Some Damn Good Life Experience(through the eyes of Stephanie)

Reflection and Conclusion

Madison, Wisconsin is definitely the kind of place you could spend a bit of time exploring. It’s a college town, on a stretch of land between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. It’s also the state capital of Wisconsin, with a town ordinance that no building may be built that is higher than the capitol building – which strikes a chord of Wisconsin pride...the campus is beautiful, with the student union building beside the lake…and a short walk to downtown gives the students plenty of things to do. I would have had fun going to college there, no doubt. Frank Lloyd Wright studied at the university, and designed several of the city’s buildings. Sprinkled throughout the campus and downtown Madison are what seem like dozens of fiberglass cow statues, painted in themes and bright colors by local artists. Wisconsin is America’s Dairyland! And it’s true – every highway exit seemed to boast billboards advertising local cheeses for sale.

The Best Western we stayed at in Madison, I must say, had the best breakfast offering that I’ve seen. You were handed one meal ticket for every night you stayed there, and you could actually pick one of four hot breakfasts to be cooked for you! We’re talking bacon, eggs, hash browns, French toast. I appreciated this immensely because I’m used to bowls of Cheerios. (No biscuits and gravy, but I’ll let that go.) Compared to some places, which say they offer a continental breakfast and then you’re faced with watery orange juice and four-day-old mini muffins…liars…false advertisers…

On June 13, we arrived at the Days Inn in Plymouth, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, for our final trip destination. Bill has made financial contributions to the University of Minnesota’s Experimental Surgical Services lab, because that’s where the heart valve he received was designed. The University's lab is one of only a few in the country that work with the Food and Drug Administration to approve devices and procedures independently of the companies that develop them, and they depend greatly on private funding. This particular laboratory tests about 90 percent of all artificial heart valves developed worldwide, and Bill discovered this after his surgery and decided to contribute. It was an appropriate ending for our trip, since Bill’s heart surgery was the original catalyst for leaving in the first place. And so, after sandy deserts, down the rocky California coast, over bridges, past fields, past roadrunners, and through forests, we found ourselves in the Twin Cities. And Bill rode 3260 miles to get there.

We caught a Red Sox game downtown, where we saw them get swept by the Twins in the Metrodome – but it was still great to see the Sox. (Although it was strange to be in the minority of Boston fans, once again…but there were a few Boston natives a few rows back that echoed our attempts at drowning out the Twins fans) I did NOT enjoy watching a baseball game under a domed roof – and when baseballs hit the ceiling, plays are possible that wouldn’t be in open-air venues…and that’s cheap…but the Twin Cities are building an open-air stadium in a few years, so I’m glad for them.

I can’t believe I spent six months with no refrigerator. Well, most rooms had small refrigerators…but the only things we put in them were bottles of water and leftovers. I miss having a big jar of Claussen pickles in my fridge.

I also can’t believe I lived in hotels for six straight months. Now I know how musicians feel when they’re on tour. Kinda. Although nobody was trying to get our autographs, and the Suburban wasn’t exactly the glitziest tour bus, I did get a semblance of what a crazy lifestyle it would be. I suppose I can more compare our traveling style to less prolific bands who are just ‘trying to make it’ and actually lug their own stuff from place to place, over and over when they go on the road. So we were sort of like E-list celebrities.

I’m really going to miss untying the bikes and unhooking that bike rack from the back of the Suburban just so I can get to my stuff, which was jumbled in twists of laundry in the back…the rack clips over the two back doors and then you have to clip it under the bumper area and cinch it so it’s tight. I can recall several times when we glanced in the sideview mirrors of the SUV just in time to see the bikes swinging wildly from side to side and an emergency pullover was required. Actually, I can’t believe that the bikes never fell off and crashed onto the highway. Miracles do happen.

And that $3.00 combination lock that dangles from the back of the trailer…one of those cheesy ones where you don’t have to get the combination EXACTLY right…you can miss it by a few dash marks and it’ll still open…it got rusty after being parked next to the ocean in Daytona and getting salt water from the air on it.

I lost two cell phone chargers over the course of this trip, and the one I have now is one I bought in desperation from a drugstore in Florida. It’s enormous and has a retractable cord, and I hate it. I also left a bathing suit in a hotel…but besides that, I haven’t noticed anything else I’ve left anywhere. I think that’s pretty damn good. Sarah lost two USB cables for her videocamera. Bill had two hospital adventures, but the Lyme tick scare and the broken rib scare both turned out to be fine. The initial Suburban – trailer crash didn’t ruin the trip. Also, none of us got speeding tickets or got arrested – we had a running joke that it was bound to happen for some stupid thing or another. And that’s a good thing because if it had been Sarah or I to get thrown in jail, Bill would have left us in there for a while to teach us a lesson – maybe forever. And if Bill had gotten arrested, we definitely would have left him incarcerated until further notice. For the record.

I love to learn, and that was a big part of what this trip has done for me – not only learning historical facts about our country, but that there is life happening all over our amazing country – and how many different sorts of lives it is possible to lead while on United States soil. Of course I have to say that I learned personal things about myself as well – that I am capable of making bold, unexpected changes in life, that I can take off my shoes and put my feet in new oceans. I’ve eaten crawfish, seen wildlife I never thought I’d see, danced, swam, had my backpack stolen, stood beside coastal redwood trees, got a flat tire in the middle of the desert in New Mexico, went boating, hiking, scuba diving, horseback riding, took a bunch of crazy taxi rides, stood beside giant cacti, smelled the fetid hurricane destruction of Louisiana, explored caverns, saw countless pink-gold-purple-streaked sunsets, crossed border patrol, and accidentally stepped on a flounder.

I met so many amazing people across this country, hilarious and tragic and fascinating, some of whom I am going to keep in contact with. Others will fade into the great wide open of the United States, never to be seen or heard of again by me – but conversations I’ve had with them and stories they’ve shared with me will remain in my mental archives up there and in the scribbles of notes I’ve taken.

And I’m sad that this trip is over, even though I’ve missed home desperately. But can you ever really go home to your old life after something like this? I’m not going to deliver mail. I’m not living in the same apartment as I was before. I don’t know how things are going to go after this trip…I’m closing the door on the most dynamic chapter of my life. I’m the same person that I was before, but at the same time I’m not. My eyes are open much wider now and I’ve grown to care about some issues and places that I didn’t really give just thought to before. I think I’m going to be a better person. A better person with a fridge. Six months seemed like forever when I left home, but it went so incredibly fast – it was like a flash. It was one of the highlights of my life – and I’m only 24 years old, but I know that for as long as I live, it will be.

My favorite places: Big Sur, CA, for beauty of ocean and forest in the most striking combination I can imagine; Grand Canyon, AZ for the gorgeous purples and blues of the canyon sunset; Nashville, TN for the fiddles, steel guitars, and fun-loving attitude; New Orleans, LA for the culture, sordid history, debauchery, and eclectic locals; and Daytona Beach, FL for the lifestyle of living beside the warm Atlantic. But there are so many other places that will stick in my memory (fondly or not) for a variety of reasons: Marathon, TX for the White Buffalo…San Clemente, CA for good company…Carlsbad, NM for caverns and bat lore…Laredo, TX for terrifying predatory Hispanic men…Portal, AZ, which takes the award for ‘time spent in closest proximity to ‘the middle of absolutely nowhere’…Padre Island, TX for craziness…Savannah, GA for Spanish moss and River St…St. Augustine, FL for an incredible piece of American history…Big Bend, TX for remote beauty and horses…Madison, WI for the college campus I absolutely loved…Ajo, AZ for stories told of border jumpers…Salinas, CA for being stuck after the trailer-crashing incident…Elk Grove, IL for our suburban Chicago antics…Sanderson, TX for being the worst low-populated town we visited…San Francisco, CA for our stay at Bill’s friend Joe’s memorable apt…Phoenix, AZ for the Pointe Hilton…Puerto Penasco and Tijuana, Mexico for all the poverty and insanity that ensues and the Spanish that is spoken in daily life down there…and that’s just a brief summary.   

I didn’t know if I had it in me to leave home for six months. I have always enjoyed having a nice cushy comfort zone of familiar people and places. To prove to myself that I could actually leave has meant a great deal to me and to be proud of myself is an exhilarating feeling. And so, after chasing warm weather around the United States since December, I’m home in my own summer back home, with an unknown future – but I have to say: New Hampshire has never looked so beautiful.

Chicagoland

We have less than a month left in our trip, and we have several destinations, so the Suburban has been covering greater distances.

After passing through Kentucky, we entered Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln”. One of the first things I noticed about Illinois, besides the endless green of roadside fields and silos, was that they call their rest stops ‘oases’. (I had to look that one up…plural of ‘oasis’…we all get stumped when dealing with the English language at times.) To me, an oasis is a breath of fresh air, or a place of safe refuge; I suppose to residents of Illinois, an oasis is a McDonald’s and a few gas pumps. Our first two nights in Illinois were spent in Springfield, at the Best Inn. That was the name of it: the Best Inn. I don’t know what motels and hotels it considers itself so superior to, but whoever named it the Best Inn was a bit delusional, because it was not the best. It was nowhere near the best.  The pool was covered over with black tarp-like material, and the chain on the inside of our room door was broken. This only freaked us out because every time someone opened the outer door to get inside the building, the air pressure would affect our door, and it would sound like it was opening. Our unchained door. There was a motorcycle gang staying there at the same time we were there, and they sat outside drinking cans of PBR during all of the waking hours they weren’t spending on their bikes. We ordered a mushroom pizza, and the motorcycle gang tried to intercept it and eat it. This place ain’t a Hilton, folks…but…it is the Best.

