(As I mentioned, I've actually already returned from this trip, so this is not exactly a blow by blow, but I just post it to show I was thinking of you, wishing you were there, et cetera. Oh wait, I'm lying.)

Vacation! If there is anything more conducive to relaxation than barreling down the Interstate at Warp 8.2 then I don’t know about it. Wait, yes I do, it’s called staying home and faking your own death, but I’m saving that for next year. It took about seven hours to get to South of the Border. It would have taken longer except that when traffic got congested, there was a man who held a two-foot cross aloft from his driver’s side window to disperse the offending cars, and we followed in his hallowed wake. There was also a minivan with a large decal emblazoned across its back window reading “Body Piercing Saved My Life!”, which captioned a bloody illustration of someone hammering a nail into Jesus’ wrist. At least they properly rendered the anatomy as it is unlikely one could be held aloft on a cross or any other surface via a nail through the palm, which is the traditional image. I get the idea that Jesus was no fool and ended up choosing crucifixion over a road trip through the bowels of the American South.

South of the Border is a hideous and excellent fantasyland situated between North and South Carolina. I almost typed “Couth” Carolina instead, which would have been the typo to end all typos. One of my dearest friends—one of the most brilliant and creative people I have ever met—is from South Carolina, and my theory is that he and his family must have been queued in just the right spot when the gods were distributing positive attributes in the former Confederate states. Or perhaps everyone else was off buying fireworks and contraband cigarettes. In any case, South of the Border is presided over by Pedro, a Mexican caricature in a sombrero and serape who rules with an iron fist. Pedro sez no running. Pedro sez no stealing. Pedro sez every neon and fluorescent light between South Carolina and Timbuktu must be assembled in the most alluring configurations around his roadside kingdom. Pedro owns a diner, a tee-shirt shop, a fireworks stand, a Mexican shop, an African shop, a concrete statuary booth, a hot dog counter, a candy store, a live shark, about seven hundred life-sized plastic animals, and a fifteen-story tower shaped like (what else?) a sombrero, from which one can observe traffic whizzing by on the highway.

Rob and I stayed for the night at the associated motor lodge, which has not changed a shingle since 1962. On a previous occasion when we stayed there, we were given a large room with fabulous mod furniture, but this time they stuck us in a windowless cinderblock cube that stank of three hundred years of accumulated carpet powder. We nonetheless found the wherewithal to sleep, although I first had to decompress with a book about how plants attached to polygraphs can read your mind and react accordingly if you intend to burn them with a match. I feel this shows more common sense than the person waving his personal cross out his car window to dispense with traffic, but then again, I am a stranger in these parts.