Kennesaw, GA – afternoon

Well, the rain and Bell Atlantic conspired to keep me from getting back on schedule.  If you ever try to take a cell phone out of town, interrogate your service provider, using all means of torture available to you, to make them ‘fess up to any secret codes or IDs or PINs you’re going to need.  You have to have a PIN to use the phone in the Atlanta area.  How do you get a PIN?  Call your service provider.  How do you call your service provider?  With a PIN.  Arrgh.  Luckily, a helpful woman at Bell South Mobile (absolutely no relation to Bell Atantic Mobile, of course, even though they use the same logo and advertising materials, which is what attracted my attention to stop in there in the first place.  But I digress…) made the long distance call on her dime and was able to get me what I needed.

But that took a lot longer than I had budgetted for, and the rain got harder and I decided I didn’t want to hook up the Tracker in that mess.  Besides, I’ve got a computer hookup here, which I’m learning might not be as ubiquitous as I had thought.  Even farther out beside that, I think I’m going to treat myself to dinner at the OK Cafe (I’ll be thinking about you, Zywick).

I expect to be in Nashville tomorrow night, and Memphis the night after that, although I might spend some extra time in Nashville and get back to the schedule somewhere around Denver.  I also expect to do a third update later tonight.

Kennesaw, GA – morning

Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t get out of Greenville on the 25th.  Picky, picky, picky.  It’s now the 27th, and, as per the schedule, I woke up in Atlanta, or at least the greater metropolitan area thereof.  More precisely, I’m in a KOA Kampground (isn’t that cute with the “K” in “Kampground?”  I think they should be Kwality KOA Kampgrounds, just so they could advertise as KK… never mind) in Kennesaw, GA, a bit up I-75, for to give me a headstart on Nashville when I leave later today.  It’s rainy, which makes me kind of cranky, and, frankly, quite wet.  But I found a natural food store, and I think I’m going to be able to clear up my phone problems today (if any of you were expecting a phone call on the 26th and didn’t get one, blame the Altanta-area cell phone companies nazi-esque policies concerning roaming in their area, or as they like to call it, their “turf”).  Well, great, it’s raining harder now, and it’s time for me to hook up the jeep and get moving.  Glad I brought my raincoat.

Greenville, SC

Okay, I’m still at home, but the RV is in the yard and I’m getting packed.  There are several goals I have for this trip.  I want to learn how to use my camera, so I bought a bunch of film and I’m going to a lot of Natural Wonder type sites.  I want to build my collections of comic books, computers, and guitars, so I will be visiting those kinds of stores all along the way, as well as attending the largest conventions this year for comics and Atari computers (yes, some of us still own and run Atari computers).  I want to record and edit some of my songs so that I will have a usable demo tape when I get back.  And on a somewhat grander scale, I want to have some time to myself to figure out who and what I want to be after this is over with (the trip, I mean).

At the moment, I’m planning to leave either this weekend or early next week.  This has moved from my original plan of leaving yesterday or today.  The main reason for this is I’ve been having trouble getting locations in mind for the trip west, and I keep finding things I want to do as I return east.  Given that some days out west are in fact nailed down, I’m shortening the west bound trip in anticipation of lengthening the eastbound.  Right now, this is what things look like:

July 25, 26 Atlanta, GA

July 27 Nashville TN

July 28, 29 Memphis TN

July 30, 31 St. Louis, MO

August 1 Lost in the prarie (okay, _you_ find something fun in Kansas…)

August 2-4 Denver, CO

August 5 Somewhere in or around Cortez, CO

August 6, 7 Grand Canyon Village, AZ

August 8 Lake Mead National Recreation Area, AZ

August 9-17 San Diego, CA

August 18, 19 Los Angeles/San Bernardino CA

August 20-23 Las Vegas, NV

August 24 Somewhere in or around Tonopah, NV

August 25 Reno, NV

August 26, 27 Klamath Falls, OR

August 28 Newport, OR

August 29-September 1 Portland, OR

After this, things get sketchy again.  The general direction will be east, but the specifics will depend on a lot of variables I cannot foresee at the moment (like wether I find that ’63 Gibson reverse-body Firebird, or that pre-CBS Fender Jaguar, or that Comic Cavalcade #1, or that… well, you get the idea).  I’ll post more details as things get more clear.

NAT Home

Here’s the plan:  the plant where I worked (okay, “worked” is perhaps a stretch here.  Let’s say the plant that paid me for my continued attendance and leave it at that) is shutting down, and they started offering severance packages.  I got the hell out of Dodge.  One of the upsides of working for a big company is that they really take care of you when they put you out of work, so I was faced with a big chunk of time where I really didn’t have to do anything if I didn’t want to.  Rather than bank the proceeds and find another job right away (which was my mother’s brilliant plan.  Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I’m really related to her…), I decided to borrow the RV belonging to my sister Susie and brother-in-law Bill.  Heeding the ancient call of “Go West” (my SC home kinda dictated that “going East” would result in an odyssey less epic than the one I have in mind), I signed over a portion of my stash to AAA, who must have wiped out an acre or two of old growth forest to print all the maps they gave me.

There are a few stops that are set in stone (San Diego, August 10-18, for ComicCon International; Las Vegas, August 21-23, for World of Atari ’98), and the rest I’m making up as I go.  I’m taking my laptop and a list of local access numbers with me, so I hope to update the Tour pages as I go.  This also means that, theoretically at least, I can get email, so feel free to drop me an electronic line if you know of something I absolutely must see, hear, or drink on my trip (yes, I’m going to Newport.  Yes, I’m parking the RV at the Rogue brewery and filling the fresh water tank with Shakespeare Stout), particularly if you’re interested in meeting up with me for the festivities.

The tentative schedule looks like this, with notes on where I _actually_ was compared to the plan: (NOTE: as of 08/02/98, this has all gone to hell.  See update for 08/02/98 for more information).

July 25, 26 Atlanta, GA

July 25: Greenville, July 26: Atlanta

July 27 Nashville TN

July 27: Atlanta

July 28, 29 Memphis TN

July 28: Nashville, July  29: Memphis

July 30, 31 St. Louis, MO

July 30: Memphis, July 31: St. Louis

August 1 Lost in the prarie (okay, _you_ find something fun in Kansas…)

August 1: Salina, KS

August 2-4 Denver, CO

August 2: Salina, KS

August 5 Somewhere in or around Cortez, CO

August 6, 7 Grand Canyon Village, AZ

August 8 Lake Mead National Recreation Area, AZ

August 9-17 San Diego, CA

August 18, 19 Los Angeles/San Bernardino CA

August 20-23 Las Vegas, NV

August 24 Somewhere in or around Tonopah, NV

August 25 Reno, NV

August 26, 27 Klamath Falls, OR

August 28 Newport, OR

August 29-September 1 Portland, OR

Hopefully, below this blurb is an ever-growing list of dated articles created as the trip unfolds.  Have fun, I’m going to.

07/23/98