Notes Photos from the road

I love Intercourse. (PA)

I'm blogging from my cell phone by sending an MMS message to Blogger Mobile. Seems to work all right after a little finagling.

I stopped off at a gas station a couple days ago ($3.85 a gallon? Sheesh. Well, beats $4.50 the summer of 2008....) and walked into the convenience store to grab some water. What's the first thing I see when I walk inside? T-shirts that read "I <3 Intercourse" in big bold letters; then, in small letters, PA.

ROTFLMAO

Places and town names all just kind of run together when you're zipping through on the interstate (it's still weird to call it the "interstate;" I just grew up out west calling it a "freeway") at 65 mph. But boy, oh, boy, am I glad I stopped in here. I have a half-heartedly cultivated taste for road kitsch. Convenience stores at gasoline stations, travel plazas, and truck stops sell some really great stuff, and if you're lucky (or plan a visit well enough in advance, like I did out in Beaver, UT), you'll get a t-shirt commemorating your 15 minute stop at Intercourse, PA, or some other unfortunately-named city -- just like me.

Anyway. The road is getting longer and the weather's getting hotter and more humid the further I get from New England. The radio blurts out severe weather warnings every so often -- about thunderstorms, mostly -- but the closer I get to Joplin, MO, the more wary I get of hearing a tornado watch warning over the airwaves. On top of the fact that I already watch too many horror movies for my own good, I also unfortunately watch too many disaster movies, just like -- yes, Twister. Last thing I want to have happen is a tornado sucking me up and spitting me out somewhere in the middle of a densely populated cow pasture.

Yes, the road is getting longer and the sacroiliac is not happy. Little Sonny has gotten used to the journey and sits half-asleep in his cage most of the time. Sometimes when I turn around to check on him, he'll open his eyes and let out a scratchy "Hi." before going back to sleep. When he comes out at rest stops, he chirps, takes baths, and draws a crowd of parrot lovers and children. That's when the beak flashes open and the eyes slit and he goes into defense mode momentarily, all before diving for cover underneath my hair to hide from the crowd out of shyness.

I'm in Collinsville, IL now, just a little outside St. Louis. This is my second time in Collinsville, and I realized sometime today (while roasting my limbs and getting that authentic "road warrior" driver's tan) that I was lucky to be able to say I'm driving across the country. I've always wanted to. Next time, though, I'll have to put in more time to get in some of the roadside attractions I would have liked to see (like Jesse James' cave hideout).

Ugh, next time...? By the time I'm done with this time, I'll probably want to fly next time. My poor sacroiliac....

I love Moosic. (PA)

At the cafes and truck stops
All up and down the line
I see lots of pretty girls
But there's none as sweet as mine
With big blue eyes that sparkle
She's the sweetest I ever seen
Gotta keep these big wheels rolling
To my truck driver's queen.

I finally left Cambridge this morning and pulled into Scranton, PA sometime in the early evening. Ah, Scranton. Doesn't the TV show The Office take place in Scranton?

I used to do a lot of driving between Tonopah, NV and Southern California a few summers ago when I worked for the Forest Service. During that time, I'd listen to a variety of NPR podcasts, The Splendid Table with Lynne Rossetto Kasper being one of them. She'd usually have Jane and Michael Stern talking about the more delectable highlights of random restaurants they'd hit on the road. It took me several years after that to finally pick up my own copy of Roadfood. Now that I have it with me and I'm actually taking a road trip, I wanted to use my copy of Roadfood like a journal. It would be so marvelous at the end of the trip (or, better yet, at the end of many trips), to thumb through a ragged, dog-eared copy of a book that, for the present moment, sits clean and new in my backpack. At the end of its usefulness, I imagined that I would have written millions of notes, directions, comments, critiques, and stars in the margin and between the lines of Jane and Michael's reviews. The pages would be stained with grease and ketchup from diners through the South, the East, the North, and the West. This was a book with untapped potential. This was a book that would get about as much use as my Munsell chart, and would undoubtedly prove to be just as good an investment. The Sterns have an online version of Roadfood, but I figured I'd pony up the money and invest in some serious memory-building and memento-collecting as an American archaeologist in America. Buying this book was not an option. It was like a college textbook. A textbook on LIFE. LIBERTY. and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

I pulled out my copy of Roadfood and looked to see whether any restaurants in Scranton had been reviewed. Yup -- the Sterns had reviewed the Glider Diner in Scranton, PA. After double and triple checking the diner hours -- "always open!" -- I pulled into the parking lot with anticipation.

They were closed.

...

Well, of course they were. If there's anyone alive on this planet that so plainly deserves the title of "Harbinger of the Most Anti-Climactic Moments in History," it would be me. The hours on the door read, "Open 24 hours -- Monday thru Saturday." Well, Jane and Michael, this place is not always open. Or maybe someone should have told the Glider Diner that they were supposed to always be open because the Sterns said so. Well, I suppose that random closures and incorrect hours are supposed to be verified by dialing the diner's phone number that the Sterns had also graciously written into their reviews. Oh, well.

So I turned around and Yelped up a place -- Thai Rak Thai on Adams St. -- and enjoyed a lovely (overpriced) Thai dinner. I brought Roadfood in with me for good measure and set it down by my plate. By George, I paid $14.95 for this book. It's going to get stains on it whether it likes it or not.

(That's what she said.)