The Amazing Adventures of a Zoobroker and a Sentiographer
Right off of Interstate 95 in North Carolina we found a good place to start our BBQ throwdown - Ralph's Barbecue (Buffet) in Weldon, NC.
Load yourself up, grab some sweet tea and chow down. Best eats were the pulled pork and roasted chicken.
The fried chicken was also good. Zoo says he makes better at home, though. Can't wait to get invited to his place.
Oh, and I wished I could be there at night to see the neon pigs all lit up. Hard shadow looks real good, though.
Waking up early ain't one of my strong suits. Waking up to direct sunlight is harder. But Richmond had its charm from 19 floors up. Check these out.
And found this awesome banner that declares our intent for RT6:
Southern States, indeed.
OK, so we start this 17-day journey with high hopes to enjoy the hell out of the South. Just want you to know that outright. For starters, we hit Hoagie Haven in Princeton. Zoo got this monstrosity:
I believe he called it a #16.
I chose a #8,l and they had no idea what Russian Dressing is, so they added oil and vinegar. Close. But check out how damn HUGE these Hoagies are:
And yes, this is a Hoagie. Not a Wedge or Grinder or whatever else you want to call it. THIS IS NJ!!!
</rant>
Sooooo, we made for Richmond, VA. Made it just after midnight and headed over to Sine Irish Pub. First shots and beers.
Live band, one shot, one beer. Out. See you tomorrow!
Well, after a little drama where my friend's honeymoon in Bora Bora got cancelled due to a strike in Tahiti and I had to reroute their whole trip to Ixtapa, we're headed down south. Check in regularly and hopefully we'll have some gems for you soon...
Just got off the phone with Zoo and the recounting of his latest galavants, my own struggles to keep the work gears meshing with my artistic pursuits and constant practice of living that happy life made me consider writing this whole thing as the exciting beginning of a movie script. It sure sounds fucking fun. (grin) Well, it is. How many times have you re-evaluated, improved and upgraded your life? Seriously. I think I'm in a damn rut again and it's my own fault. Good thing is that I'm on it and the next road trip is only days away.... droooool. Gimme a break, gimme a break make me take some time off off to live real good!
(above: punkout wussyface)
But then again, there is always moments like this:
Now that's what I call the pursuit of happiness. And this opening is two nights prior to our departure.
So taking a check on past promises to self (from memory) that I would follow my wants I have to put a fat "X" on this one. Check. I have one awesome group of friends, family and supporters, too. Check. Healthy. Check.
So I'm beta-testing Life 3.0 on this RT to see how much further I can this this. Alpha build is done, time for some realtime debugging. Lemme know about your experiences in the comments, if you are so inclined.
The trip starts for me tomorrow ... and the way it's scheduled, I'm on the road for 30 days straight. The official road trip doesn't start until the 11th ... look for updates starting around then ...
In the meantime, enjoy this tip of the day:
Eggs Mushrooms Strawberries Pieces of Banana Boiled Potatoes
Apples Zucchini* Raw Potatoes*
*Not actually tested, because it broke on the apple.
I was thinking about shit the last few days -- mostly about how much people suck -- but I realized that one aspect of me (ever since we killed the pushup chart and the cigarette chart) that isn't well reflected here on lifeisaroadtrip.com is my obsession with "the numbers". Forget the whole "truth, lies, statistics" b.s. I'm not trying to simplify the world just cuz I can't comprehend or don't appreciate its complexity. But numbers, simple or not, can provide insight into what we're dealing with.
Anyway, this is what I was thinking yesterday ... when I tell people I'm going on 18 day road trip .. they're generally like "cool, I wish I could go on a road trip, where ya goin'?".
Me: "All over the south. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Mobile, Alabama. Lexington, Kentucky. Places like that."
Them: "Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Lexington?"
So this is what I've come up with:
If you're in the big red circle, I don't want to ever, ever talk to you. I realize that's not a great Venn diagram, but suck it. What I'm trying to say is, if you only want to visit the "cool" cities (e.g., NY, LA, Miami, Chicago, Vancouver) you're barely travelling. If you haven't already figured it out, travelling is a state of mind, and most of the world's reknowned cities are basically the same place ... the cool shit exists in the margins.
Anyway, I'm gonna go data heavy this trip ... jst cuz.
Las Vegas sits in the middle of some of the most beautiful terrain this country has to offer. And most of the millions of fucking tourists never see it. It's like they say, "ooh shiny! oooh tits! ooh buffet!" and while they're inundated by fake they quickly lose their hold on reality. I mean, fuck, I like shiny. I like tits. I love the fucking buffet. So we struggle to remain even sort of rooted, so getting the fuck outta Dodge is a requirement. We headed to the Valley of Fire. If we didn't have shit to do, I'd rework the 23rd Psalm to my purposes. Alas, I'm just gonna drop a teaser. We went with friends of Phaux ... maybe more on them another time. Good people.
Sometimes I think we should rename this blog Proof Of Future Cancer with all the smoking that's captured on film. Anyway, Phaux, thanks for the ego-porn.
Yeah, this a road. It screams Moto Guzzi commercial. Except we were driving a Kia. But everytime we parked it, it looked like one of those depressing mini-van commercials that consoles both men and women about the depressing sterility and banality of their existence by saying, "You will not always be changing dirty diapers in the living room watching SportsCenter, sometimes you will be changing dirty diapers in the the desert."
So, this is the kind of shit that you get when you take 3 awesome photographers to the desert ... serious ego porn.
These were taken with a IR-modified Canon G9, which for some reason turns my clean shaven face into very strange 5 o'clock shadow, sort of like the oldest brother on Party of Five. You know, the guy who became the doc on Lost? Don't you think it's strange that when he's living on Alamo Square with running water and Walgreen's within walking distance he never could shave, but when he gets on the semi-deserted island in the middle of Pacific, he actually is Wall Street clean shaven? Weird. Oh, yeah, that's a knife. Not the Global, but hey.
That's Sylvester. Photographer-slash-Art Director. That's my grill going in the background. Cowboy cheesesteaks, rosemary pork tenderloin au poivre, asparagus. That's why they let me tag along.
I hate to tease all of you with this shot ... but pretty sick, huh? And that's not even the best shot. God I just creamed myself.
... seriously. It's full of cheeseball douchebag wanna-be brainless fashion victims. It annoys me so much that normally I go windmill tilting and try to annoy it right back, but that has generally ended badly -- like, my-friend-covered-in-a-third-party's-blood badly -- so I thought, okay, this time I'm going to play nice ... .. apparently, I didn't play nice enough ...
... I really don't get why women take so much pleasure in hurting me, but moving on ... we headed downtown with every intention of shooting some pictures of Fremont, when I saw:
... it screamed "road trip classic", I just knew that this was my bar ...
... minus the tila tequila wanna-be, pictured below ...
... great locals joint. Sexy women, cheap tequila, midget twins ... can you really lose? Well, apparently I can ...
... I guess I offended her by wiping off the copious lipstick ... we did make up after that ...
.. right before her husband, who was there the whole time, made his appearence ... oops .. I guess "I'm here with my girlfriends" means something else in Vegas.
Vegas, helloooo again!
Zoo and I are on a little R&R and hopped over to Fremont for some photo ops and she-nan-i-gans.
Reminds me of my head.
Rub it...
Zoo spotted this bar, had a hunch and made a run for it.
Music wasn't impressive, but I felt like we were transported to Portland, OR. It was so NOT-VEGAS, chill, firelit and filled with younger, somewhat less-skanky people.
And some beautiful people...
And fun people, some with sequin pants and mismatched shoes. Good times. Will come back, for sure.