Rockville, MD

06)28(05 its 915pm

The humid air of Maryland has cooled a bit, and a gentle breeze blows through the screen porch I'm sitting in, nicely appointed, in Rockville, about 30 minutes North of Washington D.C.

Almost by accident, our sails were allowed to deflate, and the urgency that we had been feeling since the pushy rainstorms in the Smoky Mountains has begun to let up a bit. In fact, today I haven't accomplished much or seen much at all, and it is a welcome relief.

We left the grand old south and its sturdy cities of Savannah and Charleston in a hurry and immediately met the frustrations of camping out head on. All of our gear was still soaking wet and beginning to carry questionable odors, so we pulled into a campsite north of Charleston to air it out and stay for the night, but only 45 minutes into unpacking everything, the camp hosts approached us and told us that the site was taken, even though it wasn't reserved and there was no-one currently there. This was strange, but some things you can't fight, so we headed off on a search for a place to stay that took us through three more extremely grungy campsites that we opted out of and a fourth, almost worse, that caught us as the Summer night was setting in. And so we stayed, in Myrtle Beach, at a horrendous and overpriced state park. This area of the Carolinas is almost shamefully overdeveloped and tacky, lined with mile after mile of oceanfront junk stores, fast food places and overweight vacationers toting golf clubs and oily suntan lotion. The ocean is of course, pleasant and beautiful, but looming cryptically over it there are decidedly socialist housing project style 'resort' hotels.

And so, when the morning came, we jetted out of there en route to anywhere but there.

True story: back in the mountains of Asheville we became disconcerted with all the hard times and went out of our way to find a way to entertain ourselves in the back of the truck while the rain sloshed about everything. We decided that it was important to find a dvd of "The Dark Crystal" an epic Lord Of The Rings style movie done with muppets. We scoured every video store we could find, and out of some strange chance found it buried away in an Asheville mall. We also found "Big", and "Big Fish" for real cheap, and so we grabbed those. Anyways, it has felt sometimes silly, but for a few nights we've been able to huddle over my computer (which has a dvd player in it) in the middle of nowhere watching silly movies and loving every minute of it, the convenience and comforts of home so far away, but somehow available to us in a small way.

We found a campsite that sat near a pristine swampland, and sat on a rickety old dock while a crazy songbird attested its territory and a lightning storm slowly rumbled towards us. That night we watched "Big" inside the confines of our screen house while the rain fell all around us.

Our route has taken many twists and turns, and we were having a tough time deciding which way to head up to DC; were we to go through the potentially cool and pleasant Appalachians, or were we to head toward the mysterious, pirate plagued islands of the Outer Banks, off the coast of North Carolina? It was a tough decision, but by this time we decided that adventure was more along our lines than safe. So we drove up to meet the ferry which took us sleepily towards the island of Hatteras, and deposited us and a few seagulls and tourists there to enjoy the salty air.

Since the very first explorers arrived in America, the sandy reefs of the outer banks have spelt trouble for big ships, and yet the currents that wash along them were apparently strong enough to make the risk worth it, were it successful. Not only that, but pirates abounded between coves, and there were very few places to hide from them. In the end, the tiny strip of land that makes up the outer banks is riddled with hundreds of shipwrecks, lots of pretty lighthouses, hearty island types and neat pirate stories.

As we walked over the sandy dunes on the way from our second camp spot to the dazzling bright and wind swept beach, we imagined we had shipwrecked, looking for food and water. In a way we felt that way too, somewhat exhausted, but somewhat free in that, worn and smoothed by the months of travel, able to deal with the passing storms, able to find what we needed, and able to have a really good time doing so.

That second night in our campsite, as the wind blew steadily and littered sand over every single piece of equipment we had anywhere in or out of the truck, we grilled fresh caught tuna over a charcoal fire, and washed it down with cheap beer. It was a perfect kind of moment, the kind of moment that becomes giant in memory, though at the time it just tasted right, with bits of sand in our teeth. We were regaining our health and our happiness, and the ocean and the strangeness of place, and the coolness of the air were all welcome to us again, as the sediments and dust piled up in layers on our clothing and on our truck and on our skin. I remember feeling that easy laugh resurface, we were out of the south, out of everything we had felt or known again, and it was easy to be pretty alright with it all.