It was coincidental, and appropriate, that on Memorial Day we all went to the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield to visit Abraham Lincoln’s final resting place, which is a granite tomb surrounded by oak trees and manicured lawns. I would have thought that Lincoln would be buried in Arlington or something…but after his death in 1865 his friends in Illinois lobbied to have him brought back to Springfield for burial. It was a very emotional time for Lincoln when he left Illinois in 1861 to be the President at a time when our country was on the verge of civil war. His farewell remarks to his beloved Springfield were: “My friends – No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington…” (February 11, 1861). That speech was far better than the goodbye I said to my friends before I left on this trip, I must admit. I find it very appropriate that his final resting place is in his beloved home of Springfield, entombed with his wife Mary and three of their four sons. After I’m famous, and I’ve freed some slaves, defeated the Confederacy, and given a few amazing speeches, and I die, (hopefully about four score and seven years from now) I think I’ll have a nice tomb commissioned in New Hampshire.

The suburbs of Chicago, plus the city itself, are all referred to as “Chicagoland”. Ten million people live in Chicagoland. (As opposed to the 1.3 million people in NewHampshireland.) We didn’t stay in the city, though – we stayed in a suburb called Elk Grove. The Howard Johnson’s of Elk Grove is conveniently located close to O’Hare International Airport, which is great if you have to catch an early flight…not so great when you have squadrons of planes taking off and landing very loudly at all hours of the day.

The only place within walking distance from our Howard Johnson’s that had any semblance of interest was an inconspicuous white building with a sign saying HUNTER’S DANCE CLUB. Sarah and I wandered across Higgins Road and, as we approached the door of the place, telltale flashes of colored lights and eighties music leaked out from the darkened interior. Two doorways later, we found ourselves inside…you got it…a gay club. Of course, when a man and I were engaging in conversation, Sarah was told to “keep her girl in check” and we realized everyone thought that WE were gay. Ha, ha, ha. It was a good time, except for the occasional transsexual encounter in the girls’ room…but that just adds to the experience of life, right?

Driving into Chicago did not sound appetizing, especially since the front desk people told us there was a bus stop right in front of our hotel. We waited at the bus stop…and waited…and the bus didn’t come. When we called the metro transit company, they informed us that no, the 233 bus wasn’t running to our hotel. Great. We eventually made it to the train station in Rosemont, where we boarded the blue line and discovered that we were at the farthest-away possible stop from downtown Chicago, except for the O’Hare stop.

We had a very odd experience when we first arrived at the train station in Rosemont. We went to the booth to ask how much the fare was - and the obnoxious, obese, colorless woman who was perched flabbily behind the glass elected to separate herself from her chair and come around to help us. It was unnecessary; she could have just told us that five bucks would get us an unlimited day of train riding, given us a hint as to which stop to get off of the train, and sent us on our way into the Windy City. Instead, she waddled all the way out of her booth, all the way around the turnstiles, breathing heavily. The woman led us to the ticket machine, plucked our money from our hands, and handed us our tickets. Sarah and I tried to escape from her, but instead we were forced to wait while she lumbered back to her booth, produced a very thick 3-ring binder stuffed full of more Chicago tour information than anyone could ever need, and brought it around to us. “I’m showin’ you everything there is to see,” she rasped. There was no escape! She started pointing to a map, talking rapidly, chins wobbling in excitement, as she began to outline a Chicago tour day for us. Then she looked at me as if I were the village idiot. “You should get a pen and write all this down,” she commanded. Still attempting to be polite, I tried to rifle through my bag for one and realized I’d left my pen in my hotel room. (I usually do have a pen, okay?) “I don’t have one, sorry,” I said. “So, I have to go back into the booth and get one?” she asked, incredulous at what a horrible person I was to not have a writing implement. I shrugged. I felt I was a second-grader on a field trip and she was my chaperone. The immense train station woman then exhaled loudly in exasperation, ambled back to get a pen, pushed it at me, and I pretended to take shorthand notes as she rattled off no less than SIX possible tours we could take of the city. Nobody could have written that fast. Escape was sweet relief. *

* THEN when we finally made it back to the Rosemont train station after being in the city all day, the SAME WOMAN was working. I had to use the restroom, very badly, and I wouldn’t have asked except that it was very urgent…so I asked her if I could use her comfy private little powder room tucked behind her booth. “It’s against the rules,” she informed me, not letting on that she recognized us from her fifteen-minute diatribe on Chicago touring from earlier. “Show me your identification as a CTA employee,” she said. Needless to say, I did not have my Chicago Transit Authority employee identification, because I am not a CTA employee, which she very well knew. I do not like that woman, not at all. She’s on my list.

Trains can be fun for about five minutes…and only if you don’t have to take one in your daily routine. My only streaks of obsessive-compulsive tendency (the ones I’ve self-diagnosed) surface in two places: I WILL NOT touch public bathroom door handles, and the thought of railings and bars on trains and subways…nasty, nasty public germs. Of course if there isn’t an empty seat on the train, there’s no choice but to grab onto the smooth, contaminated metal. As much as I try to plant my feet wide apart and bend my knees for stability, I ended up stomping hard on an Asian guy’s sneaker. I was immediately humbled by the dirty look he gave me, conceded that I was not as good at balancing on a moving train as I liked to think, and grabbed on to the contaminated handrails. These are the trials of life.

We got off of the train at the Jackson stop, and wandered out into the unfamiliar streets. Chicago is the third largest city in our country, and compared to other cities I’ve seen…it’s very clean. I saw several workers picking up trash, and they had a good amount of public garbage cans scattered along the sidewalks. Of course there was a dude in ragged clothes who was mumbling to himself as he scrutinized the cracks in the sidewalk for castaway cigarette butts with any smidgen of tobacco left in them…and smoked them…gross…but hey, that’s city life. 

We were super tourists. We actually took a grain of advice from the creepy Chicago Transit Authority woman and decided to ascend the John Hancock building instead of the Sears Tower, because it was closer to Lake Michigan and would give a better view of the contrast between the blue water of the lake, the Chicago River, and the city’s skyscrapers. Plus, it was closer to downtown. The John Hancock building is 100 stories high, boasts the fastest elevator in the country, and also contains over 700 condos – making them the highest residences in the world.

Millennium Park, in downtown Chicago, is new (completed in 2004) and beautiful; a 12-acre park constructed on top of parking garages and a railroad yard. The park is very nicely flowered and landscaped, and there were two works of art displayed there that really fascinated me: first, a $23 million sculpture by Anish Kapoor called “Cloud Gate”, which looks like a gigantic bean made of mercury. The sculpture is three stories high and you could spend a very long amount of time staring at yourself in the sides and from underneath the bean, because your reflection is warped in silver. (It’s also fun to watch other people looking at their reflections and waving at themselves with big stupid grins.) The best part about Cloud Gate, though, is the way it reflects the skyline, in a graceful curve of architecture. The second work of art that blew my mind in Millennium Park is Crown Fountain. This is an area of black granite covered with a thin sheet of water, with glass bricks forming two enormous panels with LED screens behind them. The screens show a slideshow of the faces of 1000 random “Chicagoans”, one by one, showing the diversity of the city.

Another big touristy thing in Chicago is Navy Pier, which juts out into Lake Michigan, which was dotted with Canadian geese. There’s a Ferris wheel, and charter boats, and beer gardens. Of course, we went on the Ferris wheel, but we felt a bit gypped because it only went around once. There was a cool Irish pub called Fado which I would recommend – the staff all wear cute, brightly colored soccer shirts, there’s a good variety of beer on tap, and the bathrooms were clean. The other place that we tucked ourselves into was called Pippens…a tiny locals bar with friendly people. We realized later that it was owned by Scottie Pippen! (He wasn’t there.)

Bill’s total mileage as of our departure from Illinois is up to 3131! He’s really done it.

Almost home…

Bridge to Music City

The drive from Georgia into Tennessee was absolutely beautiful. Finally, some hills…thick green trees…lakes that reflected the blue sky…and some views of the Appalachian Mountains. The next time I come to Tennessee (and I hope I get the chance) I really want to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – the pictures I’ve seen of it are breathtaking. (The more places we’ve been to, the more places I realize I still have yet to visit. It may turn into an endless quest in my life.)

On May 17, we arrived at the Ramada in Nashville, Tennessee, the capital of “The Volunteer State”. (This nickname refers to the time in 1847 when the Governor called for three regiments to serve in the Mexican War and 30,000 Tennessee men bravely volunteered.)  We were supposed to get off at exit 49, but accidentally got off at exit 48 and very mistakenly assumed that we could find the hotel from the wrong exit. When there are three people in an SUV, and none of them have been to a certain city before, and none of them are the sharpest navigators, getting lost is second nature. We ended up Suburbaning all the way around the city of Nashville in a futile circumvention and getting back on the interstate to take the right exit.

