Vagabender

We made it to New Orleans. Wednesday night we camped at David Crockett State Park south of Nashville, a place with lots of fireflies and no one else bold (or dumb) enough trying to sleep without an air conditioner. The humidity was intense, but we made the most of it with a little fire and a few sips of Port Wine. We all went to bed early, but no one slept well.

Thursday it was on the road. We made it down to Bama, to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute -- a must see -- and got some help getting around a traffic jam from a friendly local gentleman. After that we drove hard on the 59 west. This is our only scheduled backtrack and we didn't take the scenic route, blowing down through the earthy lush corridors of Mississippi and into French-friendly Louisianna at top speeds. Four states in one day; just find a trucker who's balling it and get behind the mule.

Aunty Sheena comes through on the phone (I'd just left her a message before) and we've got a place to stay, so we visit for a moment, shower and head out to the quarter. It's around midnight and I'm in a crappy mood because I was in the zone and did a lot of driving and didn't take a nap, but we make it there and a beer and a slice of pizza bring me back around.

Bourbon street is kind of slow. There's action in the clubs, but at midnight on a thursday, there's not a lot happening in the streets. Just drunken northerners wandering aimlessly around packs of 6'6" rail-thin black transvestites and a few gruff barkers trying to hustle pudgy jocks with mardi-gras beads and giant fruit drinks into the strip clubs. It feels like the mother of all tourist traps, though that may have also been the $4 slice of pizza.

But we walk it because we have to walk it, and we cruise around to Molly's on Decateur, which seems to have some real people, and where $4 will get you an awfully large glass of Turkey. We park it there for a little while, shoot the shit, move into the back bar, which is actually in a courtyard, so no AC but much better music.

The way home was confusing. I wandered off to get a hot dog and we got separated, and then when we got back together there was some altercation arising from my inability to tell when Mark is joking and when he isn't. C'est la vie. Luke and I stay up until dawn talking about trade policy and whether or not to abolish or reform the corporation as a legal form. Another prime night.

Tonight will be cuisine and music, out on the town with Sheena.

We had a dream. The dream was to find moonshine, in America. And here it is.

At first we weren't sure what the score was with Nashville. On our way into the city center we saw approxomately one million police officers. Seems like a fightin' town. Downtown the music is always free though, and the BBQ is good, and the daughters of the south are present. And we met up with Travis and his friends Mark and Ben and Erica the half-sleeve tatted bartender on her way to North Carolina sent several rounds our way and the good times got to rolling.

I hung back with a couple glasses of water (because in spite of the website name one thing we don't do is drive drunk) and we made our way over the Cumberland river into East Nashville, which except for the 90% humidity feels a lot like Portland. Nashville Mark broke out this jar of rasberry shine, and in spite of the fact that it was his birthday he shared it with us.

They have a giant white German Shepard named Tulsa. Took the Toe a little getting used to, but Tulsa is the major buddy. He don' give a shit and loves everyone -- except people who come to the door in uniforms, of course. So we got all fired up, saw a little of the hood on foot, got giant glasses of whiskey and t-shirts from Niko, the major man at the Red Door East Saloon, came back, broke out the Texas Thunder Cannon, had a good ol' time.

Now we're feeling the second-day effects of the rasberry shine, copying music switching between great concert DVDs and the Supreme Court hullabaloo, waiting on a pizza.

Here's a photo I call Rummy on the John:

We stayed at Daddy Dean's last night. It was a dry out day; just hung out and ate chineese and watched The Magnificent Seven, which is about a much different idea of what Texas was. Luke is playing some guitar. Mark wrote some postcards. I wrote a couple good things (about racy racy stuff, I assure you) that will be posted soon.

Tonight we're out with Travis Collinsworth; brother to Kevin, who was one of the many fine people I met through MFA. Should be a good time.