Even though there is uncertainty, and yes, the uncertainty hangs over us now more than ever. Where are we to live? What are we to do for a living? Was this trip all a big experiment that would do little more than leave us dangling over a cliff while our future sat on some other route? Were we supposed to be in grad school or in the city or getting married or working in a coffee shop or running errands or making epic albums or making connections and planning retirement funds while we sat there in the dunes under the moonlight and the remnants of a perfect meal sat in our stomachs? What exactly is it that we are supposed to be doing? Is it ok not to know? These are the kind of thoughts that we talk about often, always ending in an optimistic "this is right. THIS is what we're supposed to be doing.".

We rolled down sunny gray asphalt between the salty dunes back to the mainland of America, back to land it seemed, and up to a campsite outside of Virginia Beach.

To make a long sad story short, we unpacked a bit at the campsite and left my guitar there and headed into town, saw Norfolk Virginia, and I never saw my guitar again. Someone very cursed now stole it, and though we spent the rest of the night and all the next day looking for it and them, filing police reports and launching our own detective style investigations while trudging the beach in search of any clue, peeking into every single campsite there, judging campers by their looks, trying to decide what we would do when we found it. And yet it disappeared. That guitar that I played hundreds of gigs with, wrote thousands of songs on, worked all summer in a factory for, elated myself anytime with, it is gone for good.

Its been a theme that repeated itself here in Rockville. Kate's aunt and uncle, as I was saying, very graciously welcomed us into their house. They had just got a little kitty, sweet and timid and quiet. The first night we were here, chatting over wine on the outside porch, the kitty jumped off, escaped through a hole in the screen porch, and has yet to be seen again. I guess I can't really measure or express the disappointment I feel at this, and I don't have a place for the loss in my mind or body. It makes me feel a bit numb, and strangely, makes me want to: get a better guitar, save some abandoned kitties, more forward, become brighter, burn brighter, find good things, roll over and get up, and get going again and not let it seem like a wayward curse that settled onto us. I can't feel sorry for us, and I don't. But I do feel bad for Andy and Marilyn, and wish I could do more to answer for the loss.

From the trouble of Virginia Beach we headed to a beautiful, perfect start of the summer, green leaves and cool swimming pool, pretty river and lots of deer campground called Westmoreland State Park, about 10 minutes away from the place that George Washington was born. We spent four nights there reading through two books a piece, eating nice food, communing with the foxes, huge and colorful moths, lightning bugs, bald eagles, deer and even a few stray dogs. It was a perfect start to the summer, June 21st feeling long and precious. We baked ourselves by the poolside while kids in bathing suits splashed and played and ran all around us, concentrating on our books and on the sweet smell of the air, the warmth of our skin. We woke up in the mornings and had coffee while listening to NPR and in the evenings east coast baseball games. It was a nice interlude to where we are now, in the orbit of DC.

Far East, Off The Mainland, NC

06)18(05 its 406pm

The gray choppy waters of the Atlantic splash and and splish as the truck rides smoothly over the white horizon. We are on a ferry between North Carolina's mainland and the Outer Banks, and Kate is napping while I lean the laptop against her in the back of the truck.

The week has ben good and full, back on track you could say, from the pitiful small setbacks we had experienced in Asheville. After the remnants of the hurricane and the last night in a Super 8 I hope to spend in a very long time, we finally were able to remove the dead mouse from the air conditioning and head into the humid south again.

As we headed north, as far up as central Kentucky, we both agreed that there was something about the south that we hated to leave so soon... something about the people, the allure, the feeling and pace of life. Something about the south, the Louisiana, Mississippi part of the trip had embraced us in a friendly way, and so we were really looking forward to getting down to Savannah, Georgia, for a last glimpse of the steamy south, at least for this summer.

We pulled into the most perfect of Charleston afternoons, almost shocked to find ourselves looking straight at the unthought of and (in my case) rare Atlantic Ocean. It came as a surprise that we could now look at a map and trace a line from Mendocino to Charleston and cut the country in half along our trip's jagged lines. The breeze was blowing, joggers were jogging by the handful, and the statues and palm trees and civil war cannons were glowing in the warm afternoon sun.

