Back East

We've covered a lot of ground on our zig-zag back to Richmond, but right now there's less than a week until I'll be back for the winter. After leaving Houston we made a straight shot for New Orleans Saturday and made it there in the early evening. As I would soon find out, there are no alcohol laws in Louisiana. Well there may be some, but most of the normal ones don't really apply. So our "low key night out" turned (after a few drinks called "hand grenades") out less low key than expected. Several jazz clubs, bars, clubs, dance parties, casinos, and impromptu street drinking songs later, I realized it was 6:30AM and I should get back to the van before the sun came up. Having gotten all that out of my system we found some good cajun food (jambalaya and alligator po' boys) and I went for a good long 13mi run in Audobon Park. The parts of the city where tourists end up have pretty well recovered from the Hurricane destruction with almost no trace that a disaster even happened. A lot of other non-tourist laden parts of the city (the 9th Ward most certainly included) are still pretty much in ruins. Abandoned houses with National Guard spray painted "tattoos" still on them are everywhere.

New Orleans is an area that's been hit pretty hard between that and the oil spill, though if you never leave the French Quarter, you'd never know it. We started up the road to Jackson, MS. Mississippi is, in a word, depressing. We spent less than 2 days there, and everyone we met was very friendly, but it doesn't take long in Mississippi to find out almost everyone there is poor, obese, bored, or tired of living there. We got a lot of attention at the Jackson Wal-Mart where we parked our van. Lots of high-school kids, locals, friends of high-school kids who were sent there specifically to see the van. And they all wanted to take a picture of it. They all also wanted to know "why the Hell did you want to come here?" which we answered by telling them we were coming from New Orleans, headed to Memphis. Jackson isn't a very popular tourist destination I guess.

Robert had a college friend in Memphis we stayed with for 2 nights, we went out on Beale Street, hit a couple other local spots and got some good barbeque. Oh, and we went to Graceland. Which, yes, is every bit as tacky as you'd expect it to be, plus a good dose of awesome. Here's a fun fact about Memphis: everyone jaywalks. And not just normal "oh, nobody's coming, how about I cross the street here" kind of jaywalking, more like they jump out in front of your car at night forcing you to slam on the brakes to narrowly avoid hitting them. It's a cultural thing I guess. Memphis, like Mississippi, is also still incredibly segregated. It's not institutional anymore, but it is definitely still there. Besides living in neighborhoods defined basically by race, there seemed to be almost zero social interaction between blacks and whites. Still. In 2010. And this is coming from a suburban white kid raised in Virginia; not exactly the most racially integrated setting either, but it's got nothing on the segregation still in the deep South. It was a whole other level of racial divide I wasn't really expecting. I thought that died out in the 70's sometime. Nope.

Turns out we have a lot of friends in Illinois, most of which we missed on our way out West, eager to get past the Rockies at least. So we took our time thru the Land of Lincoln this time, first stopping for a few days with Caitlin's parents, Bruce and Maryanne, in Carbondale. Southern Illinois reminded me a lot of western Virginia with the hills and leaves changing the weekend we were there. You're still out in the country, but not just in an endless array or cornfields. Driving the Chrismans around in the magical mystery bus, I got some good stories out of them about how they moved from California to Southern Illinois to start a communal farm and drop out of consumer society back in the day. And how Bruce became radicalized by the government's process of trying to undermine his personal beliefs and send him to Vietnam. They liked the idea of our trip; Maryanne thought the van was pretty much a throwback to 40 years ago. This gave me a lot to think about. After a run thru Amish country and a potluck breakfast with some senior citizens, we headed down the road to Bloomington-Normal. It was good to see my friend Mel there, who I hadn't seen since college. I got to introduce her to the van and catch up on old news. That's a really fun part of the trip; you get to see all these people you haven't seen in forever but wouldn't necessarily make a dedicated trip just to visit for a day. Like your own personal disjointed high school / college reuinion except you get to pick the most interesting people. Traveling gives you the excuse to reconnect with people you've lost touch with.

You know that good high school friend you had who moved to Arizona/Oregon/Montana/wherever and you never talk to anymore? You're not going to buy a plane ticket to see them for a weekend (and they might think it a little weird if you did...), but if you call them up and tell them you're driving across the country and just happen to be in their area, chances are they'll jump at the chance to try to meet up.

So then we're up in Central Illinois and we met up with Cy for a couple days. He showed us all around U of I and got us in some interesting places like his graduate lab where he knew most everyone and could show us some of the projects they had going on there. Robert and I both tried controlling his paraglider wing in the wind and then chased him around the cornfields in a truck when he went for a ride with the propellor and motor strapped to his back. Powered paragliding. Looks like a lot of fun, you don't need a license, and in Champaign, he just uses any road around as a runway.

Here we had a few days between central Illinois and Chicago, so we headed up to Madison, Wisconsin to meet up with our friend John we met at Burning Man. He's a character for sure. He's like a 20 year old basically, tho he's a doctor in his mid-forties and has a wife and 2 teenaged sons. He still has a lot of fun. Enough to embarrass the shit out of his teenage sons. John is one of the people I met this summer I know I'll keep in touch with. He took us squirrel hunting near his church and we drove there in a Prius with a bumper sticker in Arabic (he's fluent) on the back. Defying all stereotypes for sure. We went to a Wisconsin fish fry and within 30 seconds John had somehow bypassed the crowd to get fish to go so we could go on a brewery tour and also convinced 2 girls to give me and Robert Polka dance lessons. He's an expert in bullshit. He told us how he took his wife to Haiti for their honeymoon (he flew there himself) and convinced the hotel she was a Duchess so they could get the Presidential Suite at the fanciest hotel there. He's got some stories.

Next, we headed to Chicago for round 2. More on that later.

169 Days
26,635mi
Richmond is in sight...