And Away We Go!

Greetings from Meridian, Mississippi.  This is the first of what I hope will be many posts.  As I am new to blogging and to Blogger, changes can be anticipated.  Apologies for the length, but you can always skip to the exciting parts.  I'll let you know when I come up with some.

My trip technically began on Saturday, March 3, when I drove from Washington, DC to McLean, VA.  The afternoon was spent with my old friends (OK, Cathy, let's just say we've been friends a long time) Cathy Botticelli and Mike Spafford, who were my hosts that evening along with their great kids Monica and Andrew. Saturday evening we travelled to Bethesda to the home of Jeff Puretz, fund and insurance lawyer extraordinaire, where he was hosting a party for our former partner but permanent friend and co-conspirator, Ruth Epstein.  Many DC partners and spouses were present, and we feted Ruth, who has now been with her new colleagues at Stradley Ronan, where she is happy (but she misses us and we miss her).

Of course, there was discussion of my leave of absence, also known as my frolic and detour.  There were many suggestions and at this point, it will take a year to do everything just in the US.  While I have decided to "see America first," I do hope to visit many other countries.  Let's see if I survive this initial jaunt.

Sunday I visited with my parents (my dad is almost 90 and my mom is 85) and then travelled 40 miles northwest of Washington to Poolesville, MD to visit with my brother and his family.  Poolesville is an old town set among rolling hills with a classic upper Maryland and lower Pennsylvania horse country feel to it.  Its like stepping into a Matthew Brady photograph.  Without the dead people.  Bob took me to the C&O Canal, which passes through the area.   There is an amazing 1855 stone bridge across a branch of the Potomac there that carried the canal far above the muddy waters swollen by the early spring rains in the area.  After a decent night's sleep (courtesy of my nephew Sam, who gave up his bed), I consulted with Bob about the best way to get to I-81 and off I went.

One would not think of a car trip to the West starting by water but this one did.  I took the ancient Whites Ferry from Poolesville across the Potomac to Leesburg, VA in the pointedly named "Gen. Jubal Early" ferry boat (cap. 20 cars) for $5.  Sorry, no photos but my detailed trip planning did not, apparently, include the right memory card, which should be rectified soon.

From Leesburg, I went due west to hit I-81, which runs along the spine of Virginia and the Shenandoah Mountains.  Soon, snow began falling and continued for several hours, almost until I reached Tennessee.  The route threaded between the tall hills of the Appalachian Mountains from the Shenandoah's to the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee.  The snow and clouds prevented me in large part from enjoying the views, although occasionally glimpses of distant snowy hilltops offered some diversion.  The highest point on the road was 2,600 feet (in - wait for it -- Rural Retreat, VA), and I felt my ears popping often.  Unfortunately, there was a wet sound as well, which was the sound of my oncoming head cold, which was in full throttle by the time I arrived, exhausted, in Johnson City, Tennessee.  Johnson City is famous for its Tennessee Walkers, a show horse, and is part of the "Tri-Cities" that include Johnson City, Kingsport as well as Bristol, VA.  Nearing Johnson City, I also passed a gigantic modern brick complex of buildings that turns out to be an evangelical church.  Since then, I have noted a number of these "megachurches" and listened for a while to the local radio, which is dominated by religious programming.

After doses of Zicam (not the nasal form, linked to the loss of sense of smell), I was doing a little better this morning and, after a late start, I continued on.  My route took me through Knoxville, home to the University of Tennessee, which I had last visited with my older son, who was attending a chess tournament there.  Chess is great for kids but lousy for parents, who spend many hours waiting for tournaments to finish, unable to watch the action and worried about how their child will handle losses, which are pretty much inevitable and are not diluted, as is the case with team sports, by the presence of other players.

After Knoxville, I turned south, through Chattanooga, where the amazing Lookout Mountain looms over the city.  Soon after, I skirted an edge of Georgia for a short while before entering Alabama (where a huge sign over the entrance of the Welcome Visitors Rest Stop states "Welcome Back, Snowbirds").  Over the period of several hours, and an atrocious meal at Strykers, a regional fast food place, I traversed the entire width of Alabama.  Birmingham sat in the middle and is a built-up modern city with skyscrapers, traffic and some actual industry.  The area is notable for not only an apparently still operating steel mill (in Bessemer, of course) but also several foreign car manufacturing plants (I saw VW and Mercedes), lured by government inducements and right-to-work laws.  Just as textile manufacturing went to the South in the 19th Century, leaving New England mill towns like Lowell and Lawrence in bad shape (although with great old buildings suitable for rehabbing), the end of the 20th saw auto manufacturing leaving the Midwest and Northeast for accomodating Southern locales from Alabama to South Carolina.  It is to be hoped that these Southern workers do not suffer the same fate as their forebears when textile manufacturing left for even cheaper labor overseas.

Finally, I reached my third state of the day (and 9th of the trip in just 3 travel days), Mississippi, where I finished up in Meridian.  A very strange interpretation of my hotel's location by Google Maps took me to downtown Meridian, which is truly disheveled.  While there seem to be glimpses of efforts to reclaim the downtown, it seemed mostly rough territory with a few handsome old buildings.  Finally I figured out that I should ignore the instructions and head back to the area abutting the interstate where chain hotels, restaurants and shopping areas appear to have escaped to.  I'd traveled 520 miles today, zapping myself with Zicam and with a buzz from Sudafed (now available only from the pharmacist since a key ingredient is used to make crystal meth, a drug that has its claws into wide swaths of rural America from coast to coast.

Happily, across the parking lot of the hotel is Logan's Roadhouse, one of the highest rated eateries in Meridian.  I opted for one of the "health nut" meals (so-called on the menu) and it was actually pretty good.  Strangely, my meal was comped (I did leave a "healthy" tip).  Either they took pity on my for avoiding the very good looking steaks, ribs and burgers or they thought, pad and iPhone in hand, that I was a restaurant critic.  That, of course, only means I'm a New Yorker.

So that is the start.  Tomorrow takes me to the Big Easy, which I have never really had time to see before.