I am not endorsing any of the crazy ideas described in this post.

I was lying there in the hotel room last-night-into-this-morning not sleeping. I think I slept restlessly for about an hour or and then woke up and was awake, wide awake trying to fall asleep. So I got out of bed, checked out of the hotel at 2am and drove back, arriving here at about 10:30am.

So...I haven't really slept in about 29 hours, I hadn't exactly slept well the two prior nights, and yet...I can't fall asleep.

Surely all the caffeine I pumped into my system during the eight hours plus on the road is impacting the current situation, but still...!

A few things from the last day:

**Had breakfast in a nifty enough little hipper-than-thou cafe this morning. The young woman who took my order and became my hero by refilling my coffee cup had on a Bryan Adams tour t-shirt, even though I overheard her telling one of her coworkers that "that Robin Hood song" was the only song she even knew by him. Oh, these kids today and their ironic t-shirts!

**I've got to stop ordering mochas from anywhere other than Stardust. They're never any good.

**"The tag's RUSSELL, with a JACK in front of it. The kind of name that fits a normal 19-year-old dude living out in L.A.--not the kind of name you'd expect to find slapped on a guy who sprouted fangs, pore-to-pore fur, and wolfish howls every time the moon ballooned full. Unless that guy happens to have a father who was cursed by an arcane book called DARKHOLD -- and who inherited his father's curse on his 18th birthday." That is the beginning of what may represented the best dollar I've ever spent.

**Had dinner at a fantastic restaurant called The Grit. There were many skills I picked up during my years in MadTown, but one of the handiest has been being utterly comfortable in a restuarant heavy with an upscale scruff vibe.

Theories I will test this morning:

**Any restaurant with Tabasco on the table as a necessary condiment is a good restaurant.

**Walking to a place gives me a much better sense of the layout of the surrounding community than driving does (my sense of direction is horrible, so this will be a tricky one).

**In the proper coffee shop atmosphere, I can get a lot of work done.

The rest of the day:

**Got stuck in an absolute downpour walking back from downtown because I'm too dumb and/or stubborn to carry an umbrella. My clothes are draped over the shower curtain slowly drying.

**Ate two chicken tacos from an establishment called The Taco Stand. They had "extra hot" taco sauce that was so underwhelming I can't imagine what the "mild" sauce must be. Tepid water with some red food coloring is my best guess.

**Tried to nap, but couldn't shut my brain off. The bad side of that is that it doesn't bode well for a good night's sleep tonight. The good side is that I got up and was actually somewhat productive, getting three pages of writing done. I wrote in a very different style for me, so it's sort of a fractured mess right now, but I have hopes that I can hone it into something worthwhile.

**Found a shop I absolutely HAVE to go into tomorrow. Further details about the establishment are too painfully geeky to share.

Highlight of the day thus far:

Flipping through CDs at Schoolkids Records while the two clerks on duty (which was about one clerk more than the traffic in the store warranted) basically ignored all of the clientele, including those whose purchases they were ringing up, to engage in a prolonged debate on, to the best of my determination, whether or not Devendra Banhart was overly derivative of Marc Bolan.

This trumped the previous highlight: the gentleman with a voice like a gravel road and a face like a fist who came into the bar where I was eating lunch to down a couple quick drinks because he didn't have enough yesterday and needed to get his weekend quota back up to a respectable level before beginning his Sunday chores. Despite the fact that he seemed like a lush fratboy, he noted that he had a college degree in psychology, and had completed a year of graduate studies in the field of social work. Which, of course, goes to show you that either: a) even the most unlikely person has reserves of intelligence, or b) the current state of American higher education is alarming. Pick one.

Slept horribly, as expected.

Tossed and turned all night. The only dream I remember involved debating Michael Stipe about how record companies turn musicians into indentured servants while Sufjan Stevens looked on. Weird thing is, I don't even know what Sufjan Stevens looks like, but there he was in my dream.

And I woke up for good at precisely 7:00 a.m. Why? Because, a few hundred miles away, Maxie and Radley want their breakfast at precisely 7. They've got me well-trained.

My eyes are so red and puffy that I look hung over. In a big college town that may help me fit in.

I just hope I can find a newspaper and a place for a decent breakfast.

I'm in Athens. At the motel I'm at they put me in a room hidden away in the corners under the stairs. It's really as if they saw my name on the reservation and said, "that guys really curmudgeonly--let's make sure we keep him away from our happy family guests."

Other notable points from the first day of traveling:

--Due to a serious of small misfortunes, I didn't get any coffee until 11am (!), 60 miles into the trip. I've never been so happy to see a corporate logo as I was when I walked into the little travel oasis place and saw that big, green Starbucks circle,

--The car's cassette deck has been really fussy today, even shutting down completely at Barneyville, GA. Luckily it recovered at Wenona, GA because I was about to run out of interesting public radio programming to listen to,

--Speaking of which, I never listen to anything other than PRK or public radio in O-Town so it's always a fresh shock when I spend some time listening to commercial radio and the crud that passes for music on it. It's all so overproduced, especially, weirdly enough, the country songs. As far as I could tell they were just playing the same song over and over again on every country station I encountered. And driving through Florida and Georgia, you encouncter A LOT of them,

--I got all turned around in Macon. Again. This happened when T.L.A. and I roadtripped up to Sconi with Parker a couple years ago. Macon was also where Parker threw up in the car. I hate fuckin Macon,

--The cassette gave up again about 30 miles from Athen, but I was able to pick up the University of Georgia's radio station. For the first few minutes, its signal kept crossfading with the signal of a religious radio station with a fellow speaking nonstop about how Jesus loves us all (and isn't that nice of that Jesus fellow!). It gave the sensation that the college radio DJ has discovered a really weird remix of the Cake song he was playing.


Now it's time to rest up. Tomorrow, exploring!

I've finally booked my hotel room for a trip to Athens, GA, so there's no turning back now. (Well, actually, there's turning back until Saturday at 2p.m. at which point I can no longer cancel the reservation.) I have little to no idea what I'm going to do there besides walk around and shuffle in and out of record stores and book stores and coffee shops. But a vacation was needed and Athens just feels like a place I should visit while it and I are in close proximity. It's residual from being immersed in college radio during the administration of Bush the First. Record companies descended on Athens the way they would on Seattle a few years later. They were trying to find the second coming of R.E.M. (which was a little odd because, in many respects, R.E.M. hadn't even really arrived yet). The difference between that era and the surge of multi-platinum northwesterners was that Pylon, Guadalcanal Diary, Love Tractor, etc. never sold any records.

Still, as hard as it is to believe in the wake of their last couple efforts, there was still a time when R.E.M. was as good as it got and heading to their hometown was like booking passage to music-lover's Mecca. Well, at least a scrawny, college radio kid's Mecca.

This is also going to be the first time in years that I've traveled solo, and maybe the first time ever that I've actually vacationed completely on my own. This is going to be interesting.