Tag Archives: travel

Jul 07 2014
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Wassup USA?

Are you in Georgia? Use this checklist to find out (or at least narrow down the possibilities)

Georgia

Georgia on my mind.

As of this moment when I am writing this sentence, I am in Georgia. I drove east from Nashville into the heart of the American Southeast and watched the sides of the highway fill up with those shapely Georgia pine trees. So I know that I’m definitely in Georgia.

Unless I don’t. Sometimes I forget where I am. Maybe I’m just in the East Bay where it also gets hot and there are a lot of trees. Maybe I just took the BART train one too many stops and got off in Orinda and started calling it Georgia like a crazy person.

Luckily, I made myself a checklist of ways to determine if I’m in Georgia. If you ever find yourself in this kind of situation, feel free to use this list. If you check off 5 or more of these, then you’re probably in Georgia or at least the Southeast portion of the United States or I’ll eat my socks.

You know you’re in Georgia when….

1. There are more deer, fireflies, squirrels and frogs than people.

2. Liquor stores are called package stores, which causes some people to think of genitalia and giggle.

3. When you accidentally oversleep and end up going for a run at 9:30 on a July morning, the experience is equal to being burned with the heat of a million suns while running in a sauna and choking down steam.

4. The trees are taller than 5 tall men stacked on top of each other.

5. There are more American flags than people and one on every porch.

6. American flags and colors are suitable for decoration in the months preceding and following the 4th of July.

7. Cheese sauce (also known as queso) accompanies salsa at Mexican restaurants.

8. You can say hi to the people on the street without seeming like a creep. They are friendly and will respond positively.

9. Front porches are everywhere and they’re filled with furniture.

10. Kudzo (an invasive plant that looks like ivy) is everywhere, and it is unstoppable. Longterm, it’s probably a more worrisome enemy than many other countries and militant groups.

11. The chicken biscuit reigns king.

12. Chick-fil-a has a presence in the local Kroger.

13. The forecast for every day in July is humid with a chance of thunderstorms and a 100% chance of y’all.

14. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the humidity, but something about the place seems timeless, like you could buy a home here and live forever while the world spins around you.

15. Jeep Wranglers.

16. Peach lore and Civil War generals make up 90% of local nomenclature.

You might want to hate it. You might want to love it. At the very least, you should sit on the front porch and enjoy a chicken biscuit. If you turn out to be in Orinda, take a walk and then head home, friend. Georgia will await you another time.

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Jul 06 2014
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Wassup USA?

Somewhere Right Now, A Millennial Is Freaking Out About Life

millennial dinosaur is afraid of things she can't control millennial dinosaur is afraid of things she can't control

millennial dinosaur is afraid of things she can’t control

I was in Nashville for a reunion with some of my best friends from college for the 4th of July weekend. In the three years since we’ve graduated, we’ve all gone and gotten jobs or done Americorps or the Peace Corps or something along those lines, and now we’re trying to figure out what the heck to do with our lives and also what we’ve already done.

Sometimes I feel terrified that I’m doing everything wrong. Graduating from college was like being forced through the birth canal and leaving a tender home for a world of concrete and screaming and people slapping you to make sure you’re alive.

I miss classes and learning for the sake of learning. I miss my friends and being within a 2 mile walk of 80% of the people I care about. I miss grades and how easy it was to measure success. Sure it was all hell sometimes, but mostly it was awesome.

Not college has been different than college. In the “real world,” learning is not valued just for the sake of learning. My friends are spread out and busy. Community is difficult to build and what the heck is going on with dating nowadays? In some ways I want to write Boston University an angry letter saying “WTF? Why didn’t you prepare me for this?”

On the other hand, my real world education has been incredibly valuable. I’ve learned the value of a dollar (which is almost nothing), and how difficult but important it is to continue to invest in relationships as part of building a life worth living. I’m probably doing most things incorrectly, but so is everyone else and that’s a reassuring thought.

One of the best parts of not college has been the relationships I’ve maintained and the joy of seeing old friends. As I live more life, friendships grow richer as we experience tragedies and great joys together, and as life becomes less about us and how we stack up against arbitrary standards, and more about the kind of legacy we’re building with the people we love.

Because in the end that’s the most valuable thing we have. College couldn’t teach me about the other hard lessons in life, but I did get to build some incredible friendships. My dream is to continue growing that spiderweb of love for the next one hundred years.

I don’t know if I’m making the right career decisions, and I don’t know if my life will look like what I want it to look like in 20 years. I do know that friends are awesome, so I’m going to start there with the rest of my life and ask questions later.

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Jul 05 2014
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Wassup USA?

Nash-hash: The Most Popular Tweets in Nashville on the 4th of July

There are 4th of July celebrations and then there are real 4th of July celebrations. Nashville belongs in neither group. It is in a tier of its own, with the 2nd biggest fireworks display in the entire nation (and the largest one in the south) and over 100k people that turn out to watch it. The only word appropriate for this scenario is damn (pronounced dayum).

