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I rose at the crack of noon to learn that my car had been booted then debooted as taken care of by Dallas.  Lunch was in the food court of a nearby business building and we were shortly thereafter on our way to visit Texas Instruments Boulevard (TI Blvd, get it?) except for the part where I completely forgot that was our intermediate destination and Dallas had to swerve across 32 lanes of traffic to reclaim his position as lead of our caravan.  In penance, I opened my door and yelled “DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERP!” at every stop sign and traffic light much to the confusion of other drivers.

We arrived at a parking lot near the sign and on our walk out I saw this billboard:

Minute Drowning

The billboard is missing the bottom line of "So what's your excuse?"

After Suzie was attacked by ants, Operation: Place A Sticker commenced.

Group Shot

Over-excited Group Shot

Ride an SA

Let no one say I don't support my team.

Gratuitious HDR Sign

Gratuitious HDR Sign

Documenting vandalism is probably a subpar choice, but we stand by our work.

The ride to Austin was hot and trafficky when we were outside the city limits.  Entering the college town area brought back memories of every college town I never wanted to visit again but we met with Dylan, our next host, without incident.

Soft Dylan

Dylan and John's Neck

After attacking Dylan’s bowl of seasoned pecans, I asked, no demanded, we go for a walk around the University of Texas at Austin.  It was a typical college town full of sometimes attractive underdressed people in front of stores professing allegiance to things.  Dylan pointed out a notable graffito, and one of the better group shots was had.

Needed Site

Apparently, when this is graffitied over, this graffito is re-graffitied over the other graffito.

We walked another four miles in total and got to see fountains with horsemen shooting from them, a bell tower with bored people in front of it, and two spheres covered in pennies that I think symbolize…. sphere’s covered in pennies.

Balls

Bitches love sepia

Back at Dylan’s, we gazed longingly at his pool but ran out of time as another person we knew had driven to the area.

Ashley and Suzie

Ashley and Suzie

I ate more seasoned pecans and we went to see Super 8 at the Alamo Drafthouse.  The schtick of the Alamo Drafthouse is that they are a movie theater that emphasizes the movie and boots out people who talk.  In addition, they have a reasonable menu and server food before and during the movie while one is seated.  Brian Brushwood recommended I have the Raging Bull pizza, but portioning won out and I stuck with a diminutive hamburger.  Their menu included a Philadelphia-style cheesesteak which was impressive for using an actual Amoroso roll.  The sandwich also included my favorite non-cut of meat, “shaved beef” as “ragged slices of idunno” would be more accurate but less appetizing.

My review of Super 8: Meh but funny and the lead kid was adorable.

After, we returned to Dylan’s, didn’t use the pool, I ate more seasoned pecans, and duckfaces came out.

Immitation

Mike's Attempt

vs.

Dylan with Glasses

The master. Yeah, I know, there's no actual duckface in that shot. Use your imagination.

That night was spent on a folding chair that flattened to a bed.

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Horror is rarely the descriptor I use to describe my first emotion when I wake and horror, in this case came from the simple and normally uncontroversial act of looking down.  I had spent the night on some sort of Scandinavian folding bed/chair that probably went under the trade name of Vuddekista which probably came flat-packed in a shrink wrapped box the size of a toaster oven.  Upon this lumber-gami contraption there was a… mattress-esque padding wad that possessed absorptive powers well beyond conventional science (we’ll come back to that) topped with a fleece blanket-let.  During the night I had tossed and turned such that the fleece was now on top of me and my comparatively virgin skin came in contact with the seat pad.  The seat pad had the normal stains of a household trapping such as coffee, a bit of mud, as well as the expanded canonical college stains of vomit and Keystone Light along with what appeared to be a rogue’s gallery of bodily fluids whose investigation may net both a Nobel prize in medicine and literature.  As when one is so angry as to emit silence, I was sufficiently repulsed that the only response I could muster was a very long blink followed by looking at my host and saying “Dylan, I think I have hepatitis”.  He sipped his coffee and shrugged.

I showered aggressively, ate some seasoned pecans, refolded my bed Frankenbed, ate some seasoned pecans and we departed the company of our host who was now down a goodly quantity of seasoned pecans.

