Wagons Home!

Wagons Home

2007-12-29T00:07:00.000-08:00

18 days
26 states
8,527 miles

There's been some rumbling around my house regarding my lack of posting once I returned home, the day after my last post, so here's a tidy wrap-up.

States visited/traversed: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland.

Things I learned:

Some of Amarillo, TX's stoplights go over to blinking yellows after 10 p.m.
Okemah, OK is very proud of Woody Guthrie.
Cotton picking is still a back-breaking job.
Pennsylvanians are awfully nice.
Traffic in and around Atlanta is the worst I have ever seen.
Seattle has more of an attitude than Portland.
In the deep dark of a United States night, you can see the most stars in Wyoming.
Colorado isn't all Rocky Mountains; some of it is flat, boring plains and zillions of cows.
Arizona snow squalls come up like driving straight into a wall.
The California desert near Barstow is perfect in the winter: 60 degrees, mild winds, always sunny.
You can see Mount Shasta from 60 miles away on I-5.
Go to the Cadillac Cafe on Broadway in Portland and get the custard French toast.
Best to avoid the Snoqualmie Pass in winter, unless you have snow chains or four wheel drive.
You'll never go more than 10 minutes without hearing or seeing a train in Cheyenne, WY.
If you drive from New York to Las Vegas, Las Vegas will be the least interesting part of your trip.
Piggly Wiggly really exists and had brands of toothpaste I had never heard of.
Arkansas is beautiful.
When the levee breaks, mama you got to move.
Waffle House might be inexpensive, but they make patty melts on Texas toast, which is awesome, and their coffee isn't half bad.
Yakima. I just love saying it. Yakima.
Tumbleweeds also exist.
If you drive between Asheville, NC and Long Island, NY, you will drive through 8 states in one day. And it will be 759 miles. And you will have to take a nap at a rest stop south of Roanoke because you are so tired because you barely slept in Asheville because you were all like, "Should I head home tomorrow or should I try for one more night?"
Asheville is adorable and if you're ever there, eat breakfast at Early Girl. You'll thank me.
Also? 18 days = 1,040 photos. A lot of duds in the mix. I'm printing 306 photos and it's costing me an arm and a leg, but the first thing everybody wanted to know was when I was planning to print out pictures. So the answer is: tomorrow.
Home is good. But home could be anywhere.
Greenwood, MS, for example, could be home.

Random facts:

I jumped on the bed in five states.
I have about 10 pounds of hotel toiletries, if anybody need a shoeshine kit, shower cap or bar of soap shaped like a duck.
The cold cuts at the Peabody are Boar's Head.
I listed to all of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops for the first time over the course of day 18. That's about 5 hours of loops disintegrating.
Troy Aikman's house is the first attraction listed on the See Henryetta! sign on I-40 in Oklahoma.
Every Whole Foods sells my beloved Ito En teas, so I didn't have to stock up like I did, but hey.
Just over the Nevada/California border is a patrol stop, like a toll both, and if you're not from California, they stop and ask you if you're carrying livestock or produce. I said no on both accounts, and later that night realized I was carrying three Pink Lady apples from the Whole Foods in Santa Fe.
The guitar statue at the crossroads in Clarkdale depicts two blue guitars crossed over each other--they're copies of the iconic Gretsch guitar (think George Harrison's guitar in the early 60s--which was picked up by the bluesmen well after Robert Johnson's death, so they broke the anachronism and it only now annoys me). Weird sidenote: my Ibanez semi-hollow body electric guitar is a copy of that Gretsch. It's this one.
If you're going on the road for a long time, pick up an 18-pack of Horizon Organic reduced fat milk. They come in little cartons with straws and when you're not quite hungry enough to stop, but hungry for something, it's the most delicious treat ever. Because of the special container, they don't need to be refrigerated until after opening, so they're perfect to keep in the car. I paired that with an apple and some shredded wheat and I never went without breakfast or a snack.
You can't not get the catfish in Mississippi. Or the collard greens. Or the biscuits and gravy.
Little Rock is named that because of a rock formation in the Arkansas River.
Dust storms! Wyoming gets them so bad that they block out the moon sometimes.
Cheapest gas: $2.10/gallon on the Continental Divide in Arizona.
Most expensive gas: $3.49/gallon off of Route 99 in Stockton, CA.
There's a shift on the oil platforms in the gulf that's called a "14 & 14" (which is not like two 7 & 7s, for you drinkers out there), which means 14 days on the rig, 14 days off. This was told to me in a bar at the MGM by a platform worker who had seen the Mayweather fight the night before and had lost $7,000 in the sports book. (Nerd note: when he first used the term "in the sports book," I had no idea what that meant)
Memphis BBQ sauce makes the perfect gift.
Elvis' middle name is misspelled on his gravestone.
There is a Bob Dylan song to fit every occasion--but anyone reading this blog is probably painfully aware of this fact by now.
And, finally, my lucky streak ended and I got two speeding tickets: the first in Washington, and the second just outside of Amarillo, Texas, on my way back to get my pillow.

I did a lot of--sorry for the awful cliche--soul-searching, but I didn't do a lot of worrying (until the end, honestly), and now that I'm home, I've decided to take my mom's advice and enjoy my life. That's probably what I realized more than anything else: 2007 was too much about just struggling to get through, struggling to get to the next mile marker, struggling to figure out the next step and I put myself in too many places where I shouldn't have been for my own wellbeing. No more. No stress in 2008--there's just no place for it in my life.

Thanks to all of you for sticking through with me--your comments and e-mails were always appreciated and read with love.

Hope the new year brings you peace.

Andrea

P.S. Next stop: Darjeeling! I only have one question and that is: Who's comin' with me?

"Tired of screwing up, tired of going down, tired of myself, tired of this town."
Tom Petty

"You don't have to yearn for love, you don't have to be alone,
Somewheres in this universe there's a place that you can call home."
Bob Dylan

"Good work, everyone. I suggest you get some sleep. Me, I'm going to stay up all night singing songs about penguins in a fine, piercing tenor."
- Futurama

Day 17 (Or: Not Much To Write Home About)

2007-12-20T21:30:00.000-08:00

Kiss my Asheville, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just west of the Eastern Continental Divide, where Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald died in a fire at a mental institution in 1940.

I'm the kind of tired where everytime I look in the mirror even I wonder what I'm so angry about. But my eyebrows are just too tired to stay up and make me look open and kind.

The reason there's not much to write home about is that today was spent driving from Mississippi to Asheville, NC, from where I'm currently writing. A meager 600 or so miles, and yet, 11 hours of driving. Doesn't help that technically, I'm still on central time, even though I crossed over into eastern once I went over the border between Alabama and Georgia.

States traversed today:

Mississippi (I should have stayed. I have lovely stories of the nice people at the Alluvian helping me this morning to find my way to North Carolina, giving me water and extra pads of paper and pens for the trip, and the business card of the front desk manager in case I got lost or turned around on the way up here. What hotel in the north would ever do that for somebody??)
Alabama (arrrghh... I really wanted to see Birmingham, but it was shrouded in fog)
Georgia (been here before, not particularly sad I missed it this time)
South Carolina (I was only in South Carolina for like an hour)
North Carolina (and even less here, although this is where I'm sleeping tonight)

I also learned today that there are two kinds of rain. The first one is something like this:

I took this photo during a minor squall, under a little straw umbrella-type hut in Aruba about four weeks ago. This is my kind of rain: warm, drifting, temporary.

Here's the other kind of rain:
Cold. Persistent. Day-long. Alabama-style. It had rained overnight in Mississippi, but when I woke up, had breakfast and went about the other tasks of my day, it was clearing, blue skies and sunshine. Then, about five minutes after I crossed the border into Alabama, there was this. It lasted all day.

Also, once I got into Georgia, I immediately wanted to turn around and head back west. Traffic. So. Much. Traffic. It is the sole reason that I didn't get into Asheville until after 11. At first I was going to just scrap Asheville and try to stay somewhere else, but I really didn't have the desire to do the extra work--it just seemed more productive to keep driving.

I did pass through Atlanta, and it was all lit up and pretty.

And now it's raining again, although the sound of it is beautiful. Seem a little random that I'm in Asheville? Here's why: At this inn, the Grove Park Inn, F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed in room 441 in 1935-36. That's all I needed to hear. I'm in room 368 and things are gooood. It's a period-appropriate Arts-and-Crafts style lodge, by far my favorite American architectural period, and thus the room has a lot of texture, color and wood detail, as does the entirety of the other spaces, too.

But to pay for just 11 hours in this room seems like a waste, sadly enough. I thought I'd be here by 8 pm, but no such luck.

*

So the other thing I was thinking about on the road, when I wasn't willing the traffic to clear up, was how this trip has, in a bunch of different ways, represented the different stages of my life, in an eerily accurate timeline, with appropriate watershed dates along the way. Hard to describe here, but it has something to do with how the trip began with me kind of groping along for direction, followed by a period of frenetic learning of the road, the towns, the histories, the culture, culminating in spending time with Amelia, my college roommate, and then the rocky trip back from the west, and then passing through South Carolina, where my first boss out of college was from and now staying at this place which feels like the last great hurrah before I head home, back to my transformed life.

And even if my life doesn't outwardly seem reformed, it certainly is an upside-down version of the way I was living just a few weeks ago. Because every day that I woke up in a new place, was a new beginning for me, with a different perspective. This long road has left me half-fulfilled and half-longing, but I'm not as concerned as I was before I left with immediately finding whatever it is that I'm longing for, whatever it might be that I'm looking to do, looking to be.

I think I finally have gotten that I need to stop waiting for my life to begin, that it already has begun and I need to just accept it and live it. It's not perfect, and if it's not what I want, I have to change it.

My father's best piece of advice this year has been that you cannot hope to change, if you cannot accept that your circumstances are things that you ultimately have created for yourself. I was resistant to that idea, because it meant that I made bad choices, but what are bad choices? A sin? Every minute is a blank slate.

So that's that.

Look at all those logs! I hope they're being combined with post-consumer waste!
The Delta, after a storm.
I wish I was still there.
'Bama.
Raiiiiin.
Grove Park Inn, #368.

Day 17:
Greenwood, Mississippi - Asheville, North Carolina
Mileage: 621
Total: Approx. 7, 890

Also, also: I was getting very, very tired when I was about forty-five minutes away, so I dug deep into the iPod for the dance party songs and came up with Wilson Pickett's "Land of 1,000 Dances," and it totally helped me stay awake, doing the mashed potato, and whatnot. Picture that one.

Good night.

Day 16 (Or: Stories About Robert Johnson and Other Faustian Narratives)

2007-12-19T20:14:00.001-08:00

Good evening from Greenwood, Mississippi, cotton capital of the world, seat of Leflore County, hometown of Mississippi John Hurt, Bobbie Gentry, Morgan Freeman and Donna Tartt!

So, here's a modern-day slacker version of the Faust story*, which I hope my friends will appreciate:

Dude is standing around, probably at the mall waiting for his girlfriend to get off work at the food court.
Dude gets to thinking about his life, living over his mom and stepdad's garage, working part time data entry for the telephone company. Dude concludes that life, which sucks, is both annoying and boring.
Dude's girlfriend totally shows up with some other dude who has a mullet and a bicep tattoo of some stupid dragon, and is all like, "We're totally over."
Dude is seriously bummed. On the way back to his mom's garage-top hideaway, his ride, a Delta '88, breaks down. A Scientologist approaches, maybe it's even whatever his name is, Xenu, or whoever. Xenu is all like, "I've got something that'll turn your life around." Dude is like, "Will it cure my learning disability?" Xenu's like, "Whatever, get in the back of my spaceship."
Pact is sealed in blood, because Xenu's a freak like that.
The next day the dude is discovered on the street and in six months time, his name is Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise marries Nicole Kidman, is at the top of his game for a couple of years, gets too full of himself, divorces Nicole, calls Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields a pair of dicks, jumps on a couch and shouts at Oprah, converts a nice little Catholic girl to Scientology and outs himself as being a bag of mixed nuts.
The rest of us wait for the Scientologist (who in this version is actually Satan) to come and get his due from the big-headed, hurricane of hubris that is Tom Cruise. (That could totally go on the back of his robe, if he ever becomes a lightweight boxer: "Hurricane of Hubris")

That's kind of a Faustian tale and it always ends with the protagonist heading south. Well, I'm now back in the deep south and let me tell you: nobody tells a Faustian tale like someone from the Delta.

So down here, as I've touched upon a number of times, the ultimate tale of a failed pact with the devil is Robert Johnson, whose grave is either in Greenwood, Quito, Clarksdale or Morgan City. And everybody claims him as their own, so that makes the facts more than a little hard to come by--but legend reads better than facts, don't it?