It was nice to be there, to have made it, but unfortunately the reality of needing a place to stay is never far behind us on this trip, especially a place that we can afford. We kind of had to face the reality, finally, that it was summer, and that summer means tourism, and that we no longer are the only people out poking around other people's towns. And so motel prices skyrocket, and availability dries up, and we find ourselves staying 20 minutes out of town to the north, in the ghetto of Charleston, in a STILL overpriced Best Value Motel. But Kate was still a little sick, and it was worth it to not have to struggle so much for the day.

We threw our backpacks on the grey blue carpet, turned on the rattling a/c and headed back out into a Charleston evening.

Charleston is renowned and loveable for its amazing clusters of historic buildings and its arched cobblestone streets. At night the alleys glow amid the humidity with history, and the way the wrap around in that European way makes you feel like you could explore them for hours just enjoying the view as you turn each new corner.

And did I mention that the days are hot? The next morning we set out with no real determined end and found ourselves gasping and bickering in the intense heat reflected between the bricks and stones and the sponge like air. At 11:30 we found ourselves in a bar for lack of a better place to go and ordered ice water as the sweat evaporated from every inch of our body. It was somewhere in that moment of lightheadedness that we decided to just trek to Savannah that day, it was only an hour and a half away, and we had been waiting so long to see it.

We accepted that with the campgrounds being full and or as expensive nearly as a cheap motel room that we would spend the night outside of the city and head in. The drive through South Carolina's lowlands was hot and slow, but soon enough we crossed the Georgia border and immediately had Ray Charles singing "Georgia On My Mind" stuck in my head. We found another Best Value Motel amid an oasis of McDonalds, Subway, every other fast food chain and several other motels. It was becoming normal to be staying in places like this and after a short nap we were almost comfortable with its dingy interior. And again we headed off into a Savannah Night.

Savannah's historic district is pretty large and pretty amazing. There are 22 separate but geometrically equally distributed park/courtyards, often with creepy gothic fountains and statues in the middle and pleasant park benches spread out underneath the moss draped live oaks. So you can be in one of these plazas, walk a few blocks in and be in another, they are like their own little worlds, and they are a godsend in the brutal humidity and heat. And so walking Savannah is amazingly pleasant, even with the air sticking to you and making your brain nearly inoperable. We passed the evening walking along the riverfront, where once slaveships and cotton bundles were shipped in enormous quantities to and from the old world. Savannah's strategic port clearly made it a major power in the boat dominated industries of the past.

For now Savannah is enjoying its place among travelers as being one of the more exotic American cities, and rightfully so. It is clear that the successes of "Forrest Gump" and "Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil" has attracted a great number of tourists to the musty allure of its streets. But for us it was simply the feel of the place, the idea that mystery and shady secrets lurked along the quiet waterfront, in the strangely silent statues, below the ever hanging spanish moss.

Some of the shady secrets are buried even deeper into Savannah's unconscious. We visited the civil rights museum there that detailed the influential and monumental fight for basic respect and rights for the cities huge African-American population. The underbelly of the city , the sad reality of the place is that brutal racism has not fully gone away, and didn't even come close to not being the status quo all the way up to the 1960's and 70's. It was only through the courage, perseverance and effectiveness of black boycotts on white business, sit ins in "white only" restaurants and stores, and integration of schools that progress was made. To imagine the brutality of racism before some changes were made is impossible to imagine, and perhaps for many, to forget.

We spent our day in Savannah taking pictures and slouching through the heat. At first I was ready to get somewhere, anywhere just to avoid the intensity of humidity and hazy weather, but by the end of the day I was truly sad to go. Its such an amazing city that in one city I had fallen in love with its simple pleasures, its lusty feeling, its gorgeous ghosts.

Now, almost by accident we are headed to the outer banks, being lulled by the Atlantic's quiet pull, ready to spend some crystalline days on gusty dunes.

Asheville, NC

06)12(05 its 443pm

The interesting thing about the week after Natchez, even the two weeks after Natchez, is that we were suddenly restless. Or at least, we weren't comfortable staying in any place for a very long time.

Following our thunderstormy night outside of Natchez, we headed up north through Mississippi, along its muddy river. The Delta region of Mississippi is absolutely astounding when it comes to its feel, its contribution to America, and its brooding undercurrent. We really only passed through, as opposed to relished, The Birthplace of The Blues, and yet the feeling of the place slung to our skin like smoke from a crowded juke joint.

