I have made the transition – everything I own now fits in the back of a 2005 Volkswagen GTI. I was dreading it, but the feeling is one of surprisingly enjoyable lightness and freedom. This is probably what the Roma and Pavee feel – nothing tying you down, the road beckons… if I could fit a bed into the GTI, I might never get an apartment.

Gave notice for June 27, and I have every intention of being at the Grand Canyon the next day.

Watch this space…

It’s amazing how many odds and ends accumulate when you stay somewhere for even a brief time. I spent a big chunk of the morning corralling little bits of my life and stowing them in an organized way in the back. I determined not to travel the country with a car filled to overflowing with stuff like the Beverly Hillbillies. Better to start later in the day than regret it down the road.

I had decided that I wanted to leave from OB, both to say goodbye to my old neighborhood and to mark the start of my trip exactly at the coast. I got this wild hair to carry a bottle of ocean water from the Pacific to the Atlantic – I don’t even know for sure what it signifies, but it seems to be something like bringing that essence with me as I travel, then releasing it when I get to where I’m going. So I gathered water, and said goodbye.

I brought the statue of the Amida Buddha from my altar along with me, as a kind of touchstone and also a subject for photos – traveling solo doesn’t give you a lot of opportunities for portraits, and also I wanted to do little things with the Buddha like people do with stuffed animals as they travel.

One amusing thing that happened right at the start was that my Blackberry internet connection failed, which I was counting on to be my map. Would I have to buy a map, or trust road signs, or worst of all ask for directions? I took it as a sign (as I tend to do these days) not to worry and just trust that everything would work out. And so I just took off up the 15 freeway and settled in to the number 3 lane, trying to keep my speed below 70 as California drivers whipped around me on both sides.

Departure.

A big part of my trip would follow the old Route 66: swallowed up by I-40 in most places, segments of the old road still exist, running through a series of Western towns. I knew a lot of areas were preserving and restoring their parts of Route 66, so I followed an impulse and jumped off the 15 (freeways still retain the definite article inside San Bernardino County) at Victorville, Calif.

It was cute, though there was that air of high-desert freakiness that always makes me think behind one of these doors in a future serial killer. I strolled around a bit and met a lady named Rose as she caught a smoke outside her storefront-church-slash-thrift-store.

I think she picked up on my I don’t have to work, not a care in the world vibe – she told me “I can always tell when people are happy and joyous inside.” And, I mean, sure: happy, joyous, why the hell not? Not like I don’t have things on my mind, but I have pretty much been trained from birth to be an optimist… and what’s more joyful than having a mostly-full tank of gas and an open road calling?

She wanted to talk about Jesus, but I had Buddha in my pocket, so I wished her well and moved on.

the trip so far

I was only able to keep my speed down for so long, plus once the price of gas climbed down from its Southern California high point I felt a little more free to let my foot drop a little. The GTI is such a driver’s car, and I just enjoyed feeling the open road. I didn’t even play music at all that day, just watched the scenery change.

It was a little surprising to me how nice the high desert is. I was expecting kind of a blasted landscape, but there’s actually a fair amount of green growth, and the hills are strikingly beautiful. There is an almost physical pleasure to looking out across broad vistas; maybe something about the eye focusing out as far as it can. We did evolve on the savanna, and probably there was a security and comfort to being able to see long distances.

Anyway: pretty.

I finally rolled into the environs of the Grand Canyon just as the sun was setting.

All the hotels near the park were filled up, and ridiculously expensive anyway. I turned around and headed for the crossroads town about 20 miles back, but not before seeing elk. Elk!! I didn’t get a pic, since it was too dark for my little Cyber-Shot, but the sight of large mammals cheered me enormously.

There was plenty of room at the little Grand Canyon Inn in Valle. They even had low-cost singles in the “Motel,” which is apparently under the same management. All I wanted was a bed, so I went for it, and $49 sounded pretty good at that hour.

This is what $49 gets you at the Grand Canyon:

What you see is what I got – I mean, behind the door is a little toilet-shower and an ingenious combination of sink, dresser, and desk. And that’s it. The ubiquitous TV, of course, but that was just an annoying waste of a corner to me.

I was tired, and loopy from the high altitude, and I just wanted to crash. I dropped off my overnight bag and went back out to the car to get my laptop. Rather than close the door and have to unlock it again, I left the door open, and left the key in the room.

You can see where this is going. I said I was loopy.

