So I fin­ished my time in Ithaca, spent one night in New York City with my friend Helene, and then hit the road back to Austin, where I have now arrived. My trip back was nice for the most part. For some rea­son, I got into state line sign pho­tos on the way. I missed some states, but for the most part, I took all of these on the road while dri­ving. So, with­out futher ado, here’s my state line photo montage:

So there’s my signs. I know I missed a few, but some­times it was dark, or rain­ing, or I didn’t have the cam­era ready. So, to New Jer­sey, Mary­land, and Ohio, I’m sorry. It doesn’t mean I love you less (except for New Jer­sey) and I’m sure I’ll be back again.

So there were a few excit­ing things that hap­pened. I was at a rest stop in Ten­nessee stretch­ing my legs, when I saw some­thing mov­ing down by my foot. Imag­ine my sur­prise when I saw a giant prey­ing man­tis about to attack my foot! Once I jumped 4 feet in the air and my heart stopped pound­ing like crazy, I decided the lit­tle bas­tard needed his pic­ture taken. So here he is:

He was really evil, and kept chas­ing my cam­era as I tried to take his photo. He actu­ally almost grabbed my cam­era once. Scary. I spent the night in a hotel right near Nashville, again. As I went to sleep I was watch­ing CNN to see what was hap­pen­ing with the Hur­ri­cane. At this point, it was over on the coast, and as I drifted off I heard the announcer say “the remain­der of the hur­ri­cane is now posi­tioned over mid­dle Tennessee.”

“Oh” I thought “This could be inter­est­ing.” as I fell asleep.

But it wasn’t a big deal. As I woke up, it was rain­ing and windy, but noth­ing too bad. The rain was going side­ways, but it was pretty light. And I had to drive in it for a few hours, but that was it. And con­sid­er­ing what hap­pened down south, I’m cer­tainly lucky. I did drive through a tor­nado once, and that was pretty scary. It was sum­mer of 1996, and I was dri­ving to go stay with my brother in Col­orado. I was dri­ving through Nebraska. The first thing I saw was some amaz­ing clouds. I pulled over to look for a while, and then I noticed “hey, those clouds are get­ting kinda intense. I bet­ter get going.” So I hit the road, and then noticed all the trucks were going super fast, and the wind was blow­ing my Honda all over the road. I also saw two semis almost get blown together. Ok, this was get­ting a lit­tle scary. So I decided to turn on the radio, and the first thing I heard was some announcer say­ing “We have reports of Tor­na­dos touch­ing down right now in down­town Ogal­lala. Get you­self some­where safe, right now!! We’re going off the air to get to safety!!” I had no idea where that was or where I was, but that name looked famil­iar. And I had just seen that movie Twister, and those things were freakin’ scary. Shit!

So I floored it. And I was ok. I later fig­ured out that I had missed a few small Tor­na­dos by about 10 min­utes, and one of them had crossed the interstate.

So back to my cur­rent trip. Tues­day was my last day on the road, and I decided to treat myself to Cracker Bar­rel for a last day treat. For those of you who haven’t been to Cracker Bar­rel, boygee­howdy, it’s the best break­fast ever. I ate it so fast, my waiter actu­ally went “woah!” So as I’m sit­ting there eat­ing my break­fast, I remem­bered I might be able to make it to Mem­phis to catch the Gib­son gui­tar fac­tory tour, which I had looked up online the night before. The last tour was at 2pm. But it was about 215 miles, and I had 3 hours. So I floored it. Went 90 for most of the time. I took a quick wrong turn, and finally found the place, and went run­ning in at 2:05. The lady said she tour had already started, and she couldn’t let me in. I begged and begged, but no dice. Even after I told her I drove from New York and was dri­ving to Texas. AND I COULD SEE THE BEGINNING OF THE TOUR 20 FEET AWAY!!! Damnit! I did check out the cool Cus­tom shop, and the lobby was pretty neat:

So since I couldn’t do the tour, I did walk down a block, and spend some time on Beale Street. Some seri­ous music his­tory, and you can feel it. It is some­what like other famous his­tor­i­cal places that have been com­mer­i­cal­ized, and you can see it going away. 6th street in Austin is a lit­tle like that, and the Alamo is really ter­ri­ble. There’s a run­ning joke I’ve heard that goes “Do you think that if Davy Crock­ett had known what they were going to do to the Alamo, he would of just said “fuck it?” I mean, there’s a star­bucks across the street! And you can see it on Beale street as well. There’s some kind of Giant sports arena directly behind things that kind of loomed over every­thing. But I still liked it. I wan­dered into the Mem­phis Hard Rock, and saw the Gib­son gui­tar Elvis played in the ’68 come­back spe­cial. Not bad. I’ll need to get back to Mem­phis some­time and do Beale Street at night. Maybe I could even get a gig there sometime.

Any­way, I’m back home. It’s good to be here. My heart goes out to the whole city of New Orleans, and all the other cities dev­asted by Kat­rina. I’m glad to report my two friends who live there are accounted for, although the state of their homes is unknown. Count your bless­ings, everyone.

David