[Editor’s Note: I really wanted to include a joke about Hep Chair as a play on Death Bed the Bed that Eats People but couldn’t get it to come together.]

To Oklahoma City.  Slowly.  The I-35 corridor between Austin and Dallas is a 200 mile stretch with a Frontage Rd. that never quite becomes busy but never quite peters out.  There is a pottery stand the size of a used car lot, billboards that haven’t been taken down for developments that never opened, and historical markers of dubious historical value.  Moreso, as a straight, high speed, well-maintained road it is subject to a ridiculous number of accidents per mile.  This time, we lost an hour seemingly because a parade of police cars wished to line the median and introduce two lanes of traffic to the wonder of the shoulder.  This compares to an accident we passed through near Memphis were a lane of traffic was opened and guided literally between two smashed vehicles.  The drive was hot and what I thought was Suzie stretching was really her tiny fingers clawing for cooler air.  As a person, I possess sub-par aerodynamics for such things, but I am working on this.

Once in Choctaw, we met our host Justin and his perpetual copilot Kevin and shortly thereafter two very large, very hair dogs.

Rocky

Rocky

Rocky is a St. Bernard that clocks in at about 190 lbs and was how I thought Justin got to school prior to learning that his family had only had him for two years.  Rocky is also notable for being the first St. Bernard I’d met that wasn’t named “Beethoven” nor did he appear to have a fondness for brandy.  The other dog appeared to be some sort of genetic hybrid designed to simply produce hair.

Massive Dog #1

Other Dog Whose Name Escapes Me

I have a reasonably hairy dog.  One can use a horse brush on Max and pull off enough hair to fill a plastic shopping bag in about 30 minutes of brushing.  This dog was capable of producing a solid cat’s worth of hair simply by rubbing against your extended finger as evidenced by Justin having a dog hair scarf.

Hair Scarf

Hair Scarf

The final pet was Princess the cat who possessed the paramount attributes of the adorable ur-cat: being curious, and being people-friendly.

Cat thinks of murder

He was batting the power brick earlier

Justin works at a science museum and nibbles away at school.  We also met up with Cody, a graphics semi-artsy person who is…. tall and who I picture comes home every day yelling for his dinner while slamming down his briefcase.  I’ve been assured he does no such thing.

Spooner and Princess

Cody made better looking by holding Princess

Kevin is a guy with attributes who I believe does things.  I know him mostly as a sniper in TF2 as well as the first person to respond when I posted that I had a milligram accurate scale that I was giving away.  He probably needed it to mete out tiny amounts of glue to mount decorative tea cozies.

Justin and Kevin

Kevin

We didn’t come to “do” anything and not doing anything proved very entertaining.  We learned that Justin’s wifi password is an MD5 hash of the name of his cat.  We also learned that cat paddling is indeed a real phenomenon.  Finally, I learned that the enjoyment in Cards Against Humanity is very dependent on the group and that Mike Noble knows that “Bees” will always win the trick if I’m the judge.  As the evening wound down, John got hit by a shower head and I passed up on a game of “Toss the Expensive Thing”.

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A difference between group and individual travel was the necessity of synchronicity.  If we wanted to do something as a group, that meant I had to be awake which may sound trivial but I’m very comfortable with the organic sleep schedule “go to bed when tired/wake up when no longer tired” which didn’t quite jive with the rest of the car.  Suzie had seemingly replaced the sleep centers of the brain with an additional adrenal gland and John was able to enter some state of torpor in the car allowing him to be unconscious for 2/3rds of the day.  Mike and I required between 7-8 hours to be happy but he’s far better than I at passing up palaver for the pillow.  Sleep came quickly in Dallas as everyone (nearly) had their own bed.

This being our rest day, I didn’t feel bad with “events” starting with lunch at about 2 PM followed by a trip to a mall to walk around.  Most of the stores were pedestrian fair but there was a bonanza of fun at the not-quite-a-dollar store.

Dollar Store Cravaets

I'm secure with my masculity. Luckily, so is Mike.

Walking Party

Patriotic and festive, you double threat

Suzie, Librarian

She knows you have overdue library books and she doesn't like it.

The store also had a novel way of grouping items.  The combination of butane fuel, hair coloring spray, and silly string looks like it’d make for a fascinating evening.

