Bonjour Quebec

Hey everybody,

Up until now the weather gods had smiled upon me, but they decided to take their vengeance as I made my way up the coast of New England.  It's not so much the rain but the thick, soupy fog that made it impossible at times to see anything 100 feet in front of you.  I left Boston heading straight to Cape Cod, the curly-shaped peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic from the southeasternmost part of Massachusetts, hoping to catch some amazing views of the ocean on the drive up.  I could barely see past the beach.  I'm pretty sure there was water out there somewhere.  Somewhere.  I heard a splash when I threw a rock.  I wanted some kind of experience where I felt like I was at the end of the world.  When I traveled through Portugal back in 2003, I went to Cabo Sao Vicente which is the westernmost point in continental Europe.  From there you really felt like you were on the precipice of an endless ocean.  From a foggy Cape Cod, not so much.  On the plus side, the drive itself was really enjoyable since there are a bunch of small, picturesque villages on the way, ending at the tip of the cape in Provincetown (P-town to the locals).  It's obvious from the get-go that P-town is a finely-tuned tourism machine, with a 10-block main street lined with craft shops, bars, and restaurants, and a large portion of that tourism seems to be targeted toward a specific segment of the population.  The "Provincetown Bears" are not a football team. Cock and Bull Leather Shop... hey now.  I'm sure "Seamen's Bank" is legit, but after a while you just start looking for it.

From Cape Cod I made my way back up the coast into New Hampshire where I spent the night in Portsmouth, which is also a really nice coastal town, and then through into Maine.  I stopped in Portland for a lobster roll then proceeded directly to Mount Desert Island where I spent the night camping in Acadia National Park.  This was the best national park I've come across since Joshua Tree.  There is a fantasic loop road which takes you all around the island ending up at the top of Cadillac Mountain with 360 degree views across the ocean and back inland.  I knew this was as far northeast as I was going to go so the plan was to wade into the ocean... until I got my feet in and immediately lost all sensation.  It was colder than Linda Mar in December, and that's saying something.  Bar Harbor, Maine, about as far as I'm going to be from home, is where I've gotten my only California license plate shout-out thus far.

After traveling across the center of Maine and into Vermont, I can tell you that the northeastern part of the U.S. is the most beautiful part of the country I've seen since leaving the southwest.  The terrain is completely different of course, consisting of farms, trees and hills, but it's been the most pleasant driving scenery I've had in a long time.  There are loads of campgrounds and inns, and I'm lucky that I caught it on shoulder season between skiing and summer because I'm guessing from the number of places to say that this area blows up during tourist seasons.

On a personal note I was incredibly disappointed to find out that the town of Spurbury, Vermont does not exist.  There are about a hundred something-burys, but no Spurbury.  If you're a fan of the movie Super Troopers, then this may come as a crushing blow (it was filmed in upstate New York).  Nevertheless, I was determined to perform an honorary Vermont maple syrup chug, so I traveled to Morse maple farm in the capital Montpelier, which even though it's not a "bury" is good enough.  And there I pounded a pint of maple syrup.  Look, I'm not going to lie to you, sometimes you just need to come up with stupid shit to do in order to amuse yourself.  Witness the glory:

http://youtu.be/ZPBteQg2D8Q

I thought that was a thing people did in Vermont, sort of like their version of cow-tipping, but if you google "Vermont maple syrup chug" you get surprisingly few results.  You may be thinking that was really stupid, and in retrospect I agree with you more than you know.  I sampled four different types of maple syrup, ranging from light to dark, before settling on the lightest "Vermont Fancy" as the most easily chuggable type.  Maple syrup fun fact: there are 1600 calories in a pint of maple syrup.  It wasn't so much the caloric intake that bothered me though; the syrup went down surprisingly easily.  The problem started occurring about an hour or so later when this strange burning sensation started occurring in my stomach which lasted about 6 hours.  Then I got what I can only describe as "maple sweats" where my whole body started sweating for no particular reason.  On top of that I started feeling kind of stoned and woozy.  That's probably why, when I went on a tour of the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory, I kept asking people "Where do you keep the monkeys?"  Yeah, that was weird.