The towns that edge the Mississippi as you head north along its banks are gritty, worn, revolving around the abandoned city centers of 40's and 50's glitz no more. When we headed into most of these places it was obvious, so obvious that we were the only white kids to be cruising through town in a long time. Faces turned towards us out of curiosity, as curious what we were doing there as we were. Despite any initial trepidation, I was again amazed by how friendly people were, with a genuine concern and politeness that I've only seen in the South.

The rain drops are sticking hesitantly to the Super 8 Motel window which looks out at the lush green hills of Asheville, North Carolina. Kate is sprawled out on the tacky bedcover, sick from some sort of quick flu. Her sickness set in this morning unexpectedly as we were lying in the back of the truck listening to the storm that had been pushing and pulling all night. We hoped that finally for once the rain would let up, but it was in vain. I knew when she said she was feeling sick that we needed to abandon our ridiculously soaked camp and head for civilization. Our tarps that had been set up were ragged, our equipment completely muddy and soaked. In the pouring rain I pulled it all down and cramped it into the back of the poor beat up truck.

Its been a rough week, the weather unrelenting, and the small mishaps piling up. It peaked for me as I backed the truck into the front bumper of a '75 Chevy, smashed the taillight and crunched the rear panel. It broke my heart that the truck should be looking as beat as we were feeling. Too many one night camp outs in haphazard locations, too few complete night sleeps, and too much worry about money and timing. And still the weather charts for the week ahead picture five straight lightning bolts poling out of dark gray clouds. How perfect then that I'm listening to Bob Dylan sing "Hard Travel", wailing on his harmonica, 'carrying a load on my worried mind, looking for a woman that is hard to find...'.

In Leland Mississippi we stopped into the Jim Henson museum and browsed through the nostalgic shelves full of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy memorabilia. It was sweet to be there, where Jim Henson was born a poor creative boy in the heart of Mississippi, feeling parts of my childhood resurface and remind me that they were there. It made me think of my brother Pete, of us sitting on Saturday mornings making forts out of blankets and camping out in front of the cartoons for innocent hours on end. Kermit was our friend, and it was good to hang out with him again.

We headed west towards Clarksdale, where Robert Johnson was born and lived. Robert Johnson was in many ways the predecessor to rock and roll as we know it, his fingerstyle playing and dark lyrics, together with the voodoo mysticism that he has come to embody make him live as a legend to this day. The story goes that Mr. Johnson took his guitar one night to the crossroads of Clarksdale. He sat down to play and a large figure approached him, dark like a shadow. The figure took the guitar and retuned it, and then played the most amazing music. He handed the guitar back to Robert Johnson, and to his amazement he was able to play with the same grace. Its interesting that most people refer to this shadowy character as the devil, it could be a voodoo God, or in my mind, it could be the artist accepting his self, the part of him that was genius.

So the town of Clarksdale was old, felt old. Old traditions, old ways, old buildings, old streets, worn and rubbed down. The feeling of poverty cracked the sidewalks, and the isolation of the delta, its limited opportunities, weighed heavily on my mind. I felt that this was a part of the world that was hard to escape. i felt that this black America was suffering the weight of a brutal and strange past. I felt that this was a place that should be worshiped by all Americans, for the legacy that it holds in its broken neon signs. But I was only passing through. We stayed in a $29 hotel in the heart of downtown, and walked through the warm evening streets peacefully as groups of people met and passed by on foot. It could have been 1956, 1975, or 2005, it was so specific of a place and feel.

Oxford, Mississippi, home of William Faulkner and Ole Miss U. was a stark contrast to Clarksdale. Shimmering clean sidewalks and a renovated downtown was filled with hopeful Mississippi college kids, mostly white. Coffee shops and book stores overflowed with tradition and vitality, there was a definite sense of pride in the town. We sat down in the early afternoon to a good hearty southern meal, fried catfish, collard greens, sweet potatoes and eggplant and felt too full for words. Weather again was a factor, but we decided to tough it out. Even at $29 a night, motels were stressing our budget, so we were going to camp out, and nothing was going to stop us, not even the rain, or the fact that the only campsite available to us was 30 minutes away into the woods and empty save for us. We set up a screenhouse on the misty shores of a beautiful lake and drank bourbon into the night to tide away the strange lonely feeling of the campsite. We talked about life and friends and laughed and recalled the trip until we were far too detached to care about how strange it felt to be so far from civilization that we knew. It kept raining through the night but we both slept sound until a groggy wake up.