Texas is where the West and the South meet. At this point, the Southwest (which is where you think this would happen) is it's own animal. The desert metros are booming, and the highway signs advertising real estate tell you on the way into Las Vegas, "Welcome to the New Southwest." But the spirits of the West and the South (and throw in Mexico if you want to keep it real) have deep roots in the Lone Star state. It's rugged individualism of the frontier coupled with the kind of cultural pride and rituals that spring from generations.

We came in on the national parks tip. Three words: Big Bend Basin. That's where you go, although the Guadeloupe Mountains were also quite picturesque and led to our first good run of audio. Luke posted some other stuff on this with more photos as well.

Our first stop in civilization was Austin, where I'd gotten us set to stay with my ETW alumni friend Julia Smith. Her and her roommates Zack and Andy were fantastically gracious. We arrived late, around midnight, but we hung out with Julia and Zack for a couple hours and I slept in absent Andy's bed.

The next day we hit up the Austin Museum of Art to see the Annie Libowitz exhibition, portraits of great American musicians. Then to the Green Mesquite for some delicious BBQ, and on for a swim at Barton Spring, a natural spring that's been turned into a pool by the city of Austin. It's cool all the time and doesn't need chlorine since the water springs pure from the earth and constantly washes on down.

Then it was back home to shower, get dressed and head out to see some live music. We'd picked The Weary Boys, always a hootin' hollerin' ho-down of a good time. It was a scant $5 and there was an amazingly graceful amazon cocktail waitress who'd parade the room dancing along and holding a tray of beverages above her head and the crowd. Future ex-wife #1 for the Kone Zone? Maybe, friend. May be.

In any event, I slapped my leg so many times I had a healthy bruise the next day, and we left happy and energized to meet Zack at another spot, then off to skinny dip at the elks lodge before finally returning home.

Big D
"Drink. Drive. Go To Jail? Another Government Lie," so sayeth the billboard with the power-suited woman lawyer outside Dallas. The highways are mad, huge soaring overpasses that must reach 75 or 100 feet into the air. The city center is all mirrors -- oil money booming the town out just as architects perfected that technique -- like a cluster of diamonds.

Paul and Jo's place is in a quiet exurb town called Farmer's Branch. The surrounding towns of Dallas are fully integrated into the larger metro area, but maintain their identity via huge water towers and individualized street signs. You know you've left Farmer's Branch and crossed into Addison when the signs go from red to blue and they get a different logo tacked on to the end.

When we got there the scene was set. Paul did us up right, with a bucket of Shiner Bock and Blonde on ice and three truly Texas-sized steaks ready to throw on the fire. By and by Scott and Nikki made it on over and we filled out the spread with some loaded baked potatoes, fresh-cut tomatoes, texas toast and a delicious (yet inexpensive) merlot. It was the finest meal we've had since hitting the road. That's one of the things that's so cool to stay with your friends parents.

"You can't win a race on cheap gas," he says, so we supped and heard stories from Paul's old days. He helps run the North Texas Food Bank, but as a kid he grew up overseas in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which is where he met Jo. At that time it was a pretty small community of Americans in that part of the world, mostly the children of a few businessmen and diplomats. I suppose it's mostly the same today, although the populations of both have probably grown.

We also got to hear some dirt on ol' Tommy boy. He was Luke's long-time roommate and fast friend at Reed, but somehow we had to go all the way to Texas to hear about his trip to Mexico. Interesting. That's what happens when you let your friends have dinner with your parents and your sister and you're not around, my man. ;)

In summation, it was a great evening. Paul had to get back to work feeding the hungry in the morning, so we all headed out to that Duke's place, which I mentioned before. Outside their house is a sort of cul-de-sac/roundabout with some grass, a couple trees and a bench in the middle, so we hung out there for a while, having a little guy time, working on a bottle of Rye, enjoying the warm night air. In truth the main thing that got us back in to bed was the thought of Paul waking up for work and seeing us degenerates still awake outside his house.

So we slept it off for a while, did our laundry, cleaned out the truck then went out for some TexMex, which is sort of the opposite end of the food spectrum from the Steak extravaganza, but unique and delicious in its own right. And then it was over to Scott and Rodger's for all the hilarity you may have heard.