The Nashville Ramada’s claim to fame is their indoor guitar-shaped swimming pool, complete with strings painted on the bottom. Some sort of aquatic tape, actually - I swam to the bottom and touched them. Lots of the rooms opened up into the pool area, and we saw a man peeking out at us while we were swimming, hunched suspiciously in his room with just a corner of his curtain peeled back as he stared, backlit by the lamp in his room. Creepy – just the thought of Peeping Toms is scary, and even scarier when I’m in a bathing suit. It was fun to just walk out of our room and go in the pool, but what wasn’t fun was that as soon as the pool opened in the morning the aquatic guitar would be filled with screaming kids, and it would wake us up. Something about kids – stick ‘em in a pool and all of a sudden the decibel level screams up dramatically. On those days, though, we’d actually make it downstairs to the free hotel breakfast.

The first meal that we consumed in Nashville was at Shoney’s Buffet. Shoney’s had a great selection…although NOT very healthy…fried foods, green beans, ears of corn, biscuits and gravy, and some of the most delicious mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. We went back there a few times for the mashed potatoes. We were usually about the only white people in there.

                                                                                                                           

Nashville has a pedestrian bridge, which crosses the Cumberland River. The bridge is concrete and well-lit in white lights that reflect the underbellies of the bats that flap around above it. (We couldn’t decide if they were bats or birds, but the rapid fluttering motion of the creatures’ wings led us to the bat conclusion.) Fortunately, our Ramada was across the street from the Coliseum (where the Tennessee Titans football team plays) and the stadium is next to the pedestrian bridge, so to get to the city we just had a football-stadium-sized parking lot to cross, and then the bridge - it only took ten or fifteen minutes to walk downtown. I have worn my flip-flops to about a quarter-inch thick…it was too sweltering in springtime Nashville to wear any socks or pants. The nighttime cityscape of Nashville is smaller than most cities’, but it’s beautiful. The tallest building is the BellSouth building, which the locals refer to as ‘the bat tower’ or ‘bat building’ because there are two spiky points on the top of the tower and it is lit in blues. The skyline view from the pedestrian bridge, with the cities’ lights reflected in the Cumberland River, is one of the greatest views we’ve had on our trip.

Nashville is the L.A. of country music. Its alter ego of  “Music City” was its destiny beginning in the 1920s, when WSM radio started the “WSM Barn Dance” which later became known as the legendary Grand Ole Opry. In the 1950s, the “Nashville Sound” emerged and the term “Music City” was coined in regards to Nashville. Since the 1960s, Nashville has been an enormous music production center (second only to New York) in the United States and rakes in $6.4 billion a year! I’d better start my fiddling lessons. We visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, which is a beautiful building, and saw all of the plaques representing the pioneers of country music. The Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Opry, lies downtown and houses the ghosts and legends of all the performers who got their start on that very stage: Elvis in 1954, Johnny Cash in 1956, Patsy Cline in 1961, and so on.

Sarah and I were wandering around in downtown Nashville, perusing the tourist shops, which sold items such as bright purple sparkly cowboy hats, tank tops saying REDNECK WOMAN and Jack Daniels sweatshirts. We found ourselves wandering down Broadway, after eating at the Hard Rock Café, and heard a band playing inside one of the bars. The cowboy at the door ushered us in, and that was the beginning of a week saturated with amazing live music. Everyone who wants to make it in the country music business eventually drifts to Nashville - and networks like crazy with all the other singers and musicians to get gigs playing on Broadway, where all the honky-tonk bars are. They play all day, in four-hour sets, and since there’s so much competition, we got to hear the best of the best. It was ironic that after we started listening to country music when we were in the Southwest, and listened to it for the past few months, we got to end up in Nashville – if we’d gone to Nashville first, I wouldn’t have known so many of the songs! The Stage is the name of the first place we found ourselves in, and the guitar-shaped neon Heineken and Budweiser signs seemed to fit perfectly with the enormous, beautifully detailed mural of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams, Sr. that covers an entire wall. Our other favorite hangout was the Second Fiddle – smaller than The Stage, but with the same first-rate live music and dancing and friendly people, locals and non-locals; we met plenty of both. The honky-tonks on Broadway don’t have cover charges; the bands get paid minimal money and make their money by passing around their tip jars. On our first day downtown, Sarah was designated as the band’s tip girl. It’s good enough money that most of the musicians can live off of their tips, though it certainly isn’t lucrative – but to make a living playing music seems more feasible in Nashville than anywhere else. Dreams abound.

A tradition that needs to be spread across the country is the “Holler and Swaller”. This commences when whoever the lead singer of the band is makes the grand gesture of raising whatever beer he is currently drinking or shot that was just bought for him and yells for the crowd to “HOLLERRR”- a pause for the whoops and yee-has of the crowd - and “SWALLER!” as the entire crowd, band members included, takes a swig of whatever they’re having. Crowd participation is fun!

One night we went to Robert’s Western World with our friend Lucas, a drummer from Missouri. You can buy cowboy boots, beer and cheeseburgers there as you look at the nostalgia-covered walls, and listen to great music. The Don Kelley Band was playing, and the air was filled with cigarette smoke and amazing bluegrass; I didn’t really know the songs but if the live music is good enough it’s not relevant whether or not you’ve heard any of it before. The energy they brought to the stage was completely hypnotizing, and I didn’t go a second without tapping my foot to the beat – too bad I was wearing flip-flops and not cowboy boots! Dave Roe, who played the upright bass, (“slap bass”), was absolutely incredible – he toured with Johnny Cash for eight years and now tours with Dwight Yoakam.

Aside from seeing the huge bass played (or “slapped”) in crazy rhythms, the two other instruments that I really grew an appreciation for during my time in Nashville are the fiddle and the steel guitar. (Of course we heard “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” several times…but that’s a song you never get sick of, especially when there’s an accomplished fiddler up there.) The steel guitar produces beautiful sounds – it’s what makes country music sound so sad. The steel guitarist sits at a bench, with the guitar strings stretched out horizontally in front of him on a sort of table, and he uses guitar picks attached to his fingers to play and slide the strings. He uses foot pedals and levers beneath the guitar to tune the instrument with his feet and legs while he’s playing. It’s an unmistakable sound, and I can recognize the twanging sound of it now in songs I hear, even though I didn’t ever know that the steel guitar existed before.

I am not a good dancer. I cannot learn coordinated dance movements. I have a specific and severe short-term memory loss when it comes to dance steps. I never know what to do with my hands. It’s not pretty. Well, I danced more in Nashville than I ever have – men who live in the South are much more into actual dancing than at home, and they enjoy plucking girls from their seats and transporting them to the dance floor. And although I still felt like a complete idiot, it was fun. Everyone down there (in the South in general, really) enjoys dancing, and dancing to country music is so refreshingly different from the butt-grinding that goes on everywhere else. Southerners are more inclined to know actual dances, like swing dancing with the hands looping overhead and the turns and spins – oh dear I cringe to think of me spinning and flailing and turning the wrong way and practically crashing into people, which happened often during my dancing attempts. I’m glad no videotape exists. That’s all I have to say.

Late-night food is eaten at a 24-hour greasy spoon called the Hermitage Café. The bathroom has a sign that says “Out of Order”  - but that’s a lie. (That’s an inside tip.) The bathroom is, actually, functioning…barely. The coffee was good, the biscuits and gravy were yummy, the service was rather sluggish, the menus were ancient and dirty, and the company was always nothing less than fantastic. There are some hilarious people hanging out at the Café late at night – we went there several times and the plastic, no-frills booths were always full. At one point Sarah, Bill, and I – plus our posse of new friends - were cramped into the back room, which has three small tables which each comfortably seat two to four people - and there were about twenty people in there. Screw the fire codes – I’m eating my artery-clogging late night meal. (I see Taco Bell commercials lately on TV that refer to their late-night menu as ‘fourth meal’. Really healthy, America.)

It rained several times while we were in Music City; there’s nothing like being in a crowded, sweaty honky-tonk and slipping outside onto the sidewalk to get rained on for a few minutes. Everyone was clamoring to get underneath awnings, but my face was upturned to black sky and the cool flecks of water that reflected the neon signs of Broadway. I wasn’t wearing a white shirt, so it was okay.

Bill got caught in the rain one Nashville day while he was out riding his bike – after that he resorted to riding laps around the Coliseum parking lot so he wouldn’t be caught far away from the Ramada in a rainstorm. As of our departure from Nashville, he’s logged 3050 miles and is coming into the home stretch – as is our trip.

I love that people actually wear cowboy hats. Nobody in New Hampshire wears them. But they look cute on girls and guys. There’s no denying the ‘country’ style of dress at the honky-tonks. Lots of the locals dress country, and lots of the tourists use their Nashville vacation as an excuse to, because it’s fun. There are several stores in Nashville that sell just cowboy hats and boots. All colors, all embroideries, sequins, you name it. You can tell the quality of a pair of boots by the number of lines of stitching in the boot embroidery. Standard boots will have 2-3 lines of stitching, and the nicer the boot, the more lines of stitching there are. The style of apparel in the downtown area is varied – people wore anything and everything – and I have to say that I was never, how shall I say, partial to cowboy hats and jeans and boots…and NOBODY would dress like that at home…I don’t have any guy friends who even own a cowboy hat…but I’ve gotten a bit used to seeing real country girls and real cowboy types that own horses and rope cattle, etc. And now I think cowboy hats and Western-style outfits are sweet. For other people.

