Rapid City Rules OK!

Rapid City is one of the finest remedies for the Missouri blues. Everything is wide, grand, vast, baffling. Except, of course Rapid City itself, that cutesy tiny town in South Dakota.  Rapid City offers some great hotels, fantastic coffee shops and excellent restaurants.

Breakfast at Alternative Fuel Coffee House is a trip. Best.... coffee.... ever! Tasty breakfast choices and great service to boot. Yes, guys, I will write you up on trip advisor.

As Mount Rushmore is only a few mies away, we spend most of the afternoon gazing at dead presidents. So did the thousands of Harley affecionados who decided to motor up to see Teddy, Abe, George and Tommy. That reminds me, shouldn't someone initiate a Ramones memorial somehwere?

The end of the afternoon found us in Deadwood. We parked our car, loaded up and got us some Chinese. Deadwood was quite a letdown. It is a 19th century Atlantic city. Gambling, gambling, and gambling. Not my cup 'o'tea, I'm afraid.

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St. Louis to Rapid City

We got out of Missouri before it killed us and headed west on Interstate 90. People, get out of this state! Go see the world! Yes, the grass is greener over yonder!

As we passed Kansas City we gazed at the "Ron Paul for President" billboards and already felt much better. From the face of it, KC looked like paradise compared to St. Louis, we could tell there was something there. A "je ne sais quoi" of some magnitude not yet determined.

Driving through Missouri and Iowa was by far the most boring part of the trip. After 5 days we were kind of edgy and really wanted to see "the west" as opposed to the "mid-west" and leave the bad taste Missouri gave us behind us.

Things and scenery started looking up in Sioux City and Sioux Falls as we realized we were more than halfway there. At Chamberlain, South Dakota we crossed the mighty Missouri river which offered a beautiful view of the  Chamberlain/Oacoma Bridge. As we did, we passed literally hundreds of Harley Davidson's on their way to Sturgis. Dead tired we reached Rapid City and finally got a decent kip.

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Chickamauga - Bellville Illinois

Time flies when you are on the road and have no time to update your blog. I left you in Atlanta, Georgia and writing this from Rapid City, South Dakota. And it's only been three days...

Day four brought us from Atlanta to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. After that, the battlefields of Chattanooga and Chikamauga awaited on the border of Georgia and Tennessee. We also did the incline, a little monorail to Lookout Mountain. It is the worldst steepest monorail and boy, was it steep!

The road lead us into the beautiful tree laden countryside of Tennessee as we drove north towards St. Louis.  On the way, we passed Nashville. The capital of country music shall be remembered for it's bad drivers and nasty congested roads. But then again, I was never a fan of Nashville.

We finally reached the border of Missouri and illinois where we enjoyed a lovely hotel in downtown St. Louis close to the Arch.  St. Louis is another of those cities which should be avoided, apart from the tourist attractions and the lovely boat ride we had on the Mississippi. Missouri people are best described as Miserable and Dim. The Gateway Arch was a great experience as we got to the top and made some pictures.

The next day it was over the river back into Illinois to visit Belleville, the birthplace of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco and Son Volt. A very sad and depressing place. I got a couple of pictures from me under a Stag beer sign. We had lunch at Eckerts, one of those typical country eateries. Belleville is not a place you should see. Just buy the goddamn Wilco records!

Watch out for the overzealous Illinois state  troupers on your way to St. Louis.


 

Currently listening : The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society By The Kinks Release date: 02 May, 1990

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The Dirty South

Day two brought us from Gainesville (Gooooo Gators!) to Atlanta, GA. Had a great pizza dinner at Osteria in Virginia Highlands followed by some nice italian ice cream at Paolo's Gelata.

After getting bit the living crap out of us by mozzies, we had an early night to recover and be ready for the next day. 

Day three brought us the Atlanta Cyclorama and the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. Between those political historical landmarks we had the chance to meet up with Tobi's friend Deondra who lives quite near Atlanta. A nice lunch at Apres Diem was had by all.

Tomorrow we'll see more civil war stuff as we continue our journey north to Chattanooga Tennessee, and the battle fields at Chickamauga. From then it's on to St. Louis where the Missouri river awaits.

photos at http://photosbyjeroen.fotopic.net/

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Go West Young Man!

Started our trip to Seattle today, about 3500 miles from the Atlantic Southeast  to the Pacific Northwest.  I feel a bit like an explorer, like Lewis and Clark, or a pioneer of some sort about to conquer the west.