Fortunately, I had opened a window rather than run the Eisenhower-era air-conditioner, so it was a relatively simple matter to slip the screen and climb back in. I set my laptop on the sinkdresserdesk and got my contact lens kit out so I could give my eyes a rest.

Now, atmospheric pressure is closely approximated by the hydrostatic pressure caused by the weight of air above a given point. As elevation increases there is less overlying atmospheric mass, so that pressure decreases with increasing elevation. The pressure in a closed container – say, a bottle of contact lens cleaning solution – remains constant.

You can see where this is going.

After I cleaned up the contact lens fluid off the keyboard of my MacBook, I noticed that the mouse-click wasn’t working anymore: it could only do “secondary-click” mode. Then, I noticed the keyboard itself wasn’t working.

Epic fail.

I quickly powered the laptop down and turned on the ancient nuclear-powered air conditioner to try and reduce the humidity in the room to absolute minimum. Then, I spent a fidgety night trying to sleep in the super-arid, high-altitude environment, reflecting on how much I distract myself with technology. I had had this big plan to live-blog the trip, using Jott on my phone, Blogger Mobile and Wi-Fi hot spots, all so I could keep the few friends who follow my blog – most of whom I’ve been in regular contact with anyway – up to date on my latest twists and turns.

Maybe it was time to cut myself off for a while. And what better place to do it than at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River?

I slept. Eventually. A little.

the trip so far

The sun comes up really early in Arizona.

Maybe it’s the whole Daylight Savings thing (Arizona doesn’t observe it). And maybe I’m just used to the sun coming up through coastal clouds. Whatever it was, I was up at about 5am after a tossy-turny night.

When I woke up, my computer was still spazzing, but I decided I had plenty of time to figure out what that meant for my job, so I packed up, checked out, and wrote some postcards over a light desert breakfast. It was still cool, but I could feel the heat of the day coming on. Even the waiter was like, “I try to tell these people how much water it takes to digest these big breakfasts, but they still want eggs, bacon, pancakes…” I bought a gallon jug of water and headed for the park entrance.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the crowds, even at 8:30 am: a week before July 4 at one of the great tourist attractions in America, if not the world. Why a dozen busloads of Koreans chose that morning to arrive at one of this country’s premier holes in the ground may forever be beyond my ken, however. I considered making for the North Rim, but that would take hours and get me there in the main heat of the day. I had nothing but running shoes, no water in a carryable size… and no real desire for an expedition, anyway. I just needed some peace and quiet. I headed to the trailhead on the South Rim furthest from bus parking: Grandview.

Once the aging frat boys got finished bellowing into the canyon (why do Americans always seem to do the most cringeworthy things just when foreigners are watching?) it actually got pretty tolerably calm. I hiked a couple thousand feet down and found a little cleared area that led to a cleft in the rock where I could sit and not see – or be seen by – anyone else. This was about as much solitude as it seemed I was likely to get.

I did some breathing meditation to quiet my mind and clear out the jangling energy of all those tourists. Once I settled, it was actually not all that distracting to hear the occasional snatch of conversation or sound of boots on the trail. The hugeness of the canyon tends to be a pretty effective sink for human disturbance.

I wondered for a bit about my constant need for distraction – with my computer and Blackberry safely packed away there was nowhere to go but inside, and I had some time to catch up with all the various dramatic changes of the past months. So many things had just come to a close, and the new phase of my life hadn’t even revealed itself in all its details. I was, literally, sitting in limbo, in open space.

Most of what passed through my mind under that rock is non-bloggable stuff. What I can say about the experience is that it represented the clean break that merely leaving San Diego did not achieve, with all the packing and rushing about. It felt very much that my entire life up to that point had brought me to that quiet place on the cliffside, and I hung out there for a few hours before moving on.

The car was warm and welcoming. Still with the music off, I headed back out on the open road. The deep quiet was refreshing, and the vistas of the Kaibab and Coconino forests uplifted me – there had apparently been a recent fire, and blackened trunks were intermixed with bright green saplings.

It’s incredibly clichè to say that change is the only constant, but the things that seem so simple and obvious are things we so often ignore.

Reset.

The Northern Arizona desert was more like the desert I had imagined: huge, flat, mostly featureless. And big. Did I say big? Yes. Hours of driving and you seem to be right where you were when you started.

