I made it safe and sound (if a little delayed) to Atlanta, Georgia, where giant peaches perch atop buildings and everybody calls me "Sugar."
I'm currently hiding from the sun and hopping on a wifi signal at a Caribou Coffee in downtown Atlanta, and soon I will be taking my rental car down into the depths of rural Georgia. A certain somebody who will not be named described this region to me as "hot, humid and mean." Whoohoo!
Seriously, though, I am excited, so I won't spend too long typing up a blog post and I'll try to hit ye old dusty trail pretty soon. Just a few things to note:
1. One of the conductors on my train had an accent EXACTLY like Kenneth's on 30 Rock. I always though Kenneth's accent was completely made up, but turns out there is in fact a strain of Southern accent just like that. File that under things-i-never-knew.
2. I'd forgotten how surreal the Southern landscape could be. There were times when the view out the train window looked like it was ripped out of a fantasy novel or a scifi film. Don't know what I'm talking about? One word: KUDZU. I didn't snap a picture but I'll see if I can sooner or later - imagine forests so coated in vines that you can't even see the trees underneath. It's both beautiful and deeply creepy (and an ecological disaster, of course).
3. A caribou coffee employee just came by and offered me free samples of a pineapple coconut smoothie. And then made me take two, because nobody else was drinking them. Life is great.
4. Does travel = freedom? Companies certainly promote the idea - my Hertz folder actually has FREEDOM written across it in giant yellow letters. Do people believe it does? Is this an American concept? Travel doesn't have to be linked to freedom - it could be tied to escape, to adventure; it could be seen as a mark of economic prosperity; it could be seen as a duty, or as self-improvement. My rental car packet screaming "FREEDOM" probably has me biased, but right now I'm feeling like in America, we travel to prove our freedom - we go somewhere to prove that we could go anywhere. Agree? Disagree? Should I stop with the national identity essentialism?
Oh, Kudzu. It's all over the damn place just about anywhere south of North Carolina. I was warned while in SC once never to jump into a bed of kudzu because you never know how deep it goes. Like those reflective pools in caverns.
ReplyDeleteI have an aunt and uncle who live right outside of Atlanta (in the suburbs, basically). If you happen to run into a plump, 60-something grayhaired, balding man with glasses and a beard who fences, rides a motorcycle, and goes by Bill Lanier, pester him for me. And then sit down and have a philosophical conversation with him. He likes that. :P