Breaking Blog Silence
posted at 11:19 am
on Feb. 13, 2005
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Stuck in Russellville
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Mixed Nuts
Blog silence. It can mean three things:
1. Life has overtaken the writer; they’re too busy to blog about what they’re busy doing.
2. Life has abandoned the writer; they’ve got nothing to blog about other than one entry about how they don’t have anything to blog about. (It looks silly to do several of these in a row.)
3. Life has cut off the writer off; whether they want to blog or not, the Internet has no tendril nearby for the writer to tap into.
In my case, it was none of those things. I just plum forgot.
Debbie and I made it out of Russellville, Arkansas, one day early or two days late, depending on your point of view. In the two days we spent there, we discovered:
* the distance from our hotel to a herd of cows (four blocks)
* the distance from our hotel to a bottle of alcohol (12 miles to the next county)
* the distance you can drive with a broken valve spring (120 yards)
* the distance from Arkansas Technical University to the nearest frozen yogurt store, given that there are no bars around for the poor students to patronize (3 minutes walk)
Value spring replaced, we drove from Russellville to Memphis and took a quick look around Graceland. Elvis was a really down-to-earth guy, if you don’t include his super-gaudy clothing and jewelry. He had a pool room, a nice carpeted kitchen, a big back yard and his own racquetball court. I mean, Graceland was truly impressive, but not over-the-top in the way that other instant rich have spent their money. A room with three TVs was about the height of his residential extravagance. Well, there was that round white fake fur bed….
Unsurprisingly, the tour didn’t mention anything negative, about his drugs or where he died or whether he still walks among us. It didn’t mention that his movies were mostly dreck, even if they were entertaining or well-attended. And it didn’t discuss much about what the Presley family’s been up to since he shuffled, hips waggling, off this mortal coil.
Tour complete, we then pushed on all the way to Virginia, just past Bristol. Our hotel room there had no Internet access, so I didn’t bother to take a picture of the place. It was dead to me.
Next day, the sixth day , we drove all the way to Debbie’s house in Rockville, pulled up, and realized we didn’t have a key so spent some time pressing our heads against the windows while we waited for Tracey to show up.
They gave me a ride back to the Gardners. I got them to stop at Five Guys drippy greasy fresh and friendly hamburger place—why had I not eaten there before?!—and then finally arrived at the Gardners about 9 p.m. Total miles driven: 2807.
I’m now in the airport in Seattle, flying standby back to Vancouver. It’s cheaper, but it does mean a lot of time on my butt hoping other people are as flaky about plane flights as I was.
Photos galore (300+) will be put online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nep/
