Road Trip of Freedom 2010

In early November, I'll be getting out of the Army after five years of service.  I've got some complicated feelings on the subject that I might eventually share, but one very uncomplicated feeling will certainly be the most incredible sense of relief and release.  What better way to celebrate my newly recovered freedom than to spend a few weeks roadtripping across this great country I spent five years of my life defending? Here's what my tentative itinerary looks like:

The only schedule so far is that I leave point A on the 4th of November, I need to be at point E by the 12th, and I'd like to finish at point L by Thanksgiving. Anyone anywhere within a couple hours of this general route who'd like me to stop by for a cup of coffee, a meal, or feels like offering me a bed (or couch) for the night, drop me a note and we'll see what we can work out.  Oh, and anyone who'd like to join me for this, or even just for a leg of it, we should talk.  I do really enjoy driving solo, but for 6,000 miles I'd certainly prefer some company.

A Visit to the Ovine-Infested Austral Isle of the Antipodes

Hello, friends. It's been a while. Don't get too excited, I'm not breaking my blogging moratorium quite yet, but I just wanted to share some things. Consider this a hiatus from the moratorium.

A little while back I got my two weeks of mid-tour "Rest and Recuperation" leave. I knew I wanted to take advantage of the taxpayer-funded airfare (thanks guys!) by going somewhere with expensive fares, and I knew I wanted to get to the greenest, most un-desert-like place I could think of. So I went to New Zealand's South Island, and it was amazing. This picture sums it up pretty well:

From Enn-Zedd

Seriously, I could go on and on about it, but I'll just let you look at all the pictures. Oh, and yes, that album "outs" my real name. I'm okay with that at this point -- really effective internet anonymity being nearly impossible anyway -- and eventually I'll get around to fully onymizing this blog, once I figure out exactly what I want it to be and start posting again.

Obama Visits the Pyramids

Of course, you can't go to Cairo without seeing the pyramids. Yawn. You've seen them already, I assure you. Only in the books and postcards, they make sure to take the pictures at an angle so you can't see the Pizza Hut and the rest of the sprawl that runs right up to them.

He took a tour of Sultan Hassan mosque, which is okay, I guess. By which I mean BOOOOORRRRING. He should have gone to Ibn Tulun, which is truly one of the great treasures of human endeavor. I suppose the location might have played a role. Security would be pretty tricky in the heart of Khan al-Khalili.

Festival Tour

I daydream a lot about lazily traveling 'round the world (again). In one particular version of my daydream, I wander from country to country on the schedule of bizarre local festivals. Whenever I am ready to move on, I'll just see which nearby country is chasing wheels of cheese down hills,


breaking out into a city-wide tomato fight (but only after a ham has been retrieved from atop a greased flagpole),


dousing one another in bright pigments,


or parading toddlers affixed on top of 12-foot bamboo poles in front of multi-story towers covered in steamed buns.


Humanity is a fascinating thing.

On Interchanges

Fascinating "Field Guide to Highway Interchanges" (and part II) from the Infrastructurist. Some pretty cool examples of the genre, though none quite as fun as Randall Monroe's imagination:

Faking French

Learning a handful of conversational phrases and some everyday vocabulary can get you a long way in a foreign country, if only as a gesture of goodwill. Learning them too well can put you in an awkward spot, when it finally becomes clear that's all you know:



Being fluent in a language with few second-language learners presents the opposite problem, where for the first few minutes of smalltalk everyone assumes you just know the stock phrases, and five minutes into the conversation, your acquaintance excitedly exclaims, "Wow, you speak ____!!" Well, yes, we've been speaking it for five minutes now.

The New Iraq's First Tourist

Serious tourists (who, of course, would never let themselves be called that; they are travelers, scoff, scoff) live to one-up one another by dropping mentions of exotic destinations: "Oh, yeah, Thailand's nice, I guess, but it's a bit too commercial for me. You should really visit Burma." Visits to crime- and disease-ridden third-world countries are of course played like trump cards. This guy, then, has all-time hands-down bragging rights.