Some of you may have also noticed that my travels across the U.S. have turned into a sort of microbrewery tour and you'd not be mistaken.  In Vermont I traveled to Alchemist brewery where they only brew one beer, Heady Topper, a thick, unfiltered IPA which scored 100 points from Beer Advocate.  They let you take your own tour of the brewery, which basically means just walking in there and checking it out.  When I bought a four-pack the woman told me to make sure I keep it chilled.  If by chilled you mean five weeks in a rubbermaid container in my car then no problem.  I also visited Magic Hat brewery where they brew that kind of gnarly apricot-flavored #9 beer but is also the first time I've found an Imperial Pilsner.  And then it was on to Canada.

This is what the border guard looked like.  Except more angry.

So I don't know if it's the aggressive beard (that's for you Josh) or what, but the border crossing did not turn out to be a routine affair.  First off, I made the (I think understandable) mistake of driving past the initial stop sign at the border crossing.  I sort of found myself in no-man's land, nobody was in the booth, I was sort of just waiting there thinking about what the hell I should do next, when a border patrol guy who looked like a younger, angrier, French-Canadian version of Louis C.K. came out and said "What are you doing?"
Me:  I'm waiting... not sure what's going on.
YAFCLCK:  Didn't you see the stop sign?
Me:  Yes, but there was nobody...
YAFCLCK walks back to the stop sign, TAKES IT OUT OF ITS POST AND CARRIES IT OVER TO ME.
YAFCLCK:  What does this say?
Me:  Uh... stop.  (This is when I kind of laughed because it was so ridiculous.  He didn't like that.)
YAFCLCK:  Ok, you can read.  Now drive back to the sign.
So he made me go back to the original spot of the sign and stop my car.  Then he got in his booth and waited for about 15 seconds and waved me forward.  As I'm sure you can guess by now, he did not like any of the answers that I gave to his questions about why I was crossing into Canada.  He then waved me over into the car bay where I waited for another 10 minutes until he and his partner were free to pillage my car, which is what they did for the next half hour.  They went in and took everything out, and I mean everything.  I had nothing to hide so I wasn't nervous, but I was getting annoyed and actually a bit concerned.  I mean, in this situation, I have no power whatsever.  YAFCLCK could find any technical excuse not to let me in the country.  And he was trying.  I started thinking things like "What if it's illegal to bring granola bars into Canada?"  He kept asking me the same questions over and over again but in different ways.  They opened every bag in my car, leafed through all my books, and went as far as to look through all the pictures I had on my camera.  Finally, he has me follow him back inside, hands me my passport and says, "Have a nice trip."

I'll be honest, that soured me a little bit.  During the search I was a bit detached from the whole thing but after I had a chance to reflect I got more and more pissed off.  I was pretty lathered up when I got into Montreal, but after settling in and walking around for a bit I managed to chill out.  I really like this city.  It is easily walkable, culturally diverse, historically interesting, and completely engaging.  I spent most of my first day walking along the waterfront in Old Montreal just hanging out at the park and people-watching.  After a few hours of that I headed back to my hostel to chill out for the night and that's when I started hearing the banging of pots and pans coming from a few hundred yards away.  The receptionist at the front told me that those were the protesters that gathered at a park half a block from the hostel and had been doing so every night for the last two months.  She also said that last week they had marched up our street and the police had fired tear gas driving some of them into the hostel.  That was it... I heard "tear gas" and I knew I had to check that out.

Ok, a little background on the protests, and admittedly I only know superficially what's going on.  The way they started is that the government of Quebec decided to hike up student tuitions by a large amount, so the students began protesting.  As a result, the government of Quebec decreed a "Special Law" that said any gathering larger than 50 people needed permission and to clear their route through the government.  This is when the shit hit the fan.  The protests have now grown to symbolize something beyond student tuition, namely resistance to government oppression of free speech.   I followed the protesters in a giant loop around Montreal for about two hours and I can say that it was one of the most spectacular displays of civil disobedience I've ever witnessed in person.  It wasn't just about the protesters themselves, but I'd say about 95% of the onlookers and bystanders were completely supportive, clapping their hands, joining the chants, and banging on pots and pans with wooden spoons.  It was a fantastic display of solidarity, from children to elderly people, and it happens every night!  It was electric.  And, to be honest, it was better than any walking tour of Montreal.  Plus, with the beard I have going I probably got my picture in some newspaper as an anarchist provocateur.  And then I wonder why I get stopped at borders.  So here is some video goodness from my night as a Montreal protester:

