the open road .....
finally, we get on 40, headed west. after a few hold ups with ye old tow dolly in durham, pittsboro, and some excellent dudley repairs in asheville, we take to the highway - confident that our caravan is in good shape, ready to get to arizona.

the storm clouds brewing in tn....it poured down rain
our second day of driving. If I might add: the man is definitely building bombs of some sort in TN. We had to take a detour off 40 through The Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Hmm...lots of fencing, no tresspassing signs, weird road symbols. Of course I could not take photos to document this for fear immediate "shock and awe" retaliatation. They have a website, and claim to work on "Big-Time Nano-technology." Funded by the Dept of Energy no less.

a lake with old dead trees in it....

meg with elvis at the memphis welcome center. I think Elvis looks a little suggestive is this photo, don't you? Something about his hips, meg on the other hand looks positively virgin.

and then things got a bit more complicated...we pulled off onto an overlook to enjoy a nice view of a lake in western arkansas and we noticed the tow dolly was having some troubles:

the roads were so bumpy that we couldn't tell the difference, but all the tread had come off the tire....and in the process blown off the fender and shredded all the wires going to the tail light. rose gets on the phone with budget roadside assistance and waits on hold for a good 40 minutes until someone ginally gets on the line and informs her that it will be atleast 1-2 hours before they can get in touch with a local mechanic, and who knows how long after that before they make it to our lovely overlook.
Below is Lewis. He popped around the corner of the Budget with two bottles of water. He scared the shit out of me. Mostly because I could not see him coming and then because I thought he was going fit the stereotype of a "trucker," and thus force me to pray for his immediate departure from the lovely roadside pull off, or worse the entire planet. Turns out he was pretty cool. Lewis told stories of "the life." He came out of retirement to keep on truckin, excuse the pun, and to get out the house. Lewis is from Memphis, which prompted me to mention that I might like to live there (so far this had been the most promising city I had seen along the way), to which he replied "oh no you do not want to live there." I couldn't ignore such a come on, "what don't you like about it?" "Blacks." and that was that. Lewis had laid it out for me. I just sat there looking at the ground, a concise statement, leaving the air between us bloated. He continued on with trucker stories, and then it was "time to move on." Meet Lewis:
Above and below: budget home movies. Rosie and I decided we could watch DVD's in the sweltering heat. The theater served white cheddar cheese-its and all natural sodas. This is American Middle Class life at its most inventive. The saddest part is that many other folks, who had pulled off to see the lake and looming nuclear power plant, seemed to believe we were just relaxing; that watching dvds in the back of a budget rental truck was something people from NC might just do.