Can Fun

Party Platter

After tooling around the mall for 9000 steps, we decided on a seeing X-Men: First Class at the theater adjoining the mall.  I questioned whether I’d be able to get into the theater with my wrecking ball of a DSLR.  Solution?  When asked, fake being “Ake”, the semi-retarded Swedish cousin of Dallas and reply to every question with “teekit?” while holding up my movie ticket.

X-Men: First Class was a solid B in my opinion with the standard plot liberties I’ve come to appreciate from the X-Men movies.  The characters were a bit thin but that’s going to happen when you’re up against Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in comparative acting ability.

We exited the theater into a sandstorm and a Burlington Coat Factory (NJ REPRESENT!) cart had attacked my car.  I wanted to submit a note saying “look what your cart did to my car” but those cases never hold up in court.

Cart Attack

Look what the cart did to my car.

We returned to the hotel to for Chinese food, laundry, and swimming, those items listed ultimately in order of increasing difficulty.  My fortune cookie revealed the wisdom of “You need to work on your exercise routine.”  Really?  Either the cookie was acutely aware that I was away from home, had a wicked sense of irony, or…. was just a random fortune (probably that one).  Laundry involved a quest to get quarters and the trade-off of a soap dispenser eating my change giving me full rights to kick it.  While our laundry was in, we went to the pool side and again, Apocatequil was giving Zibelthiurdos pointers.  Another time.

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Today is our first long day where the gap between waking and stopping for the day is at least 16 hours.  I felt that if we could survive today, we’d be fine for the rest of the trip barring some emotional breakdown or high travesty and I was glad to come out the other end without incident.

Our first stop was Huntsville, AL to meet Dan and Josh.

Crasian

Dan of the False Surname

Dan is joining the Air Force and told me his last name was Paladin which would be totally bad-ass if it were true.  It was not, thus he is not bad ass until he joins the Air Force where is nickname better be either “Crasian” or “Paladin”.  He has a dog that’s annoying as shit.

Gutbuster

Josh, friend of Dan

I knew little about Josh before meeting him.  I have met him.  I know little about Josh.

Huntsville, AL seemed to mostly consist of a cyclopean strip mall that cut the landscape as the knife of a mad surgeon where the Appalachian Mountains peter out.  The strip mall contained a Zaxby’s, a Buffalo Wild Wings, and a Hobby Lobby as a kind of Noah’s ark of crap not available in the northeast and each held its own unique wonder.  I’ve looped this part of the country now three times and I’ve yet to go to a Zaxby’s which is apparently slightly nicer than Chic-fil-a, a place that I consider on the high end of the Bojangles/KFC spectrum.  We opted for Buffalo Wild Wings as Suzie longed for them after becoming persona non grata at her local site after quitting.  But before this, we walked.

On a normal day, I walk at least 10,000 steps and shoot for 12,000 to 15,000.  On a day of walking and shooting at say a Scouting event or a Magic tournament I can hit 20,000 steps.  Yesterday and the day before I clocked 5,000 steps and I felt like I had soda in my leg veins as they twitched from non-use.  Tooling around the strip mall for an hour gave me two miles and I felt better for having moved albeit at the cost of my co-trippers becoming sunburned.

Group Walk

Walking Proof

A late addition to lunch was Ty who was spending part of his summer taking care of family member with his father.  Much of lunch was spent explaining to Ty’s dad what his son was doing until 3 AM most days in Minecraft as well as the source of my compulsion to meet people.  In exchange, he told us stories about his time as plumber in Chicago and the number of serial killers from the area he could name off the top of his head.  Fair trade, I guess.

The group dissolved and we went into the west to meet Hunter for the first stop that could potentially require outright deception.  He was still in high school and our group wasn’t exactly the norm his parents would expect  so should it be required, Suzie would liaise as a passable high school student.  Picking him up didn’t come to such and we got to see a store that sold birdhouse trees.

Birdhouse Tree

Birdhouse Trees

Hunter was a teenager with all that encompassed including the ceremonial hair translated from pube to chin that constitutes most people’s first copse of facial hair.  It was unbecoming of him and I recommended be bronze one and slay the rest in ritual facial shaving.  He being a gamer, there are tools for such things.

