Martinsville, Virginia

The first leg of the journey went surprisingly well. It was a stunning day out and the Waffle was in a good mood. I can already feel the tension of D.C. traffic leaving my body.

I spent the past day and a half visiting my good friend, Julie, in Martinsville, Virginia (see her self-portrait at right). It's a beautiful area! On top of that, a nice one bedroom apartment is something like $350 w/everything included. As someone who is coming from the inflated housing market of D.C., I can't quite comprehend paying less than a thousand clams for your own place. And in the D.C. area, even living with roommates only gets it down to about $500-$600...and all that includes are ants in the kitchen and a rat in the dryer. No joke, people! Rat in the dryer! If only he would've helped out more with the laundry...

I guess having grown up in the center of the universe (St. Teresa's neighborhood, Lincoln, Nebraska to everyone else), I think it's kind of unfortunate that there's so many cool places to live and experience, yet everyone crams along the coasts...of course, I'm moving from one coast to the other so maybe I should keep my mouth shut on this topic. All I'm saying is if you think the coastline is a shelter from biggots and ignorance, you're romanticizing your surroundings a bit. Now if the problem is that you think there's not as much to do in middle America, well...you're probably right.

Next stop is Tennessee.