Anyway, so I'm back in Greenwood, is more or less what that long interlude was trying to suggest.

*Kind of.

**

I only drove a couple of hundred miles today, between Little Rock and here, the Alluvian Hotel in the middle of Greenwood. Greenwood is more or less the opposite of Clarksdale, and most of it is due to the Viking Range Corporation, which is one of our advertisers in my other life at the magazine. Viking, which is headquartered here in Greenwood started a hospitality arm that includes a Spa, the Mockingbird Bakery (where I had truffled fries, marinated green salad and an out-of-this-world gourmet grilled cheese for lunch), a restaurant (more on that in a minute), the Viking Kitchen Store and this beautifully appointed hotel, which I feel lucky to stay at.

(Did you catch that? The hotel is owned by the Viking Corporation? Viking?)

A plug for the southern Delta: I know Greenwood's not really much of a destination if you're from the north, but I have to say, it's such a quaint, picturesque place I could imagine spending more time here in town. If you're not familiar with the south, this seems like a good place to start--a couple of hours between Memphis, Gulfport, Little Rock and Atlanta, just down Highway 49 from Clarksdale, and full full full of that famous Southern Hospitality.

So tonight I ate at Giardina's, the restaurant attached to the hotel, which was opened in 1936 (the year of Robert Johnson's first recording session in San Antonio, TX, which is completely unrelated, but come on, work with me here). Forget what you know about Italian pronunciation; down here they say it "Gardenias," which is kind of quaint to my Girolamo-influenced ear. I had a king's meal, and for significantly less than I did at Craftsteak in Vegas, but with far, far more atmosphere. For example, I could hear myself think. Terrific.

I had made a reservation because the extremely lovely people at the desk had told me in passing that the restaurant only had 14 booths, which is more or less the size of Salsa Salsa back home. Although it's Wednesday, I don't fool around when it comes to fine dining. I started with crispy oysters, served with a jalapeno tartar sauce. I had been asking about trying crawfish, but I chickened out at the last minute; when the waiter came back to bring my salad, he also brought a small plate with three crawfish tails on it, "on the house," which was awesome. They're like shrimp but with some other aftertaste, kind of like... I dunno, mussels? The little tang that steamed mussels have? Kind of like that.

Then I had a green salad with "Comeback" on it, which is like a spicy Thousand Islands dressing. Then came the 8 oz. ribeye, which was lean and flavorful and topped with sauteed mushrooms. I also got a baked potato on the side, and managed to finish like half of it, surprising even myself. Anyone can tell you that while my palate is wide and my tastes are adventurous, my stomach is small and I never finish a meal, unless it's a bowl of soup.

But tonight I splurged because they had my favorite dessert: bread pudding drizzled with an aromatic Bourbon sauce. They even had my favorite kind of tea, a second-flush muscatel Darjeeling. I left completely stuffed, a feeling that's been alien to me on this trip, but completely satisfied.

Oh! But the coolest part! The restaurant was moved into the hotel from its original location a few blocks south of here two years ago. The 14 booths are separated by seven-foot-high beadboard walls and curtains--I was in 9A. A few restaurants in the south still have this; it's a holdover from the moonshine days during Prohibition, and it was totally helpful as I plowed my way through Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guaralnick, which I picked up at the bookshop across the street when I got into town today. The privacy was nice. I eat alone at restaurants a lot and sometimes you just don't want people staring blankly at you while you try to read. That happened in a faceless town in Oklahoma, in a Pizza Hut that was apparently the place to be, when I was starving and exhausted and still 150 miles from Amarillo. I was finishing Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road and it was like they'd never seen anybody read and eat at the same time.

Misc.:

Crossing the Mississippi in the daytime was awesome.
I saw a dog in the median of Highway 65 today, looking both ways, waiting for cars to pass. After they passed, he trotted safely to the other side. I saw the same thing in Oklahoma yesterday. Weird?
Hurray! It's really Christmas now, because Adult Swim is playing "A Very Venture Christmas" right this very moment! Nothing says "birth of Christ" like the Venture Brothers. ("Why didn't he wish me a merry Christmas?... Nobody wants a Dean-in-the-Box!")
It was 65 degrees when I got here today. Cloudy, but beautiful. I didn't even wear a jacket when I explored the main streets around town. Gonna make Long Island's 30 degrees quite a transition.
Shin Chan on Adult Swim is possibly the most disturbing show in their lineup.
This may be a day late and a dollar short in terms of insight but: While I was away, Roger Clemens was confirmed as a 'Roid Rager, as I always suspected, that jerk. As the offspring of a natural bodybuilder, I have this incredibly complicated negative view of steroids and the people who think they enhance anything meaningful. In fact, I have considered starting my own line of anti-steroids clothing. I'd call it "Natch" and it would have slogans on tee shirts that would embarrass my mother, highlighting the... um... notorious physical side effects of steroids. Since I never thought the Yankees should have acquired Clemens in the first place, I feel somewhat lamely vindicated. Clemens has got the crazy eyes like my arch nemesis, Jason Giambi.
Get ready for a lot of photos of this room...

Little Rock, the capitol in the middle distance, and the moon!

Cotton on the side of the road. Arkansas, south of Dumas (which the locals pronounce Duh-miss).
Lake Chicot, which is leveed against the Mississippi.

The Mighty Mississippi!

"It's Like Coming Home."

Greenville, the first town over the bridge from Arkansas.

Crossing into Greenwood over the creek, which is actually a slough, which I learned in my travels are little tributaries that usually fill up only after heavy rains--that goes for the west. In the southern Delta, they're filled up most of the time, as are the ditches dug on the sides of the roads, so be careful to stay off the shoulders of the highways.

When I first got there I ran around the room and made little "Eeee! Eeee!" noises like I was watching the Beatles's helicopter land at the World's Fair grounds.

Leather headboard and pillowtopped mattress! And down pillows!

The prints on the wall are of bayous in the Delta.

Handsome, no?

My own little office.

Look at the floor!

The coffee is from Wolfgang Puck.

Looking toward Howard Street.

The Viking Cooking School.

The kind of research you do in the Delta. Pictured, top to bottom: A set of postcards of turn-of-the-century posters featuring magicians and conjurers; Bob Dylan's "Modern Times"; Robert Johnson's "The Price of Soul" compilation; William Faulkner's Collected Short Stories and Peter Guaralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson.
Day 16:
Little Rock, Arkansas - Greenwood, Mississippi
Mileage: 207
Total Mileage: approx. 7,000
(I have to check the tripometer--there are two, one which I use to record the daily trips, and a second which has the total tally, which is the correct number. But I've tried to break it down daily to give you all a breakdown of what my driving days are like--I just keep forgetting to reset the tripometer or I reset after I've gone a few miles, so the total is the only real way to know for sure how far I've gone. Full report tomorrow, once I've remembered to look.)

Click for every Dylan lyric ever (except, oddly, the lyrics to "I'm Not There"--odd because of the Todd Haynes movie about Dylan that's out right now, includes the song and takes its name from the title):

I'm gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Bob Dylan - Blind Willie McTell

No solid plans for tomorrow; I'm hoping to make it to Asheville, North Carolina, which I hear is adorable, and an easy drive from here. See you on the flipside!

Greenwood trivia, from Wikipedia:

Greenwood is one of the few places in the world where you can stand between two rivers flowing in the opposite direction: the Yazoo River and the Tallahatchie River.
Legend has it that the Leflore County Courthouse in Greenwood stands on Choctaw land once used for rituals and sacraments.
The City of Greenwood is named after Choctaw Indian Chief Greenwood Leflore, who negotiated the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek with the U.S. Government.
Cottonlandia Museum in Greenwood houses furniture from Chief Greenwood Leflore’s mansion Malmaison, which was destroyed by fire in 1942.
Greenwood known as the Cotton Capital of the World and boasts the second largest cotton exchange in the nation located on Cotton Row.
The Tallahatchie River in Greenwood contains relics of the Union side-wheel steamship, Star of the West, sunk to prevent passage of the Union flotilla, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, to Vicksburg.
Walter "Furry" Lewis was born in Greenwood in March 1899 and became the first bluesman to record the bottleneck method of playing guitar.
Keesler Bridge in Greenwood is a swing bridge of the Howe Truss design and a dedicated Mississippi landmark.
Helen Keller gave a speech about happiness in Greenwood on March 29, 1916 (Unfortunately she was unable to hear the applause.)
John Phillip Sousa conducted a concert in Greenwood in 1930.
Robert Johnson died and was buried just north of Greenwood in August 1938 and now has three memorial gravestones set across the county in his memory.
B.B. King, King of the Blues, was born near Itta Bena at Berclair in Leflore County in 1925 and initiated his career in the mid-1940s on a broadcast over Greenwood’s WGRM [then located at 222 Howard Street - upstairs (now home of the Greenwood Blues Heritage Museum & Gallery)] as guitarist for the St. John’s Gospel Singers quartet from nearby Indianola.
In 1944, Time covered the Greenwood Mule Race, attended by over 5,000 people.
Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman graduated from high school in Greenwood in 1955.
Young Emmett Till's abduction from the home of relatives at Money, Mississippi (just north of Greenwood) and subsequent murder in August 1955 sparked the civil rights movement.
Little Richard sang a song titled, Greenwood, Mississippi and William Eggleston captured his photograph Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973 there.
The movies Home from the Hill (1960), The Streets of Greenwood (1962), Ode to Billie Joe, The Reivers, Mississippi Masala, and The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag were filmed on location in Greenwood.
Greenwood sites used in the filming of John Grisham's “The Chamber” include Webster’s Restaurant where you can sit and eat steak and seafood on the same barstool as Chris O’Donnell.
The largest Bible-binding plant in the nation is Norris Bookbinding located in Greenwood.

Day 15 (Or: "This Machine Kills Fascists")

2007-12-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

Ahoy, once again, from the Peabody in Little Rock, Arkansas. They totally gave away my room so guess what--upgrade city! 18th floor! Be quiet Barbara, I know, the fire ladders won't be able to reach me, but up here in the suite, I'll be waiting in the bathtub to be rescued, watching CNN on the flatscreen that's built into the mirror. Yeah, that's right.

So, OK, remember how I passed into Amarillo, stayed at that same hotel just to get my pillow? Which you saw me with in the photo two posts ago? To prove that I got it back? Well, I was so happy about it, that I totally went and drove off without it. Again. Luckily, this time, I wasn't a state and a half away when I remembered, just ten miles outside Amarillo, so I turned around and went back. The girl at the desk was like, "Didn't you do this two weeks ago?"

Oy. Then it was time to go back through Oklahoma. Yesterday was a terrible drive, just too long and winding, and too many miles. So today, I didn't make a room reservation, I just decided to wing it. Little Rock is about 600 miles from Amarillo, so I figured I wouldn't make it. I woke up late and ate a lazy breakfast so by the time I got on the road, it was about 11 am. I made amazing time and got into Little Rock around 8 pm local time.

Here's the thing about Oklahoma: a few people I know told me that it was full o' nothing and worth skipping altogether, if possible. So not the case! Granted, the panhandle smelled overwhelmingly of cow poop and fine dining in every town I passed through was Pizza Hut (I eventually surrended to hunger and got one of those teeny pizzas with veggies on it), but today, day 15, I got a wonderful look around. Last time I passed through, the whole state was shrouded with fog and then the sun went down and that was it. Today I got to see the farms and the rolling hills and the ACRES and ACRES of wind powered-turbines! Green! Energy! In the heartland!

So, I ask you: if Oklahoma is empty to you, what would you put in it? Big rocky mountains? Then it would be Colorado. Acres and acres of desert? That's Nevada. Buttes? Hello, New Mexico. Leave Oklahoma alone--it's beautiful. And you can get those awesome western print blankets absolutely everywhere. That's my kinda state. Plus, everybody I met was so nice.

**I have often had this dream where I'm wandering across a large green hill, more like a mountain, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of these turbines--so getting to see so many of them across the country on this trip, has been surreal. From Oklahoma to Nevada and California to Colorado, it's so encouraging to see how many turbine fields there really are.

Last time, I totally didn't get to see OK City (that's how they call it for shorthand--isn't that cute?); I wasn't even sure how close I-40 was to the city center. Um, it goes right through it. That was some HEAVY fog, let me tell you. I had no idea, none.