http://youtu.be/rzvZ2A75tVo

Well how do you follow that up?  I had another day in Montreal that I just spent roaming around, mostly in the Parc Mont Royal in the center of town.  If you climb all the way to the center of the park you get these spectacular summit views of the entire city, which I hope you will enjoy in the pictures.  I then wandered down to the east side of the park where I found a Brazilian drum circle and some kind of crazy Sunday park rave with a DJ.  It was a lot of fun, just sitting in some park listening to crazy music and watching people walk by.  Montreal is vibrant... there is a little bit of everything for everybody, from highbrow to hippie.  The only other destination I had left was the Dieu du Ciel pub, which had been recommended to me by a guy I met at a microbrewery in Bar Harbor, Maine, who told me that the best beer he had in his life is at Dieu du Ciel.  That is no recommendation to take lightly.  I sampled quite a few of their beers, and while I don't know if I can say they make the best beer in the world, I won't deny it either.  They had a peppercorn ale and an ESB that were out of this world.  They had a simple menu and served all their food on blocks of wood.  It was exactly the type of place I'd run if I opened a brewpub; I had a memorable evening there.  I've had my ups and downs on this trip so far, mostly because the nature of driving around on your own tends to be a solitary experience, so it was refreshing to come to Montreal and be reminded that you can find other travelers to chat with in hostels and bars and there are all sorts of fun things going on if you wind up in the right place.  And when in doubt I ask myself WWJD... What Would Jeremy Do?  The answer is either a) start up a conversation with the closest person, b) do something completely random in the next 15 seconds, or c) head to the closest bar.  That usually solves the problem, or results in conditions like "maple sweats."  By the way, WWJD is valid for both DuPont and Gilmore.  There must be something about being a Jeremy from Denver.

So now it's on to Kingston to hang out with Rich and Cari... which means a week of hanging out and drinking lagers with two of my favorite people.  Rich made sure to instruct me on how to find Prestige in Montreal before I left.  Things are good.  I want to wish everyone the best.  Be good to each other.  Here are the pics:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hBnRJFqEpQMFiMvz6

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Now Entering New England

Hey everybody,

If you like beer porn then there's probably no better place to go than the Dogfish Head brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware during craft beer week.  It's not their main brewery but it's the brewpub/restaurant where Dogfish Head originated and it still maintains a brewhouse for what they serve on tap.  Their beer menu consisted of about 10 of their normal brews and another 15 seasonal or experimental brews available only this particular week.  I sampled about 10 different beers which varied from jalapeno-flavored ales to ginger IPAs to one that tasted like a pine cone mixed with Fernet and cough syrup.  After the first few sips of that one the bartender must've seen the look on my face because she said, "Yeah, I think that's pretty much the worst beer we've ever made."  You know what would've been nice?  If you'd mentioned that before I ordered it.

It's funny how each region has its own ubiquitous (for them) local vacation spot, which is where I think Rehoboth Beach falls in the spectrum of coast-side towns.  It's a summer destination for people from all over the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia area.  It has one of those kind of old school salt-water taffy boardwalk-type places feel to it where you can picture a bunch of families taking their kids for a week or two.
I took the ferry from Lewes to Cape May in southern New Jersey, driving for a bit along the ocean until I arrived in Atlantic City.  My two driving observations of New Jersey is that everyone drives at least 15 MPH over the speed limit at all times and are annoyed when you do not and that the NJ turnpike is the biggest ripoff road in the continental U.S.  Why is there a toll plaza every 10 miles?  Anyway, Atlantic City itself is more or less what you might expect, a scaled-down Las Vegas strip of huge casinos directly on the beach boardwalk.  Souvenir and t-shirt shops abound, and the size of the casinos themselves makes walking distances deceptive.  That may explain the proliferation of pushcarts, basically a guy pushing a cart with two or three people in it along the boardwalk, presumably to get them from one buffet to another.  One thing I've also noticed the last few times I've been to casinos is the increase in numbers of Asian gaming areas.  Casinos are usually ahead of the curve when it comes to figuring out where their bread is buttered... they'll probably be the only U.S. industry that's in the black when our Chinese soon-to-be overlords finally take charge.

My biggest hesitation, actually fear really, in coming to Jersey was that I would surely encounter my life's nemesis:  the Guido.  For many Italians, the Guido is the embodiment of all that is unholy in this world.  Their origins are shrouded in mystery but my theory is that it's sort of like what Saruman from Lord of the Rings said about how the Orcs were made.  "They were Elves [or Italians] once. Taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life."  I was concerned when I continued north toward Hoboken that I would somehow cross their spawning grounds but that was not the case.  I stayed with Hugo the Juice in North Bergen and when we went out that evening to the beer garden or at any of the sports bars where we watched the Devils-Rangers game we were unmolested.  We did notice, however, that we were the only guys in all of Hoboken who are not on steroids or HGH.

