Day 2-- Nashville to Blacksburg

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

9:16 pm EDT - Highway 40 out of Nashville is not for the sleepy, or those with poor eyesight. In Nebraska, going across highway 80, you can let go of the steering wheel and - if you are
driving something new and foreign on a windless day - you can hold your course for hours. The highway out there is a long flat slab of concrete that cuts through the endless fields of corn between Lincoln and North Platte. Not so I-40. The Tennessee interstate twists through
the hills of western Tennessee with discomfiting irregularity. Drift for a moment here and you will find yourself plunging off into the trees, a ditch, or some unlucky woodland creature. Being sleepy, I medicated myself with several doses of Red Bull then threw on a Big Smith album (when in the country you've got to listen to... well, country) and drove with a fluttering heart rate and mongoose reflexes.

The good news is that when you are following a forty-foot monster-bus, you can't really get lost. We are on our way to Blacksburg, VA where we will spend the night and register some voters before storming into Richmond tomorrow night for Tuesday vote-rocking.

Politically speaking, we are in red territory right now. The red, white, and blue 'support our troops' magnetic ribbons on pickup trucks far outnumber the 'go green' bumper stickers on hybrids, but - again judging by bumper sticker traffic - we are a divided nation even here.

Around 6:30 we pulled into Bristol, designated in 1998 by Congress as the 'Home of Country Music' in honor of Ralph Peer recording The Carter family there in 1927. The town straddles the Tennessee--Virginia divide and along with country music is home to Ryan's Buffet, where
our lovely waitress Tina declared - after some pressure from my colleague Aaron - that Aaron was the more attractive of the two of us. I am holding out for a recount.