Screw Waldo...where am I?

At the moment, I'm sitting in Cafe Rouge in Myrtle Beach, S.C., taking advantage of the free WiFi and a fantastic iced coffee...
The road is a blur. Has it only been 5 days since I left the Newark of New England? You realize quickly how homogeonized this country has become. Every place looks like everyplace else. Oh look, there's a Starbucks...another TGI Friday's, another Comfort Inn, another McDonalds and Gap and high-end mall with a Macy's anchor store. It's only the physical layout of the cities themselves, the historic aspects that provide any unique characteristics. Thank god I found this place, ironically enough by going into a Starbucks and asking if they had Wifi (they didn't, and the barista sent me here!).
There's a slide show (or Powerpoint, if you prefer) running thru my head...Lynn Goldsmith photos at the Rock Hall of Fame, the Bruce Nauman light exhibit at the Warhol museum (as well as a ton of Warhol art-go figure), lunch at the Gypsy Cafe in Pittsburgh (fantastic city, btw. Surprisingly beautiful architecture & bridges, very well laid out, and the Cuban sandwich was awesome), and then highways...cruising south through West Virginia, which is also beautiful, had to stop a few times and just take it all in from the side of the road. Highways slicing through the mountains, foliage not quite early-October Vermont, but still bright and vibrant, a great frame for the highway.
In total, drove 6+ hours from Pitt to Winston-Salem N.C., which is about 60% of the way here. Seemed like a good place to stop. Also paid the most EVER for gas, $3.29 a gallon. Thanks, W. Just one more cause-and-effect related clusterfuck you'll take no responsibility for.
Left NC this morning, cold and blustery, drove straight here. Detoured thru some small, rural NC towns...it was a minor shock, a break from the homogonized everywhere else. Broken-down shacks, shuttered windows...just visible abject poverty. You wonder how places like that could still exist in America in 2007, or in 1987 for that matter. Like they were forgotten about, written off, left behind in the "it's all about me" America. It's their sons and daughters fighting our wars, getting limbs blown off or coming home in body bags to be buried in pauper's graves off the side of Route 220. The other dichotomy of it all, the sight of pawn shops and check-cashing stores interspersed with churches of various Baptist and Evangelical denominations littering the road sides. When you've got nothing else, very little hope of ever escaping that world, faith is the one sustaining element. The unshakable certainty that this is all part of a grander design, that the ultimate end will justify the meanness of the means. It also gives a man a renewed humility, a renewed awareness of just how fortunate he's been to be blessed with so much.
So I sit here and count my blessings. Health, family, great friends, and a future firmly in my control. The ability to take a trip like this, and to appreciate the kindness of strangers, like my new friend Ed here at Cafe Rouge and my old friends whom I'll soon join for Yosef's bachelor party tonight and thru this weekend. Please, take a moment for yourself and remember your own blessings.
Ok, no more preaching. I've got a bachelor party to get to...there's another gospel to abide by. :)