While in the north New Jersey area I took a trip to Ellis Island in order to visit the immigration museum.  The interior of most of the buildings where immigrants coming into the United States were processed have been maintained in their original form, so it was striking to look at the old photographs and then picture how people were moved through the various stages of the immigration process.  The main reason I went is because my great-grandpa came through Ellis Island in 1924 in order to work in the U.S... I'm not sure if that was when he worked on the Brooklyn bridge or whether that was on another trip.  There is a very cool immigrant database where I was able to find a digital copy of the ship's manifest that showed my great-grandpa on the lists, which was a little bit of an emotional moment for yours truly.

I drove out to northwest New York the next day to stay with Amy and her family and I have to recommend the drive if any of you have the opportunity.  The Finger Lakes area is quite beautiful, especially if you enjoy driving through picturesque small towns.  I really enjoyed being hosted at the home of the "most spoiled girl in the world" but I have to admit that my highlight came when Brian handed me a cooler full of venison steaks on my way out the next morning.  Oh, baby.  I spent the next night in Providence, Rhode Island, mostly to say that I've been to Providence, Rhode Island and from there proceeded to Boston.

The first and only time I've been to Boston was on the tail end of a business trip back in 2002 with the one-and-only E-man.  I had asked my buddy Murph (a Boston native) what I should see when in Boston and he told me to drive up the interstate to Peabody and go to this place called The Golden Banana.  So one night after work the E-man and I took the rental car to Peabody to visit The Golden Banana which as I'm sure you can imagine is a "gentlemen's club."  And, as I'm sure you can imagine, when a "gentlemen's club" is right off the interstate it is not one of the highest quality.  It might have been a Tuesday night and there might have been three other patrons in the entire place and one guy might have been asleep/passed out/dead.  Anyhow, we ended up strategically seated on the end of the catwalk where the pole was located for optimal viewing.  After one of the strippers had done her thing she came over, the E-man handed her a few dollars and said to her, "You are very professional."  Maybe you need to understand that the E-man is a 5'4", 110 pound Chinese guy with coke bottle glasses and a very thick accent to understand why this moment was unforgettably awesome for me and very confusing for the stripper.

Anyhow, this trip to Boston unfortunately did not involve any golden bananas.  I stayed with Chris and Sarah who are possibly the two best people ever and whom I miss dearly because they laugh at all my jokes.  Chris just finished law school and his graduation is coming up next week, so this weekend involved a softball tournament and a pub crawl with soon-to-be lawyers.  Chris and Sarah have been living in Boston for 7 years and they have the tour guide thing down, so I got to hear a surprising amount of historical detail about events that occurred in downtown Boston leading up to the revolutionary war.  We tooled around various neighborhoods, visited Fenway Park, and caught a hip-hop show featuring F. Stokes (http://www.fdotstokes.com/).  It was a great weekend and Boston is a great town... it has a little bit of everything and it's easily walkable.  And, of course, the company was fantastic.

http://youtu.be/DA4TxHf1ZTc

Next I'm headed up the coast then making a left turn toward Canada.  Hope everybody's going great, and here come the pictures...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/JUbrwShiw8FjK3g88

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Goodbye Confederacy

Hey everybody,

This is racist

This is badass

I was driving along a scenic two-lane road in rural central Georgia, zooming by ranches and farms, when from a distance on the right side of the road I saw a really tall flagpole with a humongous Confederate flag waving in the wind.  As I got closer there was a sign that said "Sons of Confederate Veterans now recruiting" with a phone number.  In Charleston in front of the central market there was a sign on a building commemorating the Daughters of the Confederacy.  Almost every market or general store I went into across the south had some sort of Confederate flag paraphenalia... license plate frames, hats, t-shirts, pendants, etc.  Before I go any further, I'd like to make sure we undersand each other.  The Confederate flag was the symbol of the short-lived (less than 4 years) Confederate States of America.  One of the primary causes of secession, if not THE primary cause, was the desire for the Confederate States to protect the institution of slavery.  In the constitution of the Confederate States of America there are several articles which not only define but protect the ownership of slaves across state lines and for future states which may enter the Confederacy.  That flag symbolizes a union that was largely formed based on something ugly, shameful and immoral, and I think I'm being kind.  So if you are a racist and/or an advocate of slavery then well done, you selected the right symbol to represent you, asshole.  On the other hand if you support Southern pride, or freedom, or states' rights, or just want to be a "rebel," all of which are cool, then can you come up with something else?  Look at all the other sweet flags and slogans that are around.  At first I was going to suggest the Gadsden "Don't Tread on Me" flag but then I found out that the Tea Party idiots took that one.  Think about New Hampshire for inspiration... their state motto is "Live Free or Die!"  Or how about something along the lines of the California state flag... it's got a bear on it!  Or maybe design something with an eagle, because as everyone knows an eagle screeches freedom.  If you want further inspiration how about the Welsh flag?  It has a FREAKIN' DRAGON!  Now that is unquestionably badass.  So please, use your creative rebel powers to find another symbol.  The Confederate flag is racist.  Thank you.

