Road Trip
Day 2:
Set off bright and early (not as bright and early as we should have) and headed across the great state of Tennessee. Tennessee is quite wide and thus it took us most of the day.
Our first stop was about halfway across the state. Tomas had decided that we needed some Fireworks and we stopped at one of the many many fireworks stores you can find along the highways. I have never seen so many explosives in my life. After much deliberating and browsing, I managed to escape only 25 bucks the poorer. I could have spent a lot more...

While tooling around iTunes last night I came across Barack Obama's new book for download. As I said I'd get a hold of that as soon as I saw it in audio form, I decided to follow up on that promise. The audio is abridged but still lasts almost 7 hours.
Listening to Obama talking about our country while actually driving across it was at once interesting, uplifting, and surreal. I can't wait to vote for that guy. He seems to have a pretty perfect grasp on just about every aspect of how life and government should be in this country, endlessly wise and even-handed on matters of politics, race, family, religion and industry.
Apart from being less than thrilled with the Bush administration's policies on... pretty much everything, I have been more or less apolitical throughout my life. This guy, however, I could really get behind. I worry about him though, and hope he'll have the opportunity to fulfill his potential. He reminds me of guys like Gandhi, Lincoln, JFK, Akbar The Great, Martin Luther King, Jr. These wise, reasonable men come along who have this vision for a better way for us to live together on this Earth. They have big, unifying ideas and start to change the world, but are never allowed to finish. They're all stopped by people too selfish and or stupid and or greedy and or scared to let things evolve.

We made our way across the state, shooting for Memphis and the home of all things Elvis. While I had little time or interest in the actual Graceland tour, we did go in with every intention of grabbing ourselves some of the most ridiculous Elvis stuff possible.
This led to one of the most bazzarre and surreal experiences I've ever had. We got our merchandise just fine. However, Tomas went out to grab something from the car and managed to lock his keys inside... This led to us being stranded in the Graceland gift shop on Elvis Presley Blvd. for a couple hours with nothing to do but watch Elvis videos, listen to Elvis music and stare at Elvis stuff... It was a bit hard for Tomas to explain to the roadside assistance guy where we were. My favorite part of their conversation:

"Is there anything around you not named after Elvis??"
"I'm guessing not... We're in Graceland."

Eventually we made it out of there (a nice lady from Progressive showed up to let us into the car in a flash) and resumed our travels. Right before we crossed the Mississippi border, we passed the largest roadside gentleman's club either of us had ever seen. This thing had to have been the size of a Wal-mart. Of course we had many miles yet to travel and could not investigate further. As we sped through the darkness of Mississippi, we were accompanied by the stand-up comedy stylings of Dane Cook, Mitch Hedberg, and David Cross.