty much the same as the farms in Missouri or Indiana – large and flat. There were some oddly shaped irrigation ditches on some plots, and we had a flyover from a crop duster, but that was about all Arkansas had to offer. Not even a travel center to stop and buy a refrigerator magnet. So on to Tennessee it was.

Do Elephants Lay Eggs?

For a day with an itinerary reading “ribs, Cardinals game” today we managed to cobble together a full slate of St. Louis-iciousness – and one that again left us both thoroughly exhausted. Again we found ourselves walking more than we expected, although we didn’t come anywhere near the 12 miles (Lindsay did the math) that we’d covered in Chicago. And, mercifully, it didn’t rain.

People In Every Direction

“Welcome to your new home.” 

Ominous words spoken over a loudspeaker by a faceless creature known only as “Steve.” I have a home, Steve. It’s in Boston, among my people. My home has culture and variety and authenticity. Your boat seems to have none of these. It is certainly not my home. Five days from now, I don’t envisioning this iron leviathan becoming my home, either.. And honestly, Steve, your little “welcome” sounded awfully cultish.

Moments of Gold and Flashes of Light

What is time, anyway? It can give order and regularity to the workings of nature, but it can be arbitrary and artificial. Perhaps its most important quality is that it can be (and is) relative. However, as Lost taught us, we need a constant frame of reference in order for our minds to make sense of this strangest aspect of time.

We Have Come This Far, Always Believing

What a strange day. It didn’t really have a beginning, since I went right from writing last night’s post into watching breaking news coverage of what at the time looked like a random crime spree around Boston but that was getting national coverage because all the media in the country was already there. When I decided to go to bed around 2:30 that was still all it was.

From there, things got weird. The first important piece of information is that the Motel 6 sheets were made of some strange material that got much warmer than most sheets. The other key piece of information is that the TV in the room had no sleep timer. Combined, these factors led me to wake up several times during the night to adjust the heat, while also hearing a version of the story that was slightly different from the last one. It wasn’t until 8:00 when the alarm went off that Morning Joe proclaimed “it’s all connected, folks.”

On Top of Old Smoky

While it wasn’t covered in cheese, it was still the main event on today’s schedule. But before I get to that, there is much scenic driving to report:

Waterworld

Water, water everywhere. Except I’m really not that thirsty.

If Captain Planet were real (don’t tell Don Cheadle it’s not), the girl with the 4^th ring would have loved today, because it was all about water. It made its presence known before today technically began, by way of a massive rogue thunderless storm whose path was trained directly on Mt. Desert Island from 10pm until about 3am. I know because it woke me up and kept me nervously checking the corners of the tent for the water that never did manage to get inside.

Can’t You Just Feel the Moonshine?

This morning I awoke in the east, and now I am in the uttermost west. Well, probably not the most uttermost, but there are several 6,000-foot peaks between Asheville and my current home: The Comfort Inn & Suites at Dollywood Lane in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Let’s parse that name for a moment, because it’s perhaps the greatest place name in the history of mankind. Dollywood Lane does, in fact, refer to the theme park based around the large-bosomed country singer. Dollywood is right down the street, and while I don’t plan on going, Ms. Parton has infiltrated much of this town, for better or for worse. Her ghoulish likeness is on my room key, advertising “Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede,” which is apparently some kind of strange animatronic dinner theater production. I bet if I tried hard enough I could come away with at least a life-sized cardboard cutout of her. But wait! We haven’t even talked about the name “Pigeon Forge” yet! Picture, if you will, a pigeon forge. Is this an iron smelting forge fed by pigeons? “Quick, Larry! Throw some more pigeons on the fire before that metal hardens!” Or maybe it’s a forge that makes pigeons? Who knows.

Snow & Opulence

Really only one thing happened today: The Appalachian mountains became larger, closer, and more picturesque; going from this:

 to this.

I’m Not Dead Yet

The reports of my and my blog’s death have been greatly exaggerated. I know I haven’t posted in a few days even after promising that I would, but the truth is that, even though I’ve been plenty busy gallivanting around central New Jersey over the past few days, there just isn’t as much notable stuff to write interestingly about now that my trip is pretty much over.

On Thursday, my sister and parents took me to Joe’s Crab Shack for my birthday dinner. I’d only been to one Joe’s Crab Shack before – an experience which I’ll never be able to completely replicate, since that restaurant now sits at the bottom of Galveston Bay thanks to a hurricane. This time, it involved a big pot of shellfish and a certain person being forced to do a hula dance against his will all because he was fortunate enough to survive 27 years without dying. There may be pictures of that, but they won’t be appearing here. Sorry. But not very sorry.

Come On, Babe, We’re Gonna Paint the Town

The route I had planned out yesterday developed a hitch almost from the very beginning. The plan was for me to gradually make my way north towards Wrigley Field in the morning / early afternoon, and then slowly come back south in the evening. To that end, I was going to do a quick drive-by at the Adler Planetarium first, because it has great views of the city skyline (I do happen to like planetariums too, but I wasn’t in the mood for a museum).

In the Land of the Wild Hogs

The day I was offered my new teaching job, I immediately went home and started booking hotels for this trip. My general goal was to pay somewhere between $50 and $80, with a few exceptions (Las Vegas in particular). But when it came time to find a hotel in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I ran into problems. At first, everything close to Mt. Rushmore was coming up at over $250 a night on Priceline. Expanding my radius as far out as Rapid City and the Wyoming border didn’t help. I couldn’t figure it out. Why, of all the places I’d be visiting, why was this one so much more expensive? Eventually I stumbled upon the answer when Priceline offered to search nearby towns, and one of the options it gave me was Sturgis. A few clicks later and I realized I’d be in South Dakota at the same time as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

For those of you who’ve never watched American Chopper, Sturgis is the largest biker rally in the world. During the first week of August, the state’s population frequently doubles with the influx of bikers. But from what I saw today, that’s not entirely true. It would be more accurate to say that 90% of the vehicles on the road this week have no doors.

Here On This Mountainside

As I began the second half of my journey, instead of focusing on geographic and geologic features, today was almost entirely about life. Specifically, the largest life forms the earth has ever known. There is a reverence that comes from walking among the giant sequoias. Even without fully comprehending their sheer immensity, it is plainly obvious to anyone who visits them that they are enormous and nearly indestructible, and that our presence among them is possible only but for their grace. Should one choose to shed even a small limb while crowds are gathered beneath, there would be nothing we could do to save ourselves. We are lucky that these are peaceful and hospitable giants.

A Dam Quick Day

There. Obligatory “dam” joke out of the way. Like the title says, today was a quick day, but for some reason I’m still exhausted. Hopefully I’ll sleep well for the few hours I have until I need to be up again.

I'm getting close...

Who Puts a City in A Place Like This Anyway?

It’s in the middle of a desert. There’s no available drinking water. On a day when the temperature reached 106, the meteorologist on the news commented, “If you don’t like the weather today, you should probably move.” What on earth possessed someone to build a city here, of all places?

Cows Into Rocks

I knew my breakfast plans from the moment I woke up this morning. Last night, as I was pulling into the rest area, I spotted a sign for an IHOP. Since IHOP is the greatest invention in the history of the human race, there was no doubt what I’d be doing this morning.