Song of the Open Road – Walt Whitman
This is a poem by Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass that is compelling to my journey. I have the goal of memorizing it.
1
AFOOT and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever
I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
Bus Trip to Austin (1/21)
Not many people take the bus anymore, it’s almost a forgotten mode of transit, with their cars or plane travel being the primary mode. My experience taking the bus has rarely let me down. I’ve been all over the Northeast on buses and have now added my longest trip to date – a 22 hour foray from Atlanta, GA to Austin, TX.
It started at 2pm yesterday, I PackageExpressed some excess clothing back to Maine, and boarded the bus (again the last person on). PackageExpress is probably one of the cheapest ways to ship boxes and baggage long distances.
We traveled into Alabama and stopped in Birmingham for an hour. I posted a brief update from Java & Jams, a cafe I found via Yelp, where I sat down for a coffee and some wifi.
Alabama was far more Apalachian than I had imagined it would be, full of scraggy conifers and rugged albeit not massive hills. I thoroughly enjoyed the scenery from my window and will definitely make a point to travel back through Alabama in the future.
As we departed night settled down and I kicked back to finish Vagabonding, scribbling notes in Moleskin for SlackerReform.
We rode through Mississippi, a state I’ve only ever spelled out loud for the entertainment in that process, with an hour stopover around 9:30 central time. I grabbed a chicken sandwich from the Union Station cafe in Jackson, MS. The woman behind the counter inquired about my washboard and we chatted a moment about music which I think landed me a free batch of fries.
Once back on the road I settled in for the night with The Weepies strumming me to sleep. I recently discovered The Weepies while flipping through artists on AllMusic and I have two of their albums, Say I Am You, which is my favorite and Hideaway. Lovely little duo of musicians from California playing a mellow but entrancing pop-folk style.
I woke up about 6am CT as we drove in to Dallas. Perfect timing as the sun climbed up across the vast openness of Texas (it’s amazing really).
We pulled into Dallas late, I unloaded, grabbed my checked bag and stepped on to the Austin bus. I had slept fitfully overnight yet, like a cat, put me in a patch of warm sun and I’m out.
I woke around 9am and watched the flatness roll by. In the ways of geography and ecology Texas is strange yet when you add the clutter of big box stores, Starbucks, McDonalds and all the rest of our consumer life it isn’t that far off from the drive I would get through New Hampshire.
The greatest relief of the trip: stepping off the bus at 10:20am into 65° F weather.
Birmingham Alabama (Layover)
I have an hour layover here in Birmingham, AL and I’m sitting in this little cafe on 3rd Ave and 20th St. called Java & Jams. I pulled it up on Yelp for iPhone and proceeded to truck my way out of the bus station and past the park to get here for a short cup of joe.
Walking in I already liked the place. It’s a narrow cafe with seating along the sides and counter at the end. Three folks were sitting talking about country music guitars in laps near the counter – one turned out to be the server. I ordered a cup of coffee and sat down for a moment of plugged in time.
They played an old country tune entitled, “Long Haired Country Boy” originally by Charlie Daniels, and I caught up on an e-mail or two. Now, back to the bus for the next leg of my journey.
Knoxville (The Rest)
Yesterday I caught the bus back to Atlanta from Knoxville after a little mishap at the rental car agency where they lied – okay perhaps not – about their willingness to take debit cards and I ended up without a rental car for the day. In the end 30$ saved.
Jon picked me back up and we headed over to Golden Roast, a cafe we’d frequented near the University of Tennessee campus, for a quick sit and coffee. My bus was at 6pm and I had two hours to kill – the internet did that quickly – and it is when I decided to start this travelogue.
My bus was approximately 40 minutes late in departing although I had the opportunity to chat with a guitarist from Chattanooga about bluegrass and Americana music. I ended up in Atlanta about 11pm.
Backing up.
I had spent five days in Knoxville visiting, relaxing and mostly enjoying coffee either in Jon’s living room or in a cafe (this sort of helps justify part of my title).
Notable events throughout the week:
Watching Gran Torino at the Regal Riviera thanks to the movie friend (aforementioned) for free. Clint Eastwood is one scary old dog in this film. Sorry if I spoil anything. He plays a Korean War veteran whose wife has just passed away. Living in an old neighborhood that has become a Hmong ghetto he’s all by himself (not including his golden lab). When a gang causes trouble that spills on to his lawn he scares the offenders away with the perpetual snarl and his rifle. He becomes an inadvertant hero of the neighborhood. I’ll leave the rest for you to see but it was an exceptional movie with an unexpected ending and only one short overacted scene (not by Eastwood) that I would cut out.