Food Meme

What a great way to finish off my block leave: a food meme! Shane pointed me to this list of the Omnivore's Hundred, or as Shane puts it, 100 Things to Eat Before You Die, originally from the Very Good Taste blog. Items I've had in the past are in bold, my commentary is in italics, and items I've had in the last two weeks of leave are in red, just for kicks.

1. Venison (though only in the form of garlicked summer sausage, which could be made from fetid dingo's kidneys and nobody would know the difference).
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue (though the last time I had it, I had so much and was in such a bad mood, I'm not sure I ever want it again).
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear (yeah, remember field exercises in Texas? I hate to get my revenge on the buggers somehow).
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (though seriously, I think only once. I'm a quarter-pounder sort of guy).
56. Spaetzle (best. staple. starch. ever).
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores (do they count if I never have to patience to actually roast the marshmallow?).
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (only if you count using Kaopectate, and I don't).
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (heck yeah county fair!).
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (wait, just hare? or does rabbit count?).
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

52. Just over halfway there.

Remaking the Highway Trinity

Gas, Food, Lodging... and Wi-Fi? Louisville, Nebraska thinks so, but the state disagrees. Mike Elgan of Mike's List says Wi-Fi has become a "universally valuable service" deserving of a position along with the familiar highway trinity of Gas, Food, and Lodging. An increasing number of states are providing free Wi-Fi at public rest stops, with roadside placards advertising the service, so why not mark exits where the service is available? While I've only been in this position once or twice, I can certainly imagine situations where it would be very useful to know which exit had businesses offering Wi-Fi, particularly as the use of Blackberrys, iPods-Touch (I pluralize how I please, thank you very much), and Wi-Fi/VoIP phones continues to grow.

In related news, I noticed on my recent visit to Minnesota that different states have varying protocols as to whether they note coffeeshops on their freeway exit signs. Minnesota lists Starbucks and Caribou on the "Food" signs; I hadn't ever noticed it, but I don't think other states do this. It's nice, since most coffeeshop chains sell enough food for a substantial snack. And it precludes the need to add a "Coffee" sign. To which I, of course, would in no way be opposed.

Trip Update

2,000 miles covered already. I need an oil change, but when I detoured through Asheville to look for a JiffyLube, I realized it's not exactly an oil-changin' sort of town. It's the sort of place where even the McDonald's bears a facade in the style of the Biltmore estate, Asheville's primary tourist trap. All in all, though, it looks like a very classily touristified slice of Americana, the sort of place that might make a really nice family vacation destination. And you really can't beat the mountains around here. By the time I got settled for the evening, everything was closed, and unfortunately I'm guessing most places will be closed tomorrow, so my poor car will just have to deal. Right now I'm staying in a hotel in Knoxville, TN, and I'm really wishing I had researched the city a bit more before I made my reservation here on the edge of town; if I had known Knoxville was such a nice city, I'd have gotten a downtown hotel so I could get out a bit instead of spending a Saturday night drinking Sailor Jerry's rum and blogging in my hotel room. Oh well, lessons learned.

So True

Xkcd nails it again. Now, I'm a solid devotee of Google Maps. I probably have a rather unhealthy attachment to it, honestly, to the point that I feel a shudder of horror at the thought of using something so positively primeval as MapQuest. But it does occasionally have some snafus. Or more accurately, this world of ours doesn't quite live up to the perfect order implied by Google. And of course, Google's employees like to leave little jokes here or there. For a while, requesting directions from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe would direct you to New York harbor, followed by the line "swim the Atlantic", continuing with road directions from Calais. Google's got jokes.

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.

Heading Out

These weeks have leave have flown by, and now I can't quite believe that I've heading out today on the road to North Carolina, and I probably won't be back to Wisconsin for most of the year. Strange, too, to think that much of the meantime will be spent in Iraq. Well, I ought to be packing rather than blogging. There will probably be some more thoughts from the road later this week.

On My Way Home

Now is the time for the long journey back from the lands beyond the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River (all set about with fever-trees). I'm on my way back to the great grayish North for a well-deserved nearly-a-month of leave. My parents came down to Georgia for my Airborne graduation ceremony, and my dad's driving back up with me. This noon we'll stop in at the home of the Elephant's Child for a visit.