The quintessentially American culture of the roadside attraction seems to flourish along the I-40/Route 66 corridor like nowhere else. It seems like a natural, if bizarre, evolutionary response to the presence of a road through the middle of a whole lot of not too much in particular. Largest-Ball-of-Twine type outposts seem to sprout like weird blossoms to attract travelers, like flowers draw bees. Instead of taking pollen, we leave money. Or so they hope.

The Meteor Crater drew me in; something about a huge rock hitting Arizona tickled a response in me. However, they had planted a huge multistory Meteor Crater Education Center on the crater’s rim, along with a $15 entrance fee. Given that the Grand Canyon is $25 for a week, I thought of this as – literally – highway robbery.

I got back on I-40 and rolled on for a while, just watching the billboards. I kept seeing signs for Winslow, and it rang sort of a faint bell. Winslow, what do I know about Winslow, Arizona? I racked my brain for Winslow history (and resisted the urge to Google it from my Blackberry) until a snatch of music floated up from, I think, my limbic brain: “Well I’m-a runnin’ down the road tryin to loosen mah load…”

I knew what I had to do.

The image of the Buddha standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona seemed sort of funny at the time. When I got to downtown Winslow, however, I discovered a “Standin’ on a Corner” Park, along with not one, not two, but three “Standin’ on a Corner” gift shops on the three corners of the intersection, with the “Standin’ on a Corner” statue occupying the fourth.

I got out of the car clutching the Amida Buddha in my hand. From a loudspeaker mounted on one of the shops came the sound of Glenn Frey singing “Take it Easy”from the Eagles’ first album.

I can only assume it played, on a constant loop, all day long.

I snapped a quick picture and fled.

I drove through an impressive storm and crossed the Navajo Nation, stopping briefly to buy my cheapest gas of the trip ($4.05 premium!). My mission was to reach Albuquerque by nightfall, so I poured on the speed.

As I neared the city, I decided I really wanted something more luxurious for the night. I wanted – oh, say it! – a Jacuzzi. And at that moment hove into view a sign for the Comfort Inn in West Mesa. Free Wireless! Hot Tub!

I floored it.

This is what I got in Albuquerque for $10 more than the Grand Canyon Motel:

I set the MacBook up on the desk (actually a separate piece of furniture at the Comfort Inn) and it worked like a champ.

Showered, put on clean clothes, ate, collapsed. End of a good day.

the trip so far

I slept in. It was wonderful. Allow me to sing the praises of the reasonably clean and halfway decent traveler’s motel. It is a boon to the soul and a balm to the spirit of the weary traveler.

As you can tell, I really liked the suite.

I rolled out of bed, f***ked around with my newly-working-again computer for a bit (e.g. watching Flickr Uploadr totally choke and die on the lousy Comfort Inn Wi-Fi) and went for a run before it got too hot. When I came back, I showered and took a dip in the Jacuzzi.

I mean, this place wasn’t like the Fairmont or anything… but when you’ve been on the road for a while it really feels great to pamper yourself. By the time I got back in my car again, I felt even better than I had before I left San Diego.

I loaded up on road food and headed out to the hills. New Mexico roads are fast, and gas is (relatively) cheap, so I ran pretty hard for a while. I had hoped to make Lubbock in a day’s drive, but I got a random text message from a friend in San Diego who wanted to know if I was trying to drive straight through to Austin. Almost eight hundred miles! What was he thinking?

I took it as a challenge.

Google Maps would have had me go straight down I-40 to Amarillo and then hang a south down I-35 all the way to Austin. But screw that. I decided to go the weird way, through Roswell and West Texas, so I took U.S. 285, an almost vacant stretch of glass-smooth four lane asphalt. After a couple hours cutting through eastern New Mexico at better than a hundred per, I came upon Roswell: a much bigger city than I had ever imagined. I mean, it’s pretty much the only city for many miles around, so it sort of has to be a regional center. It’s more than just UFO kitsch.

That, however, was all I was interested in.

There was one big “International UFO Museum And Research Center,” which was offputting not least for the fact that it charged admission, and a whole smattering of little kitschy shops. In short, basic roadside attraction culture, but packaged and sold as a commodity. Yahoo.

I got back to my previously scheduled reckless driving, and managed to fall off the route Google had carefully prepared for me:

I found “Continue to follow US-285″ to be kind of an ambiguous direction, given the state of southern New Mexico signage. As a result, I went the wrong direction at an incredibly high rate of speed before recognizing my mistake and speeding even faster back in the direction I had come. Fortunately, as it happened, the “rush hour” traffic was apparently in the other direction out U.S. 180, so I only had to pass three cars.

