June 8th, 2010.

Okay – so whenever I think of roasting marshmallows, I actually generally think of Star Trek VI. That’s pretty wrong of me, isn’t it. Anywho – here’s Heather and our friend Brandon roasting marshmellons (as Spock would say) on a fire at our backyard show at the Red House in Columbus, OH.

It sure is a beautiful day for traveling more than a mile-a-minute, dodging roadkill and truckers. I-70 is no longer the beacon of freedom it once was, simply because it’s so freakin’ long, but it IS a beacon of choice. An almost infinite number of exits and types of towns. I like the East-West highways much, much better than the North and South ones – it seems that I-95 just travels through metropolis after metropolis, clogged with traffic and the like-minded East-Coast hearts of New York’s stain – applied a little thicker or thinner depending on the distance. Going from East to West, you get a little coast on you, a little mid-West… a little mid-West can be a little South or even a bit Canadian – and depending on the coast, well – that’s a whole other story. You get some mountain and you get some plain and the only mana you DON’T get is the blue (cause lakes just don’t count as coast).

Shane Tripp performing at the Red House in Columbus, OH. He had a beautiful old Harmony archtop – a breed that I’d not normally think twice about – but his had an open and rich sound that really surprised me and matched him well.

It’s a beautiful country and I admire it intensely. America’s passion and it’s variety – these are things that I treasure. I wish more people could do the same, but unfortunately I feel more and more we’ve forgotten that variety is something to treasure and we’ve found fear in our differences. Passion no longer brings energy and creation, but anger and hate – and as we lose our will to cooperate with one another so we seem to fall into a creeping decay.

In Columbus Heather joined up with her friend Jason Cokes, a comedian she’d actually met at a show in Louisville, KY. He’d just gotten a sponsorship from a car rental company which got him lots of t-shirts. Poor guy now has to come up with lots of car jokes.

I was listening to the news today (oh boy) and listening to someone rant about federalized power and how the US Government shouldn’t have the power to do much other than defend the nation…. And I wondered if I’d be able to hear his voice if there wasn’t some version of the FCC in existence, and if he’d have been able to get there if it wasn’t for one of the aforementioned highways in place.

Sorry guys, it was all fine and good to let the Fed think small when the world was small, but the world’s really, really big and there aren’t THAT many things that the economy of Maryland could take on on it’s own.

Later on in the show, the rain picked up and a gutter overflowed, creating a river right through our stage. We moved gear as appropriate, but my new case took a soaking and all of our cables had the be de-mudded. Heather was non-plussed. See? That’s her non-plussed face. Kind of cute when she’s non-plussed – a dangerous precedent indeed.

Whatever, I don’t have any desire to complain about politics. The world’s one big rug with an obnoxious bubble in the middle that you keep trying to smooth towards the edge, but no matter where you push it down, something pops up somewhere else. Fortunately, overall, things get pretty evened out – even enough to build on at least – and isn’t building towards tomorrow just about the only thing you can ask for? Getting through today, building towards tomorrow, and taking some semblance of joy and satisfaction from the journey.

And so I-70 means something different to me than it once did. In college I was fascinated by it – and I have yet to literally drive it end-to-end, and I don’t know that I ever will. The path seems a little pointless if you can’t stop and enjoy yourself along the way.

Happy West Virginia.