Thoughts From The Road

Here are a few observations I've made on the trip to North Carolina, as well as a few from other recent long solo trips:

• Ruby Tuesday's salad bar is by far the healthiest and tastiest quick meal to be found reliably along interstates throughout the South.

• Washer fluid is probably your second-most important fluid after gasoline for winter driving.

• AM radio gets progressively worse as you approach the Appalachians. I didn't even bother trying the FM dial.

• The Appalachians are beautiful, however, even the parts visible from the interstate. I can only assume they're even better elsewhere.

• Ron Paul has apparently cornered the "people willing to wave signs from overpasses" demographic.

• When a car's roof is covered in ice, eventually it will warm up to the point that it all lets go at once, flying off in a huge ice explosion on the freeway and making it look like a surgical strike with some sort of ice missile. This is totally awesome.

• North Carolina stoplights have the longest wait for a left-turn arrow that I have ever experienced. This is not awesome. Pretty much the opposite, in fact.

• Our nation boasts an incredible selection of strange, intriguing, and potentially hilarious tourist traps and dubiously-named "attractions" along her highways. I've been to Wall Drug and the SPAM Museum, and neither disappointed. Some day I will take a trip and stop at every one I see.

• If the young women working at the burrito place where I had dinner tonight are anywhere close to a representative sample, I like North Carolina already.

That is all.