July 9th, 10th & 11th 2001

A three day journal entry this time... not a whole lot going on thus far.

Woke up with Jon and Diana this morning.... saw them for a while before they had to headed off to work. John had left a stack of about a 1/2 dozen burned CDs sitting on my suitcase... all sorts of live U2 and another group called Government Mule. Song lists included. I wish this rental car had a CD player... or at least a tape player.

OH! The new car. Well, there's a reason I didn't take any pictures of it... it's a Chevy Metro LSI. A WHITE Chevy Metro LSI. It sucks. Worse than Hoover. At least Hoover could move. This poor car sounds like it's going to explode when you get it past 65mph. At least it has a radio. And a trunk we can actually use. :P

Today we plan on driving to Knoxville, Tennessee... then making the rest of the trip to Alie's grandparents tomorrow. They live east of Memphis out in the country and it's too much to drive all in one day. North Carolina and Tennessee are loooong states.

I already feel weird not having a functioning camera to take photos... although there's nothing much of interest on the road as we drive along... it sort of makes keeping the journal a completely different experience.... no longer is it so much a show and tell. It's more of just a tell now. Again, a change in the stream that has to be contended with and made the best of.

Anyways... I let Alie do the driving for a while so I can finish getting caught up on everything. The next time I get net access I should be able to get everything up to date. It'll be a good feeling. My head feels clearer now.

We take I-40/85 out of Durham and follow it back west to Burlington, Greensboro and Winston/Salem. Traffic is fast but pretty heavy... Alie is a little put off by it but fares all right. We plan on staying on I-40 after it splits from 85 and take it straight to Knoxville. It sounds like there's a few things to see and do there, so it won't be a boring stop on the way to the grandparents.

In Knoxville...

The drive to Knoxville is pretty boring until you get closer to the Smokey Mountains. I've decided that one of these days I'll have to return and get a closer look at them. As their name implies, the mountains are indeed rather "smokey" as we approach. I don't know if it's the climate or what, but a dull haze hangs over the range as we approach. Well, haze isn't a good word. Low lying clouds that look like plumes of smoke hanging heavily in the air enshroud the mountains. Really quite pretty.

Once we cross the Smokeys we end up in Tennessee proper. One thing I notice as we drive along is that hotels and motels in Tennessee are DIRT CHEAP compared to the rest of the country we've seen. We're talking like $20 a night or so. Crazy.

Knoxville is a weird little city. It's built around the University of Tennessee. It reminds me a bit of Auburn University... but there's actually a fairly large and built up downtown area. The UT stadium is immense. We're talking huge... it puts the FSU stadium to shame(you know, the Temple of Testoserone in Tallahassee). We cruise through the city, checking out the campus, take a few pictures. Our goal is to find this restaraunt called Calhoun's which is supposed to have some killer ribs, again, according to the guidebook.

I should take a moment to expound upon the 2 most useful implements we've used on this crazy journey across the country. The first the map, a Rand McNally Road Atlas of the United States, Deluxe Edition. This thing has been indispensable. Along with my laptop bag, this was the one thing that I made it a point of to take out of the car everything I stopped so it wouldn't get stolen. We'd have been up the creek sans paddle without it. The second is a book called Lonely Planet, The United States. This is like the ultimate road trip guide. It gives break downs of all the states, including things to do in the different cities, places to eat, sights to see, cheap places to stay. It's an ideal book for people backpacking across the country and wanting to do it on the cheap. This is what I keep referring to as "the guidebook".

We find the restaraunt without too much trouble... it's hidden behind a row of trees on the river that runs through the center of the city. The ribs, their specialty, are awesome. They give you these huge bibs to wear with a great big pig on them. Rather cute. We have a waitress get a picture of us chowing down. Talking to her, I get my first earful of a true southern accent for the first time in a few years. I've been to Florida, yes, but the south ends at the Florida/Georgia border. I guess it must begin somewhere up here. ;)

After dinner we realize that, really, there's nothing to do or see in Knoxville of interest to us. It's decided to turn in early that night and get a good night's sleep so we can take off early the next morning.

The 10th...

We leave Knoxville fairly early in the morning... around 9:30 or so. Leaving the city involves us going back through its downtown area again. It looks the same in the morning as it did yesterday afternoon. Alie comments on how it looks pretty dingy and used up... an old rust belt town or something.

We pass through Chatanooga but don't stop... this was probably a mistake. Chatanooga would have been an infinitely more interesting city to have checked out than Knoxville. Maybe we should like actually read the guidebook we have a little before we're ready to pass through a city.

Heh... reminds me of the trip up the east coast with Greg. "We're going through Washington DC!? Well, we can stop for a few hours..."

We make good time through the Tennessee countryside. Most of it is unremarkable... so I don't feel too bad not having the camera. We pass through some mountainous countryside, but compared to being lost in northern New Mexico the scenery pales in comparison. After a time it largely flattens out into farmland, and we find ourselves more or less out in the middle of nowhere. The closest city of any size is Columbia, Tennessee... and it's relatively small too. Nasheville is 2-3 hours away, Memphis further.

