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maj 19, 2004
Morehead City-Topsail Island-Wilmington-Charleston
After very little shopping in one store in Morehead City we set off on the road again. We were heading for Charleston, SC with a stop in Wilmington, NC on the way. We also decided to check out Topsail Beach as it was on the way and see what would await us on the wedding the upcoming weekend.
After driving over the bridge to Topsail Island we turned left which was very wrong. We drove for five minutes and suddenly reached the end of the island. We turned around and went south and that was a lot better. We found the restaurant where the rehearsal dinner would be on Friday. Liv and Jerry, the couple who were going to get married, were arriving this day too but we didn't manage to meet up before we had to drive on.
We grabbed a sandwich for lunch at a 50's style diner and drove down to Wilmington which from reading in our Lonely Planet book sounded like a cool town. It wasn't that exciting but we managed to get some shopping done anyway. The most exciting thing, except a small cool alternative record store, was the guy washing his horse in the middle of the street, as pictured above.
We grabbed an ice cream before we left and enjoyed the horror on the ice cream sales woman's face when I found a hair in my ice cream. Americans tend to get that don't sue us! look on the face when something like this happens. I got a new ice cream and that was fine with me. No need to get dramatic about it. I'll save that until I have to pull that hair out of my mouth.
We arrived in Charleston after dark, which seemed to be a theme of the journey. We almost always arrived in new towns after dark. The old and very high bridges leading into town was scary at night. When we arrived down town we decided to take a drive around since we were so excited to have arrived in Charleston. It looked cool and we quickly found a Howard Johnson to stay in. This hotel was probably the worst we stayed in. It was very run down and not worth the price at all.
Next to the hotel was an exhibition of American junk food. Every chain you could think of was represented and that was excellent since we were hungry. A nice oppurtunity to check out something different than McDonalds, which we have here at home in Sweden. We walked around to all of them and every single one had just closed. The only one still open was - yes, the McDonalds. Being the last to close, it was also home to some of the local homeless. They didn't bother us though to we picked up some cheeseburgers and enjoyed them on the porch of the hotel before going to sleep. We were determined to check out some new exotic junk food for breakfast next day instead.
Posted by swepett at 11:01 EM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
maj 18, 2004
Kitty Hawk-Outer Banks-Morehead City
We had planned to visit the Wright Brothers memorial when we came to Kill Devil Hills but we drove up there and saw lots of buses and decided to give it a pass. Instead we went shopping!
I am sure we actually had a good reason for going shopping this time but I can't remember which now. Emma bought a pair of shoes and I bought a sound level meter. These kind of meters are expensive in Sweden and Radio Shack has a good one for a decent price. A friend had warned me that all stores don't have them in stock and that I would maybe have to search a while before I found one. Well, at the first Radio Shack we find, in this small town, they have one! Shopping Mission One of the trip accomplished! I even got a ten dollar discount on the thing. I don't know if that was intentional or not but I'm not one to go around pointing out to people when they do mistakes. If you know what I mean.
When driving on to the Outer Banks, we found a park just outside Kill Devil Hills that looked interesting. We stopped and went on a very hot hike up some huge sand dunes that we thought would lead to the shore. However, when we got up on top we realised that it was pretty far to the shores. We got a nice view though and some good exercise. We also got a feeling of how it must be in the desert because the last bit was very hot and just sand everywhere.
On our way back to the car we met some charming kids on a school trip (pictured above). After their first big ascent up a big dune with lots of sliding sand under their feet we saw some great expressions of feelings, the way only 10 year old-or so kids can provide. Some seemed shocked, some seemed proud of making the climb but the best comment came from a little girl: that was not funny! She was right. We even managed to keep one of the techers from going up by telling her, it was not worth it, when we came down. I know, she said, I've been here before.
The Outer Banks, NC is a narrow stretch of land and island going out into the Atlantic, sort of like Key West which probably is more well-known. The nature is fantastic with lots of sand dunes and houses on poles, I guess to avoid flooding. Even though I have to say that building on poles can not be the ultimate soultion when the tornados roll in.