As for the listenin' today, I created a monster of a playlist called "Place Names" which, predictably, includes about 500 songs which feature the name of a place in it. For example:

Bob Dylan - Goin' to Acapulco
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
Sufjan Stevens - Pittsfield
The Grateful Dead - Panama Red
Arlo Guthrie - Coming Into Los Angeles

You get the idea. I also have a subset list which has specific places like The White Stripes' "Hotel Yorba," Elliott Smith's "Memory Lane," and Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2." When you're not really into books on tape, music selection is ESSENTIAL. Although, I listened to some terrific blues on the radio, for a change, while going through the Texas panhandle today.

Oh, and I had a vivid dream last night. I dreamt I was talking with someone familiar, but whom I could not identify, when the door to my left opened and Alan Alda walked in and said hello while passing us. My friend turned to me and said, "That guy again."

They say you have dozens of dreams during the course of a normal night of sleep. I can't imagine what my unconscious is going through for it to make that the dream worth remembering from last night.

Also, I might get the truck washed, which is weird for me, since I don't even do that with my own car (thanks, Pop). But when I'm driving at night, I can't tell if I need to turn on the defroster or if it's just the salt-crusted outside of the window. So far, Defroster: 0, Salt-Crusted Window: 7.

Anyway, here's a sample of today:

This bills itself as the "Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere," and the secularist in me doesn't think it probably has a lot of competition. Groom, Texas.
Wind power!
I don't think this properly gives an idea of how large these things actually are.
OK City!
That biker dude gave me a thumbs-up as he went by. He has a New Jersey license plate--can you imagine?! In the winter time!
Horses just hanging out in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Shawnee, Oklahoma. I love the writing under the name--thanks for clearing up the mystery.
I made another pilgrimage of the musical sort today. For whatever reason, I've spent most of the time on this blog focusing on either Robert Johnson or Bob Dylan, but there's one guy who, arguably, made Dylan into what he is even more than Johnson did, and I visited his hometown today, forty years after his death. Woody Guthrie's Okemah, Oklahoma.
This is another one of those towns, much like Clarksdale, that is caught in time, no matter what the modernizations (and on the main drag through Okemah, there aren't really many to speak of, except for maybe the gym--the town still has a five-and-dime). There's a little garden in the center of town with a display that is sponsored by lovers of Guthrie's music.

He wrote one of my favorite songs, "California Stars," and is without question the backbone of the folk music which came after him.
I'd totally be a folksinger if I could. And my first song would totally be "Passing Through Amarillo, to Pick Up My Pillow."

Day 15:
Amarillo, Texas - Little Rock, Arkanasas
Mileage: 631
Total Mileage: 6, 538*

* So, a sidenote: As many of you know, if I could go to one place anywhere in the world, I would go to Mongolia. If I started out driving from my house in Holbrook, NY, and drove straight across the globe (more or less), the distance to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia would be 6,322. In other words, I would have gotten there yesterday, Pacific Ocean notwithstanding. And it probably would have been cheaper to go that way than a $6,000 round-trip plane ticket from JFK.

***

California Stars
Woody Guthrie

I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I’d give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of California stars

I’d like to dream my troubles all away
On a bed of California stars
Jump up from my starbed and make another day
Underneath my California stars
They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers glass like friendly wine
So, I’d give this world just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of California stars

***

Tomorrow: Back to Mississippi! Staying in Greenwood! Mmmph! So excited!

The rest of Day 14 (Or: "T is for Texas")

2007-12-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

Union Pacific train in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I wonder where it' s going.Southern Wyoming, or possibly northern Colorado.
Anheuser-Busch plant in Colorado.
Denver, Colorado!
Preeeetty. And nice to get away from snowy landscapes.
I love the name of this town. But dude, the elevation changes were killin' me on this leg of the trip.

Sunset in Colorado. I crossed into the Central Time Zone after the sun went down, once I passed into the Oklahoma panhandle.

Interlude: Day 14, but too tired for real post, so...

2007-12-17T22:49:00.001-08:00

I haven't gotten around to writing my folk song, "Comin' Into Amarillo, Searchin' for My Pillow," which I imagine to be a massacree with four-part harmony, which would probably also be to the tune of "Big Rock Candy Mountain," but since I'm quite tuckered out from today (it was a trying, trying day, and I'm looking at you, Texas), I'll leave you with this, so that you know for sure that the song is being composed as you read!

This trip has taught me that really, you need very little to get along. But still. Getting this thing back is priceless. I even decided to stay here again. (The $44 room rate and indoor pool had nothing whatsoever to do with this decision--it was alllll for sentimentality's sake)

And now, to get my laundry out of the guest dryer and get myself to bed. More in the morning.

Day 14:
Cheyenne, Wyoming - Amarillo, TX
Mileage: 537
Total Mileage: 5,907

It was on the northern border of Texas where I crossed the line.
Bob Dylan - When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky

More from day thirteen

2007-12-17T21:16:00.000-08:00

In a handy-dandy bullet list:

I apparently, somehow, managed to cross over the Continental Divide twice yesterday, at two different altitudes, while heading in the same direction, if the signs on I-80 are to be believed.
Cities in the northern plains appear like mirages on the horizon, miles and miles before you actually get to them.
I wish I was heading for Omaha, but next time... next time...
As I pulled into Cheyenne, whose stoplights turn into flashing yellows after 10 p.m. (I'm not kidding, all of them in the entire city turn into flashing yellows), I thought to myself, "If these hotels ever fill up, it is because the rodeo's in town." I'm not completely sure a rodeo comes to Cheyenne, but it seems likely.
The bank clock said it was 15 degrees when I got into town at 10:30 p.m.
If ever a city were stuck in time, Cheyenne is it. Don't get me wrong: I loved it. It was completely charming, updated in places, clean and interesting, but it definitely has a touch of 1850 and 1950.
The Bible was open in my room to Psalms. Psalm 45: "My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I speak my poem before a king; my tongue is like the pen of a skilled writer."
This was my list for day 14, and I only completed items 3 and 5

Eat breakfast
Get cowboy hat
Smell nice air
Photograph Union Pacific sign
Get out of Dodge... I mean, Cheyenne.

That's it. Now for Day 14.

Day Thirteen (Or: Next Stop, Amarillo)

2007-12-17T08:52:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Cheyenne, Wyoming, a city I never, ever thought I'd see.

This was the first day that didn't feel vacation-like, mainly because of the stressssssss of trying to get to Cheyenne at a decent hour. But hey, that's OK.

The drive was about 750 miles. And doesn't have a lot in it. I did stop in a town called Little America because I was DYING for some vegetables and the only thing I really wanted was some cucumber. I stopped at possibly the only restaurant in creation that doesn't have cucumbers. What else.

Oh, I passed through Laramie on the way here. Laramie is where Matthew Shepard was beat up, strung up a fence post and left to die by two men because he was gay in 1998. I actually didn't want to stop there, but I was absolutely low on gas and had no choice. It smells like Santa Fe, with the faint scent of burning wood in the air.

Then, I was driving through Medicine Bow national forest, elevation 8,060 feet above sea level, and I got a nosebleed! That never happens to me, but it wasn't surprising--I'd been having issues with the elevation all day.

The driving was a little scary--there were random ice slicks on the road, even though the weather was clear--but everybody's wearing cowboy boots and this hotel (the historic Plains Hotel in downtown Cheyenne) has a charming, if slightly un-p.c. obsession with Native American likenesses that kind of thrills me. The hotel was built in 1911 and restored in 2003 and is totally charming.

Cheyenne is the "Magic City of the Plains," because when the local people in the area heard that the Union Pacific railroad was coming through, they slapped the city together quickly, hoping the railroad would bring them prosperity. It's the largest city in Wyoming and has about 10,000 more people in it than live in Holbrook. Weird. Anyway, it means there are plenty of places to park downtown, which is cool.

It's a total Union Pacific town and in the distance as I went to sleep last night, I could hear freight trains rumbling through. Made me feel good about bringng the train conductor's hat with me.

I've got to get on the road to Amarillo, but I'll post some more thoughts about Idaho and Wyoming later on, including the revelation that Idaho drivers are Idahorrible and the fact that it was about 15 degrees here last night.

Day 13:
Boise, ID - Cheyenne, WY
Mileage: 750
Total Mileage (adjusted--I messed up somewhere): 5,370

Idaho Heritage Inn, Boise, ID. With the geothermal shower.
I didn't even know there were mountains around Boise until the morning.
You can't really see it, but this car's license plate says Alaska.
I love historical markers.
I drove over this.
The Snake River.
And this guy.
I call this one, "No Direction Home."
Ogden is where there is a monument to the golden spike, or "Promontory Point," where the Union Pacific railroad met the Central Pacific railroad, completing the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Also, I am a dweeb for knowing and getting excited about this.

UTAH!
More Utah.
Seriously, I kept thinking every time I saw a sign like this, that Cheyenne was getting furhter away.
Wyyyyyyomin'.
My hotel. P.S. This town closes at 10 p.m.
From my hotel room--totally charming, no?

Well, seen her up in old Cheyenne
Turned my head and away she ran
From Denver Town to Wichita
Last I heard she's in Arkansas.

Bob Dylan - Gypsy Lou

Days Eleven & Twelve (Or: "I landed in the old Northwest / Seattle, Washington")

2007-12-15T22:58:00.000-08:00

Before it slips my mind: I've been through both Gary, Indiana and Kearny, New Jersey, but Ontario, Oregon is by far the smelliest city through which I've ever traveled.

Greetings from downtown Boise, Idaho, 2,704 feet above sea level, home of Bodybuilding.com, the 4th largest Basque population in the world, and the Idaho International Film Festival!

Yesterday, Amelia and I swung by downtown where I got to see the Space Needle up close (because I haven't stopped talking about that since Amelia and I made these plans a few months ago) and the Monorail (which I found out only goes a mile, which is very funny), along with the Experience Music Project. We illegally parked in a McDonald's parking lot--suckers! Hee hee. Then we went to the Pike Place Market on the waterfront, which was totally great. We walked around, went to the eponymous brewhouse where we had BBQ pulled pork nachos which were excellent (I tried a brew called the "Kilt Lifter"), and went down to the Perennial Tea Room, where I bought some loose tea to take home--pouchong with coconut! Tasty! Antioxidant-rich!

We then went back to the apartment, popped some popcorn and watched "Love, Actually," which I hadn't seen and boy, was it totally squishalicious with the romance and improbably perfect setups. I was irked by poor Laura Linney's plight, though, and it made the ending unsatisfactory. Let Laura Linney live happily ever after, I say!

This morning, Amelia and Tres took me to Top Pot, which is a homemade doughnut place in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. I had a chocolate sandcastle doughnut, which was just what I wanted, and I brought a pumpkin doughnut with me for tomorrow morning. The coffee was also excellent. After that, we said goodbye and they led me back to I-5.

Thanks, you guys. I hope I expressed what a good time I had!

So the trip today involved taking Interstate 5, to 90, to 82, to 84 into Boise. It was more or less as annoying as it sounds but I did manage to find an Exxon--finally, and a cheap one!--in Yakima. Thanks, Universe.

The most unexpected part was the Snoqualmie Pass through the Cascades. OK, so it's about 3,000 ft. above sea level (which has been the theme of the trip: altitude) and, literally, one moment I was driving through on I-90, la-dee-dah, and just around the next curve: blizzard. It was unbelievable! Not totally in a bad way, but unexpected. All around me, 18 wheelers were pulling over to put on their snow chains. This is a minor problem when traveling across the country, so keep it in mind: so often you only check the weather for the place where you're going, and that's fine if you're flying, but every day that I've been driving, I have experienced the complete spectrum of weather.

Side note: If you had a PC in, say, 1993, you probably had a word processing program that had an early version of Word Art in it. You might remember, as I do, that the typefaces had names like "Walla Walla," "Wenatchee," "Enumclaw," and "Anacortes." All are Washington place names. I think "Ellenburg" was one, too, which I passed through today. Anybody else know what I'm talking about?

Amelia: Oh, Yakima. That'll be scenic.
Me: Really?
Amelia: No.

I would have seen both Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier, but there were a lot of snowy, low-lying clouds, so I missed them, just like I missed Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens driving between Portland and Seattle. Those two I saw the last time I was in Portland, though, so it's less of a loss.

But anyway, after the snow in the Snoqualmie Pass, it was totally fine. Eastern Washington and northeastern Oregon are totally beautiful and charming, not overdeveloped in the least and the sprawling farmland and rolling hills were terrific. I also witnessed another really terrific sunset in the Blue Mountains, which I wish I could have traveled through during the day, because I get the feeling it's a pretty magnificent region.

The Oregon-Idaho border leaves something to be desired, that's for sure: aroma. For serious, people. There are some industrial plants and things and this MUST be the source.