Staying overnight in Gainesville, Florida's biggest university town. Lots of cool places and a really lovely downtown area. Then again, I am a sucker for sudent towns (and college girls for that matter) ;-)

Had some rough weather on the way, especially around the Orlando area. Lots of tropical down pours, making driving almost impossible. There isn't anything worthwile seeing on the way from Hobe Sound to Gainesville. I guess Orlando has some interesting things if you're into talking mice and super heroes. Other than that, the scenery north of Orlando reminded me a lot of Europe's rolling hills, like the ones you find in southern Belgium or England.

Anyhoo, after ordering Italian from one of those student diners in downtown Gainesville ( I swear our waitress was straight out of an Edvard Munch painting, all full of angst) we headed up to our hotel and said goodnight. The Country Inn and Suites has, indeed, very nice suites and free wifi access throughout the hotel. Nice perk for all those nerds who write blogs at night....oh.. right...

Tommorrow's leg will bring us to Atlanta, Georgia. Going 330 miles straight up the I-75. More tomorrow.

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Tour de France

I can't believe Rabobank, by way of Michael Rasmussen, actually has a chance of winning the tour de france. Argh, now I probably  jinxed it!

I have been listening to the tour on Dutch radio. The last two days the live TV stream has been available too. Having said that, I probably jinxed that as well. You see, they filter by location/IP address, so technically or legally I shouldn't be watching it  But it's better than watching it on Versus which has commercials, like, every 5 minutes!

Anyway, keep up the good work Mikey! I'll be rootin' for ya.

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Wilco in New VW Commercial

Wilco's "Either Way" is featured in the new Volkswagen commercial, airing on national TV. It's fantastic to see such great music being used for this kind of purpose. The more exposure Wilco gets the better. Speaking of Wilco, I am quite looking forward to see them in Seattle on my birthday, August 21st. The gig will be held in the Marymoor Park,  a couple of miles east of Seattle.

If anyone is going, let me know and we can meet up.

Currently listening : Sky Blue Sky By Wilco Release date: 15 May, 2007

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Windows Safari

Give your PC a real Mac experience! I just downloaded Safari for Windows and I love it! It is superfast , it downloads pages way faster than Firefox or IE and accessibility gurus will love it since it makes everything on the screen brighter and therefore clearer.

For me as a web designer it is quite revealing to see some of the sites break down in Safari because of ill formed HTML or CSS. Safari was until now something I didn't really took into account when designing pages. You know, when you look at statistics of what browsers people are using to view your website, there isn't all that much Safari traffic. However, Safari for windows looks very promising and could take the PC world by storm. And that means I now have to test everything in Safari for Windows as well.

You can download Safari from Apple's Website
Currently, it is still in beta (v3 at the time of writing), but don't let it hold you back giving it a spin. As said, I just started using it, so I'll keep you posted on any new developments or quirks I'll find.

Currently watching : Entourage - Season 3, Part 2

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The Jupiter Island Wildlife

A reported $75,000 is what one millionaire in Jupiter Island spend on fireworks this weekend. Gotta give him/her credit for a very nice display we enjoyed from across the water. The Saturday night sky was lit up by all these rockets and made an amazing colorful spectacle.

We live in a community with a lot of snowbirds; people who are here for the winter and go back to north in the summer. This is the time of year they're all heading north again. My guess is that somebody wanted to celebrate the fact they were re-migrating, but who knows. Why somebody wants to spend so much moulah on pyrotechnics is beyond me.  I think it was just a millionaire power trip. Half of Hobe Sound came out to see it and we all enjoyed it a lot.

Among the rich and famous of Jupiter Island (just across the intracoastal from us) we have Celine Dion and Tiger Woods. Luckily we don't hear Celine practicing, hohoho. Tiger is building his house about 2 miles from us, but I am sure he'll be living there soon. Maybe next year he can chip in for some bottle rockets.

Currently listening : Costello Music By The Fratellis Release date: 13 March, 2007

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Radio is a sound salvation

The solid state of affairs concerning FM radio in this county is abismal. Switching on the radio here is like flipping through the yellow pages. 150 stations fighting for a place on your dial all trying to sell you something. Be it real estate, cars or jesus, commercial radio has never sounded so bad.

The freedom of choice according to the marketing powers that be consists of classic rock (all the same, all the time), nu-rock (please, I beg you, no more emo!), alternative rock (kiddie style), country (strictly comercial nashville crap) and the seemingly very popular Christian rock. Sort of Nu-rock, emo style but with lyrics "straight outta Canaan". I dubbed that new style "Pilgrim rock".

God bless the good people at NPR. If you're really fed up with the "choice" described above, you can always tune in to New Public Radio. Unfortunately they play mostly classical music during the daytime.

As long as there is no state-wide wi-fi available, you really need to have an Ipod around here. Or get satellite radio, which is becoming very popular for some reason.  You need a subscription and special hardware for that though, money that can be better invested in a carkit for your Ipod methinks.

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