Not being a native of the United States, Mark asked me if I could somehow include a map of the places I've  hit so far, so here you go buddy:

View Where the f*** is Dave? in a larger map

I have to admit that it was a huge relief to finally arrive on the east coast and I couldn't have asked for a prettier destination than Savannah.  When I got there it was in the midst of some kind of tropical rainstorm which revealed Savannah's Achilles heel... drainage.  The city center is laid out in a grid with dozens of small parks intersecting the main streets.  There are many cobblestone streets and there is liberal use of wrought iron on the well-preserved older buildings.  It reminded me a lot of London except hotter and with less kebabs.  I think I would use the word "haunting" in a brochure description of Savannah, and I mean that in the best possible way.

After a pleasant walking tour I continued east about 15 miles because I wanted to see the ocean and complete the coast-to-coast experience.  I ended up spending the night on Tybee Island because it's a cool little beach town and because I could smell the sea.  I found a cheap hotel with an old Indian man at the desk who immediately started telling me about how he's 82 years old and has never been to the doctor and never had health insurance because he adheres to some strict diet with no meat, no coffee, no alcohol (this all sounds terrible), raw vegetables, very little water, and a litany of other rules.  He had me trapped for at least 10 minutes, like some kind of religious zealot.  Then he goes to the back room and returns with a photocopy of an article about him in a local Savannah paper talking about his diet and regimen.  I thanked him for the article and he said, "That'll be 25 cents for the photocopy."

From there it was north to Charleston in South Carolina, another really pretty town.  Charleston has a lot fewer parks than Savannah and a lot more shops.  You get the idea it takes some money to live in the center of this town.  It's easily walkable, it has a really nice waterfront, and one of the best craft beer shops I've seen since leaving SF at The Charleston Beer Exchange.  Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, is in the Charleston harbor and accessible by ferry but I didn't have time for it.  At the center of town is the city market which back in the day used to be the slave market but now is filled with small shops selling all manner of trinkets.  Personally, I would've burned that shit down and started over but I wasn't in charge of Reconstruction.  I also have to say that Charleston has by far the best looking women I've seen in the South.

The next day it was up the coast and through Myrtle Beach, a 15-mile long strip mall on the water consisting of fireworks stores, beachware and souvenir stores, miniature golf courses, and the most hotels I've seen outside of Vegas.  It's low season which means it's almost sadly empty, but I can only imagine the sweaty, claustrophobic mess that this place becomes in the middle of summer.  Legions of mouth breathers descending on this short strip of land, playing miniature golf in 110-degree heat wearing $5.99 or less tie-dyed "Booty Inspector" souvenir shirts and blowing up M-80s.  The mere thought of it chills me to the bone.

North Carolina was next on the agenda where the plan was to take the ferry to the islands on the Cape Hatteras national seashore.  The Cape Hatteras lighthouse is 12 stories high so I was really looking forward to climbing up and having a view of the island chain and the Atlantic.  After a 2-hour drive to the Cedar Island ferry I come to find out that the ferry to Ocracoke was running ok, but once you got to Ocracoke Island you'd be stuck.  The ferry between Ocracoke and Hatteras wouldn't be running for at least two days because of low tides.  So I had to drive all the way around and up north, skip the national seashore and take the bridge directly to Nags Head and north to Kill Devil Hills, the site of the Wright Brothers' inaugural flight.  The upshot of that is that I didn't end up driving through Rodanthe, which would've violated my personal vow to never again come into contact with anything having to do with Nicholas Sparks.  My consolation was a softshell crab BLT in Nags Head, which was fantastic.  The Wright Brothers' memorial was very cool, don't get me wrong, but that sandwich... man.  Anyhow, the field where the Wright Bros conducted their first four flights has been preserved along with markers showing the distance of each flight.  I really like it when you get to see the actual location of a momentous event in person rather than some sort of museum abstraction, it's much more powerful that way.  The Wright Bros were mechanical genius bachelors from Dayton, Ohio who still lived with their mom and sister, which probably more than anything explains why they fled to Kitty Hawk for two years to conduct their flight experiments.