"Look, I think that's a natural gas plant over there."
"Honey, there's nothing natural about this smell."

Misc:

Puyallup, a city in Washington, is pronounced "Pee-wall-up," FYI.
Coffee and beer are awesome in the northwest.
Yakima has a lot of coffee shops.
There's a sign on 82 with little arrows that says:

IN DISTANCE:
Mt. Adams
Mt. Rainier

I passed over the 45th parallel again, and the sign I saw in Salem was there on I-84, too.
I crossed into Mountain Time while still in Oregon... whuh?
My hotel has geothermal hot water. The cold water is city water, but the hot water comes from a natural hot spring. Which is, of course, a little sulfurous. Which made for an... aromatic bath. The lady proprietor left a big shaker of lavendar bath salts, but, um, still. I don't smell like sulfur right now... but I didn't quite know what to think at first.

So, that's two-thirds of the trip done. Now, to get home for Christmas and avoid any and all "Planes, Trains & Automobiles"-type delays. Wagons east!

In not-exactly-chronological order:

Over the Columbia River from Portland.

At the Kennedy School, the announcement of the school's opening (when it was still a school) in a 1916 edition of Ladies' Home Journal.

In the Music Room.
14 Carrot in Seattle, where I ate breakfasts on days 10 & 11.
14 Carrot interior. Get the egg nog pancakes or one of their omelet specials.
She makes a convincing Viking, no? In Ballard.
Amelia spotted this bar and was totally all over it, telling me where we could park and walk up to take the photo.
I thought this was kind of funny: in Washington state, the numbered state routes appear in a silhouette of George Washington's head.
At the Seattle Center.
Monorail! With random guy who later felt bad about stepping into the photo.
Hi Mom.
SPACE NEEDLE!
Frank Gehry's EMP building, which everybody in Seattle seems to hate.

Give me candy.
The very first Starbucks ever. In front, there is a guy playing a fiddle, and another guy playing a tub bass.
It's a farmer's market and flea market and everything else market.
Christmas pigs.
Note the giant light-up fruit.
From today, sunset in the Blue Mountains.
The Columbia River.
Yakima!

Amelia reminded me the other day how my dad asked her when we all first met on moving-in day, freshman year, if she lived in a covered wagon. So this one's for my dad, along the Oregon Trail on I-84.

The Road Viking is very much at home in rural Washington with the cheap sunglasses on.
Vicky: See the 405 sign? That's the 405 in the Death Cab for Cutie song.
My cute little room at the Heritage Bed & Breakfast.
I wish my house looked this antique-y.
It's the Senator room, which overlooks West Idaho Street. In the lefthand corner, note the Frank Church poster and other framed memorabilia. He was an Idaho senator from 1957 - 1980. He ran for president the year that Carter won and he even carried some states in the primaries that year. Church is universally beloved around here because he was a big outdoors guy and is responsible for much of Idaho's preserved wilderness areas.
Po-tay-toes.
Also? The first time I've seen the moon on this whole trip. That would be it, the indistinguishable light spot in the middle of this photo.

Days 11 & 12:
Seattle, WA - Boise, ID
Mileage: 554 (including miles driven while in Seattle)
Total Mileage: 4,970

I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - Bob Dylan

Day Ten (Or: Dude, Relax)

2007-12-13T22:56:00.000-08:00

Day ten started off at the leisurely hour of ten a.m., which was awesome. I had directions to the best breakfast place in Seattle courtesy Amelia, and so I headed over there for a big breakfast of egg nog french toast, eggs and veggies.

After Amelia came home from work, we drove to the Ballard neighborhood and walked around for awhile. She needed to buy cookie cutters, so we went to a place that sold only cookie cutters, we looked at records in another store, and then settled into a cupcake house for some tea and cupcakes, which was fun.

Ballard is a cute neighborhood that, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook sitting around the apartment, has a large Scandinavian population. I didn't see so much of them, but I did see some Scandinavian-themed stores and a Viking bar, no kidding.

We walked around one of our mutually favorite stores, Goodwill, where I found the vinyl of Alice's Restaurant (weird, given how much time on this blog has been dedicated to it, no?) but it was just the jacket--the record was missing, so I didn't spend the 99 cents. I did spend 99 cents on a little wooden painting of a snow-capped mountain.

After that, we drove down toward the Ballard Bridge in search of the Jolly Roger Taproom, a pirate themed hole-in-the-wall bar and restaurant where we had sliders and smoked onion rings the size of my head served with jalapeno tartar sauce, which was awesome. We also had Jolly Roger beer, which was also very good. And they call Portland "Brewtown." There was a pirate map on the floor although, regrettably, I don't have a photos because it didn't seem like the kind of crowd that would dig a photo-taking tourist.

I'm not going to be such a weenie on Day 11, that's for sure--we have a slew of very touristy things to do today. The Olympic Peninsula is out because the weather is rainy and cold, so we're spending time downtown (Space Needle!) which will be terrific.

Also, last night, I helped Amelia make blue Play-Doh from scratch for her class and it was totally fun. There are blue splotches of food coloring on my hands, and it is very satisfying.

I heard the Northeast got pounded by a storm, so I hope everybody's OK, especially those of you out on Long Island, because it seems like the suburbs got the worst of it!

Day Nine (Or: Wagons, Halt!)

2007-12-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

I've arrived in Seattle!

The drive from Portland to Seattle was really beautiful and not too long--I've arrived to a classic Seattle weather condition: cloudy.

But before that, I drove from the Kennedy School down through Portland's Alameda neighborhood and stopped to eat a terrific breakfast at the Cadillac Cafe before getting on the road. It was good to have real, hot food, instead of eating my mini shredded wheats and drinking my little containers of milk for breakfast. Generally I'm not a fan of big meals, but I think I needed the recharge.

Although the drive was short, this was the first day I really felt tired and consequently was in bed and asleep by ten. Amelia and Tres took me out for a beer at a local bookstore/pub and then we came back to their apartment and made pizza and talked about hunting mushrooms. It's nice to know that I'll be here for a few days and don't have to think about driving or where my next stop will be.

Internet isn't ideal here (I'm on Amelia's computer, because my own won't pick up any wireless signals) so I won't be posting pictures until Saturday night, but never fear, the updates will keep coming.

More to come!

Day Nine:
Portland, OR - Seattle, WA
Mileage: 185
Total Mileage: 4,416

Day Nine, Morning: Alert

2007-12-12T09:47:00.001-08:00

To all my concerned friends (and my mother) and their funny, frantic messages: the highway I'm going to be on, I-5, is mudslide-free, so you all can relax. Thanks so much--your concern is overwhelming.

It can only be expressed through use of an emoticon: :o)

Day Eight (Or: My Very Own Oregon Trail)

2007-12-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

Let's start with a diversion tonight:
The music video for Loretta Lynn's duet with the White Stripes' Jack White, called "Portland, Oregon" starts out with Jack and his backing band (two of three who would form The Raconteurs with him a year and a half later) dressed-down and playing in a dimly-lit bar. Jack plays the trill beginning of the song and the intro--all the while, you don't see much of Loretta Lynn. When the time comes for her to sing, the camera pans over and she is standing nearby in a weirdly virginal, very Grand Ole Opry dress, complete with Nashville-style sequins up and down the bodice.

The contrast looks something like this:

She doesn't help his case, for sure. As Nora likes to say whenever I try (and fail) to describe what makes Jack White such an engaging figure, that "he always looks like he needs a bath." I protest: the same could be said for much of the supergroups throughout time, save the Beatles. Tell me that Clapton didn't need a shave and a heaping dose of methadone at the Concert for Bangladesh and I'll show you a liar!

Anyway, the song "Portland, Oregon," won Lynn and White a grammy three years ago. As I (clearly) like both the White Stripes and Loretta Lynn, this isn't a surprise. Driving into Portland tonight, what do you think may have been playing? Anyway, first things first:

Good evening, from Portland, Oregon, home of the International Rose Test Garden, "Beertown," seat of Multnomah County, Oregon and my very favorite city on the West Coast.

Today was another rather arduous driving day, kind of unexpectedly, too. I started out with only one goal in mind: eat at In 'N Out Burger before I left California. Perfect--the last one between me and Oregon was in Redding, a few hours to the north. I'd get there right before lunch. But first, I had to bug the supervisor at the Lion's Gate to set my bill correctly. Then I had to write last night's post (durn buggy internet!). One interruption after another. I checked out right at 11. As Bob Dylan would say: "Maybe we just better call off the picnic."

Alas, no! I would not be deterred from the finest burger joint in all the land! I finally got to experience some of those infamous six-lane highways everyone's always (pardon my French) bitching about (just kidding--that's Middle English). I'm sure it's worse in Los Angeles, but in Sacramento it wasn't so bad--it's just confusing because the lane you're in keeps changing, merging, becoming an "Exit Only."

As I drove from I-80 (which, incidentally, runs from San Francisco and ends at the George Washington Bridge into New York City) to I-15, I began to feel like every place in California is just a way to get to another place in California. Immediately outside of Sacramento, after the airport (and intense wind shear from the wide open land) is about 150 miles of farmland with rolling hills to the west and the northernmost peaks of the Sierra Nevadas to the east as the backdrop. Then, after Redding, where I had my delicious In 'N Out lunch, the Cascades began.

I had been thinking, "Gee, it's nice to be back at sea level," where all the cities I passed had populations of less than 1,000 and elevations of 27 ft. After about two hours of driving through the mountains, it occurred to me that if I had done any kind of planning for this trip, I would totally know that I'd be passing through the Sierra Nevadas yesterday, and the Cascades today. It's OK--the surprises have been both beautiful and welcome.

Ever seen the commercial where the cows are playing kick ball, or Marco Polo, or Soccer in a field and trash talking each other? The commercial that says, "Good cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California." Yeah, they do. It was about 60 degrees, bright and sunny, and groups of brown guernseys were just hanging around everywhere. I passed, in Colusa County, a strange sight: black and white dappled horses who looked just like lean cows, sharing a field with brown guernseys who rather resembled a horse's coloring. Weird.

Also, I passed a lot of wildfires. Set or not, I couldn't tell you. They started around Arbuckle, CA and every twenty minutes or so, I'd pass another one. "The Last Time I Saw Richard," was playing and I wrote down as I passed, "Is this the kind of place where smoke in a field isn't a big deal?" Arbuckle is mostly farms, vineyards, dairies and mountains, population: 864. I can't believe towns that small are on the map.

Can anyone define for me the following two terms?

Fry Breads (seen throughout the southwest; it's something you can get if you stop on the Rez)
Duck Blinds (seen in Colusa County, CA on a hand-painted billboard.

Of note: Corning, CA is "The Olive City," in case you didn't know. Write it down. It was there that I first saw Mt. Shasta in the distance, and even though I'd never seen it before, and I hadn't looked at the map since last night when I was trying like the dickens to find where Arnold and Westover Streets met in Sacramento, I just knew that's what it was. I'll let the photos tell the story, but it was, more or less, the most spectacular part of today's trip. I became totally obsessed and kept pulling over to take pictures of it from different angles. Around the same time, I stopped into a roadside post office in Castella, CA. It was more or less the size of a phone booth. The lady who staffed it had only a handful of teeth, but she was super-helpful and sold me five bucks worth of postcard stamps and personally gave my mail to the traveling postman, who brought the Castella mail to some other central sorting facility.

At that point, I still had about 300 miles until Portland and, for the first time, I just wanted to get there. I was eager to see this hotel, order the Mediterranean Salad in their restaurant, write on the chalkboard in my room, futz around with the fancy lamps and desks and chairs and wander into the Detention Bar (there's also an Honors Bar).

Anecdote:
Gas has been an issue. I'm driving a Ford Escape and it needs to be filled up about two and a half times for every 600 miles, or something like that, and this is starting to get expensive. My father gave me the ExxonMobil card to use, but there are very few Exxons or Mobils here; west of the Mississippi is the land of ConocoPhillips, Flying Js, Pilots and Chevrons. But the card has a Cirrus designation, so I pulled into a Shell to see if they would accept it. As I was peering closely at the gas pump trying to divine its will, the attendant came out and said, "What can I do for you tonight?"
Puzzled and mildly embarrassed (because I had been debating going over to the gas station across the street, a 76), I replied, "Oh, is this full serve?"
"It's Oregon," he replied.
"Uh-huh," I said, not following his logic.
"You can't pump your own gas in Oregon," he said slowly, like I had a disability of some kind, and after about 500 miles of driving, I kind of felt like I did.
"Ohhhh..." Now I was completely embarrassed. "Like in New Jersey."
This kid clearly didn't know that about Jersey just like I didn't know it about Oregon.
"Yeah. So you get to stay in your nice, warm car."
But it was 55 degrees, even though the sun was down, so it felt great to me. It was Canyonville, OR and it didn't even smell like a gas station--it smelled like pine trees and uninterrupted outdoors--so I kept the window down.
He asked if I was on vacation and I explained where I was headed. He cleaned off my windshield, "I think you're the first New York car that's stopped here."
"Ever?"
"Since I've been here."
Everybody's been so pleasant and hasn't held my license plate and state of birth against me. I practiced lying into the rearview mirror. "I was born in Sacramento. I was born in Santa Fe. I was born in Little Rock. I was born in Nashville."
But "I was born on Long Island," comes out too easily.

