Greet­ings blog read­ers. I’m now back in my home­town of Ithaca, New York, after a 1,710 mile road trip. I drove from Austin to Ithaca in 2 days. I drove about 12 hours on Mon­day, and about 15 on Tues­day, due to a big traf­fic jam in Ken­tucky. My favorite detail is that I drove 854 miles on Mon­day, and 856 on Tues­day, com­pletely ran­domly. I guess 20 miles out­side of Nashville is the halfway point. I had a pretty good time all together. I’m a big fan of road trips. I’ve done alot of them by now. Here’s a list of the ones I can remember:

1) Ithaca to Col­orado: I’ve done this at least 5 or 6 times. My Brother used to live in Ft. Collins, and I drove to visit him alot.
2) Ithaca to Cal­i­for­nia: I’ve done this twice, once to LA and once to San Fran­cisco, always with Col­orado as a stop­ping point.
3) Ithaca to Florida to Col­orado: My first road trip, done with my Brother.
4) Austin to Col­orado: Done this one twice right after I moved to Austin. Only 1000 miles, so barely qual­i­fies.
5) Austin to Ithaca: I think I’ve done this 6 or 7 times now. I’m start­ing to mem­o­rize the route.

Wow, that’s a lot of dri­ving. Some of these I’ve done alone, some with peo­ple. I must say, I’m get­ting really good at it. I can run off 700–800 miles a day no sweat. More than that, I start to get a lit­tle punchy. I think the most I’ve ever done in a day is 1130 miles, due to not being able to find a hotel with any space. I’ve also got­ten over 1,000 a few times, but it’s tricky. You have to start early and not stop for any sit down meals.

I left Austin at 12pm on Mon­day with a cooler con­tain­ing 5 sand­wiches, 12 string cheeses, 20 cans of soda, 5 pears, and a box of fig new­tons. I didn’t have to buy food at all until Tues­day night, when the temp­ta­tion of Wendy’s was too much. But the main rea­son I wan
ted to write about my road trip was all the really cool things you see on a cross-country drive. It’s a really great way to get to know dif­fer­ent cor­ners of Amer­ica, and I think every­one should do one or two of these in their lives. I kept a piece of paper next to me, and jot­ted down things I saw that were cool. So here’s my list of inter­est­ing stuff:

A restu­rant in Waco called “The Train Wreck”. I really don’t think I’d eat there. Would you?

A bill­board for a belt buckle store, with the cap­tion “World Cham­pion Buckle maker!” So does that mean there’s a Belt Buckle world cham­pi­onship? Where does that hap­pen? I won­der if I can get tick­ets for that! Does that mean there are spe­cial Belt Buckle mod­els? The ques­tions are endless.

In Texarkana (on the Texas-Arkansas bor­der, imag­ine that) There’s an Army-Navy sur­plus store off the high­way with a fighter jet on it’s front lawn. Won­der how much that costs?

This place.

And this thing.

A car with a bumper sticker that sim­ply said “I play Clarinet!”

This orange dinosaur

A bill­board pro­mot­ing a town that said “Med­ical emer­gency? Expe­ri­ence Wadley!” yes. Come enjoy our fine emegency room and trauma cen­ter. If you were think­ing about hav­ing a seri­ous acci­dent, go right ahead! You’re in good hands! I believe this was in Ten­nessee, or maybe Kentucky.

A small mobile home dealer with a new Corvette in the park­ing lot.

A resturant/store called “Grandpa’s Cheese­barn”. I think I need to stop there on the way back.

2 road­kill Coyotes.

And my favorite. If you lis­ten to NPR, you’ve prob­a­bly heard the story of the Ivory Billed Wood­pecker. They look like this:

A very large wood­pecker, to be sure. Any­hoo, thought to be extinct, sev­eral bird spe­cial­ists just saw one in a swamp in Arkansas. The first one spot­ted in some­thing like 40 or 50 years. My favorite part of this story is that one of the guys said “I’ve now seen an Ivory Bill. I can die happy.” I think he needs to set some higher goals, but that’s just me. Any­way, the town this hap­pened near is appear­ently called Brind­ley, Arkansas, and they had a huge sign on the inter­state say­ing “Wel­come to Brind­ley, home of the Ivory billed wood­pecker!” I think they’re get­ting awfully excited for some­thing seen only once in the last 50 years, don’t you? From the size of the sign, you’d think there were swarms of Ivory bills fly­ing all over. But I didn’t see one swarm, or even one Woodpecker.

Over­all, a really nice drive. I’ll write more in a few days about being in Ithaca.