That night I stayed at the KOA in Virginia Beach which I would recommend avoiding.  Nothing against the place itself, but it happens to be a couple of miles from a naval air base.  There's nothing like the "sound of freedom" waking you up at 5:30 in the morning.  Also, they charged $40 for a tent site, which is twice as much as everywhere else, and when I expressed my surprise the girl said "Well this is Virginia Beach" like we were in Cannes during the film festival or something.

FDR and his mansion

From there it was directly to DC, or Alexandria to be precise, to spend the evening with FDR (Fuckin' Dave Ryan) whom I hadn't seen in three or four years.  Our initial text conversation went something like this:
FDR:  Do you want to go see the Avett Bros concert tonight?
Me:  I don't know who they are.
FDR:  They're kind of like Mumford and Sons.
Me:  That's not helping me.  At all.
We did end up going to see the Avett Bros show and they were great.  Kind of a soulful alt-country hard to describe band but definitely worth listening to.  And they have a rabid cult following, especially at George Mason university.  You know, the kind where someone is bragging about having seen them 60 times and have you heard this one song that used to be called something else but they just changed the title and you may not know that but I know that because I've seen them 60 times.  This is an actual conversation that we heard.

Then it was on to Washington DC.  I've never been to DC and I was really looking forward to it but I've got to be honest... as soon as I arrived I just got a weird vibe.  I was driving around the city and all the buildings seemed thick and oppressive to me.  I don't know how to describe it other than to say you know how sometimes you get to a place and you instantly like it and can't necessarily put your finger on why?  Well this was the opposite... I don't feel like I'm friends with Washington DC.  There's some sort of dissonance between me and this city.  Still, I wanted to see the sites so I spent the first day walking all around the White House, Capitol, and all the various memorials spread through the center of town.  I knew the Vietnam veterans' memorial would be touching and in fact it was.  There were many people there searching for specific names on the wall, taking pictures, and even tracing the names with pencil.  It was cool to stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and picture Martin Luther King giving a speech.  Personally, the memorial I found the most moving was the FDR memorial (not Dave Ryan, FDR the president).  It's not so much that it was beautiful in any way, but the quotes that were scattered around the memorial really resonated with me.  For my money, in spite of several brutal mistakes (such as Japanese internment), he was still the greatest president.

Mae happened to be in town for a family event so we met up at a club where her sister was playing in a cover band.  It's really nice to be able to catch up with friends and break up the solitude of the road trip.  After the show I drove through the center of town to see all the buildings by night, which are actually quite striking.  Sometimes you don't really get the chance to know a city unless you spend some alone time with it, and that is usually best done by night.  I was driving by the Smithsonian when I heard "I Only Have Eyes for You" being played over a loudspeaker.  I had to stop because that is one of the all-time great songs.  It turns out that they were projecting a series of intertwined short film clips featuring different versions of that song onto the outer wall of one of the Smithsonian buildings.  There were a bunch of people sitting on the lawn watching the film and relaxing.  I sat down as well and just relaxed and enjoyed it.  It was a really nice moment, one of those times where you're glad to be exactly where you are.  I think that's when I made my peace with DC.

Sunday was very chill... I went to the Air and Space Museum, snuck into two movies then had a couple of beers.  I know that doesn't sound like the most exciting way to spend your birthday, but my real gift to myself is coming Monday.  Monday is the first day of Craft Beer Week.  Monday I'm driving to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  Rehoboth Beach is the home of Dogfish Head Brewing company.  I'll let you figure out the rest for yourself.

Well, I hope you're all happy, healthy and well.  Without further ado, here are the pictures:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/nB8QiNDpnvmjH4dG8

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Civil War, Civil Rights, and Delta Blues

Hey everybody,

Well, I've driven almost from coast to coast and so far my goal of not turning on my air conditioning during the entire trip has been a sweaty success thus far.  The United States is a big place, and the road trip has always been one of its great romantic journeys.  Now that I've seen a good chunk of it, I have to say that there are huge swaths of this country that are boring as shit.   I mean, mind-numbingly boring.  The driving itself is usually the highlight as long as the scenery is nice, but man, sometimes you get to a place, look at its "attractions" and "historical sites" and wonder who really gives a crap about this?  Most of the bigger cities have some character in their downtown areas but are surrounded by endless concrete sprawl packed with chain stores and fast food restaurants.  Ok... this probably isn't making you want to read any further.  The U.S. is great!  Best country in the world! USA! USA!