Y’all, I’m fascinated by Southern accents and slang words. I have been trying to perfect my own imitation Southern accent, but when I try, the native Southern drawlers just seem to laugh extremely hard, so I reckon I’m fixin’ to improve it.

We ate at a few great places in Nashville – one night we ate with our friend Marc (a bass guitarist originally from Massachusetts) at a place called Bailey’s, where you can eat on top of the roof. I tried ‘firecrackers’ that night, which are pieces of breaded fried chicken underneath your choice of cheesy, melted sauces. I had my firecrackers under a spinach-artichoke-alfredo mixture, which was delicious. The only downside to our meal were the several gigantic roaches scurrying around at about 40 mph on the floor and terrifying waitresses and restaurant patrons alike…but I found it all pretty funny…to see that everyone at every table was fixated on the roach…none of them crawled on me, so I just enjoyed watching everyone squirm. It didn’t ruin my firecrackers.

We were told we had to visit Jack’s BBQ on Broadway, a Nashville legend since the seventies, and that food was great too. I had Texas beef brisket, cornbread, and potato salad. Jack’s is a plastic-utensiled, low-key place with a variety of homemade barbecue sauces in different flavors and colors, and rolls of paper towel on each table for wiping the BBQ sauce off of your face and fingers. I enjoyed the ‘Tennessee Original’ and the ‘Texas Sweet Hot’ sauces the best – you can pump them out into little plastic containers, and my beef brisket was delicious when barbecue-sauced. If you’re looking for a vegetarian, don’t look towards me. (I’ll be at Jack’s.)

Sarah and I asked Sebastian, our sweet, mustachioed waiter at Merchants Restaurant, (excellent appetizers…crab and lobster fondue for $12 and delicious quesadillas in spinach wrap bread…I do enjoy discussing my culinary adventures) where to find a Western Union place, because Sarah’s paying someone to take care of her two cats while we’re gone. He directed us to one a few blocks over, so we walked in the oppressive heat over to a little place with a PAYDAY LOANS sign on the side. We were in there forever, and I planted myself by the indoor air conditioner and people-watched while Sarah waited at the counter. There were two corn-rowed women in full McDonald’s regalia discussing their paychecks, which were $40 and $46, respectively. Another very scrawny guy was in there with a pair of the tightest, most tapered jeans I’ve ever seen, which easily gave away his dipping habit by outlining the hockey-puck shaped bulge in his back pocket. Another patron, a woman, was unashamedly sporting some puffy black slippers. I was wearing white shorts and a tank top and, except for Sarah, I was the most fashionable person in the Payday Loans facility by far. And if I am the most fashionable person in a particular location, you know the place is not a haven for style.

There’s a lot more to see in Nashville, and it’s been one of the highlights of our cross-country adventure. I will definitely visit Music City again and for anyone who loves country music, or just good live music played by an incredible array of musicians – I recommend it. Go to Nashville, wear a cowboy hat, buy a beer, learn the history. Swim in a guitar-shaped swimming pool and sample six different kinds of barbecue sauce, and listen to songs in the same venues that so many legendary singers have played at. Nobody could be disappointed as they explore Nashville.

Upward…

-stephanie

end-of Georgia flotsam

Living in hotels and motels for six months means a consistency: dealing with maids. I can’t count on all twenty of my fingers and toes how many times we have had the Do Not Disturb sign (or, as the Spanish side of the sign says, NO MOLESTE) hung on the door and, before checkout time, a loud knocking begins. I know that maids get some sort of printout sheet that tells them which rooms are supposed to check out that day. I HAVE SEEN THESE PRINTOUT SHEETS. If we stay somewhere more than one night, we don’t get maid service in our room – we just get more toilet paper and clean towels when we need them. So if the DO NOT DISTURB sign is present on the doorknob…and we aren’t checking out…IT MEANS DO NOT DISTURB. We always slide the chain on the door too and if we don’t initially wake up, or they don’t hear us yelling to leave us alone, they will slam the door open as far as the four inches of chain will allow them. Once or twice, the maids have completely entered our room when we’re in our beds. It is very disturbing to have a stranger with a cart of cleaning supplies try to barge in while you are still half asleep. Ahhh, hotels, motels…sometimes the towels are stained with any sort of color smear; I just try to ignore it. Sometimes other people’s disgusting hairs are visible in the bathrooms, in the showers, stuck to walls. I try to ignore those too. And if you are staying in a hotel that has a visible box spring beneath your mattress, my advice is simple: don’t look at it. Some of the most colorful and unforgettable stains reside on the sides of box springs. I don’t even lend my imagination to those. I have implemented exercises in blocking scenarios out of my head. After this trip one word I will certainly not ever miss is “HOUSEKEEPIIIIIING!” I’ve heard that word a million times. And always in the same lilting tone. No matter the race or accent of the maid in question, it’s always said the same way. It’s universal…universally infuriating! House-keep-iiiing!

Somewhere on I-16, after we left the glory of Pooler, we noticed what looked like a pile of cloth and flotsam stacked in the back of the dusty silver pickup truck in front of us…and perhaps some sort of blow-up doll…but then we noticed it was a human face, facing us, with a hat on, leaning up against the window of the truck’s cab…and the random cloth was, in fact, two bluejeaned legs. There was a man chilling in the back of the pickup truck that was going 80 miles per hour on I-16. I had to re-state that. As we pulled closer, I was unabashedly taking pictures of the man and as he waved dully at us as we realized that there wasn’t anyone in the passenger seat of the truck beside the guy driving.

Someone was being punished!

My favorite billboard in Georgia would have to be the one saying JOIN THE SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS. I went to their website and man, I wish I could live in Georgia because I’m telling you – I’d be shellin’ out the dollars to get me a SCV license plate with a big ol’ Confederate flag on the left-hand side. I actually saw Confederate flags proudly waving outside of peoples’ houses. The state flag of Georgia is: half the state seal, and half Confederate flag. Are these people certifiably insane? THEY LOST. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE YEARS AGO. THAT’S A LOT OF YEARS. MOVE ON.

                                                                                                                                                    

On our way to the Augusta suburb of Groveland, which is where we ended up next, we stopped at a Chinese restaurant. I swear I have not eaten any Chinese food on this trip that is as good as New Hampshire Chinese food. Maybe it’s just what I am used to, but after the experiences I have had with American Asian cuisine across the country, if I was a food critic I would give New Hampshire five stars for Chinese. I haven’t had a decent crab rangoon since December. A consistent element of the American Chinese restaurant is the décor, however, which gives me a sense of comfort. Mirrors, tanks with koi, (I want some koi in a tank. Those suckers are AWESOME) gigantic pictures of nightscaped cities covering the walls, fake plants, perhaps a string of white Christmas tree lights for ambiance. The buffet has similar food items across the country, and similar white signs expressing which delectable dish lies beneath (and these restaurateurs don’t like pluralizing. It’s always ‘boneless sparerib’ and ‘beef with mushroom’ or my personal favorite, ‘donut’.).  You can always count on some sort of red Jell-O in the dessert section of the buffet, and some pudding. But it does taste different. It was a Sunday, too, so the place was full of people wearing suits and dresses that poured out of one of the hundreds of Baptist churches we’d passed. Jesus and duck sauce – the ideal Sabbath tradition.

Bill’s friend Matt Plumlee met up with us in Groveland; he’s a UNH associate professor who just finished the semester and was on his way to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and help rebuild houses in Texas for Hurricane Rita victims. (That brings the images of upside-down trucks embedded in swamps back to my mind…something I could never forget…) The four of us spent our Mother’s Day dinner together at a very crowded Cracker Barrel. I’d never eaten at a Cracker Barrel before, but the food was pretty good. Country style, with the cornbread and green beans and friiiiied chicken! (I love that kind of food, but I think my jeans are getting a little tight.) Half of the restaurant is a ‘country store’ with T-shirts and John Deere clocks and jellybeans, and I half expected them to have a glorious refrigerated room full of Cracker Barrel cheese, but no such luck. Whenever we’ve passed a Cracker Barrel restaurant, all I could think of was some sharp (not extra sharp) cheddar cheese. And they didn’t even sell the cheese. Actually I don’t believe there is even an affiliation between the restaurant and the cheese. Man, life does throw you curveballs. Although I did learn that the ‘cracker barrel’ was a staple at old country stores – there was an actual barrel filled with crackers, and you’d pay a nickel for a handful of crackers and then the shopkeeper would cut you a wedge of cheese to go with it, and Cracker Barrel stores used to do this. Sounds good to me, although perhaps a bit unsanitary.

-stephanie

Georgia Peaches

I didn’t actually eat any peaches. But I reckon I sure saw a lot of them on license plates.