Dinner was butternut squash soup and a chef's salad at Shari's in Salem. There was a man who looked like Gerald Ford sitting near the door picking at a gigantic salad and smiling at people who walked in the door.

On northbound I-5, when you're leaving Salem, there's a sign that says:

45TH PARALLEL
HALFWAY BETWEEN
THE EQUATOR AND
NORTH POLE

How great is that? In Northern São Paulo state, in Brazil, there was a painted line and a sign that announced that we were crossing over the Tropic of Capricorn. (When I was a kid, you know, like six months ago, I secretly wished the equator was a visible line in the ocean)

Coming into Portland was terrific; I love this city. I missed so much the last time I was here, even though I spent an entire day kind of wandering around (I did manage to find last time, a giant Whole Foods and Powell's City of Books, so it wasn't a total loss). But this time, I came in at dusk--I crossed a bridge over the Willamette River and all of a sudden I was over the entire city. It was completely awe-inspiring. There are so many more bridges than I thought; I-5 itself has several exits and entries right before the river, so you get a dizzy array of flyovers, something we don't really have a lot of in the East.

The hotel is perfect. Everything I wanted. Cozy bed, humongously high ceilings, no TV to distract me. I'm in the "Music Room," the room in the school were lessons were held. So, so perfect. I ate my Mediterranean salad, caught the last half of "Superbad" in the auditorium and browsed the school-themed gift shop. Tomorrow morning I'm going in the outdoor superheated soaking pool when it opens at 8, then a quick shower and a little tour of Portland before heading up to Seattle, the last leg of the first half of my trip, to see my dear, dear Amelia.

Misc.:

I could never take enough pictures to do this hotel justice--it's absolutely beautiful and exactly what I wanted it to be when I first started dreaming about it in August, and how often does that happen? If you ever have to stay in Oregon or Washington, check out the McMenamins hotels; they also own breweries and pubs, but their hotels are lavish but very affordable and totally unlike anything else in the area.
At the Lion's Gate in Sacramento, when I signed in, I had to initial a part that stated I wasn't having a party. I asked the attendant, "Do a lot of people come here and try to have parties?" He replied, completely deadpan, "Never." I shrugged and initialed at the same time.
I haven't gone one single day on this trip without seeing at least 100 cows.
Truckers have some kind of code that I'm starting to figure out. They always flash lights to let another trucker know that's it's OK to go ahead of them from the left into the right lane. And tonight, one flashed its lights to alert me, while I was in the left lane, that he saw a highway patrol cop up ahead. I slowed down and flashed my lights back. Thanks, FedEx dude, wherever you are.

No particular order:

The Music Room

"Everyone is either making love, or else expecting rain," from "Desolation Row." It was written in bold Sharpie marker in the coffeehouse bathroom at Sarah Lawrence.

The Shasta River
Mt. Shasta
The size of the postage stamps it sells.
Another shot of Mt. Shasta from I-5.
Sunset over the Cascades.
Sacramento, this morning. Count the lanes.
In 'N Out! So cheap! So tasty! Organic! Healthy! No preservatives!
My kinda avenue.
This soda is brought to you by God.

I like to think that as I'm driving through all of these states, I'm filling in the "New York" square in some kid's license plate bingo game.

Day Eight:

Sacramento, CA - Portland, OR

Mileage: 604

Total Mileage: 4,331 (Wahooooo!)

Good night!

More photos from Day Seven

2007-12-11T22:32:00.001-08:00

I approve of you, Mojave Desert.Windpower turbines on a hill behind me. Look at all of them! Go green!
Cypress trees. Unsurprisingly, this photo was taken outside of Needles, CA.
My $2 sunglasses from Peggy Sue's.
Oh come on.
"Our milk is udderly delicious."
Wow. You always want this kind of thing to appear and then it does and then you have no idea what kind of caption to write.
My beloved Joshua tree.
The Road Viking discovers what "Great Wide Open" means. It means, Toto, we're not in the fjords anymore.

Day Seven (Or: Our Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor)

2007-12-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

Sacramento! A gold rush town, home of the Governator. Yah, it's a goot toown.

Actually, my view of Sacramento is probably dimmed somewhat by two things:

1. I had to dispute my room rate when I got here, and

2. it took forever to get here and once I actually got into Sacramento, finding my way around was difficult.

But there's a lot of charm here, even at night. Everywhere there are adorable Art Deco architectural details, mid-fifties California bungalows and lots of Arts & Crafts-period homes surrounding the city. It's totally charming.

So this morning, I woke up with my ears all staticky from the altitude fluctuations from the day before. The novice, I thought, "Oh well, it's good I'm going through the desert today and staying out of the mountains." I thought this because my map doesn't show terrain or elevation, just roads.

There was a Starbucks in the MGM Grand and I ate a quick breakfast of granola and yogurt (woo! Starbucks, I have missed you, truly) before heading south on I-15 out of Las Vegas. I fully believe now that everybody needs to take this drive--this is the southwest as we northeasterners imagine it. I took I-15 into Barstow, CA, where I caught highway 58 up to Bakersfield.

About ten miles outside of Barstow is Peggy Sue's Diner, which bills itself as a classic 50s diner, and wow, seriously. How could I pass that up? The waitresses wear aqua and hot pink uniforms, do their make-up to match and wear little matching frilly headbands. It's on Ghost Town Road, off of 15. I'm sitting enjoying the best patty melt I may have ever had when "House of the Rising Sun" comes on--I repeat, is it not one of the best songs ever?

The signs on the wall were all oddly speaking to me: "Have You Ever Been Happier Than You Are Right Now?" No. "The Joy Is In The Journey, Not The Destination." Word, yo. And my favorite: "On this spot in 1897 nothing happened." It was the best possible place I could've stopped. Everybody looked like a trucker, which is exactly how I want my roadside diners to be.

I passed through Hinkley, which is the town that Erin Brockovich helped--it's a little slice of nothing on 58, which I took north toward Bakersfield. I'll always remember Bakersfield from the Grapes of Wrath--and also, I later learned that Bakersfield is "The Jewel of California." It's also the most ozone polluted city in the country. I also passed through Keene on 58, which was where Cesar Chavez started the United Farm Workers, which was very exciting for me--union signs everywhere! Tears have formed in my eyes over the weirdest things on this trip: through the darkness of the Arizona night, a single house in the distance draped with blinking Christmas lights, the zillions of stars in the desert between Kingman, AZ and the Hoover Dam, and it happened again when I passed Keene. So many important and indicative things about this country have happened in the most unlikely and far-flung places.

The mountains I passed through were, I believe, in the Sierra Nevada range. I went through the Tehachapi Pass on 58 before riding into Bakersfield and taking 99 north into Sacramento. That makes it sound like Bakersfield and Sacramento are right next to each other--I wish. The stretch of land between Bakersfield and Sacramento is like the New Jersey of California. Why? It's smelly. There are a lot of petrochemical refineries and farms and that makes for, um, an aromatic combination.

I've been trying in vain to get to an In & Out Burger before I leave the area. The best burgers anywhere, ever. Internet in this hotel has been intermittent at best, so I haven't been able to search for it.

Unrelated, but important (to me):

Led Zeppelin reunited tonight and both E! and CNN showed a few clips from the concert. I love Robert Plant. I'm always going to love Robert Plant. And despite whatever my father says, his voice has totally held up over the years. I am sad I didn't win any free tickets from the 15 or so contests I entered, but I'm sure they'll release it on DVD and I can see it then. John at work and I had a conversation recently about Jimmy Page and his freaked out hair--I remember that he was on the cover of Guitar World with Jack White in January of 2006 and his hair was still black--what happened to him in the last 18 months that, like, 30 years of serious drug use couldn't do? He kind of looks like he should be in the Lord of the Rings now, but I'm sure that's not a bad thing for him.

It reminds me of an episode of the Venture Brothers, (but what doesn't?) where Brock is having an argument with Helper about Led Zeppelin because Helper has called it "Jock Rock." Brock says, "Jock Rock, my ass! Listen to those lyrics, man. It's all about love and longing." Helper makes some noise in response (Helper's a robot and makes noises that everybody can understand but are incomprehensible to the viewers of the show), and Brock responds, "Yes, and Hobbits, too."

Dad: When Zep goes on tour (everybody is saying they will) can we please, PLEASE try to get tickets?? I'll do whatever you say. I won't drive my car too much, no birthday/Christmas gifts for 5 years, no anything. Pleeeeease?

Misc.:

They call Sacramento "Sactown." I'm not making this up.
Another comfortable bed!
Lots of Dustbowl-era remnants, ghost towns, broken-down cars way off in the fields along the roadside, remains of old stone houses seemingly in the middle of nowhere. If you were coming in from the Oklahoma dustbowl, the last place you'd want to end up is in the California desert.
A humongous ice storm hit Oklahoma today, right where I was, across I-40. Score one for me!

Portland, here I come. Check out where I'm staying! How neat!

Day Seven:

Las Vegas, NV - Sacramento, CA

Mileage: 605

Total Mileage: 3,727

Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed,

I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes.

Isis - Bob Dylan

In no particular order:

Cypress Trees in CA.

Heading out of Las Vegas.

Am I still in California?

So many signs today.

I guess this is where the band got their name...?

I have one of these at home! A little different, but I mean, how many palm trees could there possibly be out there?

The internet here is terrible--I'll post more photos from Portland. It's Tuesday! Have fun!

Day Six (Or: The Hoover Dam is Dam Amazing) (hee!)

2007-12-09T23:20:00.000-08:00

Got in to Las Vegas at about 7:30 PST, 10:30 Eastern and man, I was so tired. But that's the last part of the tale...

Hi from Sin City, land of forced opulence! I could feel the energy (and money) slipping away from me from the minute I crested the final ridge on Highway 93.

Next to Santa Fe, Albuquerque looks like Beijing. Jennifer, the proprietor of the Inn where I stayed last night in Santa Fe, told me at breakfast that there about 3 million residents of New Mexico and about 1 million of them live in Albuquerque. It's big, noisy and kind of ugly, but it has some charm for all of those reasons. I dig big, noisy and ugly because, after all, where would the Bronx be without those things?

The continental breakfast at the Inn this morning was the finest I've ever had: fresh fruits, yogurt, oatmeal, toast, hard boiled eggs, granola and every kind of Tazo tea there is (OK, I admit it: I pilfered). There had been two women sitting in the common area when I had first arrived and at breakfast we were formally introduced. They wanted a recap of what I did, where I'd been and what I'd seen, so I gave them the abbreviated version with four-part harmony and full orchestration--Jeez, I can't get off the Alice's Restaurant jokes this week, huh.

So, anyway, I told them about the snow in West Virginia, the Nashville skyline, Memphis and depressing Graceland, eating real catfish for the first time, Loretta Lynn's ranch and going down to crossroads. That's when one of the ladies asked, in jest, if I felt some kind of connection with someone who'd sold their soul for their talent. I replied, "I'm not that talented," and they laughed. The other lady said "I don't think we know her well enough to ask that question," to which I said, "It's far more interesting because you don't know me."

Later on, I realized that I wanted to give some dramatic answer about soul-selling because I thought it would make for a more interesting story, but I didn't have one. I think part of me wanted to go to Clarksdale because I so badly wanted to believe something like that could be true. And while I felt totally creeped out while I was driving around, I'm pretty sure the idea of souls and spirits and ghosts is still an open issue for me.

Anyway, we had a great time and they sent me off with some tips about Seattle and driving up from Portland. They wished me luck and I got in the car and headed back to I-40.

I stopped on the Continental Divide to buy some postcards and use the bathroom. All day I had been driving up and down and up and down at all elevations. Later, I would tell Nora that if there was a kind of weather that existed on this planet, I experienced it today. The snow through Arizona was weird, beautiful and completely bracing--it was high altitude snow and it didn't stick to the road, but I have to admit that some of those 6% grade drops in the road made staying alert the only thing I focused on.