When I last left you I was entering Arkansas... The Natural State.  Supposedly, it's the only state that would be self-sustaining if you closed its borders.  One thing's for sure, if you like trees then you'll love Arkansas.  It was so nice to finally see some green after the bleak desolation of Route 66.

I stayed in Little Rock for a couple of days hosted by Aly and Jay who I hadn't seen in about five years but were kind enough to let me use their washer and dryer, though that may have been more out of self-preservation on their part.  Aly's an Arkansas native but moved back to Little Rock just under a year ago with Jay, who's originally from Cleveland.  She said she's getting used to the environment again, especially the first two questions women are typically asked:  What church do you go to and how many kids do you have.  Jay... is still adjusting.  He is very thankful for their 62-inch TV.  Also, thanks buddy for that travel music CD you gave me... it rocks.

I visited the Central High School national historic site as my first bit of tourism in Little Rock.  In 1957, this was the first southern high school to defy the Brown vs. Board of Education decision regarding the integration of schools.  There's a good picture in my album with text that captures the sequence of events.  The Little Rock Nine became national news and this was one of the more significant milestones in the fight for desegregation.  After that it was on to the Clinton Library, which was like stepping into a time warp back into the 1990s.  There's a lot from his presidency that I either don't remember or I just wasn't paying attention.  I'm sure it will be shocking news that the exhibits and timelines were fairly pro-Clinton.  There were a couple of brief, apologetic mentions of an "incident" and impeachment, but you're not going to find a navy blue dress behind a glass case.

From Little Rock it was on to Memphis, which is known for music and for barbecue so there was no way I wasn't going to like it.  Of course I went to Graceland first, my impression of which is that I think we should all be grateful that Elvis dedicated himself to music rather than interior decorating.  If you threw a grenade in a thrift shop and then tried to cover up the damage with shag carpeting, that's more or less what it would look like.  You're welcome for saving you $32.  Now... Sun Studios, that is definitely a place to visit.  First of all, it's the place where the first known recording of distorded electric guitar occurred in 1951 after an amp fell off a truck and they kept the speaker cone in place by stuffing newspaper into it.  It's where Elvis Presley recorded his first record, not to mention legends Howling Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and where U2 recorded Rattle and Hum.  The recording studio is still active.  Someday...

Beale Street is where the magic happens at night.  It's kind of a Bourbon Street light, and by light I mean smaller and cleaner and with about 57% less drunk people.  The live blues is, I dunno... spectacular?  These guys could piss on an instrument and it would sound fantastic.  There's a band in almost every bar and one that plays outside in a park.  I don't usually go to bars alone, but I spent a couple nights hanging out for three or four hours listening to some great jams.  One night I couldn't see the stage because I got stuck sitting behind Chris Webber.  The next night I got in a conversation with a guy who asked me if I'd been harrassed in my travels because I look ethnically ambiguous.

My highlight in Memphis, by far, was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel.  I usually have about a 90 minute timer with museums before I'm over it, but I spent about 5 hours over the course of two days here.  It's a remarkable place.  It traces the history of the struggle for civil rights from the early days of slavery to the modern day in a way that is detailed and engaging.  There are so many evocative images on display but the one that always, always gets to me is the photos of the striking Memphis sanitation workers wearing the signs that say simply "I Am a Man."  That just tears me up every time.  The good news is that the narrative of oppression and injustice is always the same.  They can be overcome, it's a question of time and determination.  There's still a lot of room for improvement but when you look at the fact that 50 years ago we needed a Voting Rights Act... things have come a long way.