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SHAVE

Our cover was that we were going to watch Green Lantern and sneakily we went to the Genghis Grill, a Mongolian stir fry place that took the theme way too far.  For instance, guess the name of this drink:

Mongorita

Name it.

If you said “Why Terry, the lime and salt rim marks it as a margarita” you’d be sane but wrong as it’s a mongolrita.  This of it as a standard margarita but replace the champagne glass with exploitation.  The outdoor seat was “Khan’s Patio” and places that have Genghis Grill locations have been “Khanquered”.  The notion of Mongolian stir fry is intrinsically appealing to me “pile foods of your choice into a dish.  We will cook the dish and return it to you” but I foolishly left space in my bowl for the final starch which was added instead by the cook staff.  I could have added at least a half of a dead chicken to my khancave bowl with that space.

Our waitress had the math abilities of a turnip and I left without being able to the gift card legerdemain that’d net me a $4.00 savings.  Should this chain ever “knanquer” Philadelphia, I will first ask my server to answer a math puzzle before ordering.  We left.

Another Group Walk Shot

Khan-verging towards the khar

We stopped for ice khream to allow Suzie to restock on khute-fuel which is apparently bubblegum and gummy bears as Hunter dutifully watched and we dutifully ignored the clock as his alibi ran out.  He received stickers and we returned him safely home before he turned into a pumpkin.

Our next leg was to Dallas, Texas and I got the idea in my head that I wasn’t a man if I couldn’t manage to drive this 500 mile section by myself.  500 miles isn’t particularly hard given the friendliness of I-30 which isn’t as kind to the driver as I-10 (one of my top 10 American roads) but it’s nice.

A Note on Interstates

The American Interstate Highway system is among my 7 wonders of the modern world for their capacity to facilitate the movement of near every physical good in America.  The joy of driving 80 MPH in west Texas on I-10 and racing the sun as to not be subject to the night time speed limit or seeing the over one mile gap between lanes along the a particular pass on I-8.  The 20 lanes of I-805 simply baffles my eyes but the blue shield of the Dwight D Eisenhower Interstate system always means “it’s ok, Terry.  You can probably go 75 MPH without pissing off anyone” (‘cept for DC where it hits f-ing 50 MPH).  I’ve received one ticket and one ticket only over the tens of thousands of miles of driving I did on the interstate and that was only because I was going 90 on the PA turnpike because it was such a nice day and the road so inviting.  The cop agreed and downgraded it to blowing a stop sign.  Oh, that stop sign at the mid-county exit, it always gets me.  Should ever need to cross the country or even a state, take the extra time to get to an interstate if you can.

To Dallas

The drive was unremarkable to Dallas but once we hit the city limits the heavens opened and every on and off ramp was turned into a vehicular water slide.  My top speed at times was about 7 MPH and even at this I was passing cars.  I dropped off my car mates, parked, and was glad for my umbrella as buckets came down coupled with what I will call long lightning.  Bolts didn’t illuminate the sky instantaneously but instead over seconds.  There were no flashes so much as a glowing and receding brilliance over large segments of sky while still holding the distinctive bolt shape of ground/atmosphere lightning.  We did not swim this evening.  0/2

Our fixer for Dallas was Dallas Peterson, a chef (can I call him that?) that lives in Dallas and provided us rooms at a low enough rate that everyone (nearly) had their own bed.  It was wonderful.

Dallas Odalisque

Plaguuuuuuu

Maybe tomorrow we’ll get to swim.

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I consume a lot of fluids and I rarely like the taste of water so I purchased 4 flavors of single-serving instant iced teas.  Raspberry is far and away the best and for whatever reason, those that contain “natural flavors” do not appear to be taxed in PA.  Onto the day’s driving.

Our first stop for the day was Tomato Head in Knoxville, TN.  A hippy sandwich joint that served food that was compatible with almost any set of arbitrary dietary restricts and at reasonable prices [except for the hummus platter.  -S. Nieman].  Outside, we met Ben and Aaron.

Ben Sitting

Ben

Ben’s in his late teens and radiates an aura of semi-smug competence in server.  In meatspace, he was a little less sure of himself and seemed not to like that I had a quality picture of him derping.  I find these gaps comforting.

