I like to think I really get a good dose of the sights, sounds, and smells of America while tackling the interstates solo for days at a time, and driving from New England to the South is inevitably an amusing experience. This trip was not quite as entertaining as some in the past, like when I had no stereo and talked to myself aloud for the whole 20 hours or when I saw all of the following in the Ohio Valley region: 1) a dilapidated "Exotic Juice Bar" that looked a lot more like another kind of exotic bar; 2) a large sign, for what looked like a restaurant, displaying "GENTILE" (genteel?) in large letters; and 3) a single generic brown roadside attraction-info sign reading:
Water Tower
Art Museum
However, I did note the following this time around:
1) A freight truck from Liberal, Kansas. Maybe I'm just uncosmopolitan for not having heard of it before, but I had a good laugh at this one. At first I thought it might be the site of an internment camp run by the state of Kansas.
2) Tennessee's interstate roads. They're smooth as butter. Pennsylvania's suck.
3) Tennessee's education system. It's pretty abysmal. Pennsylvania's is pretty good. I guess it's a values thing.
4) A "Student Driver" decal on another eighteen-wheeler.
5) One Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker. The only one I saw after PA, I believe (other than mine). Even in the South, this is a pretty poor showing. Maybe the reminder is just too painful even for Southern Democrats.
6) One of
these stickers, which is not nearly as cool as
this one. Now I have been very tempted to stick the latter on my car just to piss off all the luxury SUVs (some driven by high-school friends) in Nashville on which they can be found, but I have realized of course that this is the kind of thing that loses a lot of votes for liberals. Plus I don't want my car bashed in.
I'm already looking forward to the drive back up.
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