After Memphis it was on to Clarksdale, Mississippi:  home of the delta blues.  There's a pretty good Delta Blues museum there that highlights many of the old-school blues artists and whose whole rear section is pretty much a shrine to Muddy Waters.  That night I was at a blues club near the museum minding my own business when I was approached by a Japanese guy who said he saw me at Sun Studios and on Beale street and now here so he felt like he had to introduce himself.  Hideki (from Japan) was traveling with his girlfriend Beth Ann (from North Carolina) and decided that we had to meet since we had seen each other so many times.  I tried to picture what it was like from his end seeing me pop up in random places like some bald, bearded Where's Waldo.  It was open mic night at the Ground Zero Blues Club and he brought his guitar and would really like it if I hung out to listen to him play a couple of original songs.  There aren't too many sure things in life, but I can say with some certainty that this was the first time that a Japanese guy played original, acoustic J-Pop at an open mic in Clarksdale, Mississippi.  He sort of blew people's minds.  Here's a recording of some random blues plus Hideki as the big finish:  http://youtu.be/ZVGAmR8b16w



From there it was on to Vicksburg where the Union layed siege to the city for over two months in order to clear the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River.  I drove through the military park which was more a graveyard than anything.  There were hundreds of memorials to the fallen, all of which were organized by state.  Then I spent the night in Jackson, an urban sprawl-ridden city inexplicably featured in a Johnny Cash song.  I had my first Jerry Springer moment here in the back parking lot of a Motel 6 where I walked in on a family quarrel... some toothless woman was yelling at a guy with tattoos all over his face about sleeping with a whore when he has a woman at home, then he says that she's not a whore and he turns to me and says it's ok that's his mom, then she starts yelling at me that he's having babies left and right.  Oh please, please let my car start.

On to Alabama where the first stop was Selma.  There isn't a ton to see in this small town but it was cool to cross over the Edmund Pettus bridge and take the same route on Hwy 80 to Montgomery as Martin Luther King.  There are highway markers on the side of the road commemorating where the marchers camped out each night but of course the one thing I'll always remember about this drive is seeing Wallace's Sports Bar and Grill along the same road.  I don't know if this is coincidental or what but... come on.  Once you get to Montgomery you can see almost all the historically significant sites within a couple of city blocks of each other:  The Civil Rights Memorial, the Alabama State capitol (which also served as the first capitol of the Confederacy), the Dexter Avenue Baptist church from where the bus boycott was organized, and the white house of the Confederacy.  And yes, it's weird that so much Confederate and Civil Rights history is so close but that's the south I guess.

I'll always remember Montgomery though as the first place in all of my travels where I escaped my motel.  Yeah, okay, maybe I shouldn't have chosen the motel under the freeway.  Or maybe the signal should've been the rock thrown through the sign, or the busted air conditioners, or the wrecked up cars in the parking lot, or the guy out on the balconies grilling up his dinner on a hibachi.  Then I got into the room and it had a deadbolt plus a chain and a sign on the door that said "Door chain is provided for your safety.  Put it on before opening door."  But I'm a stubborn man... I had already paid, I figured it was just for one night, plus it had HBO.  Then when I got back from picking up dinner a woman intercepted me on the stairway and started insistently waving at me to come upstairs to talk to her.  I mean... she really wanted me to come upstairs.  I asked her what for and she just kept on waving.  So I politely declined, got in my room, packed up my shit, and got the hell out of there.

Then it was on through to Georgia, from Columbus to Macon.  The drive was pleasant but the cities themselves were unremarkable.  Macon was holding the Georgia state fair whose highlights were carnival rides, pig races and fried snickers bars.

So... the south.  It's a lot more green and foresty than I expected.  People are generally friendly, it's hot, and tamales are surprisingly popular.  The radio stations play a lot of Jesus, a lot of country, some rock, and an unusual amount of Phil Collins.  It's almost impossible to travel through the south without thinking about race.  You pretty much get smacked in the face with civil rights history, though in all fairness I went looking for it.  I can't really make any fair observations about it after only a week or so of traveling.  It's pretty easy to make fun of the south considering its history.  It is weird to see people driving around with Confederate flags on their cars, or on their clothes, or around their necks, never mind that it's still on Mississippi's state flag.  I always wonder if you're black and live in the south how it feels when you see that stuff.  To be fair, though, we're still a pretty racially divided country overall and you can see it in the south or if you look around in San Francisco or Chicago or New York.  There's still a ways to go pretty much everywhere.

Anyhow, I'm off to Savannah today which has been billed as the Paris of the south.  I've been to the Paris of Siberia and the Paris of France so now I can complete the loop.  A warning to anybody who sends me text messages... I keep my phone off most of the time and when I turn it on I sometimes only get partial texts or none at all so if I'm not responding it's that.  Or I don't feel like talking to you.  Here are the pictures...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NzwbT7GCJKWNQ99n7

Take 'er easy,
Dave