I highly recommend taking Highway 93 up from Kingman, AZ, if you have the choice. As the gypsy cabdriver says in "Planes, Trains & Automobiles": "There's nothing to see on the Interstate except In-ter-state." 93 goes up through the mountains into Las Vegas via the Hoover Dam, and even at night, it was unbelievable. I had no idea what to expect and had thought it was going to be mostly dark and unspectacular and I couldn't have been more wrong. Had it been daytime, I might have been more nervous with the hairpin turns around the canyonside, but because I couldn't see down, it was gravy. It was the single best unexpected part of the trip so far.

So Las Vegas bored me and here's why: I'm barely interested in anything that makes the place famous. I've never been into drinking and debauchery (although I had a glass of champagne with my expensive Craftsteak supper to celebrate the fact that I hit the 3000 mile mark today); I don't like gambling, so casinos make me nervous. I'm not a fan of Celine Dion, I don't "get" Cirque du Soleil, and the appeal of Wayne Newton, Siegfried & Roy, and Barry Manilow has never made sense to me. (Actually, I like the scenes in National Lampoon where Wayne Newton woos Ellen--it's like he's so naturally schmaltzy, he doesn't have to actually do any acting.)

I have some grudges against Vegas, too: Elvis' Vegas years were his worst and the city contributed to his decline, so that's kind of annoying; whenever they show "Casino" on TV, they have to overdub all the cursing and it makes the movie virtually unwatchable--that's not Vegas' fault, but the movie primarily takes place here so guilty by association; Cartoon Network wasn't one of my 150 TV stations on either of my trips, and you can imagine how I feel about that.

Unless Kathy Griffin is in town, the only thing you'll find me doing is eating. I love the restaurants here, love that the prices exceed New York prices for no conceivable reason, love that they don't seem to know what to do with someone eating alone. The prices at Craftsteak were at least 20% higher than at the Craft in New York, but like I said, I was celebrating the 3,000 mile mark. I chose the restaurant for two reasons:

Top Chef
It was in my hotel and required no walking or navigating of any kind.

I sat next to a couple who were from (of course) Long Island. I began to look around and I thought, "Everybody's from Long Island, Long Island is the world. The Universe is Long Island." Which sounds awfully similar to some of my father's more crackpot (sorry, Pop) theories. His latest is that the world is a dream and, he says with some latent terror in his voice, "What happens when we wake up from the dream?" Cue my mother rolling her eyes.

Anyway, after I ate, I went back to my suite (thank you, Expedia!) and ran a bath in the full-size air bath tub and stretched out in the steaming water. I saw a lot today: the sun coming up over the hills in Santa Fe, souvenir shops on the Navajo reservation, the Continental Divide, Texas longhorns trudging through the Arizona snow, four fat old horses standing together in the rain at a bale of hay, a large Native American family eating lunch at the Cracker Barrel I stopped at, the valet at the MGM Grand who sang, rather than spoke, directions for how to retrieve my car when I check out. It was a busy day.

I have more or less no plan for California tomorrow. I searched for a hidden deal on the internet, but I didn't see anything that struck my fancy, so I think I'm just going to wing it. I was going to go to San Francisco, but I don't want to spend the money for a room there. Tahoe was the next possibility, but it's too far from Portland--it would take about ten hours of driving on Tuesday to get there. So we'll see where I end up.

Misc.:

You can see the orange haze of the Las Vegas lights from about 100 miles away on Highway 93.
Tumbleweeds really do blow across the road in western New Mexico. I swerved to avoid one before I realized what it was and then I was like, "I wish I could've gotten a picture of that!"
Here's a tip: if you go up 93 to Las Vegas, get gas in Kingman, because there isn't another filling station, or anything, for another 60 miles.
Gillian Welch's "I Dream a Highway," which, at over 14 minutes long is like her "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," is absolutely the perfect song to drive in the total darkness toward LV.

Day six:

Santa Fe, NM - Las Vegas, NV

Mileage: 627

Total Mileage: 3,122

I woke up on the roadside, dreaming about the way things sometimes are.

Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan

I wish you knew me, Jack of Diamonds

Fire-riding, wheeling when I lead 'em up

Drank whiskey with my water, sugar in my tea

My sails in rags with the staggers and the jags

I dream a highway back to you.

Gillian Welch - I Dream a Highway

My kinda country...

OK, so I can say I drove on Route 66 for like five minutes.
On top of the Continental Divide.
My ears hurt.

Holbrook - Holbrook. Clearly, this is the nexus of the universe.
The Painted Hills, which I've waited my whole life to see.

Hope your weekend was great!

Day Five (Or: New Yorker Cracks Wise At Local Movie Theater")

2007-12-08T15:55:00.001-08:00

I have so much to process and so much to say. Let's start at the beginning:

Happy Saturday night from the old quarter of Santa Fe, NM, home of my favorite Democratic presidential candidate, the lovable Bill Richardson!

This morning, Amarillo was blanketed with fog, so I was ready for a drive similar to yesterday's (but shorter by half). Even shrouded in white, the panhandle of Texas is stunning. And anybody who knocks the flatness of it is just insane--once the fog lifted, I could see for miles. I began to understand, I think, why Texans have such strong pride in their state, the way that I don't think I've seen in anybody from, say, Florida or Illinois. Texas is as big as all get-out, for one thing, and more or less, has everything it needs in it. Oil, cows, land, cities, ports, transportation hubs, you name it and Texas has it. As any New Yorker knows, once you've been told your state (or city) has it all, you kind of build your identity as a citizen of that place on the fact that yours is the ultimate place to be. I think Texans view Texas as a state, a republic, an attitude and a way of life. Texans, correct me if I'm speaking out of school.

Anyway, I got friendly with freight trains and cows. Tip: when you pass through Hereford, TX on route 60, keep your windows up and the A/C off. It's billed as the "Beef Capital of the World," and man, you didn't have to tell me twice.

Route 60 turns unsettling in New Mexico. For long stretches of time, an hour or so was the longest, I didn't see another car in any direction. There are fenced-in fields, hundreds, maybe thousands of acres and cattle wandering here and there, but never any ranches or roads in sight. And I passed through a few ramshackle towns that, once I was past them, I felt certain they would be ghost towns soon. There'd be nowhere else for them to go but down and into the ether, just another strange photo op on rural 60. Something else: I didn't get any photos of them, but I saw the smallest post offices anywhere today. More like phone booths than post offices.

What I will remember most about Santa Fe is the smell. It's something like cedar crossed with hickory crossed with sandalwood, and this smell is absolutely everywhere you go. In my room at the Inn, in the air blasting into the car, in front of the movie theater, in front of the old churches and restaurants; in every corner of the city, there's a fresh woodsy smell that I will always think of fondly. I have a really terrible sense of smell--I can't distinguish smells instantly. If you ask me, "Did you smell that?" it means that I didn't. If I did, I would be the first to say, "I smelled that! I actually smelled it!" So for this pleasant feeling to come through is something really special.

Santa Fe is also 7,000 miles above sea level, and that might be the cause of my headache. The towns I passed through on 60 had population counts and elevation on their welcome signs. And I didn't pass through a single town that had more than 1,500 residents.

Bad weather is heading this way and my next destination is due for rain, rain, rain. I got in to Santa Fe just as the freezing rain began and was inside and settled before it got too bad. Then I went into town, ran some errands and went to see "I'm Not There."

I don't know what I can say about the movie right now. This is the part of the day that I haven't yet processed. I want to say something meaningful, because the movie was extremely meaningful to me, but if I said that, I wouldn't be able to tell you why, or what I felt as I was watching it.

I will say a few things: Cate Blanchett was so amazing, at some points I totally forgot she wasn't Dylan. Also, there is a scene where Woody Guthrie is dying in a hospital of Huntington's Chorea and I got very, very emotional during that scene. It was unbelievable.

**Also, if anybody out there has seen it, was Michelle Williams' character Coco supposed to be Edie Sedgwick or am I misreading that? There's been chatter out there since forever that the out-of-touch bitch in "Like a Rolling Stone," is Sedgwick and that the "Napoleon in rags," reference is Warhol. Dylan apparently fell out with Warhol after Sedgwick became addicted to heroin and Dylan accused Warhol of encouraging her habit and failing to intervene when it spun out of control.

It was 62 degrees when I was driving up from the south. I pulled over to stretch my legs and I turned off the car. There were a group of picnic tables improbably placed a few yard away from the road and I sat on one, stretching my legs out in front of me, my face up to the sun. The feeling can only be described as something that makes no sense to my eyes, but it's what I thought: I am grateful to be alive. Take from that what you will.

After the movie, I came back to the Inn, brewed some tea and ran a bath. In the tub, I got to thinking about what my father says about identity and how it's just the labels you wrap yourself in: daughter, writer, 25, lost, depressed, whatever. In the movie tonight, there was a part where one of the five Dylans was being interrogated and he began to recite a list of "7 Simple Rules for Getting Lost" or something to that effect, and one of the rules was "don't create anything," and I extrapolated from there, in the context of that part of the movie, that this included a persona, an identity. The movie seems to posit that anytime somebody hung a label on Dylan, his load got heavier.

I hung onto that thought for awhile. Out here, I'm nobody. I mean, I'm somebody. I'm a person, a human, a life form. But to the people I pass, the people I meet, I'm just anyone. And that is the definition of freedom, in some form, and it makes me giddy to continue.

Misc:

"I'm Not There" might actually be better if you don't know anything about Dylan, now that I really think about it.
Sam's Town was all booked when I went to go make a reservation tonight--not such a big tragedy as I first felt, since now I'm staying in a suite at the MGM Grand. Expedia is the king of the last minute deal, no kiddin'.
OH! And this morning, I left my pillow at the Microtel in Amarillo, but they're going to hang onto it for me, which means I have to pass through Amarillo again on the way home. I just can't give up that pillow--it's goosedown and my mother gave it to me as an Easter present one year (since we're not really down with the candy in my house, I always get something weird for Easter, like a CD, a book or, in this case, bedding). Plus, the pillowcase on it is actually not technically mine. In the words of Jessica Simpson in the Macy's holiday commercial where Martha Stewart is bossing everyone around: Oops, my bad. There's a story I'll never forget, though.
It's called The Inn on Paseo, 630 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM and it's more like a boarding house than a hotel, with charming common spaces, big bathrooms and it totally feels like home. Only with less stuff on the floor.
After IDing me for the R-rated movie (seriously, this happens to me everywhere; I think it's how I wear my hair), this exchange took place:

Movie ticket guy: "So what brings you to Santa Fe?"
Me: "The movie wasn't playing in New York."

Photos are in reverse order, because I'm tiiiiiired.

My plans for the evening: bath, drink some water from that big green bottle, take notes for this entry, towel off, write this entry, bed.

The clouds aren't lower, the road is just higher. For real, that's at, like, 5,000 feet above sea level.

Someday, all this could be yours.

In the words of Jonathan Rice: "We're all stuck out in the desert, and we're gonna die."

Day Five:
Amarillo, TX - Santa Fe, NM
Mileage: 325
Total Mileage: 2495

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo: this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan

Day Four (Or: "Ooooooklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains...")

2007-12-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

Today's entry is brought to you by the letter H for hotlink. Follow some of them for all the info on all the boring things I find fascinating.

Hola from Amarillo, TX, eleventh largest city in Texas, "Yellow Rose of Texas," birthplace of my beloved friend Angie, and the self-proclaimed helium capital of the world!

Today I became very, very familiar with my inner monologue, with nothing else to do but listen to wonderful music, and to the quiet chatter in my own head.

The Peabody was way, way too comfortable. The hotel operator delivered my wake-up call at 7:30 and when she offered a follow-up snooze call, I took her up on it. I got out of bed a full hour later than I intended to, not eager to get on the road. Today's agenda was all-driving all day, to reach Amarillo at a reasonable hour.

I took a spin around Little Rock to see what it looked like in the daytime and I have to say, I'm kind of enamored of it. You can turn right on red, people stop for pedestrians and their rush hour is hardly like any rush hour I've ever seen. Also! Parking spots! Parking spots as far as the eye can see. There's also a trolley, the River Rail Electric Car system that goes across the Main Street Bridge over the Arkansas River into North Little Rock.

Something else I noticed, although it was subtle, and if you don't pump your own gas (Barbara, I'm looking at you) then it won't mean much but here goes: In the South, the gas nozzles at the gas stations still have that little rest bar on the handle so that you can let the gas pump itself--AWESOME. When I first started driving, we still had those in New York, but then it got taken away and people started shoving their gas caps in the handle to create the same effect. Then signs went up at gas stations proclaiming that to be dangerous and illegal. My gas was pumping in Oklahoma today, and I sat in my nice toasty automobile wondering what New Yorkers did to lose the privilege.