Finally, I crossed the Texas state line! I passed through the town of Pecos, which apparently had suffered a plague or a zombie attack as there were literally no people to be seen. I continued on the impressively well-maintained Texas stretch of 285, which apparently was fringed on all sides by small, slow moving black tumbleweeds.

I slowed experimentally to get a better look at one of them, and it appeared to be crawling. Now, I only had a couple espressos that morning, but I thought it possible that a bunch of hours of high-speed driving was making me see things.

So, I got out:

Big bugger – maybe four inches across. Apparently they just wander around in the summer time. It did seem like they were all going from right to left, but my understanding is that no one knows if it’s mating, or migration, or what. Why did the tarantulas cross the road? Because they’re a bunch of scary bad-ass arachnids, and they’ll cross the road wherever and whenever the hell they please! They were leaving a lot of spider-shaped splotches on the road, however…

The rest of the trip was a straight cannonball down I-10 and up 35 – Texas Troopers were everywhere, though, so I did the whole leg into Austin in the granny lane, moving with traffic, at a steady speed of 80 mph (the legal daytime limit). I pulled in to Round Rock at about 12:30, and woke my dear friends Raymond and Angela up a little while thereafter (Google Maps being a little crappy with the exit sign notation).

Halfway there!

the trip so far

The original plan was to be in Austin over the July 4 holiday, but my friends here had other plans. That, among many other similar missed connections, led me to the conclusion that there was to be no plan… that I’d pretty much make the thing up as I went along (with concessions, of course, to unavoidable realities like the laws of physics and the need to continue earning a living to pay for all the expensive gasoline I’m burning up).

I had been loosely thinking in terms of just spending a day here. However, I took the inspiration that led to my reckless driving of June 30 and ended up spending two days having a real vacation: eating, drinking, sleeping late and enjoying the company of cool people.

I am still kind of on Pacific time – is there such a thing as car lag? – and so it’s difficult for me to get to sleep at night. Add to that thirteen hours of driving at high speeds with windows down and/or music blasting and there was a distinct ringing in my ears on Monday night. I tried to settle down to sleep in yet another unfamiliar place, but kept being disturbed by these weird semidreams. I had one where I imagined I had written a whole screenplay about a music teacher at a school for autistic children who has a stroke and has to relearn how to play… but the only people who can teach him are – yes! – autistic children. If I could wave a wand and create all the things I imagine, well, I’d be rich. Or, you know, insane.

Anyway, I spent a big chunk of the first morning laying around, drinking espresso, catching up on blogging and drinking more espresso. When my friend Angela came home, I was able to catch her up on my life in the four or five years since I saw her last. Each friend brings a particular side of you out more strongly than others do, and I realized how much I missed Angie and Ray Ray and the Paul that I am with them.

Angela asked me what I wanted to eat, and I said “Tex-Mex,” thinking that this was the traditional regional cuisine of the strange land I now inhabited. Fortunately, she took me out for real Mex and margaritas at a place called Polvo’s. What they call “interior” Mexican here seems a little less intensely cheesetacular than the Mexican I’m used to in San Diego – Girlie says it’s more jalisqueño as opposed to the oaxaqueño and Baja food we had in Southern California.

We had a great time that night with some folks I had only known online before coming to Austin.* They took us to a great little wine bar called Vino Vino in the Hyde Park (um, I think) neighborhood. Girlie and the Mr. are people who enjoy exploring new restaurants in Austin and who have sufficiently developed palates (the Mr. attended a cooking school in Firenze) to appreciate what’s worth appreciating… and mercilessly, but humorously, slam what needs slamming. So I was unashamed about asking them for a recommendation.

We shared every small plate on the menu. Each of them was quite good, and the gravlax and pates were particularly rocking my world. The wines served were each excellent in their own way, though one was unforgettable for both its complexity and for the backstory: it’s made by Cistercian (I think!) nuns from Lazio, central Italy, under the supervision of the Umbrian vintner Paolo Bea. The wine is made from four grapes: Trebbiano, Verdicchio, Gracchetto and something else that I can’t remember but hopefully she or he can Malvasia. The wine is called Coenobium, and I am going to pursue it as Ahab pursued the white whale. Lucky Austonians can try it at Vino Vino, 4119 Guadalupe St. Austin, TX – (512) 465-9282

I asked about some authentic Texas barbecue, and today they delivered in spades: Smitty’s in Lockhart, a not-inconsiderable drive out of town, where they were so kind as to take me for lunch. This place is so authentic that they don’t use plates, just pieces of butcher paper to catch (some percentage of) the grease.