Aaron Smiles

Aaron

Aaron is a student and restaurant service person also from the greater Knoxville area.  He too was annoyed that only 2/3rds of the Knoxville sunsphere was properly shined and thus didn’t bring down airplanes.  Lunch passed without incident and we went to the Mast General Store which is supposedly notable.  Their bottom floor was legit outdoor equipment but the main area was mostly candy, clothing and kitsch.  Not to say I’m not an occasional fan of the tawdry but this baby summarized my sentiment.

BABY WITH GLASSES

I am unsure of how this baby summarizes my sentiment but it's got glasses. Look at it.

They had chicken hats.

John Chicken Hat

Cloaca on the brain

We talked in the clothing section for about an hour and I was worried that we were loitering until I saw that Suzie had purchased a metal Batman sign.

We crossed Gay St. and dispersed after the customary distribution of stickers.

0865-TexasLoop2-20110619

Walk Hard

Knoxville bid us adieu without incident and we drove to Clarksville, TN to stay with Dan and Jill.  I had previous met this husband and wife team after leaving the Great Smokey Mountains and it was a delight to meet them under less stark conditions that didn’t involve me stumbling out to civilization.  They are transplants from Michigan and still have an aspect of “we’re not from around here” that makes out of town guests feel like their on the inside.  Plus, their cat kind of looks like Hitler.

Kitler Feeds

Heil Kitler

LOVE ME

Their dog does not look like any notable Fascists.

We shared Cheerwine and firecracker chocolate but more importantly Dan decreed that we must juice.  So, we juiced and created a technicolor pulp pile from the watermelon, mango, cucumber, strawberries, and I think orange slain to prove Dan’s juicing prowess.

0917-TexasLoop2-20110619

Pulpatorium

The evening progressed into my favorite past time of insulting someone playing a console as we yelled at Dan while he played Just Cause 2.  He spent about an hour blowing up cars, refineries, and running helicopters into buildings without incident.  I asked to try and I think I was headshot while picking lilies.  This is why I hate consoles.

I slept that evening on an air mattress that didn’t quite have its shit together and had to rewake to re-inflate it.  During a late evening bathroom trip, I noticed that the house still had the same bottle of Transformers Bubble Bath as last time I’d been there a year ago.  Maybe it’ll evaporate off like a fine bottle of Crown Royal.

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I like to drive, or more accurately, I don’t mind being in a car for long periods while either driving or being driven and I like meeting people and seeing things.  Below is a 4800 mile route I plan on taking with John, Mike, and Suzie to see people and things.

The Loop

From PA to PA in 8 Days

My Goals

I have little experience with road trips of more than two people.  There’s an elegance to two as one sleeps while the other drives and the driver controls the radio.  The addition of a 3rd party who may or may not be in the driving rotation or who may not like what’s on the radio may prove tricky.  My goal will then be to learn to be alone together.  Headphones, computers, pillows, and books give people bubbles in which they can operate to grant release from constant immersion in the narrative of the car at more than a background level.

At more than one location we’re meeting multiple people who’ve also driven to meet us as opposed to my standard modus operandi of just going to someone’s house.  Coordination will be needed as well as the dreaded phenomenon of going to bed at a particular time to wake up at the right hour to make it somewhere with at least two drivers being well rested.  As trivial as this sounds, it’s a compliment to our hosts whose stories have kept me up well past my normal bed time.

Finally, I’m going to avoid bringing snacks.  Snacks, in my opinion, are a boredom thing rather than a hunger thing as a person of my size will rarely be in the position of being genuinely hungry and having that right amount of food to sate oneself.

Packing Oddities

I’m working with the assumption that we will find a way to do wash as I physically don’t have more than four sets of summer cloths.  Changing sizes has made that more expensive than I like.  I also don’t have a bathing suit that fits nor am I bringing a second set of shoes on the assumption that my walking shoes will neither get too wet nor will the car get hot enough that I’ll want to change them.  Finally, I’m unsure of how many pictures I’m going to take so may grab an external hard drive to carry what won’t fit on the tiny SSD built into my laptop.

Driving

Mike arrived at 7:45 AM and we were on the road before 8:00 AM.  That’s a 100% score for timely departures with Mike.

MikeMirth

Mike, my intrepid also-driver

The drive to Annapolis to pick up John was uninteresting.  It’s I-95 for Pete’s sake.  I felt I crushed John when I asked that he not bring snacks but he politely obliged me abandoning the bag of popcorn that had been the highlight of a shared drive to Cincinnati we had taken.

