Just Go!

8/1/05 Atlanta, GA to Washington, D.C.

After staying up late chatting with buddies that had just gotten back from a Palestinian solidarity conference and pretending to look at the map for the next day, we gave up and went to bed. So – first thing Monday morning the road was ours. Well, kind of. That is to say that it was ours after getting up a bit late, cleaning the car, packing the car, icing down the homebrew beer, stopping to buy groceries, then to buy a radio adapter for the iPod (insurance for our sanity and friendship), picking up the camera from school, and finally hitting the road… and then stopping for lunch. We really had every intention of starting out first thing in the morning… Honestly we did. But already the road was lending itself to metaphor. Here we were with this batch of new experiences and new relationships and new dynamics of old relationships rolling our way - but this seemingly infinite number of minor logistics were compounding to block our path.

Well, once we hit the road we plodded along the 653 mile trek up Interstate 85 through South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and finally up to Alexandria, VA without much event, calling to touch base with Bob Boilen of NPR and Jerry terHorst for the next day’s interviews – our first of the trip. We pulled in to our recently married friends Tim and Gretchen Fry’s new apartment in Alexandria sometime after midnight.