On the Road with Adie

Playlist: all-Dylan Texas

I don’t know what affection Bob has for Texas, what part of the state captured the bard’s imagination, but it makes an inordinate number of appearances in his lyrics. Here are my favorite Texas-Dylan songs:

Texas Wine Trail

You know about California wines. Everyone knows about California wines and the madness that is Napa (for once not the auto parts store—which is also madness). New York and Washington wines have their claims to fame as well. Let’s not forget some of the best wine we’ve ever had in Michigan too. But did you know about the Texas wine trail?

Podcast: William & Cory

We were a dozen states into our 49 state tour when our exhaust system developed a crack. I jumped on VanAlert and found a place called the VW Garage in Portland Maine. The shop owner, Cory Sterling, hooked us up with a metal fabricator and welder named William Bruce. William is a fellow VW owner and after he patched our exhaust system, we decided to do an interview right there in the parking lot along their very busy Main Street.

Made it to Texas

State number 30 for us. We stayed in the Angelina National Forest.

Playlist: Texas

Man, oh, man. We are in the west now, folks. It’s good to breathe the dusty air of the Lone Star State and drive the open roads (even though there’s more pickup trucks than people down here). Let me give you a healthy helping of songs to keep you sustained on the long lonely roads down here. And, never fear friends, I have a special all-Dylan playlist for Texas queued up for the next few days.

Piece by piece

If you need a reliable mechanic, stop here—not at a chain.

There’s a Johnny Cash song about a guy who steals parts from his automobile assembly plant job and builds his car one piece at a time at home. (The song was actually written by Wayne Kemp.) The song is fun and farcical and it ends by the narrator saying that the car is a vintage 1949 through 1970. People who hear it probably think it is ridiculous. Friends, I am here to tell you that it is not.

Louisiana in review

Miracle loves New Orleans and was elated to get back to one of her favorite places to wine and dine. Fortunately, we had a driveway stay in the city, making it both convenient and affordable to stay within the city. We did eat at a couple of restaurants and grabbed some beignets to make sure we had the complete NOLA experience. The food was good, though I wasn’t head over heels about it (a product probably of too much hype), but the city itself was neat, I guess. I might be jaded though because… driving.

Podcast: Gianfranco & Kim

We were staying in Wasaga Beach, Ontario, with a VW collector named Gianfranco Martinelli and his family when the weather took a turn and they invited us to stay in their spare room. We stayed with the Martinellis for a few days and became fast friends. We sat down with Gianfranco to ask him about his VW collection—where it all began and where it might take him.

Playlist: Louisiana

We are merely scraping the edge of the Pelican State to catch an interview or two and eat until our hearts’ content and our stomachs’ uncomfortably-full content. While we languish, here are some tunes that feel like the bayou and mention some locales from the only state with parishes instead of counties. Also, worth noting: two songs on this list are by Alabama-named bands. Weird.

Mississippi odds and ends

It feels like we have been in Mississippi for a long time. Perhaps it is because the weather changed so drastically over the past week that it feels like we must have crossed several biomes. But here are some observations I’ve made: