Memphis In The Meantime...

Our first official night...ON the road; Vesuvius, VA on the Blue Ridge Parkway which is closed. We stayed cozy warm with our lil' Mr. Buddy heater, and awoke to a beautiful sunrise. 

Then on to Asheville, NC and a few nights in a sweet AirBnB apartment. My affliction of connecting places to song lyrics remains strong, and passing this sign we natch listened to...

http://youtu.be/1gX1EP6mG-E

After two stays in AirBnB's we highly recommend trying it out, and we'll likely open a room in our farmhouse to travelers this summer. Our hosts in Asheville, Haley and Ted, steered us to some fantastic Jamaican food at Nine Mile, yum! 

Next night it was time to get down with Donna The Buffalo at The Orange Peel Social Aid & Pleasure Club, one of the best venues in the country to see live music, complete with springy wooden floors.

Jeb Puryear,  rates waaaaaay up there in my book as one of the very best guitarists alive today. The evening's escapades made for a late start the next morning, but we awoke excited for the day to unfold; we were meeting up with my son Noah and his friend Peter who are on a Bikeabout, making their way to New Orleans on bicycles from North Carolina. We caught up with them in Blairsville, GA. Noah making waffles at the Best Western next morn:

Monday was a BEAUTY of a day, and the four of us set out for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. We hiked the tallest mountain on the Georgia stretch of the AT, Blood Mountain, through forests of deep green rhododendron and mountain laurel. 

And were rewarded with amazing vistas!

On the way home we stopped at Pappy's, a pretty good tourist trap - saw these weirdly hideous/amazing sculptures made out of melted 5Gallon buckets:

(Talk about scary clowns!)

Some arcane leftovers from bygone days:

And taxidermy taken to levels I could never have imagined:

Yeesh!

Last night we were treated to a demo of using a bellows to power Peter's melodica:

And so today (what day is it again??) we part with Noah & Peter. We are all headed to New Orleans, but for us...it's Memphis In the Meantime, Baby.

http://youtu.be/LDdkwwiV-is

We're ALMOST ready to launch....

As we scramble to pack all that we think we might need for the next two months into our Westy, we leave behind our icy fields, which in the spring will be planted by our resident Farmers, Mark & Lindsay...seen here doing wintry farmer-things, like buying tractors:

Yesterday it was warm enough to spend some time outside, so we installed the new speakers (thanks Mom!) and pulled out the contents of all the cupboards, glove compartment, etc. Our sun room floor is now covered in STUFF, and our cat Sparky seems to think he can stowaway without detection...(ahem...fail, Mr Sparks).

Folks have been great in helping us to prepare for this trip! We know we can always call our great mechanic Andrew Flint of Flint Automotive in East Nassau, NY if we need parts or simply some moral support....here he is sending us off after he gave the Westy a good going over in preparation for the long drive south:

He also equipped us with some spare parts. We hope we won't need 'em!

And a few nights ago we attended a meeting/potluck of the Honduras Community Support Corporation, a small group of incredibly dedicated folks who are, among other good works, helping to protect watersheds from contamination by assisting local communities in Honduras to acquire lands. You can read more about the work of HCSC and their  Honduran  partner organization FECOVESO (Fundacion Eco Verde Sostenible)  here: http://www.hcsc-honduras.org/
Among the meeting attendees were a native Honduran, Del, who gave us some great tips on traveling in Honduras, if we make it that far. Okay...back to packing!

We awoke this morning in our house in Cambridge, NY to THIS temp report...it's 29 degrees warmer here than it is in Austin! Back from a family vacation in Puerto Rico, we plan to depart in a few days, hopefully it WILL be warmer down south soon. So much to do before we depart. Lists to make, parties to throw, Health Care Coverage sign-ups to wrestle with, and most important; picking up the Westy from our great mechanic Andrew Flint. He's giving it a going-over, equipping us with some spare parts we might find will come in handy on the road. A new set of tires and we'll be "good to go".

One thing my friend Kimball Petty told me when I was considering purchasing a Westy: "Just know that they WILL need repairs on a long trip, and you'll have a great experience!" Sure sounds like Buddhism to me. Kim told me of a break-down in which he spent two weeks stranded somewhere remote, waiting for parts. And Tom's brother Johnny recently related a similar road trip experience where they had to pull the engine. He described the week camped out behind a Burger King in an engine-less bus to be the best part of the cross-country trip. So here's to IMPERMANENCE and also hoping our re-built engine gets us there and back again. And a nod to the legendary Boston Bob, who rebuilt the engine not long before he passed away some years ago.