We both had Memphis, Tennessee on our minds. The allure of rock and roll, and the home of Elvis Presley was just too strong for us to miss. We had basically come this far north to see the city on the Mississippi that was as vital as New Orleans. So many musicians had earned their place on its famous Beale St. Strip, so many battle for civil rights had found a center there.

I've got to catch up

Asheville, NC

Here in the coffee shop. OK, so my excuse for being out of touch is the whirlwind of destinations all packed together into one week. Memphis to Land Between The Lakes, KY to Bardstown, KY to Lexington, KY to Big South Fork, TN, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN and here, to Asheville. No time to write, or should say, having to keep the laptop out of the thundrestorms we've had. And the constant setting up and taking down a major factor. Unfortunately, the weather isn't really giving us a break anytime soon, so we have to keep on our toes, and be prepared for more of the same for at least a little while. Next stop is Savannah, GA and from there up the East Coast. The Atlantic Ocean! We are approaching 2 months on the road and we both feel like road warriors... it would be great to take a break soon, and breathe in a little, but until then the motion continues.

I will, of course, post the latest entry on the actual stories as I have a chance. Take Care!

Memphis, TN

06)02(05 its 620pm

Memphis. Elvis. BB King. Sultry Mississippi river blues clubs. Memphis, Tennessee.

Its one of those place that is nice to say out loud. It makes you feel good to know that you are in Memphis though you don't know why. Here we are in a Super 8 motel, exhausted from the flurry of a week, relaxing before we head out to Beale Street for a bit of music.

In short, this week we headed from New Orleans to Memphis, roughly following the Mississippi River as it winded up and up. That in itself is poetic somehow.

New Orleans was difficult to let go of, hard to say goodbye to. It filled us both with sort of passionate feelings and a sense of place that was something like home, and made us want to unravel the knot of southern culture just a little bit, enough for us to squeeze through. New Orleans made me think of jazz and vampires, music, history and beauty through the ages. New Orleans introduced us to this swath of the earth that is so fertile and laden with a heavy and sometimes bitter past.

We drove across the shallow and vast Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans to a state park that sat on the opposite side, once the site of a sugar mill and plantation. We landed at Fountainebleu State Park on the eve of Memorial Day weekend and already the park was swarming with masses of Louisiana tourists all barbequeing and unloading their RV palaces. Our campsite was minimal and buzzing with mosquitoes but the nights we sat on the white sanded shore of the Lake were peaceful and made us talkative as the warm wind from across the lake blew steadily against us. The Louisiana sunsets were slow and mellow and we ate grilled shrimp and vegetables for dinner. The massive Live Oak trees that once shaded the plantation still drooped sadly in the pink rays of the evening sun, and in the days we walked around farmers markets in the tiny towns nearby and waded in the almost hot water amongst the hundreds of happy kids and parents, the never getting deep enough to actually swim in, even as we walked hundreds of feet off shore. The nights were so hot and the mornings humid too, and it was hard to wake and shake off the heavy feeling of sleep while already sweating in the morning sunshine.

Both my Dad and Kate's Dad had off the cuff told us before the trip that Natchez, MS would be a great place to see. Its antebellum houses and old cobbled downtown sit on the banks of the Mississippi with a guilty grandeur that has worn just enough with time. Natchez was the first permanent settlement by Europeans along the Mississippi River, and its importance as the main trading port along the Mississippi from Saint Louis to New Orleans made it a powerhouse economically and politically in the days of slave trading and cotton exports. It was held by the Union toward the end of the Civil War, and Grant made his temporary home there in one of the many old and ridiculously grandiose Mansions that overlooked the river.