I've still got lots of thoughts about Airborne; hopefully within the next few days I'll pound out some reflections on the most distinctive sort of school I've ever been through.

Ceilings

In reference to the Elephant's Child's thoughts on church ceilings, ponder the incredible continuity of something like 3,500 years of gold stars on blue ceilings. Beautiful. This is from the temple complex of Karnak at Luxor in Egypt, the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes.

Driving

Just finished a full day of driving through the heart of the deep South. Yesterday I had the pleasure of traversing the greater part of Texas, spent the night in Shreveport, and today I made it as far as Montgomery, Alabama. I wish I had some interesting thoughts to share about my experience, but the thing is, though this is the fourth state in two days, I never really left Interstate-Land until this afternoon, when I got onto US80 to cross Alabama. One notable: there's a Waffle House at pretty much every exit I've passed through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I also saw a Mister Waffle, which appeared to be a low(er)-grade knockoff, sporting a suspiciously similar sign of black capital letters on illuminated yellow blocks.

Other observations? I don't like driving at night. I prefer lonely two lane roads to the Interstate during the day, but absolutely hate them at night, when oncoming traffic means your eyes never adjust and you feel like you're driving nearly blind.

Also, I've started to notice signs of the drought that has affected this part of the country. Since I entered Alabama, I've been seeing more and more 'rivers' that look like little more than muddy ditches. I expect that will get more pronounced when I get to Georgia tomorrow.

Read Michael Yon

I get a lot of questions from friends and relatives about Iraq, and more specifically, whether I, as a soldier who will soon enough be visiting myself, have any insight as to what degree the picture we get from the media accurately represents what's really happening in that country. The short answer? Not very well. At all. What I hear from soldiers who've been there suffers from the usual problems of first-hand experience: everyone's viewpoint depends on their own preconceptions and the limits of the narrow slice of the country where they themselves worked. So even soldiers can't really say what's going on in the country as a whole, though all agree that the American public is hopelessly ill-informed by the media. Watch this space, because I'm sure I'll be discussing this more as I get closer to deployment.

That said, read Michael Yon. He's been all over the country, embedding with all sorts of units and traveling beyond where the military goes. If I had to trust one man's perspective, it would be his. And he's on a mission to take the MSM to task for the criminal laziness of their Iraq coverage. Read him, support him if you can. It's important.

And on a related note, what color are alligators?

Tagged

Thanks to my dear elder sister, here are Seven True Things About Me:

1. My faith, my family*, and my country are the three most important things in my life, in that order. In other news, I'm shockingly traditional.

2. My personality has been shaped by my youngest-child status to a remarkable degree. Growing up hasn't changed that one bit, just made me more aware of it. My "Me Too!" Complex is a force to be reckoned with.

3. Who I am is perhaps unhealthily tied up with where I went to college. This is a common reflection among St. Olaf alumni, which probably accounts for why so many of us end up marrying fellow alumni.

4. I've somehow managed to live in or visit many US states and 16 foreign countries for various lengths of time, and I've learned that loving places is much like loving people. Loving other places could never threaten or replace my love for home. One the contrary, it has only made me love home that much more.

5. I had to lose about 60 pounds to join the Army. Since I've been in, I've lost about 40 more. After all that, I just wish I had better advice to offer people than to run four miles a day and be hungry all the time. Certainly never going to get a book deal with that one.

6. I've given up caring what the music I listen to makes people think about me. Now I listen to whatever makes me happy. It's been working pretty well for me so far, and I can handle the bemused looks.

7. My car is the closest thing to a bionic extension of my identity that I can afford right now. I used to think I was using it for reading and relaxing because I didn't like listening to my roommate's TV. Now I've got my own room, and still I spend just as much time sitting in my car. Huh.

So there it is, folks, the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake in seven nutshells. Also: I've successfully avoided doing any work at all on the project I came to this coffeeshop to work on. Go me!

*Broadly defined, including family, friends, and Army buddies.