I passed through the Ozarks. Had it been a clearer day, I would have more to say, but even hazy and foggy, the mountains were very pretty, rolling and still green in places. I shot into Oklahoma around lunchtime (after getting lost in the fog trying to find a Cracker Barrel that I never did actually find, despite the sign on the highway proclaiming its presence). I didn't get lost, but I did get led astray, just waiting for the stupid restaurant to appear. During that trek I drove through Mountainburg, AR, population 682. The only way that town could be crowded is if everybody went to the Dairy Freeze at the same time. (Which reminds me: I saw both a Piggly Wiggly, Big Lots and Hobby Lobby for the first time today, despite having known of their existence for a long time. It's like how Long Islanders just keep waiting for a Sonic to appear--my cousin Tom and me at the forefront, for sure--those commercials of frosty limeades are such a tease.)

There is almost nothing for me to say about Oklahoma, sadly. I encountered heavy fog like I've never seen in the daytime about fifty miles outside of Oklahoma City and was in it until I was twenty miles outside of Amarillo. Honestly, I passed through the middle of Oklahoma City and didn't see a durn thing (durn it!) except the car in front of me, the car in back of me, and the white wall of fog on either side. I did get the sense, however, that Oklahoma is extremely flat. I don't mind flat, flat is OK to me. (Whoa. OK. Oklahoma. Ha!)

Oh, wait, I do have something to say about Checotah, OK, but I think the only way to do it is in the form of a letter:

*

Dear Civic Leaders of Checotah, OK:

Was it truly necessary to put a gigantic brown sign (of the variety usually reserved for places of historical import) on I-40 proclaiming that Checotah is the "birthplace of Carrie Underwood, American Idol Winner 2005"? I mean, for serious. Isn't that kind of thing usually done for, like, astronauts? Or Troy Aikman?

Thanks for your time,

Andrea

*

An unexpected feeling arose the further west I drove: my mind wouldn't leave Mississippi behind. All day, I tried planning my route home, trying to figure out a way to stay overnight in Jackson, or at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale. I feel like I have more to see there, more to do. Last night, I stayed up very late using the experience in a story I had been working on that was just waiting for me to fit in the Clarksdale piece of the puzzle.

Hmm. Not to get too far ahead of myself, but I'm resistant to the idea of taking the same route back to New York that I took to get to Seattle. If I don't get a vague idea of what that route might be, I might just fall back on I-40 out of laziness. (I hope not. That's not generally my M.O.) Last night, the valet at the Peabody, who was totally an Arkansas good ol' boy, shot the shit with me for a few minutes and suggested that I go up through Colorado to shave off the California leg of the journey up to Seattle. The theme of the trip is "Don't Get Caught With Your Drawers Down When The Snow's A-Comin'" (or something like that--cut a sister a break, I'm exhausted). Colorado is invariably associated with skiing in my mind, which wouldn't even be a sport without snow. But anyway, he suggested I take the Eisenhower Tunnel, the interstate 70 tunnel that goes under the Continental Divide, which would cut the most treacherous part of the drive right out.

I remain unconvinced as of this writing, so unless something drastically changes, tomorrow morning I'm headed out for Santa Fe, which is only a few hours' drive away. I'm hoping to catch a showing of I'm Not There, the Todd Haynes movie about Bob Dylan, which nobody seems to believe I haven't seen yet.

(Wasn't playing in WV, I missed the last showing in Nashville and it's not playing in Little Rock or Amarillo.)

Anyway, I blasted into Amarillo at around 8:30 toward my cheapie Expedia-booked Microtel right off of I-40. Comfortable and clean for $72--if you're ever passing through, this is good deal. Continental breakfast in the morning, indoor pool, lots of TV stations and the room is huge. Oh! And a microfridge, just like I had at Sarah Lawrence!

The hotel is within spitting distance of The Big Texan, which used to be on Route 66 but was moved onto the I-40 service road after 66 went into decline. Its reputation revolves around its 72 oz (which is 4.5 pounds, btw) steak ("The Texas King"), which is free if one can eat the entire meal (which also includes a bread roll with butter, potato, ranch beans, shrimp cocktail, and salad) in less than one hour. Otherwise, the meal costs $72.00. Several individuals annually are able to eat the steak and are listed at the restaurant.

Is this not both completely gross and completely charming? Kind of at the same time? This place is internationally known for this challenge. It's like the American Burger 4x4 challenge, but much... grosser. I can't even finish an 8 oz filet mignon. I can handle about 4 oz of red meat before I start in with the buyer's remorse. Anyway, you can't deny that's a valuable piece of local color. (Or as my former boss would say, "Those are some local tomatoes, all right." He said that in a variety of situations, and I never fully grasped its proper usage, but let's pretend that it fits here. This is the same boss who gave me the golden phrase, "Time wounds all heels.")

After reading about The Big Texan, I began to wonder if there was anything I'd eat 4.5 pounds of. Kozy Shack rice pudding is probably a good guess. Mmmm... and it's made on Long Island, in the town where my mom grew up.

Good songs to be driving across Arkansas, Oklahoma & Texas:

anything by Robert Johnson (particularly "Terra Plane Blues," "Me and the Devil," "Little Queen of Spades" and "Come on in My Kitchen"
anything by Django "The Gypsy Guitarist" Reinhardt
The White Stripes' White Blood Cells album
Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti (there's a cover of Bob Dylan's version of "In My Time of Dying" on the second disc)
disc one of the compilation Vicky made for my trip (Andrea's Road Warrior Mix, Vols. 1, 2 & 3) which has lots of Feist, The Elected and Rilo Kiley on it.
Oh! And Woody Guthrie. Any Woody Guthrie will do.
End your trip across Oklahoma with Johnny Cash "T for Texas"

Travel tip: If your back ever becomes stiff while driving across Oklahoma, steer over the rumble strips on the shoulder. Instant massagey chair! Just kidding (although it does feel pretty good).

Yet another random Bob Dylan fact: Dylan lived for a few years at 92-94 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. I lived at 104 MacDougal Street, in considerably less posh digs above the Yatagan Kebab shop, on the other side of Bleecker. No coincidence there, just some Craig's List luck.

Day four:
Little Rock, AR - Amarillo, TX
Mileage: 634
Total Mileage: 2,170

Top of the duck sanctuary at the Peabody, as seen from room 601. Beyond that is the Arkansas River.

This one's for Barbara: "The traveling marauder has secured the Ozarks and declares peace throughout all Odin's sacred lands! While wearing jeans!"

It was like driving straight into a wall.

Um, OK, this is the first time I've ever seen these octanes. (Here's another one Barbara and Nora won't get--hee!) I took a shot in the dark and chose 88, because it seemed one better than 87, instead of one worse. Scientific, I know.

Yawwwwwn. Not a great day for photos--tomorrow will be better, especially if I make it to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum before it closes. I took photos of all the pricey Kohler fixtures at the Peabody, but I doubt you guys would be interested (here's a teaser--pedestal sink! "You may leave Kitchen & Bath Design News, but it never really leaves you." Hey guys, there's also a Haier microwave in this hotel room!)

Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe,
My woman needs it ev'ryday,
She promised this a-lad she'd stay,
She's rollin' up a lotta bread
To toss away.
She's in Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe
Now she's opened up an old maid's home,
She's proud, but she needs to roam,
She's gonna write herself a roadside poem,
About Santa-Fe.

From "Santa-Fe" by Bob Dylan

Day Four Interlude: Forgotten Photo

2007-12-07T18:52:00.000-08:00

So, I arrived in Amarillo (thank goodness not "by morning"*) and I'm in a Microtel (which is clean, comfortable and economical, even if it does have the kind of fluorescent lighting you might expect in a dentist's office).

I'm going to get some food, so full report later, but I realized today that I never put up this photo from West Virginia...

The caption should read: "Because Beano was already taken."
Hee! Be back later.

xo
-A.

*That's a George Strait song, "Amarillo by Morning."

P.S. Check out this fancy piece of Google magic! You can see my route so far (approximately):

View Larger Map

Day Three (Or: "Highway 61 Revisited")

2007-12-06T20:30:00.001-08:00

Aloha from (relatively) balmy Little Rock, Arkansas, land of the newly-slim Mike Huckabee, the very dead General Douglas MacArthur and non-dead, noted publisher Helen Gurley Brown!

When I was planning this trip, I read the blogs of many other people who had traveled across the country and from what they had to say, I surmised that the worst thing to do was to preplan the whole trip and etch my whole route in stone.

Vindication! I can turn on a dime! Mwahahaha! OK, enough back-patting. It's snowing right now in Saint Louis, so I'm safe here in Little Rock, Arkansas. Tomorrow it's going to be 58 here! That's practically 60! Which is only 20 degrees away from 80. So really, it might as well be summer here.

This morning, I awoke in one of the cushiest hotel room I'd ever been in (goosedown everything!) in Nashville and got some breakfast before heading out on I-40.

Then, a happy accident: signs started appearing on the side of the road for Loretta Lynn's Kitchen, and her ranch. I was ecstatic; I LOOOOOOVE Loretta Lynn and have sometimes wished that I could be alternately a Coal Miner's Daughter or the Van Lear Rose (either would have been acceptable). So, anyway, I pulled off of 40 and stopped at the Kitchen for a more in-depth breakfast--real biscuits and gravy! I'd never tried that before. Next stop: grits. Maybe not. The idea of the lard in grits puts me off a little.

The memorabilia was overwhelming, and engrossing. I could have stayed there all day. I went for a quick tour around the ranch--generally, most times of the year, you can tour her house, too, but not in December (crap!). She was home, though, and just being that close was enough. Oh! Also, I drank my milk with my breakfast out of a--swear it's true--"drinking jar." Totally.

While I was tucking in (Translation in Northern: "As I started to eat...") to my food, "Burning Love" came on the jukebox and I was like, "OK Universe, I get it. I'll keep moving." Because the next stop was Memphis and all things Elvis.

Memphis! OK, full disclosure, I got turned around. Don't blame me or the map. Memphis has a grid system, but the grid system is insane. Like all of a sudden, a road that was two ways is sudden one. Maddening! I caved and bought a map. After that, it was gravy.

Speaking of gravy (beat THAT transition sentence), lunch was fried catfish, taters, greens, Texas toast and "marinated" salad at the Blues City Cafe on Beale Street ("The Best Meal on Beale"--Dear me, I love the south). Also, the finest BBQ sauce I'd ever tasted, so I bought a bottle. Pop, wait until you taste this stuff. It'll make KC Masterpiece taste like ketchup (it already does taste like ketchup to me). Then I went souvenir shoppin' at some very eclectic and weird stores and finally headed for Graceland (I passed Sun Studios, but didn't stop).

I didn't take any pictures at Graceland because, honestly, I found it depressing. There are two tours you can take--one is cheaper and lets you in to the grounds and some of the house. I found myself just kind of staring at his grave, reading the famous missprint (Aaron, instead of Aron like on his birth certificate), and thinking how lonely and ultimately empty his life actually was. How could I take a photo of that?

I think if I had taken a photo, I'd be stuck in an infinite loop where whenever Memphis would be mentioned, I'd think of that moment, standing there, wondering. (Will my kids be doing the same thing at Britney Spears' grave someday? Kinda cheapens the whole Presley mystique when you compare it to the inimitable train wreck that is Britney Spears--doesn't it feel like she could go the Elvis route?)

So I actually said a little prayer, something I haven't done in a long, long time, and got back in the car to head for the destination I've been looking forward to since I left New York: Clarksdale.

To get to Clarksdale, you have to get on Highway 61, which is infamous. Here's a quick rundown, courtesy Wikipedia: Highway 61, sometimes called the "Blues Highway," stretched from New Orleans through Memphis and from Iowa through Duluth (Bob Dylan's city of birth; His sixth album is titled "Highway 61 Revisited") to the Canadian border. It was regularly featured in blues songs, notably Mississippi Fred McDowell's "61 Highway" and James "Son" Thomas's "Highway 61." Bessie Smith met her death in an automobile accident on that roadway; Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 (itself the subject of a Howlin' Wolf song); Elvis Presley grew up in the housing projects built along it; and Martin Luther King, Jr. would be murdered at a motel just off Highway 61.

