Mobile

Being in Mobile is strange, because it's pretty in a way familiar to me only from Pirates of Caribbean. The ride, not the movie. And actually not the ride so much as the surrounding areas of Disneyland.

It's that fragile, seaside architecture, and every now and then a whitewashed building with swoops and so forth. It was very quiet and very hot. I had to take a taxi from my hotel to downtown. The taxi driver was the same one who had taken me from the Greyhound to the hotel. He had a woman with him in the taxi both times. They had a portable dvd player up front with them. On the trip from Greyhound to the hotel they were watching Biker Boyz.

I asked them where I should go to eat. I am, in theory, not against big box stores. There's a lot to be said for local enterprise and so forth, but I remember the pre-Borders/Barnes and Noble days, and they often weren't so great. If you have a good local bookstore, and there are plenty, that's great, but not every place does. Anyway, this is all to say that it was a little depressing to be told that the Olive Garden and Ruby Tuesday's were good places to go. I don't know.

I went to a local bar with food; it seemed to be the only place open downtown. They had a really good grilled shrimp salad. I sat outside; the waitress said I was brave. It was really hot. I walked to the laundromat, and like the people in the video so kindly posted by Mission Control, I thought I was dying.

People talk to you more further east. Actually, what I mean to say is that guys holler at you more, at least in this small portion of our great country. I sat outside the laundromat smoking. There was another woman out there, and a girl. One guy passed by and yelled, "Hey." He yelled it again. And again. I didn't know who he was yelling at. The other woman said, either to me or the girl, "You tell him that hay is for horses and you aren't a horse."

The sunset was spectacular. I swam in the hotel pool, which was incredibly warm. I watched some tv.