We arrive in Lawrenceburg around 2:30pm. We made pretty decent time on the state highways.

My initial impression of the town is that's it's incredibly tiny... Alie takes us through part of the town on the way to her grandparents house. We drive by like 3 little stores, 2 of them gas stations and a school.

Alie's grandparents are waiting for us... and are pleasantly surprised we made it in as early as we did. Their names are Guy and Marie, he's a retired forester, and she's a banker. I guess they were next door neighbors when they met in another little town nearby.

As is normal for grandparents everywhere, they began throwing food at us. Lots and lots of good ole southern biscuit and meat cooking. They look at me funny when I drink my tea unsweetened and called Coke "pop". I guess I've been yankified or something. ;)

Alie's grandfather seems to take to me pretty quickly... he starts inviting me to go and do "guy things", like sitting and watching TV while the "women" clean up after dinner. Alie wasn't too amused.

After lunch we take a trip over to Davy Crockett State Park and go for a walk down by a small river that passes through it. It's a nicely kept park, lots of camping facilities, etc. The rangers even had satellite and DirecTV dishes.

After the park it's back to their house for dinner. I was originally planning on losing weight over the course of this trip, but that doesn't seem like it's going to be the case... whenever we stay with relatives they load us up with killer home cooking. I'm gonna be doing sit ups and whatnot for a while to work all this stuff off. ;)

After dinner we sit around and talk. Talking to Alie's grandfather is interesting... the pace of the conversation is slow and meandering, a farmer's speaking style. He grew up on a farm and and has quite a few friends who work the land. Talking to him brings back memories of conversations I'd had with farmers up in northeastern Iowa, their ability to go along one tangent and pick up another thread from that tangent and move along to another.

The evening is spent going through all the pictures from the trip stored on my iBook. I hook it up to the grandparent's VCR and put the display out to the TV. Then we have a bit of an impromptu high tech slide show. Of course, it's about as interesting as a slide show normally is... so...

I hurry through it so everyone can turn in. Plus I'm tired of narrating. And tired in general.

The 11th...

Egads. Well, just let me write and tell you that I'm doing all right. About a half dozen of you wrote worrying about my mental condition. I'm not going crazy and I'm not depressed or anything. Like I said, I think it was just a combination of things eating at me. It's amazing what a couple good nights of sleep and writing everything down that's on your mind will do. I've been told by some real writers I know (who, unlike me, are actually able to produce finished stuff. ;) that they write for therapy. I can see how it works.

So anyways...

Today is the day when Alie's family from down in Florida will arrive; this being her mother, Julia, her father, Steve, and her sister Dominique (or "Dee", as I've always called her). Our visit with her grandparents coincides nicely with her parents coming up... we've talked to Dee prior to this and she's decided to ride down with us to New Orleans and from there back to Pensacola.

The last time I saw Dee was my trip down to Florida over spring break. Before that it'd been a few years since I'd seen her. Back when I was in highschool and college she was this little skinny thing me and my friends would torment relentlessly when we came over to visit. Then in between then and that spring break she'd grown into a mini-amazon.

The morning is spent puttering around with Guy and Marie. Guy takes me down to this little convenience store he goes to nearly every morning. Marie tells me he goes down there to talk to some friends of his and get the local gossip. We drive down there in his monstrous 1979 pickup truck. It sounds like a diesel but looking at the gas gauge shows that it's a normal unleaded gas engine. He brings a bag of tomatoes with him that he's picked from his rather impressive garden in his back yard. I guess he sells these to the girl that mans the store.

We arrive there, he sells her the bag and buys me and him a pop with the money. We sit down and he introduces me as his future son-in-law to two friends of his, rather prominent farmers in the area, he tells me later. He's such a kidder.

We hang out there for about an hour... and the three of them engage in "farmer conversation", discussing things like the weather and the crops in that slow measured prose, designed to take up time. It's interesting to take in, and so I sit there and listen to them meander from topic to topic, then back again. Of course, I really have no idea how I could enter into the conversation either, having absolutely no point of reference to be able to angle in with and contribute.

After a time they head out and me and Guy sit there and chat for a bit longer before we head home. The rest of the morning and early afternoon is spent awaiting the McGee clan's arrival. Oh yes, and we have a large lunch

They arrive around 3:30, having had to fight traffic and weather on the drive up from Pensacola. Dee has grown so tall that she can look me in the eyes. I'm gonna have to keep an eye on her, she could hurt me now, probably. ;)

Steve and Julia look good. I spend an hour or so talking to her and catching up on stuff. Back when I was in school I'd come over to visit Alie and end up sitting in the McGee's living room yakking at her mom for an hour or so before Alie would wander in and grump about me liking her mom more than her.

We have a huge dinner, and the McGee's all catch up on stuff. I hang around as inconspicuously as possible, joining in and leaving conversations as they ebb and flow. Soon it's time to sleep.

Tommorrow we venture into The Big Easy.