So, OK. There's a quick background. It's that point right in the middle of that section that I was most interested in. While not the first bluesman (Charley Patton, Son House and Tommy Johnson predate him), Robert Johnson is without a doubt the most important, which is amazing, considering that there are only 41 known recordings of his 29 compositions. Without him, there wouldn't be a basis for Led Zeppelin or Johnny Winter or Eric Clapton or The White Stripes, and so really, where would I be? I'd be another schlub bopping along to Maroon 5 (OK, sometimes I do that).

The crossroads at which Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil for his unparalleled talent is right in Clarksdale. 61 goes through the Mississippi Delta--cross that off the life list, for I've now driven through it. The flatness was the first thing I noticed, and then the ditches everywhere. On either side of the highway were cleared cotton fields, the last strings of cotton clinging to the grass on the side of the road, carried their by the wind.

Clarksdale is, I imagine, awfully similar to what it was when Johnson was alive, save the Sonic and the chain gas stations. It has a shabby, worn-in charm, but it definitely has seen better days. As I drove around, I thought about Johnson going to the pivotal San Antonio recording session, how he stood facing the corner, either out of shyness or to deepen the sound, and I realized that, in 1937, leaving Mississippi must have seemed like stepping off the edge of the Earth.

But anyhow, the next stop was Greenwood, no small jaunt, but on the way to Arkansas, so an acceptable diversion. There, in the near-darkness, I visited one of two graves that bear Johnson's name. There is dispute over where he's buried, either in the Little Zion churchyard in Greenwood, or in Morgan City. I knelt down on the ground which was littered with pecans from the trees overhead, and I hugged my arms around me, thinking about the darkness and density of his music. He was 27 when he died from the effects of strychnine poisoning.

Oh! But here's the creepy part! So, I have 8779 songs in my iPod and it has been set to shuffle since I left New York. You might imagine, I go a long time without hearing two songs from the same band. As I drove into Greenwood and pulled into the church, The White Stripes' "Stop Breaking Down" came on, which is a cover of Johnson's "Stop Breaking Down Blues." The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Eeeerie.

Then I got back in the car and headed across the Mississippi River into Arkansas. Arkansas should be called Darkansas. I went up through a very rural area and it was pitch-freaking-black. The nice part was that since it was dark and the weather was mild, I pulled over to the side, got out and stared up at the stars, which were as clear as I've ever seen them. No cars coming from either direction, I stood there probably ten minutes.

Little Rock was further away than I thought, but it was a quick drive. What a nice city... I mean as far as I can tell in the dark. Plus, everything's kind of closed, since it's a Thursday night. I'm staying at the Peabody, which is as nice as it sounds, but is actually reasonably priced.

The thing that sold me on this place is its biggest quirk: Every morning at 11 am, the Peabody Ducks (four hens and a drake), march across a red carpet into the hotel lobby to the tune of John Phillips Sousa's King Cotton March. They go into the lobby fountain and stay there all day until 5 pm when they do the march in reverse back into their "Royal Duck Palace."

Um, I love it. Tomorrow is a HUGE driving day. I'm just going to leave here and start moving. I'd love to get to Santa Fe, but that is a loooooooong ways away, so I'll probably end up somewhere around Amarillo. Which makes me think of Angie and how much I miss her!

Misc.:

Another day of clean bathrooms!
I passed a sex toy store in South Memphis called Hephzibah that had a big sign that said "The Latest and the Greatest in Wangs & Thangs" and I was alternately mortified and delighted.
"Wait, Jesus is King? I thought Elvis was the King."
I told my tale to someone at the Blues City Cafe all blues-like: "Just passin' through in a big ol' truck with some things and a Viking hat. Pardon me, I mean thangs." OK, I didn't say the Pardon Me sentence, but I TOTALLY should have. Oh and hey, don't ever get chicken-fried chicken in Tennessee because it will ruin you for fried chicken back home.
Tee shirt in Beale Street store: "I don't give a damn what y'all do up north."
I was shocked when the waitress at the cafe had a faintly Russian accent.

Bye-bye, Nashville!

At Loretta Lynn's.

At Loretta Lynn's.

The cover of "Van Lear Rose."

Drinkin' jar!

Beale Street, Memphis.

Robert Johnson's music note on Beale Street.

Blues City Cafe, Beale Street.

Big dude on Highway 61, on the Mississippi border.

At the crossroads of 61 & 49 in Clarksdale.

Sunset on the Delta, along Highway 61.

Day Three:
Nashville, TN - Little Rock, AR (by way of Clarksdale, MS)
Mileage: 521
Total mileage: 1522

More random Bob Dylan trivia: Highway 61 Revisited was named 4th in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "Like a Rolling Stone," from the album was named #1 in the magazine's 500 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. And that's awesome.

Led Zeppelin trivia: After Jimmy Page & Robert Plant reunited for the Unledded performance and album, they recorded a second studio album in 1998. It was called Walking into Clarksdale. Led Zeppelin covered or reworked a number of Johnson songs including "Travelling (sic) Riverside Blues."

Cross Road Blues (take 2)
Robert Johnson

I went to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad
fell down on my knees

Asked the Lord above "Have mercy, now
save poor Bob, if you please
Mmmmm, standin' at the crossroad
I tried to flag a ride
Standin' at the crossroad
I tried to flag a ride
Didn't nobody seem to know me
everybody pass me by

Mmm, the sun goin' down, boy
dark gon' catch me here
oooo ooee eeee
boy, dark gon' catch me here
I haven't got no lovin' sweet woman that
love and feel my care

You can run, you can run
tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
You can run, you can run
tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
Lord, that I'm standin' at the crossroad, babe
I believe I'm sinkin' down

Day Two (Or: Nuh-Nuh-Nuh-Nashviiiiiiille)

2007-12-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

If I wasn't such a lady, I'd write something like, oh, I don't know, how-lee sheeee-it.

In non-hillbilly, this means: What a day. But let's start at the beginning, before I get to the nitty-gritty, like megachurches, Hardee's and scary north Nashville K-Marts.

This morning, as I checked out of my hotel room, I said to the clerk, "Wish me luck in this snow!" If I had been in New York, the clerk would have likely rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, really," which is a New Yorker's approximation of empathy. But I was in West Virginia, so the clerk smiles and said, "Good luck!" With feelin'. (Anybody who gets the 'Alice's Restaurant' reference there, raise your hand)

If snow-filled mountains are your thing, today would have been your day to ride shotgun. If you're not much of a fan of crazy speeding 18-wheelers, then you should probably be glad that you sat this one out. At some points, it was near white-out, but the roads were salted (as my car is now), so overall the ride was smooth, if agonizingly slow. To wit: it took me about 4 hours to go 100 miles. Yeesh. But I did have the somewhat distant promise that it wasn't snowing or raining or anything in Tennessee.

(An aside: do any of you watch CNN in the mornings? I can't remember the meteorologist's name who has the morning shift, but he's always using the word weather inappropriately, like just because he's a meteorologist, that forgives all his grammatical sins. For example, he likes to say, "There's a lot of weather all over the place." Not good weather, not bad weather, just weather. Now, technically, isn't that always going to be true, like, everywhere? Isn't there always weather everywhere? Windy? Calm? Cloudy? Clear? Snow? Rain? Sunshine? Aren't these all weather? But I digress.)

(Oh, another aside: Is the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun" not one of the most perfect rock songs ever?)

I feared that I'd be in snow a lot on this trip, so before I left, I put a playlist on my iPod called "Tropic of Cancer" which contains every song in my library that is even remotely connected to good weather (oh my God, I just remembered the meteorologist's name is Chad Myers), like the Flaming Lips' "Summertime," Weezer's "Islands in the Sun," and Beck's "Tropicalia." It worked to keep the mood buoyant.

Also? I stopped in the cleanest gas station bathroom I've ever seen this morning in West Virginia.

Lunch was a la Cracker Barrel, so I can finally cross "Eat at Cracker Barrel" off my life list. Which is good since I think that's the most embarrassing item. While I was eating my sandwich (which was tasty) I overheard a waitress say, "Jeez Louise!" In Earnest.

Many of the previously mentioned 18-wheelers were hauling oversized items like train cars (Amtrak and a car from Atlanta's MARTA system) and what can only be described as something clearly resembling a piece of the space shuttle.

I traveled predominantly on the interstate today (I-64 to the Bluegrass Parkway to I-65) because of the snow, but I think I misperceived what the interstates would be like down here. The interstate I'm most familiar with is I-95--forget what you know. In Kentucky in particular, the landscapes were like the covers of Nicholas Sparks novels. For real. Rolling hills, barns and tree swings for, like, 110 miles.

Some odds & ends:

When I got out to stretch my legs in Bowling Green, my first thought was: "This is the wrong time to start craving Thai food."
A trucker at a rest stop, who got a map machine to work for me by doing the Fonzie-style fist-bump, called me "little lady." I didn't know truckers really said things like that. My mom's brother is a trucker, and though he dresses like a cowboy (for real), but I've never heard him say anything like that.
One more thing: Excuse me, Nashville, but in what other major city does one actually have to search for a Starbucks? Even in Morgantown, WV, you trip over Sbuckses everywhere. I never ended up finding one.

I rolled into Nashville around 7 o'clock and momentarily fretted: do I eat first, or find a hotel? I called the hotel, made sure they had a room free and then went to the Big River Brewery on Broadway in downtown Nashville. Big River is a small chain, and they're a microbrewer (I tried the Sweet Magnolia Brown Stout, which was terrific).

Nashville and Nashvillians (Nashvillains? Nashvillagers?) are totally unpretentious, and that was good, since it meant I could just pounce on my waitress for advice about the city. The hardest part about traveling alone into a major city you've never been to is that you have no idea where the cool parts are. Like, say you drove into New York from the Holland tunnel--you'd probably end up eating Chop Suey in Chinatown--OK, actually, that doesn't sound too bad. But not every city is New York, and if you don't know where you're going, good luck. You'll be familiar with the buffet at Shoney's in no time. (Eeee, memories of many bad breakfasts at travel camp!)

Lastly, where was this article when I was planning this trip? (OK, full disclosure: practically no planning went into the actual trip. The planning headaches were in all the ancillary details)

Thanks everyone for the overwhelmingly kind e-mails. I'm thinking about all of you!

Snow!

MARTA train on a flatbed trailer

Cracker Barrel: Mission Accomplished!

Welcome to the Bluegrass State!

Military Police on my tail.

Tank!

I wanted to offer this man a carrot. Welcome to methane belt.

I'm really in the South now.

Nashville Skyline

Random Bob Dylan trivia: The track listing on the B-side of his 1969 album "Nashville Skyline" (which is, coincidentally, my favorite--I have a first press 33 that I got on City Island)forms a poem:

Lay lady lay,
One more night,
Tell me that it isn't true.
Country pie,
Tonight,
I'll be staying here with you.

Day Two:
Morgantown, WV - Nashville, TN
Mileage: 557 mi.
Total Mileage: 1001 mi.

Day One

2007-12-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Morgantown, West Virginia! Birthplace of Don Knotts!

Today wasn't the day I thought it would be. Number one: I woke up late. 9:30. Not so terrible, but still not terrific. Number two: It took the same amount of time to go from my house to the Verrazano Bridge as it did to go from the Verrazano Bridge to Philadelphia, PA. Number three: I totally changed my mind about today's route at the very last second.

Also, wind? Hello? It was so windy that on the Verrazano, I had to turn the wheel against the wind just to keep going straight. Also cool? EZ Pass in Pennsylvania. I didn't know you could use it all throughout PA. That was a terrific piece of news.

Originally, I thought to go south and then start heading west. As I went through New Jersey, I spontaneously scrapped the plan and took the Penn Turnpike. There are tunnels! Through mountains! This was very neat. There are also a lot of weird signs before you go into them, like "Take Off Sunglasses" and I saw this before I realized I was heading into a tunnel. For a split second I thought I had read the sign wrong, but in the next minute I was in near daylight inside the tube. It was bright as day and actually it kind of hurt my eyes a little.

With a supply of treats from Whole Foods, I managed to eat healthily all day; no small feat with all of the Roy Rogers on both the PA and NJ turnpikes. It made me think of Barbara, and how she so loves the BBQ sauce there, she gets a big cup, fills it up and brings it back home.

Anyway, now I'm tucked in for the night and ready for my 6:30 am wake up call. Tomorrow: Nashville by lunchtime! Memphis in the evening!

Tip: If you're ever in the area between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh (Pennsyltucky, according to one Carnegie-Mellon alumnus) and you have to get down to West Virginia, Pennsylvania Route 381 is a great alternative to the interstate--lots of silos and hills and quaint towns to pass through, but the speed limit is still 55. Sweeeeet.

Day One:
Holbrook, NY - Morgantown, WV
Mileage: 443

I can tell that we are going to be friends.