When we started driving on the Outer Banks part of the journey, the car in front of us stopped in the middle of the narrow road. I wondered why and had just decided to explore the possibilities of going by the car to get moving when we see a woman jumping out of the car in front of us and going to the front of their car. After a second or so, we see her again, pushing a turtle off the road. Ok, so far the trip had been hotter than we expected, weather-wise that is, but now things started to get really exotic!
After a stop at a beach to see some crazy dogs chasing a kite the next stop was the first ferry. We had to go by two ferries to get back to the mainland and as we hadn't booked any of them in advance, I was a little bit worried what we would do if we hadn't caught them. I am sure the hotels close to the ferries know how to charge the people who are stuck there until next morning. It turned out to be nothing to worry about though as we hardly even had to stop when we came to the first ferry, that's how perfect our timing was!
The next road stretch was short. There was supposed to be some cool ponies on this part of the trip, descendants from some Spanish horses that swam ashore from a sinking ship stranded just outside the banks, also known as graveyard of the sea. These horses did not live up to the hype though and we drove on to the next ferry which also had a place for us, and an extra hour to spare to get some food before the trip. We found a bar in the harbour where the local fishermen, or maybe really people who wanted to be local fishermen but really just were bums renting out their boats to tourists who wanted to feel like local fishermen, hung out and drank beer. We picked up some burgers and weird-looking fries that took a while to prepare but we managed to get back to the car and I managed to get the burger stuffed into my face before I had to drive on the ferry.
The first ferry was free and this last one cost 15 dollars. When we arrived on the mainland, the sun was setting and we decided to try the first Best Western that showed up next to the road. After all that driving and no fun I decided I needed a beer. The restaurant at the hotel was closed so I drove a couple of blocks up the road to an open store and bought one beer. The store looked just like they do in movies when they get robbed and the female attendant looked at me, my beer, and my exact change like I was about to rob her. Outside was a guy serving some drink coolers. At 10 PM? Yeah, that's normal...
Morehead City, SC was so anonymous that for the rest of the trip, we forgot the name of it and referred to it as the mystery town.
Posted by swepett at 11:46 EM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
maj 17, 2004
Baltimore-Virginia Beach-Kitty Hawk
We left the hotel in Baltimore, MD at around 9:00 AM on my birthday morning, heading for the mall we had seen close to our hotel the night before. We were looking for breakfast but the mall didn't open until 10:00 AM so we hit the fast food sheds beside the mall instead. We found a chicken place that didn't sound too gross to our Swedish breakfast habits. It was like anywhere else though, serving something we would rather call bad lunch than good breakfast. They had funny ads scattered over the place though, with a cow that had scribbled in bad English on a sign that you should "eat mor chikin" instead of cows. Hilarious but somewhat morbid.
This part of the trip turned out to be bridge fest '04. Lots of cool long bridges that makes our bridge to Copenhagen look like nothing. I can't remember which bridge the photos on this page are from but it was huge!
It was nice to see some fresh fruit being sold at the side of the road. When we left Sweden, our fresh fruit season hadn't really started yet.
We stopped for a while in Virginia Beach, VA which welcomed us with a guy charging way too much for a parking space close to the beach. We walked the beach and saw some really weird bikes before stopping at a restaurant that looked not too touristy. I had some fish and Emma tried a crab leg dinner that required a short lesson from the waiter before it could be enjoyed to it's fullest. It apparently tasted great though, even though it was hard work to get to the actual crab meat.
On the way back to the car we checked out the shopping whcih was loads of stores selling the same things, cheap souvenirs. I found a cool t-shirt though that Emma bought for me as a birthday gift and I pressed a copper coin into a souvenir. Pretty pointless but you had to do something to use up that expensive parking time!
More driving followed and late at night we arrived to Kitty Hawk/Kill Devil Hills, NC, home of the Wright Brothers first attempts at flying. It was graduation times and some event took place in Kill Devil Hills that night so we had a hard time finding a room. Finally we found a room at the Buccaneer in Kitty Hawk and that was good enough for us.
