1000 EDT - Durham Station. I'm not moving yet, but as of a few minutes ago my ride to the bus station left, so I finally feel like I'm en route. 23 1/2 hours to Chicago!

1048 EDT - My bus was supposed to leave 3 minutes ago. It's not here, so I'm irrationally antsy.

1100 EDT - Finally on the bus! I sit down next to an obvious fellow nerd, put on my iPod, & go back to reading Burroughs.

1129 EDT - We're passing through Mebane, NC. Although it's pronounced /'mɛbn/ my brain can't help analyzing it as "me-bane," so I crack a smile every time I come through.

1136 EDT - I wish I'd had my camera out to document the best of the JR Cigar store's many billboards on I-40: "World's Largest Fragrances."

1205 EDT - The bus stops in Greensboro, but not long enough for me to get off and back on. I pace in the aisle for a minute or two & we get back on the road.

1316 EDT - A stop in Winston-Salem wakes me up from a nap & gives me time to stretch my legs. Next stop: Asheville.

1331 EDT - As we pull out of Winston-Salem I have some food. Lunch is pastrami & provolone on French bread, & for dinner I've packed more of the same.

1337 EDT - Next time the bus driver gives this spiel I'm totally recording it.

1343 EDT - Did I step next to a thornbush or something? There's a hell of a lot of loose threads in my left sock.

1355 EDT - We stop at a rest area for a while. Nobody gets off, though I pace in the aisle to stay in motion.

1605 EDT - Asheville! It's the virst stop far enough from home to feel special or scenic enough to merit a photo. I've also got a new seatmate. My old one got off in Winston-Salem, and I've been alone ever since; the new guy has stiff braided pigtails & a great moustache. The Asheville Greyhound station is tiny, being the first one not doubling as a local bus depot.



1616 EDT - I'm mildly amused by a sign that says "Colleɢe St" with a small capital G in the middle.

1625 EDT - The views have me regretting sleeping through so much of the last leg of this trip. Appalachia rocks.

1640 EDT - We breeze through the town of Canton - and every geek alive knows what gets stuck in my head.

1644 EDT - The man in the seat in front of me grew up in Bosnia. He's telling his seatmate about it at a volume almost loud enough for me to follow.

1649 EDT - We pass a chainsaw bear. Why are they all bears?

1659 EDT - A stop in Waynesville, whose Greyhound station is literally a gas station that also sells bus tickets. I buy an ice cream bar & a bottle of Cheerwine.

1719 EDT - The last time I drove to Knoxville was with a science teacher from my high school & one other student, my good friend Adam. We were going to see a UTK geologist who was mentoring us in our internshepi as PR spokeskids for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. As we cruise toward Tennessee, I'm reminded of one of Mr. L's grad school stories about busting up a rural NC highway to hunt for rocks under it.

1729 EDT - I have to smile at the next exit being for Harmon Den. (No relation, of course.)

1731 EDT - Best. Warning. EVAR: "Tunnel - Remove sunglasses."

1736 EDT - State line.

1817 EDT - By now the mountains have largely given way to the rolling hills of a highland region topographically reminiscent of the western Piedmont, as if somewhere around Asheville the bus had driven through a mirror.

1836 EDT - I know it means "Fraternal Order of Police," but Knoxville's "FOP Lodge" makes me picture something more sartorial.

1902 EDT - Pacing about the Knoxville station I learn that Illinois has now had 3 confirmed cases of swine flu. I'm not panicking, but it's a little reminder that there are bigger things going on right now than my Journey.

1922 EDT - Well, we're on our way again. Our new driver's not as cool as the old one; he had an old black southerner voice & a way of speaking that made me expect him to ask us to be his neighbor. This one has a midlands accent (in the American, not British, dialectologist's sense) & is generally quite boring.

1930 EDT - As we leave the Knoxville sprawl, I decide it's dinnertime.

1947 EDT - Naptime.

2053 EDT - I wake up as we pull into a parking lot in London, KY, where I spend fifteen minutes jogging in circles around the Burger King.

2125 EDT - Sign outside of a Kentucky restaurant: "Come join us on Derby with the official drink, the Mojito." Um.

2203 EDT - "OK folks, this is Berea. If this is not your stop please remain seated." So I rock back & forth for the sake of the praxis.

2248 EDT - Lexington's a short enough stop again that I'll merely pace through the aisle once or twice.

2257 EDT - A couple behind me noted a sign at some adult establishment for an "amateur underwear contest" & are exchanging raunchy comments. Me, I'm just thinking of the crazy purple underwear I once saw in a London museum that had what I can only describe as tentacles.

2359 EDT - Florence, KY. Too dark for a photo, but I saw the water tower.

0018 EDT - I'm in Cincinnati for an hour, which I plan to spend walking all over the station.

0041 EDT - Waiting for my same bus are an old man & two women in dark old clothes. He has a straw hat & they those old-fashioned cylindrical bonnets. I think they're Amish.