I have wanted to visit Savannah, Georgia since I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, a few years ago; the book painted a gorgeous, mysterious, Southern picture of the city and I was delighted to not be disappointed. Savannah was the first city in Georgia, actually founded on the same day Georgia became the thirteenth and final colony, and it was the first planned city, laid out in a grid pattern with 24 town squares -  which are to this day beautiful shady parks. (Anyone who’s ever driven a car in Boston, the Master City of One-Way and Confusing Streets, can appreciate the functionality of the grid pattern. And not having to navigate through the Big Dig, cement partitions, and road signs nearly impossible to read fast enough to navigate... But, I digress…). Trolleys and touristy yet regal horse-drawn carriages are common forms of transportation along the streets of the city. Oak trees line the streets, with Spanish moss dripping off of the branches. (Spanish moss is one of the loveliest things I have ever seen. It’s draped on the trees in a romantic way, making the trees look as though they are wearing some of Stevie Nicks’s gypsy outfits from the 70s…If I could add a few elements of plant life to New Hampshire, they would be: Spanish moss, palm trees, and the giant Saguaro cacti from Arizona.)

An early story about Savannah’s beauty takes place toward the end of the Civil War. In 1864, Union general William Sherman was marching toward the Georgia coast, having just burned the city of Atlanta and intending to do the same to Georgia’s original city. However, when Sherman rode into Savannah, he was so taken with its seductive loveliness and Southern charm that he opted not to destroy the city. Instead, the general sent a now-famous telegram to President Lincoln, offering some holiday tidings:

“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”  (December 22, 1864)

Sounds like what I asked for last Christmas! And did I get any of it? NO!

When we arrived in downtown Savannah, we drove around and around, the Suburban sleekly executing turns like the gray flash it is, but couldn’t really find a place in the city to stay. After some confusion and tension, (including a particularly tedious 100-point turn in the dead-end parking lot of a college dorm that we had mistakenly assumed was a hotel…sometimes we aren’t the brightest three bulbs in the chandelier…) we decided to turn back onto I-16, to the outskirts of Savannah, finding ourselves in a town called Pooler.

There was a McDonald’s in front of our hotel in Pooler, and we were starving, so Sarah and I went there for feeding time. We innocently wandered in, expecting to order off the dollar menu and be on our way. The experience was not going to be as brief as we’d hoped.

It was the most horrible, sketchy, unsatisfactory, demeaning Mickey D’s experience I have ever or ever will have. As soon as we walk into the AC, out of the Georgia heat, we see that the place is abounding with men...(men who say things about women in other languages in front of said women…that is the worst). It was so crowded in the front section of this unhealthy eatery that it was like being packed into a too-small, greasy elevator. It seemed the only patrons were me, Sarah, and what seemed like dozens of Hispanic men with filthy work clothes and some straaaange hairstyles: one had a dyed blond Mohawk that wasn’t spiked up…it was hanging stringily from its black roots like a dead goldfinch; one had a shaved head with extremely long bangs that had been plastered to the side of the guy’s face like the worst imitation glue-on sideburns. They all stared shamelessly at Sarah and I as we walked in. I could feel their eyes burning laser holes into my posterior as I faced the counter and all of the gargantuan, French-fry-frying employees. I ordered two cheeseburgers off the dollar menu, a chocolate milk, and a white milk, trying to speak softly because I didn’t want any of the depraved, non-English-speaking freaks behind me to even hear me talk. I was handed my milks and a receipt with my order number on it, and my traveling companion and I stood off to the side of the counter and quickly plastered our buttocks to the wall to avoid them being seared by the stares of dirty, dirty men. Since they couldn’t speak English, the visored McDonald’s lady who called out order numbers had to look at all of their tickets (I still say receipts) to see who had which number, which slowed our exit process. When we finally got our food (and we can understand numbers when spoken aloud in English, so that helped us) we booked it out of there so fast we probably had smoke coming off of our derrieres. Back in my room, I bit into one cheeseburger, anticipating the familiar McDonald’s taste; instead it tasted like a lukewarm beef sandwich that had been created from a non-English-speaking cow that had foot and mouth disease. I think I am definitely done with McDonald’s, indefinitely.

We also got a car wash in Pooler, which was a small single-bay unattended deal behind a gas station. The Suburban was disgustingly dirty, with splattered bugs of varying sizes and colors stuck to the grill area in various grotesque contortions of death. In the morning, we asked the portly, thickly-accented convenience-store guy if we had to pay for a car wash inside the store. “Yeeahh, but it’s not workin’ today,” he said. Later when we returned to our hotel, we noticed that a car was, in fact, being washed. In the car wash. I returned inside the store. Same guy. “Hey,” I said. “So…looks like the car wash is working again?” He looked up at me with not a flicker of recognition. “’S workin’,” he said. “Okay,” I said, “well I knew it wasn’t working earlier.” Same quizzical look. “Naw, ‘s workin’,” he said. “Okay,” I said again. “Cool. I’ll take the cheap one.” No movement toward the cash register. “OH,” he said, as if he had just discovered the meaning of life. He remembered! “Guy came this afternoon, fixed it.” A line of customers was building up behind me. “Okay,” I said for a third time. “So...can I get a car wash?”

These are the events of rural Americana.

Bill, who has ridden 2809 miles, was recruited by the front-desk lady to kill a rattlesnake outside. I haven’t got all of the details and I don’t really want to know. All I know is that a reptilian murder was committed by my boss, and though he is proud of his rattlesnake wrangling adventure, I am not sorry that I didn’t have a chance to view the carcass. And when Bill went back to check on the corpse…it was gone. Perhaps it slithered down to the underworld to begin its devious plot to seek revenge on Bill’s mortal soul. Some cultures worship snakes, you know, Bill. You’d be put to death if the Aztecs found you.

After walking around downtown Savannah, we walked down steep stairs to River Street, which runs alongside the Savannah River. A row of nineteenth-century cotton warehouses have been renovated into a row of shops, bars and restaurants which line the cobblestone street, and street performers play instruments and perform comedy routines, sometimes atop giant unicycles.

Wet Willies is a bar on River Street, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Behind the bar are what appear to be giant silver industrial clothes dryers, but they are filled with brightly colored frozen daiquiris that are being spun around. They had names such as ‘Attitude Adjustment’ and ‘Shock Treatment’. The strongest one was called ‘Call a Cab’, which I didn’t try – almost all the drinks are made with 190-proof grain alcohol. I sampled a few others (you can sample whichever ones you want) and they tasted really strong. (I think the tangerine-flavored one scarred me…bleechhh.) I settled on the margarita-flavored one. I love all margaritas, and a big reason for that is…how many beverages have salt on the rim? I live for salt. My body is probably 75% salt. Oh, the other thing that I thought was great about Wet Willie’s is that they have all the fake IDs that they’ve confiscated framed on the wall. Now, that’s art.

I always love Irish bars. I suppose it’s my New England roots coming out again, but you can’t beat them. So when we saw Irish flags flying over the street and a sign saying Kevin Barry’s, we decided to go eat there. We sat on the second-floor patio area, overlooking the Savannah River, which provides a view of South Carolina on the other side. I ordered the combo meal of Irish beef stew and shepherd’s pie – and it was some of the most succulent cuisine I’ve had on this whole trip. The Georgia Queen riverboat went by, and then I saw the biggest, most teal boat I’ve ever seen. It said MAERSK SEALAND on the side, with a hotel-like structure on the top. This thing was HUGE. It was actually a ‘container ship’, which just means…a big cargo ship. I thought the riverboat was big…and next to the Maersk ship, it looked like a Styrofoam peanut.

And…onward to the next excellent adventure…

-stephanie

A 400-Year History...

When we left Daytona Beach on March 9, it was a sad day. Fortunately, we were destined for another great adventure. We took route A1A north for 58 miles until we crossed over the Bridge of Lions – a historic bridge featuring two gigantic marble statues of lions (which aren’t there right now due to renovations) – and entered St. Augustine, Florida. It’s one of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen. Our friends in Daytona told us to stay at the Monterey Inn - a simple motel with wrought-iron railings which I would certainly recommend because its location couldn’t be better; it’s across from the Matanzas River and within walking distance to everything in town.

For anyone who is interested in the history of the United States, St. Augustine is a destination that should not be skipped. It is the “oldest city in the nation”, the longest continually occupied European settlement in the U.S. I didn’t know that! I loved it; one of the best parts about traveling for me has been learning history about our country that I didn’t know before. I spent my life in the land of the thirteen colonies, but St. Augustine was around way before them.

It all began back in 1565, when a Spanish explorer named Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles (I call him Don) first sighted the coast of Florida. The date was August 28, the Feast Day of St. Augustine (which is a day I have personally always celebrated faithfully).

St. Augustine flies five flags to symbolize its heritage: the United States flag, the Confederate flag, the flag of the kingdom of Spain, the British flag, and the Burgundy Cross, which was the Spanish military’s flag from 1506 to 1785 – a white background with a red X shape across it.

It’s amazing that St. Augustine has survived since the 1500s, because it was burned to the ground the first time in 1586 by Sir Francis Drake. Sir Drake is generally regarded in a positive light as a great mariner, which is true, but in reality he and his men also committed plenty of vicious acts including looting St. Augustine.