In the morning it was time to blow. We collected ourselves, got some coffee and Kolatchies and then on the road through Oklahoma to Little Rock. After nearly a week we said so long to the Republic of Texas. So long, but see you again.

Thrill to the Texas potato cannon and some other good times. Contains damning evidence. Not suitable for all audiences.

Listen Now.

Here you'll hear Rodger, Scott, Brieann and us fellas. "Kick him. Tell him Texas is calling" is Rodger trying to wake up Tom back in Portland at 4am Central/2am Pacific (on a work night). The thunk is three eggs hurtling across Rodger and Scott's back yard. The rest is history.

Quick update; we're in Dallas making the most of Paul Wunderlich's extrordinary graciousness. I'm struck again and again by how lucky we are to know so many wonderful people.

Last night we went out with Nichole, Scott and Rodger to a local upscale-downscale hotspot -- Dukes "Original Roadhouse" (which seemed a little new to be all that original, but whatever), populated by America's winners. It was actually a pretty good scene. There were a gang of consultants in training playing a cup-flipping battle-of-the-sexes drinking game. We got hit by two guerilla marketing teams; one a Marlboro man giving out free zippos in return for a scan of your ID, the other a few kids being paid to go out and talk up the Texas Rangers. The baseball team, not the elite law enforcement unit. The Shiner Bock flowed and everyone was young and affluent, beautiful and laughing. We're having grand fun in Texas.

Today we re-orged the truck and declared total war on the stankiness that has infested it over the past month. This struggle is far from over, but we've struck another blow for freedom and justice, though the whole operation may have lowered the neighbors property values a bit. C'est la vie.

We'll be here in Big D another night, and then it's off to Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, and the Great Smokey Mountains. Always more to come.

We've been recording things. Stories, goofing off, music, etc. We're going to keep posting like this; it's like our own little internet radio show (or "podcast" for buzzword-compliance) and I think we like it.

This episode features our finest run-in with the law so far. All the way back in Eastern California we were running state roads through the Mojave desert. There were some pretty big brush fires and at one point we blew right by a ranger barricade. The rest is history.

Listen now.

We're packing up to head out of Tucson, saying goodbye to the swamp-cooled box of heaven we knew as Taelyn and Rachel's house.

The regemin of sun-avoidance spurred Mark on creatively, but left me only a few pounds heavier and a couple brain-cells short. Last night we did get out into the outskirts of town to take in a great combination desert thunderstorm and sunset. That was a treat from the natural world.

We'll have more soon. Luke is going to take a turn on the wheels of steel and I'm going to get serious about producing some audio. Maybe we'll get out another mass email when we hit Texas.

It's a rest day for us. You don't go out during the sunlight hours in Tucson unless you have to, and we don't have to. The truck is at John's and Mark and I have access to 4th of July leftovers, Taelyn's DVD collection, the swamp cooler, and enough cold beer to make it a real vacation day. Luke got lawyer lucky, should be home later.

Just another lazy afternoon in America. Tomorrow we may be on the move to Northern New Mexico by way of rental car. Today we rest.

Hoora! We've made it to Tucson and Taelyn and Rachel's. It's still the stinking desert heat, but the swamp cooler keeps their floor plenty cool.

We went out last night to the hip hotel where Taelyn's the cheif and they have $1 Pabsts and amazing hot dogs. Needless to say we closed the place out, mainly hanging on the patio in the heat of the night.

Choice quotes from a Tucson native buddy named Jericho, said to his girlfriend one night in bed after a night of boozin it up: Leave me alone, you baboon she-devil! Don't touch my wardrobe, I've got a job interview! I can't procreate with you; I'm a scientist!

It's been a good run. We spent another day and night in Moab, then ran down into the Navajo rez and Canyon de Chelly for a night, then a long driving day to get here.

More photos and stuff soon. We're having the Fourth here and then the truck is going to get a little love, so we'll be connected for a bit. May rent a car for a day and make the run up to Santa Fe. We'll see.