Rackin’ up the State Tally

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Part of the joy of this trip is rackin’ up our state tally, or you can call it “measurable outcomes” if that pushes your button. According to my rules, your feet have to touch state ground, so just driving through without making a pit stop or sitting on an airport tarmac doesn’t count. Though Dj travels more these days, he lived a fairly deprived childhood and didn’t go anywhere so I still beat him at 34 states :).  I originally wanted to drive through the middle of America, via Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, etc. so I could tally up more, but alas we’re doing the Southern route we’ve mostly done before.

 For Jeremiah, he is quickly adding more states. He just hit #19 today, TN. Both of us are going to add AR tomorrow. Here’s his state tally roughly in chronological order:

1. NC (born in Raleigh, 1997)

2. CA

3. VA

4. MD

5. DE

6. PA

7. NJ

8. NY

9. NM

10. CO

11. AZ

12. TX

13. IL

14. HI

 Since beginning this trip:

15. SC

16. GA

17. AL

18. MS

19. TN

sweet hour Alabama

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We’ve just crossed the Georgia-Alabama state line and gained an hour by entering Central Time.

The day began with a wonderful home-cooked breakfast: classic bacon & eggs with toast, cooked by host and (novice) chef Jeff Shinabarger. Jeff started GiftCardGiver.com to collect gift cards with remainder amounts and aggregates them for donating to the poor & needy. Here’s what you can do with used gift cards — we’ve all got a few dollars left on gift cards here and there — mail them to:

GiftCardGiver.com
554 West Main St, Bldg A, Suite 200
Buford, GA 30518

We’re destined for Memphis tonight for BBQ at Rendezvous, recommended to us over the famous Corky’s. I consider Memphis the epicenter of barbeque, so tonight’s dining will be a particular delight. We should arrive in Memphis right around the recessional time of the Peabody Hotel ducks. Lunch might be around Birmingham – Highlands Bar & Grill looks really good. [update] Well, Highlands did look great, it’s one of those high-end dinner-only places, so we walked across the Five Points South intersection and got some smoothies from Planet Smoothie for lunch. Decided to forego the Peabody ducks and jump in the pool at our hotel ourselves instead.

Collage Catch Up

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I did get caught up on my collage-a-day this past thursday but have been unable to post til’ now. This trip is all about the food. We’re trying to avoid chains if we can help it and seek out as much local flavor as possible. Wednesday’s colors of the day were “Egg-Yolk Yellow” and “Biscuit Beige” and I made this collage of our yummy farm-fresh breakfast at the Meaders. Besides the eggs made-to-order we ate biscuits made from scratch with honey and fresh blackberry jam, two kinds of sausage, garden tomatoes, orange juice and coffee. I highly enourage the Meaders to open their Bed and Breakfast soon!

collage3breakfast

Thursday’s color of the day was BBQ Brown. We ate Southern food for lunch and dinner. I had a hankering for North Carolina Pulled Pork since we Woo’s have a preference for vinegar. Dj already wrote about our lunch at Hillbilly’s which fulfilled all my desires for pulled pork and more! For dinner our gracious hosts took us to Watershed in downtown Decatur where I had the plate of hot veggies: buttery lima beans, black-eyed peas, fried okra, collard greens, and a couple of cooked tomatoes. For dessert we walked in the balmy summer air to the Little Shop of Stories and ordered the most amazing ice cream I’ve had on this trip. Dj had tiramisu and I had Key Lime Piescream.

Collage4bbq

my kind of evening

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Asian American Emergents

The most engaging dinner + conversations with David Park (with wife Sunita) and Danny Yang (with wife Susan), and my family of 3. We talked marriage, family, money, food, technology, theology, seminary, lifestyle, emergent, check-fighting, racism, identity, church, categories, labels, Wii, though not necessarily in that order. Danny has actually made the pilgrimage to Glorietta for an Emergent Gathering, while I haven’t, so he’s actually more emergent legit than me.

Of course, the food was incredibly outstanding. We asked for local flavor, and we got very local. This midtown Atlanta place called EATS served up Jerk Chicken with heat that’d make you a believer (or unbeliever), and sides that screamed out “eat me” to me – made it a cake walk for me to order up the Meat and Three = Jerk Chicken + collards + mac/cheese + baked sweet potato, topped with a Jamaican Ginger Beer. Here’s a pix of the aftermath:

after a satisfying meal

Atlanta 2 nights

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We’re staying in Atlanta for 2 nights courtesy the southern hospitality of Jeff & Andre Shinabarger. Thank you Jeff & Andre!! I met Jeff at the Q boutique experience, which was an incredibly inspirational time for me as an ideator and all (I had live-blogged it over at the L2 Foundation blog). What’s great is that the inspiration can be had all year round (though you do have to be there at Q to get the 24/7 live experience) now with Fermi Words.

Fermi Words

Last night’s dinner was at the Watershed, and while they’re (supposedly) famous for fried chicken, they only serve fried chicken on Tuesdays, and they don’t serve sweet tea. Other than these 2 quirky things, the Southern dining was delightful, peppered with good conversations. BTW, we tooled around in a Toyota Prius, and we’re hooked! So we’ve got to get one of those as a 2nd car when we get to Cali — it’s got a built-in viral conversational piece called the energy monitor. Way cool.

Prius energy monitor

And to wind down the evening, we played a couple rounds of “Speed Scrabble”. Jeremiah had a blast along with our hosts!

IMGP1112

Today (Friday’s) family agenda is the Georgia Aquarium, touted as the largest aquarium in the world. We ordered 9:00am tickets online last night, so we’ve gots to skedaddle. Dinner will be with David Park and Danny Yang — anticipating some conversations about moving from a generic Gospel to a contextualized Gospel…

en route to Atlanta via Charlotte on I-85

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We’re about 60 minutes from arriving into Charlotte for lunch at Hillbilly’s Barbeque with Steve Knight, a friend of emergent, and a friend of a friend named Migum, who’d helped me with putting on a 2002 conference together in less than 2 weeks. Steve and Migum were both part of a relevant church community called Warehouse 242. (Migum also had moved maybe 6 months ago from Charlotte to the San Francisco Bay area with less than 2 weeks notice.)

Today’s morning fuel-up was courtesy of a Shell gift card from Eleanor Tse. She’s an old friend from my Virginia Tech days who’s lived in Southern California for years now.

[update] great meetup with Steve (with 3 kids) and another emergenty friend Jon; wow, that was some very delicious BBQ pork, and the ribs were smokey outstanding! Hush puppies with bbq sauce delish too. photos and podcast later when I can get more bandwidth.

IMGP1106 Hillbilly BBQ a real BBQ pit in action Hillbilly BBQ ribs and pork combo

The Texture of Memories

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Artistically I have always been drawn to texture, both visual and tactile. I’m about to go to bed in the hip Meader loft after Jeremiah abdicated his right to sleep here tonight. He dudn’t know what he’s missin’. I’ve just spent the perfect summer day with good friends eating fresh, unprocessed food off the farm, walking down a country lane and taking in the wonder of childhood. I am musing on the “texture” of memories. Is a memory just a mere documentation of facts, a précise recollection of a shared past event? Tonight we spent a couple hours sitting on a breezy porch pulling up random recollections and laughing less at the memory and more at the presentation (you know who you are!). Conversations meandered freely and openly with no forced performances or pressure or false pretensions. When you can palpably feel the joy in the telling, the sharing, the giving and the receiving of stories, then to me that’s the texture of memory and the satisfying touch of friendship.

Thanks porch gang.

I was not very happy during our two years in Raleigh but call it divine sovereignty that God allowed us to meet some terrific folks that sweetened the ache.

would Jesus use double entendres?

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Hangin’ out on the porch with old friends tonight (not sipping sweet tea b/c we need to get good sleep tonight), and we stumble onto an old conversation from over a decade ago about double entendres. We haven’t used the term in years, and the last time we remembered using it was in a group conversation that involved our dear friend Laurence, who happened to bring it back up. What the total recall?! So we need your vote to settle a friendly little debate.

Here’s the poll — please weigh in as to whether double entendres have to be risque or not:

navigating with a GPS

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Special thanks to Joe & Tina Chen for the use of their incredibly smart Garmin Nuvi GPS navigation equipment! We put it through its paces today driving around Creedmoor and Raleigh, giving audible and visual cues with ample time to switch lanes. Very cool hi-tech gadget! Thank you Joe!!! (tho’ we’re using it on loan, it may very well be quite addicting)

GPS on loan from cheninfo.com

Putting it to the real test at lunch time, we looked for a BBQ place. We found one a few miles further down the direction we were headed, and we started salivating for authentic Carolina BBQ. We pull up to the plaza along Leesville and Strickland, and looked for the Bar and Grill. Turns out it was a Mongolian BBQ place! Gasp – there are other kinds of BBQ in this ‘hood. We opted out, and settled for Back Yard Burgers.

burger run for lunch

First Official Day of Driving

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[from Rachelle – reflections on June 19th]

COLORS OF THE DAY: Grass Green, Maroon & Orange

Driving through Virginia in the summer is very lush. The gradations of green are broken up by the occasional billboard which I find optically stimulating. (I tend to prefer billboards to break up the visual monotony, that’s why I find driving through Maryland eye-numbing)

When we approached Virginia Tech I saw memorial magnets on bumpers in the classic orange and maroon emblazoned in our collective memories during the April tragedy. Most of the evidence of that day has been taken down on the campus. I’m struck with how global the tragedy was but when we walked around campus and Norris Hall things seemed much smaller and much more localized. The famous VT limestones seemed weighty and silent.

Collage #2 is a bit more abstract. I’m tired of the over-literalism of VT images and this seemed appropriate to my mood of the day.

Collage 2 Virginia

RESTAURANT LOG:

Breakfast: Sheetz in Winchester. We both had the “Seriously Bold Coffee” drinks custom-ordered on a touch pad screen. Nifty! P.S. Unleaded Gas was $2.75/gallon

Lunch: Souvlaki’s in downtown Blacksburg. Seriously yummy cheesecake, slow on service with a busy lunch crowd.

Dinner: Jason’s Deli in Raleigh. Graphics, cleanliness and menu presentation was outstanding but we were utterly disappointed with the price and quality. Jeremiah’s kid’s meal was a microwaved pizza with 3 pepperonis. Jeremiah gives it a “4” which is the lowest score so far on this trip. Rachelle took a trip to the salad bar (passable) and ordered a Fiesta baked potato. I used to eat baked potatoes at Jason’s Deli in Dallas all the time. In fact, I was eating one at lunch time when I first heard about the Oklahoma City bombing so it’s a distinctive memory. I was looking forward to this potato! However, it was shockingly gross, like a pseudo-cheesesteak smashed under a tire. The potato itself was huge but swimming in a pool of butter and orange liquid that calls itself “cheese.” There was supposed to be chicken in the mix but I think I only counted 5 chunks bobbing up and down somewhere. I couldn’t bear to eat more than a couple bites but passed it down to our “never-say-no” friends (i.e. Joe Chen). Dj ordered a sandwich/potato chip platter. Add drinks and it all cost $30. Fortunately, we weren’t there for the food, but for our awesome Raleigh friends whom we met when we lived there from 1995-1997.