Live from Austin!

It’s starting to look pretty empty in the house, as most of our stuff is now boxed to go. With that in mind, here’s our approximate planned route:

I-90 to NY via Springfield, MA.
I-90, I-87, I-84 to PA. Possible stops at New Paltz.
I-84, I-380, I-81 via Scranton, PA. Possible stop at Harrisburg, PA.
I-81 through MD to WV, via Hagerstown.
I-81 through WV to VA.
I-81, I-66, I-64, I-81 again. Possible stops at Winchester, Harrisonburg, Staunton, Roanoke.
I-40 through TN to AR. Nashville, Memphis, Johnson City, Knoxville.
I-40 through AR to Little Rock, 167 to El Dorado, I-20 to Shreveport LA.
I-20 from Shreveport LA to TX, via Tyler and Waco. Possible stop at Corsicana.

Suggestions for things we simply must see are welcomed. With a little luck we’ll have a Prius with GPS navigation. Failing that, we’ll have an iBook linked to a GPS.

Suggestions for good places to eat are welcomed too. As I’ve discovered on previous road trips, You can only eat so much Taco Bell before going insane.

I vote we lock the governors of Arkansas and Kansas in a room, and we don’t let them out until they decide.

It’s either (a) “kan-zuss” and “ar-kan-zuss” or it’s (b) “ar-ken-saw” and “ken-saw”.

One or the other. I don’t care which, but it’s decision time.

Many thousands of years ago, the civilization of Mars was at its peak. Mighty cargo ships travelled the network of canals, trading goods between the big Martian cities.

However, all was not well, morally speaking. The rich Martian merchants were immoral, exploiting the poor as minimum wage slaves and letting people starve to death rather than let them buy food at less than its market price. Social deprivation led to violent crime, drug smuggling, and prostitution.

God was not pleased. He spoke unto a Martian man named Mp’sj, and said: “There is much evil on Mars. I will not put up with it any longer. I shall bring down a great rain, and the canals will overflow and the land will be flooded. You, Mp’sj, must build a giant ship and fill it with every Martian creature, from the lowly Niyaw to the mighty Wk’wogsbr, so that they will survive to re-populate Mars and start anew once the flood subsides.”

So Mp’sj set to work and built a mighty Martian ark. His neighbours ridiculed him, pointing out that his house was miles from the nearest canal, but he kept on working.

Finally, as Mp’sj’s ark was nearing completion, it began to rain. The rain grew stronger and stronger, and the waters of the canals began to rise. Mp’sj hurriedly collected samples of all the Martian wildlife and loaded them into the Ark as the rain continued relentlessly.

After some weeks of the deluge, nothing was left of the Martian civilization. Mp’sj steered his ark warily. His food supplies were running low. Finally, he saw the tip of mighty Olympus Mons in the distance, and set a course. On the verge of starvation, he beached the ark on the top of the mountain.

The sun began to shine, and there was a beautiful rainbow across the sky as Mp’sj lowered the gangplank and started unloading the ark. And so Mp’sj led the Martian animals from the ark, animals of every Martian species.

One of each.