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RTD2

Dear Mr Starbucks creator/franchise owner/architect.

Our names are Christie and Tim and we would greatly appreciate it if you would increase the size of your parking lots and/or drive-thrus so we can bring our “road train” in the vicinity of your stores.

Kind Regards (It would be warmest regards but we are cold without our coffee)

C & T

Today we just wanted to hit the road. We knew what was coming after more than 12 hours on the road yesterday so the quicker we were heading in the right direction the better. The sheen has certainly worn off this road trip. We wanted coffee but we couldn’t find a Starbucks where we could pull in. 🙁

Check out vision from some of the trip:

It’s unfortunate that we are in such a rush. My friend Ryan, who I stayed with in Nashville, is down in Birmingham at the moment and I would have liked to have seen him again.

We returned to the truck this morning to find the petrol cap off the diesel tank. We couldn’t work out whether someone had tried to siphon it or whether Tim just left the cap off on the last of our umpteen petrol stops yesterday.

It wasn’t the best morning for poor Timbo. He found out his grandfather passed away whilst we were driving. He was a war veteran and led quite a remarkable life as an airforce pilot from the brief snippets Tim shared. I wish I had of had the chance to meet him.

I returned to my new favourite place in the US – Tennessee – this afternoon. We headed up through Knoxville and past Dolly’s home near Sevierville. We gave her a toot. 🙂

Tim laughed at seeing the Sunsphere in Knoxville. It features heavily in a Simpsons episode where Bart gets a fake drivers licence and he, Milhouse, Martin and Nelson head to Knoxville for the World’s Fair.

In Knoxville, however, they find out that the fair was held 14 years earlier, and that they’d accidentally been reading an outdated AAA magazine. They discover that the fair’s feature attraction, the Sunsphere, is being used as a wigshop.

After buying wigs the boys sit at the curb to consider recent events. Bart takes solace in the fact that they still have the car and a wad of cash, but Martin spent the last $10 on a talking Al Gore doll.

Nelson, angrily, throws a rock at the Sunsphere, which topples, and crushes their car.

Bart: We got no car!
Martin: We got no money!
Milhouse: And no one knows we’re here!
Everyone: We’re stranded!
Nelson: But on the plus side, I knocked over the Sunsphere. HA-ha….and crushed a new car, too!

Bart eventually calls Lisa who gets Homer to order equipment for the Springfield power plant from the Oakridge power plant near Knoxville and Bart and boys stow away in the crate to get home. Funny.

We spent the afternoon driving past many Civil War sites and admiring the snow-capped Appalachian Mountains. There is quite a lot of snow on them since I last saw them.

We spent the night at Salem, Virginia, just down the road from Virginia Tech University. Isn’t it terrible that I only know this part of the world because of a massacre?

Beat once again, we decided to order in Chinese to the hotel. I rang the number as per the pamphlet the chick at reception gave us. A guy answers. “Hi there, I’d like to place an order.” “For what?” “Chinese. Can I place a delivery order please?” “You can’t order Chinese here but actually that sounds good. Can you order me some too?” Oops! Called the right number but because I purchased my US phone in Tennessee it connected me through to some poor dude there.

Round two and we finally got our meal and our fortune cookies. Tim and I agreed that I would use my fortune to determine what to do for my Mystery Month since I still haven’t made a firm decision. But this is what it came out with. I have no idea what to make of it. It has two smiley faces but does that mean my luck will get better or worse? They could be evil smiley faces saying “ba ha ha ha ha”. More confused than ever ☹