While in Savannah, Georgia for Kara and Zach’s wedding, Kelly and I had a chance to spend a day with a couple of Kelly’s good friends from college.
Charlie and Emory had visited us in New York City a few months ago when we all went to a Camera Obscura show at Webster Hall. They live in a house — yes, an actual grown-up house! — in Gainesville, Florida. In honor of Father’s Day (and to see us!) they made the drive back to Charlie’s hometown of Savannah.
We made plans to meet up for “brunch” (they still do that in the South, right?) after which Emory casually asked, “Do you guys want to go for a swim?”
The next couple of my blog posts will be detailing a great weekend in Savannah, Georgia — the jewel of the American South. It was my first time there and we were celebrating the wedding of Kelly’s younger sister, Kara and her now-husband, Zach. I wasn’t the lead photographer at this wedding, so it was nice to sit back (for the most part) and enjoy the show. That is, until the heavens parted.
I have several friends (including Kara and Zach) who are alumnus of the über-artsy Savannah College of Art and Design and they all agreed it’s a common occurrence to have sporadic intense thunderstorms that last only a few minutes. (The most disappointing part is that the rain does nothing to break the hellish humidity.) The timing of this storm was impeccable. It had been a perfectly sunny day until about an hour before the 5 p.m. ceremony. That’s when the sky suddenly turned dark and we heard the distant rumble of thunder.
I’ve milked this road trip enough to get a few writing exercises out of it. Now it’s time to put it to bed with an index of one-sentence reviews (with a few exceptions), which is an idea I took my friend Alex’s travel blog.
States Touched
- New York. “Launching pad.”
- New Jersey. “They have cheap gas here, and a former/current conman/mobster will pump it for you free of charge! (or maybe it’ll cost you your life?)”
- Pennsylvania. “One hell of a bitch to drive across — endless, long, long! — but the parts of the farmland you’re awake for are New England-caliber beautiful.”
- Virginia. “I’ve been to Shenandoah National Park and The Blue Ridge Parkway here a couple of times before, so this time we just drove straight through it on the interstate.”
- West Virginia (barely). “I’ve never actually gotten out of my car in any of the numerous times I’ve driven through this state, but I always find myself humming John Denver tunes when I’m here.”
- Tennessee. “It was bone-chilling cold in the Smoky Mountains so we played ‘Quick! Your turn to run outside, read the sign, snap a picture, and then get back inside the car and let’s never do anything like that ever again!’”
- North Carolina. “The Native American town zoo of Cherokee (a.k.a. “land of unsold tchotchkes”) right outside of the Smoky Mountains is one of the saddest places I’ve ever been too — imagine Atlantic City with only one Ho Jo-quality casino, no ocean, and a million Burger Kings and Dairy Queens.” (Yes, we stopped for lunch at the BK.).
- Kentucky. “Where the birthplace of bourbon and Tanveer meet. And fall in love! And get married…etc.”
- Indiana. “An excellent location to play Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii.”
- Ohio. “I didn’t even know I was driving through this state until I was beyond it.”
- States intended to but not covered: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia. “Ah, well, there’ll be more road trips.”
One of the highlights of Kelly and my current road trip through the American South has been the Maker’s Mark distillery tour. We had grand aspirations of covering a majority of the American Whiskey Trail, most of it dotted along the Tennessee and Kentucky borders, but several factors, including time constraints, shitty weather and the impending arrival of Christmas led us to abandon all others and go straight to the king of bourbon.
I had never tasted whiskey until I moved to New York City for college in 2001, after which I tried really hard to get into alcohol. I was going though my Bukowski/Kerouac phase, so I considered it of the utmost importance that I find a suitable drink that matched my riotous and rebellious East Village attitude.
At age 27, I’m ashamed to admit as a fanatic carnivore, I’ve never had proper barbecue until today. Sure, I’ve been around it, smelled it. sampled it. I was even fortunate enough to attend the Big Apple BBQ festival as a member of the press a couple of years ago. The greatest barbecue chefs from all over the country gathered at Madison Square Park and fed me to my heart’s content, for gratis! But I wouldn’t even count that as a proper barbecue experience.
The big problem is I don’t eat pork, which of course, is the centerpiece to any barbecue. I used to avoid it for religious reasons but now since I’m not used to the taste, I just don’t enjoy it as much as beef or lamb or any other red or white meat. So I’ve always ate around barbecues, loading up on collard greens and macaroni and cheese and nibbling at a couple of riblets at a friend’s barbecue for the sake of being polite.