Posted by swepett at 11:00 EM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
maj 16, 2004
Malmö-Reykjavik-Baltimore
The great US road trip of 2004 finally got underway on May 16 and after a quick stop in Reykjavik we flew over the icy parts of Greenland pictured above before entering Canadian and later US air space from the northeast.
Something that always surprises me when I fly over the Atlantic is how hungryI get all the time. I eat and eat but is still hungry. I don't know if it's some kind of stress that the body is exposed to when flying or if it's simply that my body expects food at certain hours in my home timezone.
After arriving in Baltimore, we were bused to the car rental center where we picking up our rental car. We had ordered a Dodge Stratus or similar and it turns out the similar was a Chrysler PT Cruiser Touring Edition, a car Emma has been dreaming about at home since the model was first introduced. The first lucky coincidence of the trip.
A short confusion as to which way the Ramada (where I even found another great invention as soon as I stepped into the bathroom!) was at followed after picking up the car but once we reached the hotel we were happy to see that the restaurant was open. A burger and a beer in a booth of course, The American Way, and then off to bed. Not healthy but healthy is not what the United States of America is about, is it?
Posted by swepett at 11:15 EM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
maj 15, 2004
Bruce Hornsby
We are going to the USA soon and I was hoping I would be able to catch Bruce Hornsby over there. He doesn't seem to have much of an audience here these days so he doesn't come here much. I was disappointed to learn that his schedule didn't fit mine but then my eyes turned to the other side of the page where a bunch of European dates were posted! And yes, Mr. Bruce Hornsby himself is coming to Copenhagen Jazz House on September 22! Wahoo!
Posted by swepett at 2:39 FM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
maj 14, 2004
The Barcode VCR programmer
One of the million proofs that people in general are Really Stupid is the fact that everyone seem to claim that it is impossible to program a VCR. Panasonic came up with the great idea to include a barcode scanner with one of their VCRs. You would get a bunch of barcodes with the machine too so all you had to do was scan the starting time, the ending time and the channel and transmit everything to the recorder. I bet they hoped the newspaper TV guides would be filled with small barcodes too so people could just swipe in the show they wanted to record.
Well, then some smart person came up with ShowView and I have to admit, that was even smarter than the barcode reader. But not as cool!
Posted by swepett at 2:35 FM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
maj 13, 2004
Punks against Bush
Last Sunday, I had the pleasure to do monitors for Bad Religion. Walking around in the sold out venue before the show I saw more anti-Bush slogans than I've ever seen here in Sweden. Every other shirt had a message like It's not my president, the warning(?) They'll do anything the president says or my favorite, from a NOFX shirt: Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing it's idiot.
Also worth visiting: Punk Voter.
Posted by swepett at 2:30 EM
maj 10, 2004
Another reason why I love Letterman more than Leno
Dave the Brave - Stupid President Tricks can only be seen on Letterman
Late Show has the brass balls to go where the cowardly White House news corps and corporate suck-up Leno fear to tread: presenting Dubya in all his dumb-ass glory.
Unlike Leno's Tonight Show, which is owned by NBC, Letterman's Late Show is owned by Dave's company, Worldwide Pants, which affords him near-total immunity from corporate pressure.
Posted by swepett at 12:46 EM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
maj 4, 2004
Great Rock Quotes
I don't mind dying but I sure hate to leave my children cryin' - Bukka White
I always believed that if I never missed a yoga class
read my horoscope in the dailies
and recycled bottles and know a red indian I could
make myself a great spirit man
but I was only doing yoga cos I fancied the teacher
stars cos it looked good on paper
and I only went to church cos my Granny gave me
money when confession was over
and I only knew the indian cos his brother's a dealer
and the bottles had a price on their return so I could go
and play - Francis Dunnery
Posted by swepett at 2:31 FM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
maj 3, 2004
World Press Freedom Day
Posted by swepett at 2:27 EM | Comments (0) | TrackBack