Holy Smokes,
Its been like 1,000 years since I have blogged about anything.
The main reason is that I just completed the first part of the SEB program. 6 weeks of entrepreneur boot camp... and all I have to show for it is a completed business plan.
But, that's not what I feel like typing about tonight. I was actually inspired by Derek's weekend roadtrip (in blog form) and thought I would share my own thoughts on visiting the states.
I think we all seem to forget how really big the US is. Its nowhere near as large as Canada (by area), but it does have 10 times the population. That means that it has 10 times as much of everything that we have (except, perhaps, natural beauty).
That means -(AT LEAST)
10x as many towns the size of the one you grew up in.
10x as many shithole one horse towns.
10x as many quaint little towns with a beutiful main street.
10x as many weirdos, jerks and nut jobs.
10x as many nice people too.
But - what is weird... nothing is distributed evenly. You may go an entire trip and only see crap, depression and unhappiness. You could go another time and see nothing but beauty and riches. It all depends on where you go and how you get there.
I still can't make my mind up about the US. I've seen many wonders and coolness there. But, I have also seen the great sadness and hopelessness.
Last summer I went on a road trip that took me to:
A small nowhere town in Kentuky
Athens Georgia (Home of the B52's and REM - cool small university town - with a BIG ASS university full of boneheads)
The smokey mountains national park (which has on its doorstep the Niagara falls of the south - no waterfalls - just all the fun stupid crap you would find at Niagara Falls)
The Mississippi Gulf Coast.
New Orleans.
Memphis Tennessee.
A small nowhere town in Kentuky again.
and back home.
That trip was filled with nothing but coolness and laughs. And even the bad stuff (stupid americans, commercialism, cheesiness, false piety etc.) was cool on this trip.
Still, there was another trip down to the states where every stop reveled an place where there was such unimagninable poverty and decay you wouldn't beleive you were in the richest country in the world.
Yup - its a big place. And when you go visit you almost never know what you are going to get. But, its worth visiting... as long as you can come home... because afterall - how can you reconcile a place where the rich are outrageously rich and the poor so ridiculously poor and a place where the majority of people that fall inbetween are too ignorant to fix a system that allows such polar extremes.
andre
Posted by andre at July 27, 2004 04:47 AM