In 1668, the pirate Robert Searles captured a Spanish ship, sailed into St. Augustine under the guise of being a Spaniard, and plundered the town, killing sixty residents as he did so. Legend says that there was a five-year-old girl that was among the murder victims, and her ghost haunted Searles for years, appearing to him at night, and it eventually drove him insane and caused him to commit suicide. That’s what you get, evil pirate captain.

After the pirate raid of 1668, the Spanish queen decided that St. Augustine needed some sort of fortress to protect the nearly-destroyed city. In 1672, construction of the Castillo de San Marcos was begun, and the fort still stands today. It’s about an eighth of a mile from the Monterey Inn and it’s an amazing structure that dominates the landscape by the Matanzas Bay. The Castillo is square-shaped, with a courtyard in the center, diamond-shaped bastions flaring out in each corner and a now-dry moat surrounding its high gray walls. Cannons cover the entire top of the fort. It appears to be built out of gray stone, but when you are up close to the walls you see it’s made out of coquina, (“little shells”), which is a building material comprised of limestone, sea shells, and coral. If you look closely, you can clearly see ancient seashell pieces studding the walls. It’s said that the coquina is virtually indestructible, and it absorbed the impact of gunfire and cannonballs fired by the British in the 1700s as they tried to capture the city. Since its construction, the fort has never fallen to an enemy attack. That’s a pretty decent track record.

In 1702, the entire population of St. Augustine (about 1200 people) spent two months inside the walls of the Castillo while British forces fired – but the British did not take over the fort. I can’t imagine having to hole up in a fort for two months with all the people of my town while cannonballs are being fired at me...that must have been some strained dinner conversation. I bet there were lots of new St. Augustine babies born nine months later too…romantic times inside the Castillo. There is a giant oven on the grounds of the fort that was used for heating up cannonballs that would then be fired at wooden enemy ships. When the British couldn’t infiltrate the Castillo, they set fire to the city instead, burning almost all of St. Augustine to the ground again. So the residents of early eighteenth-century St. Augustine, after spending two months holed up in a fort and having cannonballs flying around everywhere, were powerless to do anything as their city burned – but they survived to rebuild.

The downtown area isn’t huge, but it is charming – narrow streets with restaurants, historical houses, and little trinket shops that  beg to be wandered around. Sarah, Bill and I went to the Castillo and went our separate ways, and then we ran into him later, trundling along the cobblestones on his bike. He’s logged 2726 miles so far! St. George Street is the main street for shopping in St. Augustine, and no cars are allowed on it. Some walls in the downtown area are made of coquina also. I like that – maybe if I ever get rich I’ll have a fireplace in my house made out of coquina and throw some snail shells or abalone in there for color. No drab white clam shells in my coquina.

Bill and I went for a walk and checked out some art galleries; of course all the paintings I liked were at least $1500. How are normal people supposed to start art collections? I appraised my car online, and it’s worth about half that. So I could either have two ’93 Tauruses, or own a two-by-two piece of canvas with paint splashed on it? What is wrong with society?

We wandered into the wax museum, which was one of the most random places I’ve ever seen. In one display, the cast of Seinfeld was depicted (and George Costanza was perfect…just perfect) next to Elvis. I fail to see the correlation. Most of the wax figures were behind ropes or glass cases – except for Brad Pitt, who was standing right out in the open and whose handsome waxen face had been almost scraped off by ladies’ fingernails. They also had a ‘death’ section in the museum, behind a curtain, which consisted of wax figures of humans being tortured and impaled, and one giant alien creature with fangs. RANDOM! Bill and I each put a quarter into an old-fashioned carnival-type machine to find out what kind of person we were. After the flashing lights dimmed, it revealed that I was a tax cheat and Bill was a cold fish. Good to know. 

Another great place to visit in St. Augustine is the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, which featured amazing exhibits such as: pictures of a man born with two irises in each eye, shrunken heads, a hat a woman made out of her own human hair, the Lord’s Prayer written on a grain of rice, video footage of a man who had a gigantic horn growing out of the back of his head, pictures of a cannibalistic man who claimed to have eaten over 900 humans, and other equally charming examples of human oddities. At the end of the museum, you walk through a big tunnel that’s an optical illusion – the walls are spinning and blacklit, and you walk on a walkway that doesn’t move – but you feel like it is – and nausea kicks in. It was awesome.

Two of our Daytona friends, Wylie and Tiki Bill, took a day off work to come and hang out in St. Augustine with us. They knew their way around – we went to the Milltop Tavern, which is high above the town, outdoors, among the trees, with birds flying around and tiny lizards perched on the railings. We also went on a sunset sailboat ride in the Matanzas Bay, where they allowed us to raise the sails and steer the boat, and they offered beer, bananas, and Doritos. That’s my kind of dining! The bathroom in the boat (the “head”, in sailing terms) was miniscule and to be in that enclosed space made the feel of the waves even more intense – it was like being in a 3” by 3” submarine down there – not the most pleasant of experiences. We also went to a bar called Trade Winds, where a band called Matanzas was playing – they were great; the lead singer had a very impressive ZZ Top beard, which gleamed silver under the lights as they played covers of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

As this is my final Florida blog, I must make another note about Florida wildlife: palmetto bugs. Palmetto bugs are cockroaches, but they are much worse than roaches because: they are bigger than roaches, sometimes reaching a length of THREE INCHES; they aren’t afraid of the light; they have armor which makes them unsquishable; and they can FLY. ENORMOUS FLYING ROACHES. They are the most awful, disgusting bugs EVER.

The schedule I’m on is my favorite – the one I had in college – staying up very late. I love the nighttime, the early morning hours that bring the following day, the world when most people are asleep.  It’s a great time of day. I went for a walk on the streets of St. Augustine alone at night; along the Matanzas River and then along the quiet, narrow streetlamped roads, which are landscaped with rows of identical, full, lush palm trees. The weather was beautiful; slightly breezy and warm, and the moon was out and brilliant, and it was a really calming time. I love long nighttime walks.

The only other time I’ve been in Florida was about six years ago when I went to Orlando, to Disney World. My impression of Florida then was Mickey Mouse and highway – scrubby vegetation, no real trees. My first impression, I freely admit, was incorrect. There is so much amazing beauty to be seen in Florida and I am glad that I feel differently about the Sunshine State now. Even though it is flat. And hot.

The Glorious Black Hole of Daytona

Daytona Beach, Florida, is known for Nascar and for Harley-Davidsons and spring break – and it’s on the ocean…and so we decided that that was going to be our next stop, in the random way we decide all of our destinations. We scrutinized Bill’s now dog-eared hotel coupon books for a bargain on a place as we made our way toward the Atlantic coast of Florida, but we weren’t having the best of luck – sometimes finding a hotel on the beach is difficult when you have a trailer shackled to your Suburban like an eight-foot ball and chain. We ended up on South Atlantic Ave, driving past endless hotels and condo complexes, until we came upon the Castaways Beach Resort. The seven-story hotel was completely covered in scaffolding on one side, with a nearly deserted parking lot flanked with industrial-sized dumpsters. The display board in front stated CONSTRUCTION PRICES. And of course, that’s where we ended up. Sarah and I lugged our stuff to Room 111. I was changing my clothes when my peripherals detected human movement to my left, so as I ducked I looked over. Three construction workers with hard hats were strolling by, not even two feet from where I had been preparing to pull on my bathing suit bottoms.

It was a bit stuffy in the room when we put our luggage down, but we had a door that opened up to the pool/beach area, so I went to fling it open. The door opened about six inches before it slammed backwards, and I was confused until I looked up and realized that the door had a chain and padlock on it because of the scaffolding that was looming outside my window. We learned the next day that another reason for the ‘construction rates’ on the rooms was that early in the morning, noises like a jackhammer filled the air inside the rooms and hallways of Castaways like violent sound waves from industrial machinery. Adding to the charm of the Castaways Beach Resort is that the vertical neon turquoise lettering out front of the hotel that is supposed to light up at night doesn’t say “CASTAWAYS”…it says “AYS”. Rather ghetto, yes, but it had its charms, as we soon learned.

Sarah and I got hungry soon after we checked in, and ventured on a quest for food. We walked down Atlantic Ave for a few blocks but didn’t really see anything – so we climbed down to the ocean and strolled along the sand back in the direction we’d come from, figuring we’d come across some sort of place. We walked for a while to no avail and ended up back at Castaways. Bill cruised up on his bike as we stood in the parking lot and asked what we were doing. We told him of our quest, and he looked quizzically at us. “There’s a restaurant here,” he said, motioning to the side of the hotel. And lo and behold, there was a sign saying ‘Mango’s Beach Bar and Grill’, attached to Castaways, and in that instant our predestined good times in Daytona were born.

