Tennessee: We do hillbilly in ways your inbred fifth cousin named Billy-cletus can only dream of.

I feel I never truly knew what a hillbilly was until I traveled through the back woods of Tennessee.


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Breakfast



Tail of the Dragon: Count the confederate flags

Psalm 34

Well today went far better than expected/nothing at all like I expected.

After waking up in D.C. to a groggy friend telling me he was way too tired to go to breakfast, I got an early start to my day. My route included a lot of scenic roads along the coast, and I was really excited.

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Then... the most anticlimactic bad thing happened. I pulled over in the middle of Fredericksburg Virginia to go inside a gas station to get some moolah (money) and my key decided it was a perfect time to peace out (run away). After looking for it for around 2 minutes I threw my arms up at the futility of it all, fell on the ground, and called my mom. She told me I should probably look for a bit longer, so I looked for 30 minutes, and then threw up my arms and fell to the ground in exhaustion again. Then I decided to tell the indian gas station attendant.

Me: Hey I lost my key in here! I looked everywhere but still can't find it!

Attendant: *feigning interest* Oh. *turns away to be distracted by something else*

No help. Long story short... After hours of calling locksmiths and realizing my cheapest option to get a replacement was around $200, I resigned to the fact that I was probably going to be in Fredericksburg, Virginia significantly longer than I had intended to be (which was like 5 minutes).

Because I hate spending money, I decided to find a place to couch surf. Couch surfing is a huge worldwide network of individuals/families that let people stay at their houses for free. It's a kind of honor system thing; if you use it, you should probs let someone stay at your house in the future.

After parking my bike, and making a hike to a starbucks across the street, I submitted some requests, and half an hour later I got a call from a man named Steve.

Steve is an englishman who used to hold a very high position in British Government. He was extensively involved with the negotiations between Britain and China over the handover of Hong Kong, and he has a biography signed by Margaret Thatcher. Now he lives in Fredericksburg and is the editor of an online newspaper, the founder of a christian ministry, and an avid cook and gardener. He is hilarious, especially with his English accent.

When I told Steve of my predicament, he came over, somehow fit my motorcycle in his minivan, and drove me to get a new key.

Steve: "Before we go home we absolutely have to stop by George Washington's childhood home where he cut down the cherry tree."

Steve: *Looking at the Mcdonalds across the street* I don't think they had that when the Washingtons lived here, but I could be wrong.

After that, he took me to his home to meet his sons, fixed an amazing dinner of shepherds pie with apple pie for desert, and showed me to my room, where I had a queen sized bed. Balllin.

Us eating apple pie

Steve's ice cream collection.

When I went to thank Steve for everything, I told him how 4 hours ago I thought I was going to have to spend hundreds of dollars to get a new key and a motel, and that I never would have thought I would have a new key, full stomach, shower, and queen sized bed to sleep in. His response was; "Well, it's like Psalm 3:4; I cried out to my God, and he answered me."

Word.

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Steve: *while getting into bed* "See this is a strange habit I have, I like to take a long nap every night."

Steve: Hello bed! *imitates bed's voice* Hello Steve!

I have to go to sleep, but I shall conclude with this picture of one of Steve's cats riding my bike.

Word.

There is a time for everything...

Hey everybody,

I can't remember how many times I have wanted to get this blog started up again. Every time I do, the process goes like this:

1: Justin thinks "Hey! I loved my blog! I should start writing in it again!"

2: Justin gets on his blog

3: Justin reads some old posts

4: Justin cries bitterly

5: Justin gets off the computer, tears his clothes, covers his head, and rubs ashes all over his skin in a sign of his great sorrow.

See the thing is... I find it hard to believe I could ever be as funny as I was when I lived in Sudan. I don't know why I had so much creativity there - all I know is that it hasn't really followed me back to the U.S.

Alas.

But, there has to be a 37th time for ev

erything, so today I am trying to start it again.

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I guess one of the real reasons I am more confident about starting it up again this time is that I have stuff to write about now. I just got a motorcycle, and I am going to be taking some roadtrips around the U.S., and it is great to have somewhere to write down all the funny (but probably not as funny as before) thoughts that I have about everything and everyone I see along the way.

So let's begin.

My goal is to take my bike out west. When I was younger I saw a video about someone driving down the pacific coast highway, the highway that goes al

l along the coast of California, and thought "I need to do that on a motorcycle."

<-- The Pacific Coast Highway

But, I thought for my first test trip I should do something a bit easier, and I wanted to see all my Pace U friends anyway, so I decided to go up to NYC.

From Raleigh NC, that is a 9 hour and 8 minute drive.

I have heard that typically you want to limit the amount of motorcycle road time per day to 6 hours, as anything past that just wears you out, so I decided to split the trip into two legs; one to DC, and one to NYC.

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1st LEG: North Carolina to Washington D.C.

On this leg I learned a couple of things.

1: Don't leave late

2: There are many bugs in virginia.

3: There are even more bugs at night in virginia.

4: A bug hitting your ch

est at 80 mph feels like a BB gun shot.

5: A bug hitting your face at 80 mph feels like a BB gun shot to your face.

2: Always wear a face shield. Especially at night. Especially in Virginia.

3: Driving at night is not fun.

4: After going 80 mph for 5 hours, your body gets very strange.

5: Never open your mouth while driving through Virginia at night without a face shield

6: Leave on time.

Somewhat random... But all very true.

Now I know what you are thinking: "Well well well, another Uganda-bus-barf-into-mouth incident! Looks like someone rode without a face shield and had bugs hit his face. Foolish. Serves him right!"

No, I didn't do that. But I did find my helmet looking like this after an hour of riding:

Now it was really dark when I took this, so it's hard to see the ridiculousness of how many dead bugs were on it, but trust me: It was significantly ridiculous.

I did, a couple of times get hit by big bugs in the chest, and that was very unpleasant.

All that to say: the first leg of the trip was not very exciting. I meant to leave at 3, but instead I left at 6:30, so most of my trip was at night time, going through the endless expanses of forest freeway in Virginia. I got to DC at around midnight, and stayed the night with my friend Cash.

My lovely couch

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2nd Leg: Washington D.C. to NYC

Leaving from D.C. (Trying to be awkward)

Thankfully, this leg of the trip made up for the boredom of the last one.

I was looking up really good roads to drive on, and I found Highway 213, which goes along some island-ish type off the coast of Maryland. If you look on this map, the three dots are where I changed my route to go over 213 for around 3 hours. It ended up being the best decision of my trip.

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Sometimes I have experiences that are just too intense to communicate to others, and parts of this drive definitely fell in that category. The whole 213 detour was a drive through giant farmlands and weird places that I didn't have time to take pictures of. The first bridge over was two lanes wide, and towered around 75 feet in the air over the bit of ocean that separates the island thing from the mainland. It was unreal.

A field on 213

Dumpster on the border of Delaware and Maryland

Gas Station in Delaware

Then I had a pretty crazy discovery: I found an abandoned amusement park in the middle of nowhere. And by nowhere I mean Delaware. Of course I had to stop an explore it for an hour or so.

The whole place was really eery. The wind was blowing really hard the whole time and the whole place was filled with the creaks and moans of the abandoned structures.

Finally I got to Jersey, and then to NYC.

I shall post more about NY and the trip back in a couple of days. For now, I need to shower. Badly.