As we drove out to the Natchez Trace State Park, our radio broadcast was interrupted by the emergency broadcast system, which told us in a sort of frantic way that a tremendous and potentially dangerous thunderstorm was headed directly our way, in about 25 minutes time. We stood on the dock of a nice little Mississippi Lake while the fishermen out for the day obliviously cast their lines into the evening water, somehow the epitomy of Mississippi living to us. The sky above us was blackening steadily and the massive rumbles of thunder slowly echoed our way across the Lake. We decided that camping out wouldn't do, albeit reluctantly, but as we headed back into Natchez it became clear that this was no subtle sprinkling of a storm. The sky quickly became a wall of water, with so much rain falling so quickly that it was nearly impossible to see the road through the thick film of rainfall that covered it in a matter of seconds. Lightning crashed all around us and the thunder rocked the truck with its intensity. We would be checking into a hotel it was decided, we would be checking into a hotel or be blown away by this storm. We were really fortunate to be in town on a Sunday, and out of desperation I checked with the downtown hotel, you know the grand old style hotel that sits prominently in most old American small towns with gold lettering and brick walls, and somehow the price was just low enough for us to take it. We had come really close to staying in the "Scottish Inn", out on the freeway a few miles outside of town, whose parking lot was lined with drug dealer looking cars and whose neighborhood was less than pleasant. But now here we were checking into this enormously posh Hotel with marble statues, fountains lit by fire and painted gilded ceilings. I pushed it a little bit further and asked if we could have a room with a view, and the receptionist kindly upgraded us at no extra cost to a 6th floor suite with a balcony that looked out over the Mississippi. It was a grand feeling being up there on that deck with its little table and Southern Style outdoor fan, looking out over the fading light of the glorious river and peaceful Louisiana farmlands across it while thunderstorm after thunderstorm raced by, lighting up the horizon irregularly with streaks of lightning.

We wanted to at least catch a peek at one of the insides of the Mansions that dominated the history of Natchez, and so we shelled out for a guided tour of the Rosalie House, where Grant had holed up while the union controlled the Mississippi River traffic. The opulence was almost over the top, but it was a good departure point from which to view the troubled past of the region. This is the place where Southern women became Ladies, and men became Gentlemen, and black people became slaves. The almost strange part of all of the revery given nowadays toward the architecture of the area by tourists is that the whole issue of slavery, that the houses themselves were often built by slaves, is barely mentioned at all, almost succinctly avoided.

We just returned from Beale St., the heart of Memphis. This is the proclaimed birthplace of rock and roll, and it revels in its roots, even though the tourist aspect of the whole party is hard to miss. Live music streams out from every bar of the three block neon lit stretch that is the modern Beale Street. Musicians work their fingers to the bone on the sidewalk and in the bars, while folks of all ages and races meander around and through the spirit of it with legal beers in hand, partying while the cops surround it all. It all felt very safe, very easy, very clean, and it was a nice experience even so. I don't even begin to think that anything we saw was 'authentic', as in, where it really all comes from, the blues, rock and roll.... but somewhere behind the facade is the birth, somewhere many years back is the root of the music that shaped my life so profoundly. Sometime way back then, in the heyday of the blues, in the 30's and 40's, underpaid working class musicians made music to make music, and they made music that felt right and felt good and made people dance and somehow changed the course of history. It makes me really humbled, the respect that I have for those musicians and the whatever it was that made it happened, and I don't even claim to know what it was that made it... the depths of poverty? the struggle of being black in America? the honesty of good souls with no purpose, no cause, no bullshit reason, just music. I think that that is what it comes down to, just music, no rules, no reason. Now, its kind of recycled. Its music for the sanitized sake of the tourists that want to see it sans poverty, sans struggle, sans passion really. But that was me, the tourist, passing through, and I'm glad, I'm glad we're in Memphis and that we saw it, whatever it was. I feel that as a musician it gives me something to live up to, and it forces me to remember, as hard as it is to put in to words, what its all about.

We left Natchez determined to camp, even though the weather was still looking pretty miserable. We headed Northeast up the Natchez Trace, which is, in short, one of the oldest roads in America, that was used by Native American tribes, traders and was the most important road in the pre civil war America up until the advent of the steamboat up and down the Mississippi. Parts of the trace are still walkable, and we ended up stomping along it quite by accident that night. The terrain was so swampy and dense, with vines hanging down over the ancient road, and we were walking as the sun was setting, out in the middle of nowhere while the rain started to fall. It was not the kind of place I would feel comfortable getting stuck in, and it was good to finally find our way back to our campsite. The rain was coming in strong, and we were forced to put up the tarps and set up a screen house around the truck. We sat underneath the brown and green tarp for hours that night while the fierce wind and thick rain pounded the landscape around us. It was strange to be sitting outside in such ferocious weather, but it was nice to say that we were in Mississippi, in a Mississippi storm, drinking cheap beer on the oldest road we'd ever been on.