0038 CDT - We just left Cincinnati. I've set my watch for CG0 time.

0226 CDT - We're stopping for an hour in Indianapolis, where I wander around the coolest building we've been in yet.

0234 CDT - I decide against multitasking,

0240 CDT - A man outside asks a cabbie if he could get a ride to San Diego. The cabbie says yes. The man clarifies that he means San Diego, California, & the cabbie nods.

0256 CDT - A man asks if I'm taking a picture of him or something in a voice that implies that the answer had better be "no." It is, so I tell him honestly that I'm taking one of an oddly-placed wet floor sign. He smiles, says "Oh, right on!" gets back in the shot & goes back to smoking.



0316 CDT - As I reboard the bus somebody's legs are across the aisle. I step over them, supporting myself with a hand on the chair of another fellow traveler, who gives me a grin as I engage in some kind of low-speed PK or something.

0655 CDT - I wake up. I don't sleep soundly enough for it to be the first time since Indianapolis, but a leg stretch on the bus in Gary requires less consciousness than this notebook entry.

0738 CDT - Chicago! Of course, I've got to keep moving for 2 1/2 hours to have completed this task...

0823 CDT - I'm off my feet & on a train in downtown Chicago.

0841 CDT - Found what I've wanted for the last hour - a non-disgusting bathroom. I change my underwear, change my shirt, & don my sixth sense.

0912 CDT - There's no reason why my compass belt wouldn't work underground, but here in the subway there's enough steel everywhere to mess it up.

0930 CDT - Part of the blue line is a bus right now, & I ride it past a familiar spot - where I started chasing last year.

0950 CDT - the list of things you can't do on the CTA is long & sensible but often grouped oddly. Case in point: a sign reads "No smoking, littering, or radio playing," in two languages.

1028 CDT - I check into my hotel, and leave the notebook behind. My 24 hours are up.

At this point I started dictating my notebook entries for the next four hours or so into my camera.

1033 CDT - So, my 24 hours are up, but I'm still on the move. I'm pacing back and forth in an elevator right now.

1043 CDT - I am wandering around the parking lot of my hotel. I'm attempting to see if there's a way to the CTA station nearby that doesn't involve jaywalking, but it looks like the answer is "no." That's a little weird.

1115 CDT - I've been in the move for going on 25 hours and my feet are starting to cramp up. I've got a nice long train ride to give them a rest, but this may be the end of my Craaank. We'll see how it goes. I'm getting on a train now.

1240 CDT - I get off the train at Jefferson to wander around downtown, maybe find myself some lunch somewhere. So, that's the latest, still craaanking so far, which is pretty cool,

1353 CDT - Just finished eating lunch, which was a sandwich from Arby's, to go. In hindsight I probably could have predicted that a French dip with, you know, au jus sauce, was not going to work very well and ordered something else, but meh. I gave up on the jus pretty quickly. Now I'm wandering aimlessly around downtown. At some point in not too very long I need to figure out how to get to Journey, but I've got time.

(1311 CDT) - So, I had managed to show up here and forget to bring anything at all that told me where I was supposed to go, so I just called Dax and asked him about that. While it's only 1:11 - well, 1311, I guess, since I've been writing everything so far in 24-hour time, but it's 1:11 PM - so I've got a while before I need to be there but I figure I'll stay in that general neighborhood, So that's the latest. So far, still craaanking; if I make it to when I start Journeying and then of course stay on the move for the event it means if I go until about 10 I'll have done 36 hours for a 24-hour task, which feels like a worthwhile goal. So, we'll see. That's all for now.

1313 CDT - I'm pretty sure I [inaudible] of it and directly west of me there's some kind of event going on about marijuana, some kind of legalization rally or something, so I'm gonna go check that out. Sometime I need to tell SF0 the story about the last time I found myself at one of these things, in fact I'll just share it now; I wound up marching around St Paul carrying a sign... unbeknownst to me when I started 'cause I was an innocent Freshman at the time, thinking this was totally just a political rally, uh, everybody else there was high, as evidenced by the fact that at some point they decided they were going to sing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" as a protest song but nobody could remember more than the first couple of lines, so it sorta fell apart. Now I'm at some event in Chicago, so I'm gonna check this out too.

1315 CDT - Sounds like the marchers are planning to go to Sears Tower; I like seeing cool architecture so I'm going to follow them and see how it goes.

(1337 CDT) - Well, the pot march just kept my craaanking streak going, but, um, I'm moving on now, and at some point I'm going to actually make my way to Journey, so, yeah.

(1349 CDT) - [inaudible] so I've fixed that now and [inaudible] excellent.

1353 CDT - Everybody around here is wearing red and white, because I am crossing through some kind of Polish cultural celebration, which is pretty cool.

1359 CDT - I'm going to stop and give my cramped feet a massage, so that's the end of my Craaank, and I'll be hitting the 28-hour mark in 30 seconds. I'm in the park near where Journey is going to start, surrounded by Poles, and I'm taking off my shoes to give myself a foot massage.