Sassy Ann’s is a whorehouse turned club frequented by mostly twenty-somethings out for a PBR and some poorly DJed 80s music (at least on the nights I was there). While the atmosphere is stellar, I mean how can an old whorehouse not be an entertaining club venue full of stairways, nooks, little rooms and that old western nostalgia, the DJ pained me in his transitions even if the songs were good. The smoke, 20-something college inebriants, cheap beer and sticky floor I can deal with. I just don’t get how 80s rock makes you want to dance in any other fashion than bouncing up and down like a bobblehead on a washing machine.
Hugging the Sunsphere on behest of Kelly – she even got it posted to her Facebook wall. While we had planned to go up and check it out there had been a sprinkler line that had broken and so the Sunsphere was raining. Slight irony anyone? Instead we cracked the ice in the small cement pool nearby with our feet enjoying the spidery veins and hollow metal sound it made.
Rocking out the drums two nights on Rock Band 2. While I can’t say much for my musical talents I can proudly say I can handle the drum kit on medium after only two nights playing. The drums just make sense to me even if it takes a second to fumble through the first pass of hits I can get the rhythm unlike my epic failure on a Rock Band guitar. Maybe I should have played the drums in band rather than split reeds on a saxophone.
Battlestar Galactica premiered the first of the series Final Episodes on Friday at 10pm. I have to say I wasn’t as excited to watch it as many other people I know but I can’t deny the siren call of a religious war and stellar drama all in one. If you haven’t caught it yet you can watch it on Hulu. It was definitely an excellent episode with enough turns to have me utter the words “What the fuck?” at least a couple times.
Knoxville (Jan 13th)
January 13th I nearly missed my bus to Knoxville, TN. I had booked my ticket online and being used to e-Ticket check-in at the bus station in NYC I failed to attribute the wait time a normal desk check-in takes. I was the last passenger on the bus – washboard in hand, Chrome bag over my shoulder.
We stopped off in Dayton, TN at a Pilot truck stop where most of the passengers proceeded to buy food from McDonalds. Thankfully I had packed a Trader Joe’s survival kit of trail mix, dried mango and chocolate covered espresso beans along with my trusty Thermos topped up with homemade coffee. Being prepared saves me from fast food and my wallet from needless spending.
Jon picked me up at the bus station and we dropped my bags at his house and headed out for dinner at a local gastropub, The Crown and Goose.
We treated ourselves to a fine beer, mine was a “Caribbean” stout – smooth and easy to drink sans a coffee bitter, and our waiter was very knowledgeable and pleasant. I chose the Shephard’s Pie which was slow-braised lamb in a red wine sauce baked with Yukon golden mash and topped with two lamb chops cooked to rare. The chops dissolved as I ate them. The pie was baked with a nice crisp skin to the mash while the insides were a refreshing change from the regular ground beef I’ve had in shephards pie in the past much more akin to pulled pork in its stringiness which falls apart.
Nearly bursting at the seams we managed to decide, or perhaps were happily convinced by our waiter, to order the bread pudding which replaced the typical raisin topping with dried cranberries soaked in whiskey. Not my favorite bread pudding but delicious all the same. We even managed to score a tasting of the Sticky Toffee Pudding thanks to again to our waiter slipping it past the chef. The toffee pudding was deceiving, when you cut into it with your spoon it seemed dense yet upon delivery it melted away. An excellent sample to round off our night.
Waiting for one of Jon’s friends to potentially get us into a movie, we dodged off to a local Borders to peruse their books i.e. read their magazines without paying and nabbed a coffee from the Seattle’s Best cafe. After two magazines our coffees ran dry and with no word from the movie friend we headed back to Jon’s.
Curled up on the couch with You Don’t Mess with the Zohan on my laptop we called it a night. As for Zohan, I would say watch the first three quarters then give up before the movie decides to resolve the hackneyed plot.
Definition of a Vagabond
Some people have asked me for updates on my travels and rather than bother with taking over one of my existing blogs (SlackerReform Jazzdance, or no way in hell Lindybloggers) with my travel writing I have created the Vagabond Cafe.
I affectionately refer to myself as a vagabond in preference to nomad, bum or hobo.
vag·a·bond
n.
- A person without a permanent home who moves from place to place.
- A vagrant; a tramp.
- A wanderer; a rover.
adj.
- Of, relating to, or characteristic of a wanderer; nomadic.
- Aimless; drifting.
- Irregular in course or behavior; unpredictable.
intr.v. vag·a·bond·ed, vag·a·bond·ing, vag·a·bondsTo lead the life of a vagabond; roam about.
[Middle English vagabonde, from Old French vagabond, from Late Latin vagbundus, wandering, from Latin vag
, to wander, from vagus, wandering.]