The meat was tender, and the flavor was of the smoked meat itself – no sweet sauce to bury the taste here. If you want vegetables… go somewhere else. However, if you are in the mood for something that looks like this:

…then Smitty’s is your place. 208 S. Commerce, Lockhart TX – (512) 398-9344.

I have been writing a while, and the one or two of you that have actually made it to this point have been reading a while. These posts are meant as road diaries, and I’ve gone heavy on the photographs for folks that didn’t want a writing assignment when they came to this blog.

This is certainly a once-in-a-lifetime trip for me. I wanted to catch as many of the memories as I could as soon as I could. I start my solitary wayfaring again tomorrow morning, with a run to New Orleans where I am thinking of spending the Fourth of July. I understand that’s coming up soon.

Austin was a wonderful break from the road. I have – obviously – been having fun on this trip, but the opportunity to enjoy a convivial pause with friends old and new has reminded me why I’m making this trip in the first place: to generate the inspiration to make a new start and build the life that I want, in all its particulars. And certainly, that will involve good friends, good conversation and good, good food.

Abbondanza.

* meeting them was oddly similar to meeting, like, celebrities that you’ve only seen in pictures. I’m going to follow blog etiquette and refer to them only by their online names, which kind of sucks as they go by “Mr. and Mrs. Pants (otherwise known as Girlie and Husbear)” on their blog. I mean, “Girlie” is kind of sassy, but having met him on a guy to guy level, I’m having a real hard time referring to her spouse as either “Husbear” or “Mr. Pants…” which is why I’m going with “the Mr.”

It’s kind of hard to believe that I have an actual crush on a whole city. But, I mean, come on: New Orleans has great music, great food, great architecture, and oh did I mention the music. Ev. Ry. Where. Even the bad stuff was pretty good. I ended up spending two days and nights in the city, and if I didn’t have time constraints I may well have spent a week or more. Or, quite possibly, just never left. It’s happened to others.

I did a straight run from Austin through Houston on I-10, fighting a couple of thunderstorms and Baton Rouge rush hour. It’s interesting how different states really do have their own highway cultures. New Mexico’s is just fast. Texans are surprisingly disciplined about using the passing lane for passing. And in Louisiana, the official road sport appears to be tailgating. At 80+. Bon temps roulez.

I hadn’t eaten anything since my Smitty’s feast for lunch the previous day. I really was still digesting, but also I wanted to save myself for the boudin at Poche’s, which came highly recommended by my coon-ass friend Angela as well as by Girlie and Mr. Whateverthefuck. I got to Breaux Bridge in a downpour and wandered around bayou back roads for a while before figuring out I had gotten off at the wrong exit. I got back on I-10… and was halfway through the Atchafalaya Swamp before figuring out it was in the other direction.

In the throes of a major blood sugar crash, I pulled into Poche’s, where most of the lunch stuff was already gone. The nice girl (or extremely tiny woman) behind the counter offered me crawfish etoufèe, fried crawfish or fried catfish.

I said “yes, please:”

Poche’s is at 3015 Main Hwy, Breaux Bridge, La. – 1 (800) 3-POCHES. You want to take exit 109 off I-10 and follow the signs.

I had no idea (since I am, you know, white, technically) that it was the weekend of the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. As a result, most of the city’s hotels downtown were packed full. Fortunately, they squeezed me in at the Quality Inn just a couple blocks off Canal Street, which was a great location though I hardly spent any time there. I spent the next two days out exploring and basically just developing a really serious infatuation with the Crescent City. I may begin stalking, or writing “Paul New Orleans” on my notebook. Smitten.

Girlie had mentioned the vieux carrè cocktail and I kept going from bar to bar trying to find someone who could make it. Finally, Girlie actually emailed me a link to a recipe, and I brought my BlackBerry into Jean Lafitte’s and said “this, please.” It’s another rye-bitters cocktail, but over ice. So it’s kind of a summer-night sazerac.

I love the Quarter but can’t really see myself living there. If I were to make my home in the city it would probably be in the Marigny neighborhood just to the north: a lot of the same awesome architecture, great people, and music music music. I saw Ellis Marsalis’s jazz quartet at the Snug Harbor in the Marigny and got myself a cup as a souvenir:

They were nice enough to fill the cup with ice and like seven different kinds of alcohol.