Our experience in Daytona was different than the normal tourist experience; we hung out at Mango’s and soon struck up conversation with the locals that hung out there. There was George the karaoke guy; Steve the cook (great grilled cheese – and I know where he keeps the pickles in the fridge); Jackie, who owned Mango’s; Kelligrace, the bartender; and the wonderful assorted regulars who spent great parts of their lives hanging out there. The locals were great to us – they took us out all over Daytona and taught us the ways of the town. So many people we met were Northerners had that elected to leave the winters behind forever and move to the Sunshine State - people from all over New England, plus New York and New Jersey, all who wrinkled their noses at the thought of the cold. Since I’ve never lived away from New England, I never really gave thought to the fact that there are people who live in the same country as I do that never had to deal with the snow. (As for me, though…I really missed skiing this winter. Especially since I bought gorgeous new skis last July…that are still unused…)

Mango’s was a karaoke bar, and I was hesitant to sing because my last (and only) karaoke experience, years ago, didn’t end very pleasantly. Also, add to the equation the fact that I really can’t sing.  I eventually did get up there, although I did make George sing duets with me. And believe me, nobody has heard a Grammy-worthy musical performance until they’ve heard the rendition of “Summer Lovin” from Grease, sung by George and myself. The bar didn’t clear out when I was up there, so I suppose that’s a good sign.

I know Bill is great with business dealings, and with money and stocks and finances, (the man watches FINANCIAL television for fun) but I really got an idea of how good he is while we were in Daytona. Sarah’s paychecks weren’t going into her account for some reason; they had been sent from Bill’s bank but then they apparently had vanished, never to make it into her bank. It turned out that the addressing had been wrong on the envelopes, and Bill wanted his bank to pay for the overdraft fees that Sarah had accrued when her money was supposed to be in her account. I was listening to him lay into this woman on the phone, and he must have had her stuttering. She originally said that they wouldn’t reimburse the charges, but Bill got her to talk herself right into a corner. She also said she wasn’t allowed to give out her boss’s extension or last name (and how suspiciously odd is that!). “So the address was wrong on the envelopes,” Bill said, to which she replied yes. “I know that isn’t my fault,” said Bill. “Do you admit that?” Yes. “I know it isn’t Sarah’s fault,” said Bill. “Do you agree?” Yes. “I know it isn’t Sarah’s bank’s fault – do you agree?” Yes. “Then whose fault is it? Because it seems to me that it is your fault,” he finished. The entire diatribe was brilliant, it truly was. And he sure got reimbursed.

To get onto the beach we would walk around the side of Castaways, beneath about a dozen leering construction workers atop  lopsided scaffolding, past the pool, and down a set of steps. Legislature was just passed stating that people will be allowed to drive on the beaches of coastal Florida for 25 more years; an annual pass costs $50 and a one-day pass costs $5. I certainly never saw this before and it was a different beach experience to walk down onto the beach and then have to look both ways before reaching the water because cars are driving on the sand. And these warm Atlantic waves could be brutal; we spent hours playing in the waves, but they really beat us up. We had waves crash over our heads that knocked us over and dragged us in the sand, and Sarah and I both had the tops and bottoms of our bathing suits pulled off by the turbulent water in different stages of indecency. Any wave-frolicking session automatically meant that several gallons of salt water were going to be shoved forcefully into my nose and mouth and ears, which was painful - but worth it for the rush. The beaches of Daytona were so alive with people and surfers and cars and parasailers and boaters and boogie boarders during the daytime…there was so much to look at…it was a beachy sensory overload!

There’s an ordinance in Daytona beginning on May 1 until October saying that all bright lights by the beach have to be turned off at night because that’s the time of year the sea turtles lay their eggs on shore. Bright lights confuse the turtles and may disrupt their egg-laying. It’s good to see that even in a place as built-up as Daytona, (and the waterfront is as built up as any place I have ever seen) there are still measures being taken to preserve wildlife. There are so many shorebirds tiptoeing around on the sand, and brown pelicans flying through the air…but birds are birds, and they are professionals at seeking out a French fry tossed on the sand just like back home. It’s universal: sea birds have a sixth sense…the French fry sense.

We integrated ourselves into the local Daytona social scene…when we weren’t at Mango’s, we visited our friend Tiki Bill at his Tiki Bar at Perry’s, another hotel on the beach. Tiki Bill is a champion frozen-drink-mixer…it’s fun to watch…like a one-man alcohol-infused, Jimmy Buffett-scored Cirque du Soleil that ends with a perfect pour every time. We explored the Ocean Deck, which is a restaurant and bar on the beach, several small local smoky-aired places where everyone knows everyone, a place called Adobe Gila’s, which would have been much more fun if the place hadn’t been so packed it was impossible to breathe, (and I have never seen a line for the men’s restroom this long in my entire life) but my favorite was a hole-in-the-wall place with a single-stall women’s room called Frank’s Front Row, which featured some well-worn, well-loved pool tables and great local bands. It’s the dive bars that I always seem drawn to. What does this say about me, I wonder? (That I have good taste, of course.)

Nascar is, obviously, a huge deal in Daytona. I have never in my life felt much interest in it, and nobody I know back home is really into it, but that’s not the case down there. All the sports bars down there have Nascar on all the time, cars racing around and around in endless circles, with the arrows pointing to them, naming which driver was in which place in the race. Bets are liberally placed. So I watched a little Nascar and felt a bit closer to the most-watched sport in our country. I got into a conversation with some locals, Wylie and Tiki Bill, about the death of Dale Earnhardt Sr, who raced the black #3 Chevy. They both swore that the clouds formed a giant number 3 in the sky after he died, which they both personally saw. Tiki called the local radio station to report it, but people had already seen it and called in. That’s a bit freaky.

I’ve never really played darts before; my dad had a dartboard set up in the basement for a while and in high school some of my friends and I halfheartedly chucked some darts at it, but this was honestly the first time I ever really played. Sarah and I ended up in a game with our Daytona friends on our last night there. It was an electronic dartboard, complete with flashing lights and beeping noises, and we played a dart game called Cricket in which you aim for the 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, and the bullseye. I wasn’t wearing my glasses or contacts, so before I threw my darts I had to pull the skin at the corner of my eyes tight and squint so I could see which piece of electronic dartboard pie I was aiming for – which looked ridiculous but was necessary. Once I focused on the right piece of pie, I was all right at throwing the darts. It was rollicking good fun.

We all had such a great time in Daytona that we extended our stay three times; what was going to be a four-night stay turned into nearly three weeks – April 21 to May 9.  Bill loved riding his bike there and has logged 2703 miles on his K2 bike with the squishy, deformed black seat. Daytona Beach was like a glorious black hole of fun, and we could have stayed even longer, but we knew we had to end our mini-vacation and move on with our trip. It was time.

There is a place in my heart for Daytona and all of the amazing, hilarious people we met there. There is no question in my mind that I will be going back to visit them, my warm-weather friends who live with a view of the ocean every day of their lives.

-stephanie

Camping in Silver River

I love camping.

Sarah and I have been wanting to go camping for a while, which is good because a campsite is much cheaper than a motel room. The idea of living in the wilderness and sleeping on hard-packed dirt for three nights isn’t high on Bill’s list of fun activities, so he elected to stay at a Howard Johnson’s in Ocala. As of April 20, Bill has logged 2325 miles.

We bought some cheap tents and some of those fold-up chairs, made a quick stop at the store to get stuff for sandwiches, pretzels, pickles, and beer, made a right on Route 35 and then a left into Silver River State Park. Normally I’m used to purchasing firewood at a convenience store (or the hideous consumer vacuum of Wal-Mart, sorry) but those establishments don’t sell wood in Silver Springs, Florida, so we had to buy wood when we got to the park. The pieces of wood were on the small side, so we loaded up the backseat of the Suburban with dozens of chipped logs. I saw some assorted strange-lookin’ beetles and crickets clinging to the wood that unquestionably escaped into the general seating area of the Suburban, but I wisely chose not to start a discussion about that.

When we first pulled into the campsite, site 38, we unloaded the wood into a dusty pile besides the fire ring, dragged the cooler over to the picnic table, and began the arduous task of putting up our tents. Tents fit perfectly into the nylon zippered case when you first open it – folded so tightly and precisely - but you despair as you unfold because you know that there’s no way you’re ever going to get that sucker back into that case. It’s not going to happen, and especially not for someone like me who isn’t a champion folder of things anyway. (In fact, I’m a bad folder of items. Maps, clothes…not good. Although I did help Jerry, the janitor at the post office, fold up the American flag sometimes…I suppose if I am assisted, I can fold. Ah, wonderful domestic me.)

The campsite itself wasn’t actual dirt; it had been covered with tiny white rocks that lay in a thin layer of white sand, which I found to be strange. We initially tried to push our metal tent stakes into the milky-colored gravel, but they would only go about a quarter of an inch into the ground. Off to the side of the campsite was a patch of pine-needled dirt that was big enough to fit our tents, so we moved them a few feet over.

And here’s the other thing about tents: (and I already knew this and fell for it anyway) whatever the measurement printed on the outside of the packaging is, it is divided by about 50% when the tent is actually erected. Our tents were labeled as kids’ tents, but the measurement said 6’ by 5’. I’m about 5’5”, so I figured I can sleep in a six-foot-long tent just fine. Well, aren’t I stupid sometimes. I couldn’t even stretch my legs out all the way unless I propped myself up on my elbows, so I had to sleep shaped like a curve, and there was a tree root that was running underneath the area where my stomach was. I didn’t realize this until it was pitch black outside, of course, and there was no way I was going to even consider moving the tent. After the first night I got used to the root and slept with it digging into my abdomen for the next two nights. Worse things have happened to me.

