Road Trip
2/19/2

Craziness. Or not quite, but close. And besides, craziness makes a better excuse for not writing than plain old busyness.

Oh, everyone�s busy these days. I get so busy playing internet games that I put off watching my TV shows for days at times.

The weekend began, as is its want, on Friday. Aisai and I tried out the new Vietnamese restaurant where Sam Goody�s used to be. I�ve never had anything against a record store before, but if there was one that I had to pick to go belly up so that we could get a new Vietnamese restaurant, that would be the one.

I was hoping that Vietnamese food would be strange and wonderful. Alien food. It wasn�t alien, but it was good. Aisai ordered from the back where they had labeled it �Japanese Corner� and got the teriyaki chicken. I got some pot of rice and goodies. Very good and they had that hot sweet sauce on the table, the kind with the seeds and you use a spoon. Like in the Thai restaurants.

I was happy with the food.

Saturday was another road trip. I didn�t do the planning on this one and I assumed that Aisai did but, alas, after driving 1.5 hours up to Nashville and getting on I-40 East, I asked what exit we were supposed to take. Aisai responded some number roughly around 320 and I did a double take. We were at exit 217 at the time. I asked Aisai to call the park and see how far from Nashville they were. She did and they said an hour and a half. Ho ho.

�Forget it,� we said. Not in unison, but if we wanted to, we could have.

On the way back, we did look at Henry Horton State Park. Recently renovated but closed in order to put political pressure on the legislators from that area to pass the Governors income tax plan. Tennessee is based entirely on land ownership and sales tax. Currently, TN has no income taxes.

This reminds me of a billboard I saw. The AEA, Alabama Education Association, placed a billboard on Mastin Lake Road that said �Elect Candidates Who Will Fund Alabama�s Schools.� Oddly, we always elect candidates who fund the schools. And always give them more money. And with that money, they hire another administrator who sits on their butt and has nothing to do with teaching. And one day, this administrator says �Rather than buy books for the kids, let�s place a political ad.� And that�s why you had to pester your co-workers with crap your kid is forced to sell at school, so they could put up that expensive billboard.

And I understand there are several more in town.

After Henry Ho-Ho State Park, we zipped by David Crockett State Park, which isn�t too near the Interstate. We had to pass through Pulaski, Tennessee. We had a brief discussion about how racist the city was while we were passing through, but oddly, Aisai was able to spot a black man in a truck. And they weren�t making him sit in the back either.

[Pulaski will shut down the city when it has KKK marches. Aisai thought they did this in protest. I pointed out that you can�t have a march of a secret society in a small town without shutting it down. Everyone in the parade wouldn�t be able to be at work.]

Oh, and in case I haven�t let you know, I�m not fond of racist cowards. Or brave racists for that matter.

We were outta there and into Lawrenceburg, TN, home of Senator Fred Thompson, who played the president in lots of movies. It was getting near eating time and we had determined that Davy Crockett�s park didn�t have what we needed. It did have a really good restaurant, if not pricey.

We drove home. All in all, the 626 got around 400 miles logged onto it on Saturday.