Georgia and Tennessee

We stayed in Macon, Georgia last night, and we got gas this morning just north of Macon. This place seemed to represent all the worst parts of Georgia. The pumps were all old and decrepid. There was trash everywhere, including piles of clothes on the road. It was weird, almost surreal.

We headed north, through Atlanta and Chattanooga, to where we are, at some Shell station in Tennessee. Monkey's driving soon.

The adventure is continuing. I'm happy with the decision of skipping the Jack Daniels distillery, hoping to make St. Louis by the end of the day. With any luck, tomorrow morning we'll get to go up in the Arch, and we'll be rolling in to Denver Monday night.

I can't wait to road trip in the BattleWagon!

I've Got Georgia On My Mind

Monkey and I got out of Orlando around 4:15 and headed due north. The sun went down, and we lost the gloomy, gray clouds to darkness. We laughed as we drove and danced to techno music to keep us awake. We stopped in Voldosta, Georgia, where we grabbed a bite to eat at Steak N Shake. Monkey offered me $20 to eat 10 sweet peppers, and I got through 4 before he name me laugh. The pepper juice went up my nose, and the challenge ended then and there. We're now on the road again with Macon, Georgia in our sights. It's starting to mist snow a little bit, but this truck is warm, and the Knob and Noster are keeping their souls lit by means of CocaCola, Starbucks, and some classic Pearl Jam.

The picture just proves something even more personal for me:  If you focus on what's behind you, you miss everything around you.

The Patchwork of the Bread Basket

We left DIA this morning around 7:30, and we just landed in a cold and wet and rainy Atlanta, excited for our continued trip to Orlando. Hopefully we'll get some time to pee and eat before we board again.

When we were flying, I snapped this picture of the plains, the different shades of dormant crops laying out like an organic checkerboard underneath us, before the clouds came and covered it all up like a fluffly white blanket.

Wings

It's 6:47 am, and this is the vehicle that will take us to Atlanta, where we'll get on a differnt plane for Orlando. The airport is quiet this morning, and the air is still. The sunrise is pretty. The morning has broken.

Knob & Noster 2: The Florida Saga

It's 5:24 am on a Saturday. Monkey and I are en route to Denver International Airport. This is to be our second foray to the deep south, flying to Orlando and driving back to Denver with a truck full of Monkey's wife's mom's stuff. She moved out here not too long ago, and Monkey, being the great son-in-law he is, has volunteered to pick up and move her stuff out here. We did this trip once before; I want to say it was November. This time, we'll have a shorter truck and no dog coming with us.

The "Knob & Noster" comes from the town Knob Noster, Kansas, which we drove by on our last trip. Monkey dubbed the two of us Knob & Noster, our aliases of adventure.

I love the first day of any vacation where you have to get up early and go. One of my favorite things when I was a kid was when my dad would wake us all up at 3:30 or 4 to load us in the van bound for Phoenix. Those were always great trips. I miss those days, when the family seemed closer than it is. Sometimes it really sucks being an adult. But then, you meet great friends, and the adventures continue.

More coherent blogs later, when it's not an hour before sunrise.

Morning Has Broken

This morning I was listening to the radio and looking out my kitchen window. I was thinking of that classic song by Cat Stevens, "Morning Has Broken". He says "Morning has broken, like the first morning, Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird." I woke up this morning feeling like it was the first morning, like life had started new and fresh. While this would normally make me optimistic, today it's different. Today it makes me feel humble, as if to outline all of the work that's cut out for me. I have a lot of things that I need to accomplish, not pipe dreams or things on my bucket list, but actual goals to help restore my mental and spiritual health. It's almost daunting to realize and admit that I have some severe issues I'm dealing with, but if there's any one thing I need to stick to, it's that I can't lose faith that I'll be able to succeed.

Even getting through the first step and admitting that there are things in my life that I can't help, whether they be external or internal, is turning out to be a very daunting task. I can't blame it on anything, but it helps to know that the blame can't include me. I don't know if that's true all the time, and there are times when I want to punish myself for my own transgressions. It's intimidating, but I can't give up, and I can't hold it against friends and family members who are hurt by me.

I sit here writing this, listening to "Explosions in the Sky", I feel much more introspective than normal, almost fearing what is to be found inside my head. But I must keep going. I must not quit.

Avatar

There have been movies which have been controversial upon their release. The Catholic church practically waged war on "The DaVinci Code", and the conservatives labeled Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" a bleeding-heart liberal doctrine. Other flicks are almost pure hype, and then when you see them, the whole experience fizzles out leaving you unsatisfied and disappointed, sometimes even angry.

I try to pay attention to the news, and it's hard to do that and not see the hype for "Avatar". I have to admit that this made me hesitate to see it. Firstly, I'm not impressed by movies that make a ton of money right away. People are easy to con. Secondly, James Cameron's last great outing was "Titanic", which, all cool effects of the ship itself aside, was kind of a weak love story with the beautiful ginger Kate Winslet and short guy Leonardo DiCaprio (umm... not really). Needless to say, with "Avatar" I was skeptical, almost to the point of writing it off in my head, when a co-worker invited me to go with them to see it.... at the IMAX.... in 3D. (I'd never seen a 3D movie before...)

So I went. Oh, boy did I go. I stood in line for 45 minutes at the Colorado Center's IMAX theater, the same place I took my brother and parents to see "Star Trek" over mother's day. The people were enthusiastic, all wearing their yellow 3D glasses with pride. And when the movie started rolling... phew... to quote Samuel L. Jackson's character in "Jurassic Park", "hold on to your butts." James Cameron came out swinging.

The whole movie takes place on this alien moon called Pandora, where a race of natives, I'm guessing to be around 10 or 11 feet tall, live there in peace and harmony with nature. They're so in tune to the world around them, that they have these biological USB-ports on their pony tails that they can use to plug in to plans and animals. That sense of harmony and respect for nature was something that I really identified with, something that was threatened by the people of Earth, who show up to pillage the planet for a mineral called "unobtainium", a mineral that has strong enough magnetic properties to make big deposits of it actually hover above the ground. There are even the "Hallelujah Mountains" on Pandora, entire mountains hovering above the ground. What happens is a classic, yet beautifully done battle of the natives to defend their homeland, and as for the end, well, you'll just have to see it.

The attention to detail in this make believe world were so overwhelming and beautiful. Unlike "Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones", this was a very believable reality, not cartoonish at all, almost like you're looking at a movie filmed in the Amazon, but every plant and animal is not something you recognize. At one point, sitting in a theater with two big and intimidating guys, I broke down and let tears roll out of my eyes, enamored with the beauty of the movie.

Out of 5 stars, I would give this movie a perfect score, and being a trekkie and having my big day last May, I have to say that this motion picture blew that one out of the water.