Sarah and I were standing above the blobs of nylon that were assumably going to turn into tents, minding our own business, jamming the interlocking tent poles together, and listening to the local country music station on the radio of the Suburban. After about five minutes, a smiling, visored, pink-outfit-wearing middle-aged woman astride a bicycle cruised into our campsite. The woman engaged us earnestly in small talk, telling us that she too was originally from New Hampshire, and she told us she was staying in Silver River for a few weeks. She gestured to an RV, faintly visible behind a tangle of woods, parked at a site far off in the distance. I felt glad to have such a friendly neighbor – although after a minute I noticed her husband was lingering on his bicycle at the edge of our site, apparently not interested in offering an introduction. After a few minutes of pleasantries, the true motive behind the woman’s sunny banter became clear: “So, anyway,” she said, flashing a brilliant RV-owning smile, “do you think you could turn your music down a smidge?” Now, I swear that the music was in no way loud enough for these people to hear at their site. (We proved this through experimentation.) And it was country music, not gangsta rap or heavy metal or something. This was the soundtrack of pickup trucks, honky-tonks and whiskey, not drive-bys, profanity and illegal narcotics. And it was five o’clock in the afternoon. And there weren’t even any fellow nature lovers staying in any of the sites around us to irritate.

So much for friendly neighbors.

We spent our time at Silver River State Park avoiding the sinister bicycle-riding couple, (deemed the Bicycle Nazis) who were really the only other people staying around us. They would glide by at intervals throughout the day, casting sideways glances at the derelict girls in Site 38 who polluted the air with their raucous musical tastes. Luckily we avoided future run-ins, and didn’t really interact with any people – although one night, at about ten-thirty, a truck pulled in to the site next of us. A fire was lit and extinguished in an hour, the people apparently slept in their truck, and they were gone by the time we got up. It was a bit bizarre, but it was amusing to spy on the campground guy roll up in his golf cart the next morning, dismount, and proceed to use what appeared to be a giant, thunderous leaf blower to smooth over the rocky white surface of the campsite that had been briefly occupied.

Sarah’s little sister Felicia lived nearby, so we took her camping with us for two nights. We went hiking, and hiking through woods in Florida is a severe contrast to hiking in New England. In my past hiking experience, there have always been hills or mountains to scale, a goal of elevation to accomplish. In Florida, everything’s flat, so a hike could be synonymous with a stroll through the woods – just depends on how long you want to walk. However, it was beautiful in a different way than at home: the woods of central Florida reminded me of a rainforest, moist and layered with brighter greens than northern forests that are opaque with dark evergreens. And the novelty of seeing different kinds of palms mixed into the greenery didn’t wear off, either. The conifers in these woods produced pinecones that were about twelve inches in length and lay around like discarded spiny basketballs. We arrived at a swampy area at one point on the Silver River trail, and I looked desperately for alligators to no avail. The only noises were the sporadic jumps of fish out in the water and the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard hum of locusts.

I love camping.

I love to forage in the woods for small sticks and pine needles to use as tinder and kindling; it gives me a sort of primal feeling, as if I’m a cave woman searching for fire-starting materials so I could roast the meat of a woolly mammoth my mate had clubbed in the head. Before long, Sarah had the fire flicking the air in dashes of brilliant orange as we perched before it in our fold-up chairs. I have always taken great pleasure in campfires; I love the smoky smell, I love people’s faces when colored by firelight, I love the crackling sounds and the violet-blue flames at the bottom, the hottest part of the fire. As dusk began to take over the campground, coaxing the sky on its slow journey from periwinkle to ink, lightning bugs began to appear all around us in a shimmering spread of tiny dancing strobe lights. It was so beautiful that I would turn away from my beloved firelight to walk towards the darkness just to see them. I tried to catch a few with my bare hands, running around like a child on a Halloween-night sugar high, but the lightning bugs would always see me lurching at them, slyly turn off their glowing abdomens, and not relight until they were several feet away from me. Slick little fireflies.

Another thing about camping that pleases me is the wildlife, and I adored the waves of small brown lizards that scampered around the edges of the woods in brief spurts of motion – they were most easily identified by the sounds of leaves rustling as they relocated. I was delighted when I was in the bathroom, looked down at what first appeared to be a large hideous beetle crouching in the corner, and realized it was a tiny toad (a gopher toad, I later learned) the color of Army fatigues. I scooped up the miniature amphibian into my hands and looked him in his glass bead eyes, the color of onyx shining even in the sickly fluorescent bathroom light. Undoubtedly I was talking to the toad as well, though I don’t recall the nature of our conversation. He was a good guy. I brought him to our site to show Sarah and then allowed him to hop his way back to the forest.

One night, while we were in our tents, there was a distinct shuffling noise coming from the picnic table. In the morning all suspicions were confirmed: on the ground lay the last slice of pepper jack cheese, half-consumed, clinging to its plastic wrapper beside the empty bag that had held our sliced turkey. But who was the mysterious creature?

That night, while sitting around the fire, we heard scuffling in the woods, off to the left of our site. I was wearing my brand-new headlamp (I always wanted a headlamp, for some reason…make fun if you must…but now that I own one I am much happier with my life in general) and held a flashlight in my hand as I scanned the palm-treed darkness. Sure enough, after a while of tense anticipation of the wild animal that lurked in the shadows, two silver eyes reflected the beam of my flashlight. We sat still until a smallish raccoon with a striking white mask ambled to the edge of our site, eyed us for a minute, and retreated. Despite the messes that raccoons always make when allowed access to human food and trash, this creature was a gorgeous animal. After seeing his eyes shine from within the brilliant white fringe on his face, I wasn’t even irritated about the pepper jack anymore.

Nighttime was cool at the campground, but by about 9 am, the Florida heat seeped in, which would wake me up in a sweaty tangle of humidity, carbon dioxide, and flannel-lined sleeping bag. My first order of business upon waking up was to unzip the tent and perform a clumsy twisting action to get out into the heat-soaked fresh air.

After three nights of sleeping on tree roots, we arrived back at the Howard Johnson’s in Ocala to meet Bill, who was excited about the ‘photo shoot’ we were about to do for the University of Minnesota. Dick Bianco, a professor there, helped design the heart valve that Bill received in his surgery last year, and Minnesota will be a future destination for the three of us. For these future Pulitzer Prize award-winning photos, we dressed in tie-dyed Minnesota T-shirts (maroon for Bill, taxi-cab yellow for Sarah and I) and had the front desk woman at Howard Johnson’s take some shots of the three of us, sweltering in high-weight cotton in the Florida sun, Bill astride his bike.

-stephanie

Skipping Through the Confederacy to Panama City Beach

On April 7, Sarah and I said goodbye to the Chateau Dupre in New Orleans and headed back to New Iberia to meet up with Bill and spend one final night in the Bayou State.  We were planning to keep on a southerly route, but we ended up heading north towards Jackson, Mississippi because all of the hotels on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama were either destroyed, gone, or housing people. This also puts into perspective the fact that New Orleans got most of the press, but it was by no means the only area affected. We met people who were from the coast of Mississippi who’d had an 18-foot wall of water surge through and wipe out their entire town.

There wasn’t really anything Bill wanted to do in Mississippi or Alabama, which was fine with us. We spent two nights in Jackson, Mississippi at the Jameson Inn, and we were the only white people staying there. Bill got another flat tire…I’m telling you, there seems to be some sort of curse going on with rear bike tires…Jackson was downtime for us; we were laying low and didn’t do much except visit the Lone Star Steakhouse for dinner…a Texas steakhouse in Mississippi. Go figure.

We stayed at the less-than-posh Best Western in Selma, Alabama. That was one of those nights that involved a long quest for food. The only place open was the Waffle House, and they only accept cash there (which Sarah and I learned the hard way) and we didn’t have any cash. There was also no ATM; the only gas station we could find was closed. At nine p.m. There wasn’t any semblance of a sidewalk on West Highland Ave, and there were cement drainage ditches every twenty feet or so that we had to climb down while semi trucks screamed past us like tornadoes of steel, blowing our clothes and hair. It was one of the scarier times we’ve had. Our quest for food that night was futile; I ended up excavating some old ramen noodles from the Suburban and heating them in our room. (I also keep a crushed, dented box of Honey Nut Cheerios in there for hunger emergencies…hmm…haven’t seen it in a while…hope I don’t get hungry.)

We pretty much only experienced highways in Alabama and Mississippi, but they were green and tree-lined. I have to say that it’s really nice to be out of desert lands and see actual trees again. Several times while we traversed the roads of Alabama, we passed a few seriously long flatbed trucks with logs loaded onto the back of them. Trucks with logs stacked on the back are one of the things in this world that terrify me the most; it always seems like one of those suckers is going to slide off and catapult itself into my windshield. I can VISUALIZE it. Now, the logs on these trucks were much skinnier than other logs I’ve seen, and they were almost twice as long as the actual length of the flatbed; they hung way off the back. There weren’t any flashing lights or anything, either; just what looked like orange-handled screwdrivers hammered into the ends of the logs with tiny orange plastic flags hanging off of them. These are vehicles to avoid, people.

We’re still listening to a real lot of