A-Typical male's journal.

Today was the worst--or best travel day. But more on that later.

I remember watching Cosmos, many years ago, and Carl Sagan was talking about two hypothetical alien races. Races which had different environmental needs, and so they travel throughout the galaxy, never meeting, but their 'empires' overlap and enmesh. We already have something like that today.

There are two kinds of ways to travel by road. There are the roads city people use, and the roads country people use.

City people roads are interstates and four lane highways. Bypasses and expressways. The purpose of these roads is to get quickly from one place to another. And those 'places' are cities. Metropolises, not country towns. Except for local character, these cities have all the same stuff. There are plenty of McDonalds, Mariotts and Malls. Your cellular phone certainly works there, and there's an airport nearby. You never go far without hearing a radio station, and there's always plenty of choice to tune in "your" music. No worries if you car breaks down, or if you need to stop. There will be something, somewhere.

That's how we drove to Mountain Home. We picked up Intestate 40 in Hickory, NC, and drove it all the way to Jackson, TN. The we got off on four lane highway, and drove through the boot of Missouri, on our way to Arkansas. The roads were pretty boring, but we were able to tune in Christmas songs, and listen (and sing along) most of the way. Not until after we crossed the Mississippi did the stations start fading away. Then we were again on country roads.

There's no way to get to Mountain Home without going on country roads. It's not near anything. The closest city is Springfield--and it's two hours away.

When we finally lost decent radio stations, and had listened to "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" for the umpteenth time, Azura cut the radio off, and asked me to read. That woke me up a bit (it was after midnight by this time), and I read. Azura liked it's style. I must have read over forty pages, before Azura got too tired to watch the road and listen to philosophy.

We pulled over in Missouri somewhere, and got out of the car. We cut off our lights, and looked up into the sky. In Charlotte, in the city, you can't see that many stars. We were able to see the Milky Way, stretched out above us. My eyes strained to see the small pinpricks of light, which were there, and then not there, they were so faint. Those stars you can never see, in the city.

I drifted in and out of sleep, as the car went violently around curves. Azura was too tired to drive smoothly. I was too tired to complain. She told me, "We're almost there." I shook my head and looked out the front window. We went around a curve and up over a hill. As we rounded the crest, Mountain Home appeared below us, appearing out of nowhere, like you only see in the movies.

It took us fourteen hours straight to reach Mountain Home, Arkansas. We were exhausted, and barely pulled ourselves into bed. It was 3am local time, but felt like 4am to us. And we knew Azura's little sister would wake us up early Christmas Morning.

We took country roads home. Unlike City Roads, country roads have places to go along the way. They twist and bend from county seat to small bedroom communities. You are lucky to see a Burger King or McDonalds. The only thing here that big cities have are gas stations. Most of those are still brands like Texaco and Exxon, but there's also Bob's Three Way Corner Store. Most of the places to eat have "Ma", "Country" or "Griddle" in the name. As a city person travelling through these roads, I wondered, what brings people out here? What do they do? Why are they here?

I'm sure part of it is the farming that's so important, but I just can't get my head around it. What is it that calls folks out to these small country towns?

The other thing about country roads is that someone lives on these roads. They aren't really arteries for shipping goods from town to town. No, these are the way Bob and Sue Ellen get to their home. I remember roads like these from the small town I grew up in. That town, though, wasn't far from a city--it was only a few minutes travel to a mall, or a movie theatre.

Not that these small roads don't make it to big cities. They do. Highway 64 runs through Memphis. We took a side trip, then headed on our way. By the time we got out of Memphis proper, it was dark.

The next morning it had frosted, and frosted hard. There was easily an eighth of an inch of frost on the car when I first went out, but the sun was able to burn all or most of it off before we left. {one of the advantages of a dark car}. We gassed up the car, and headed out on our final trip.

The slightly mountainous terrain of southern Tennessee was like a fairyland, with the frost and sun. Everything was bright and shiny, and nice. I had read up to a complicated point in Zen last night, and I think it was too much for while we're driving. Azura asked me to read some of the science fiction we bought over the weekend. So I got out Tad Williams' Dragonbone Chair, and started to read. It was pretty good, and helped us pass the time. Part of my problem was an incessant cough and sore throat. Makes it hard to read out loud.

The frost cleared as we neared the North Carolina border, and Chattanooga, TN. Chattanooga seemed like it was going to be a big town from our map, but it felt like a small town, while we were in it. Just a small town with more square miles than your typical one, I guess.

Then we made it to the real mountains. The frost we'd seen all morning was replaced by snow, and icicles hanging from the mountains and trees, and thankfully, not on the roads. We drove through the mountains to Murphy, NC. In Murphy, we had a choice, go north on 74, and go to Asheville, and then south again to Charlotte, or go pretty much due east on 64, which picked up 74 again, in Hendersonville, on the other side of the mountains. We chose 64 for the same basic reason that we chose it before. Of course, in a town called "Murphy" you have to make a mistake. We made two. First we went north on 74, then we turned around to pick up 64 again. Those were our mistakes.

Now, travelling 64 wasn't a bad mistake, just one that was time-consuming. It was also awe-inspiring, so, for that, it was worth it. After we passed Murphy on 64, we saw a sign, warning trucks of curvy roads for the next 41 miles. Then we saw a sign promising us a gorge on our right for the next 7 miles!

So we drove along this narrow mountain road, made narrower by the snow on the bank next to us. We went 20 mph around most curves, and since it was mostly curves, we went slowly through it. It was beautiful. With the snow on the trees, and the river running next to us we saw some wonderful scenery. We made promises to return--but not until summer, or perhaps during our honeymoon in May. Highland, NC is a beautiful town.

Overall, it was 100 miles through the mountains--and it took us three hours to traverse it. We made one more wrong turn, taking us ten miles out of the way, but overall, it was an interesting trip.

We stopped in Hendersonville and ate, and walked Dickens. Of us all, he enjoyed this trip the least. From Hendersonville to Charlotte we were back on interstates and four lane roads. We pulled into the apartment complex at 9:15pm, 12 hours from when we left Lawrenceburg, TN that morning. I called my Dad, Azura called her grandparents, we checked our mail and email, and unloaded the bare necessities from the car. Then we slept.

Can you blame us?

Generic Joe's A Typical Male