I decided to just cut and paste this onto the end of “craps” because it’s really the same story.  I just got interrupted by . . .  something before I posted the last part, and I haven’t bothered to start typing again until I hit Chicago.

I’m still rolling my tongue over my teeth trying to get the excess salt from the garish interpretation of a ( Read more... )

I'm at an internet cafe with the charming name of Uncle Elizabeth's in Seattle at the moment, grease from some kind of hot, italian-esque sandwich on my fingers and keyboard.  I learned in Austin -- which is the second or third most educated town in the country (in per capita college degrees) -- that Seattle was the the first smartest.  I can ( Read more... )

Telling me it has to be done at four in the morning is a good way to reduce my enthusiasm for just about anything.

I'm not the camping-est guy in the world and long drives are about as much fun for me as bone bruises (which is to say, kind of fun when they involve people other than me) so when my dad informed me that we'd be embarking on a 7- ( Read more... )

I left off on the train to San Antonio, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm up in Austin now, hoping to see first hand why this city is so mythically "cool". Thus far, I've observed little difference in the ambient temperature as compared with the rest of inland Texas.

Anyway, I got off the train in San Antonio at 3 A.M., give or take. It ( Read more... )

Bourbon Street is even seedier than I remember it. More strip clubs, I think. A stink of desperation hangs in the air, under the usual reek of alcohol-based vomit and urine ( Read more... )

Where was I? Oh, right, North Carolina. The trip there was uneventful, although my arrival had its hiccups: my friend Val, whom I had previously known only via this glorious interweb of ours (Hi, Val!) booked me a reservation in what she would’ve sworn was the Red Roof Inn in Raleigh, but turned out not to be. I went to the Red Roof Inn however ( Read more... )

I've been in the Lone Star State for over a week. At least I think that's right -- my sense of time has become increasingly compromised since I left home. Partly, it's because of the trains, in which I tend to slide into a travel-trance where the hours and miles slip by without my tattered brains connecting them with anything, least of all ( Read more... )

The good news about trains: The seats are slightly larger and provide more leg room than in air travel. There are no seatbelts to worry about, as even the regulators know that they'd be nothing but a hollow gesture in a train accident. The numbers of people on them tend toward the lower end, so there's more often room to sprawl. There are no ( Read more... )

I feel warned ( Read more... )

From the thin, persisent miasma of my plan to travel the country by train that I might call the bluffs of all those people who said "you should drop by some time" (while knowing full well that the distances involved were so great that such an action could scarce be considered sane) is born the sparkling precipitate of an actual reservation!From ( Read more... )