TheChoiceIsObvious

John of the goatee

Off to Cincinnati.  I’ve taken two or three routes from Maryland to lower Ohio and the one where one goes west across all of Maryland and then across the Allegheny Mountains is practically an emetic.  Wanda, my car, can’t do 70 uphill and she/I feel bad about this.  This route went slightly further north across southern PA and while, of necessity, also crossing the Alleghenies, the route was much less hilly.  We arrived in Cincinnati a bit ahead of schedule where we picked up the last of our war party.

MeetingSuzie

Suzie. Non-driver. Non-sleeper.

We went to a local place for pizza and we founded what John wanted.

CPAA-Ohio

Chicken Parm, the king of foods, to John.

Suzie had some salad and Mike and I ordered a white pizza with roasted chicken topped with “enough garlic to kill a small horse, maybe a shetland pony”.  Instead we received a garlic-less pizza that appeared to be topped with chunks of Shetland pony.  The alternative is that Shetland ponies are deathly allergic to garlic and the server was an equine medicine major or something.

After dinner, we walked along the Ohio river to Sawyer Point containing a prominent statue of Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator turned farmer from which the Society of the Cincinnati and in turn the city take their names.  I think he was a swell guy and am glad I was able to get a reasonable handheld HDR.

Mike's First HDR

Ball Game on the Ohio, by Mike Noble

 

”] Take ItOur hotel for the evening was about 20 minutes away in Kentucky and had a pool.  The night was warm and we’d walked a lot so the pool would prove refreshing.  That is until we learned it had closed minutes ago at 10:00 to our 10:06 arrival time.  Ah well, there will be other times to use our suits.

Skipping the pool gave me time to upload photos, something I don’t normally do same-day while traveling and knowledge that people could see what we were doing and that we could hear their thoughts was quite satisfying as the first Facebook comments came in.  I hope I can keep it up.

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Yesterday and the day before had me feeling like absolute crap and today the crap-storm broke and I attempted to return to the health habits that were largely un-interrupted otherwise.  I changed and hopped on the the treadmill to see what I could manage starting on 2.5 MPH at a 10 degree incline.  I began sweating heavily and had trouble keeping this pace and just kept reducing the machine settings until I felt I could move comfortably.  My speed stabilized at 1.6 MPH and a 5 degree incline, less than half of what I normally set these to and I’m pretty sure slower than what I had managed in work that day.

I moved on to try weight lifting and in almost no case could I manage a set of more than three reps compared to the 10-15 I normally use.

Maybe I’m not better yet.

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I don’t like the cult of happiness in almost any of its forms.  Losing your job isn’t much of an “opportunity”, pancreatic cancer is not a “window for personal growth”, and every time a door closes, a door has closed, no more.  The lack of a countervailing force to the belief that there is cosmic justice to right wrongs but rarely a force to wrong rights seems dishonest to me and the whole excursion smacks of the gambler’s fallacy at best and cosmic exceptionalism at worst.

This week, we talk about that.  And Chris learning to steal as instructed by an old gypsy woman.

Episode

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For trash day, the house put out a functional but old TV, a chair, and several normal bags of household trash.  As previous, the TV and chair were taken along with the bags of household garbage before the garbage had otherwise been taken by the municipality.  At first, I found this tendency for the Jawas of Feasterville to rummage and take our things to be disturbing and the output of the household shredder skyrocketed but then I realized I could take advantage of this.  This last batch of trash contained several bags of kitty litter that should have been collected and disposed of a while ago.  Kitty surprise for the garbage prodders of Feasterville.

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My father and I were sitting at our kitchen table, Max was laying on the floor.
Me: Have you noticed that Max doesn’t seem to do that thing where if you rub a dog’s belly, one of the legs starts going?
Dad: Of course he does.
*rubs standard dog-leg-whirl spot
Me: Don’t think he does.
Dad: Don’t worry, I’ll find it.
*minute of scratching Max’s belly*
Dad: Hm..
*few more minutes of scratching Max’s belly*

After five minutes of varied rubbing and scratching, Max’s leg didn’t move but I think Max was fine with us trying.