I had never seen so much unironic USA gear in so many different forms – frayed shirts, half-shirts, t-shirts, western shirts, pants, shorts, leggings, dresses, hats, bandanas, all of it all together and all at once with a cold Bud in hand.

Having seen the crowds in person, I was curious about what Twitter usage was like on the 4th. I compiled some fake data, did some fake data crunching, and made a pie chart that you can see below. I think you’ll also come to my conclusion that the data shows that Nashville has the most unironic 4th of July celebration in the United States. Quick note: the ironic patriotism was .0001 of all hashtags. I included it for contrast and diversity.

Nash-hash: The Most Popular Hashtags in Nashville on 4th of July

Nash-hash: The Most Popular Hashtags in Nashville on 4th of July

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Jul 04 2014
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Wassup USA?

This Just In: Nashville is Pretty Freaking Awesome

Nashville AirBnB Welcome to Nashville, TN. Here you’ll find more spangles and stars in one block than you would in the entirety of some other place with less spangles and stars. It’s a city that greets you with an American flag as big as Texas in the parking lot of a church as soon as you exit the highway. It’s a place of soul and of grit, of banjos and fiddles and tattoos and denim wear.

It’s a place where a 6 year old girl can wear make-up if she wants to and you can buy fancy ice cream from Jeni’s that actually tastes like heaven even though you want to roll your eyes that they call toppings accoutrements (soooo #hipster.) It’s a place where bands sing with American flag microphones and bejeweled jeans with makeup like whoah with a 300 pound male lead singer who has a curly haired mullet and a cowboy hat and is actually really talented. In short, Nashville is awesome.

In my first 24 hours here, I’ve had more conversations with strangers, done more front porch sitting, drank more alcohol outside, and heard more country music than I have in any other 24 hour period in my life.

In this city with the 2nd biggest fireworks display for 4th of July in the entire US of A (2nd only to Washington, D.C.), big things can happen and you’re going to talk to other people about it, especially if they’re strangers that happen to be grocery shopping right next to you.

It’s the kind of place that makes you wonder if you should have been a country music star and maybe the kind of place that makes you realize that it’s never to late to follow your dreams.

All I know is that I’m trying to get in as much beer drinking, front-porch sitting, and firefly watching as possible in the next couple of days. That’s my dream, and I’m going to make it happen.

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Jul 04 2014
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Travelling, Wassup USA?

13 Things You Can Count on While Roadtripping from Chicago to Nashville

imageLife is confusing. Sometimes you don’t know where to go or what decisions to make. Very frequently, it’s impossible to foresee the outcome of certain paths or situations, and you live in the fog of the unknown. Thank goodness there are some things in life that we can count on, like these things that are guaranteed to happen on the drive from Chicago to Nashville.

1. There will always be a Cracker Barrel every 10 miles. If you’re ever uncertain of where you should exit to get to the nearest one, go ahead and exit. There’s probably one close to you.

2. In these Cracker Barrels, there will absolutely be women named Jean and Barb wearing jeans that go above their belly button with hair dos that the coasts haven’t seen for at least a century, if ever.

3. You will stop and eat at a Cracker Barrel, be really excited about going to an old favorite place, and then realize that it’s actually a little overpriced and not that good. Also, you’ll eat too much.

4. You will enter gas station shopping centers that are complete with clothing options, 24 hour dining, a casino, an arcade and convenience food options. The only thing missing is an apartment complex to attach to it.

5. You will see billboards that say things like “Hell is Real,” or “One Day You Will Meet Thy God,” which will make you wonder who is paying for this and shouldn’t they change their marketing strategy just a little bit. I mean, if I walked up to someone who didn’t believe in Santa Claus and told her that Santa was going to give her 1 million dollars if she filled out an online form, do you think she’d do it? Or would she call the police because there was a stranger hiding in her closet. Exactly.

6. Cars will also start to get preachy, with decals and entire paintings displaying ardor for the Christ.

7. Roadside attractions, like the World’s Most Awesome Flea Market and Dinosaur land, will tempt you from the side of the road. You’ll always wonder what would have happened if you’d taken the leap and exited.

8. You will eat too many snacks in the car and feel a little guilty about it but not really. I mean, what else are you going to do.

9. You will take tons of photos and maybe even videos on the trip that are ultimately unusable.

10. At some point, you will either get lost or notice you have a huge zit on your face.

11. You will keep on waiting for the countryside to change but nothing really happens except Tennessee is a little bit hillier than Indiana.

12. You will realize that you actually didn’t have a very good idea of where Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and Illinois were in relation to one another.

13. You will decide you need to pack up and move to the countryside where life moves a little bit slower

14. You will almost instantly decide that that’s a terrible idea and you’d rather eat your own cardigan than move to the countryside.

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