The Quarter is filled with all these fake-ass little voodoo shops and tacky occult parlors for the tourists. However, a little hole in the wall on a side street really pulled me in. I mean, take this as you will, but once I saw the place, I knew I was walking right in. I asked for a charm or amulet for my journey, and, of course, winded up wound up telling the Basic Abridged Version of my story. Mimi, who runs the shop, is a funny, tough-ass little witch who rides a Kawasaki ZR750, and we talked (well, really, she talked and I listened) animatedly for a while as I sipped my Big Gulp of liquor. She pulled out a bunch of talismans and I looked them over as she helped a gay couple pick out a charm for a friend. The way I feel about magic is like the way I feel about fate in general: I don’t even try to believe in it, I just allow it to work on my more primitive levels. The wisecracking witch totally connected with my inner mystic, and I just went with the feeling that I was where I needed to be, with who I needed to be with, getting done what needed to be done.. The talisman that really spoke to me was the Second Pentacle of Venus, “for obtaining grace and honor, and to accomplish all matters of the heart.”

So I got that going for me, which is nice. Esoterica is at 541 Rue Dumaine, New Orleans, La. – (504) 581-7711.

I went to the riverbank and watched fireworks with a brass band playing and everything. Americana. I ended up striking up a conversation with a schoolteacher who came to New Orleans after the storm to help at one of the new charter schools. She had a friend from Atlanta with her, so invited me along on their bar crawl as they waited for her boyfriend to finish work. They invited me back to their cute-ass little Marigny house, where I spent the night instead of my Quality Inn. I’d have walked back but they thought I’d get mugged or wake up without a kidney or something, and I deferred to the locals’ judgment in the matter.

I got dropped back at my hotel, packed quickly (since I never really unpacked), and took off. Nashville!

the trip so far

I was feeling the urge to get back on the road after I regained consciousness at my new friends’ house in Faubourg Marigny. As much as I didn’t want to leave New Orleans – and I didn’t – the idea of having to work the following Monday motivated me to start the last leg of my trip.

The question on my mind as I got back on I-10 was which way? The shortest route led through Atlanta and would take me through the heart of the Old South. However, I had relationship ghosts in that direction, and had also always been thinking about seeing Nashville. A moment’s thought was enough to resolve that question, and I headed North.

This was another one of those no-iPod meditative drives. I was feeling a lot of power at my back after the New Orleans visit, and I was enjoying speed again after a bunch of days going no faster than my feet could carry me. I talked to M, my good friend from Baltimore, who at that moment happened to be with a friend of her sister’s who was from Nashville. Of course, I made her ask him where to go for food. He pointed me in the direction of Swett’s soul food cafè, and that was all that needed to be decided. Nashville by dinner!

Of course, by the time I got into my last motel and showered enough to be presentable for dinner, Swett’s was closed. At 9pm on a Saturday night! I was gobsmacked… but decided I may as well just head for the tourist area and see what caught my eye. Broadway in Nashville is filled with neon and music, ordinarily right up my alley. However, I was only after food at this point – I was eating like a Stone Age hunter and I needed to bring something down – quick.

One block off Broadway, I saw this sign:

Good enough.

I parked (illegally, it turned out) and went in for the kill. A half-pound bison burger looked just right. It came, reasonably quickly, and I did my best Girlie-imitation, thus:

(The flash washed everything out, but you get the idea.)

The burger was a bit dry, but that was probably my own fault for ordering a half-pound of bison meat medium-well. The twice-baked potatoes were surprisingly good, with big chunks of real bacon and nice garlic-chive spicing… however, the “pasta salad” was a bit of a letdown. True, macaroni elbows are, technically, pasta – but it struck me as sort of typical of the bistro-ification of bar food that seems to be going on more and more. I mean, why not just call a mac salad a mac salad?

All in all, though the food was pretty good, especially when washed down with a Yuengling Lager – I was close enough to Pennsylvania, apparently, to enjoy this regional specialty. I had gotten a bit spoiled due to the quality of the mostly pre-screened restaurants I had patronized since Austin. Totally worth a visit when you’re done – what do they call it? – honky-tonkin’, I believe. Past Perfect, 122 3rd Avenue South, Nashville, Tenn. – (615) 736-7727.

Google said I was 12 hours from Baltimore. Time for another Cannonball? I had to sleep on it, as a night on a recliner in New Orleans had done nothing for my mental abilities…

the trip so far