Kim left early for her flight back to Portland, Ami and I left sluggishly but were relived to see the car in one piece back in Brooklyn.
I had been feeling a bit sick and now had a full on fly; being sick on a road trip is ten times worse because the car window is your bathroom sink, and the world is is your toilet.
Ami speed us out of New Jersey into Pennsylvania, famous for its Hershey's chocolate and vampires. Factories and smoke stacks gave way to fields of pumpkins and corn tended to by the local Amish community, dressed in the latest farming fashion from 1886.
I was truly sick by this point, and the East coast was experiencing record low temperatures; at night it froze and my flu was thriving in the cold air.
We gave in and spent two night recovering in a “sleep inn” after drinking many a motherly concoction of garlic,ginger,lemon and eye of newt, we reluctantly went to a doctor for some antibiotics, $300 bucks later.
Feeling slightly better, we dipped south in to the capital on a crisp sunny Sunday, against Ami's better judgment.
Sunday was a good day for the Smithsonian Museums and the solar powered house competition that was happening in the middle of the mall, also we had arrived during a gay marriage/rights march.
Posing in front of the Lincoln Statue and the White house wasn't as interesting as the protesters marching down the main street, much to the horror of many a local resident.
Loudspeakers chanting as thousands of 'GLBT' people and their supporters marched by Obama's empty house, guarded by black suit snipers on the roof and in the bushes, watching in silence.
It was fun to witness a rally that felt straight out of the 60's; America still drags its heals when it comes to changing laws concerning religious and social morals.
The Smithsonian seemed small and childish compared to the other museums we had seen, although it does have most of Americas most famous national treasures; I posed next to some typically blank faced tourists, mindlessly cataloging every item with their flashing digital cameras.
Driving South East to the cost an amazing transformation happened, in a matter of hours we left the cold urban sprawl that began in Maine, and popped out into the humid South.
Signs for boiled peanuts and BBQ where everywhere, Spanish moss hung from the trees and the small rolling hills flattened off into sandy swampy forests.
The weather had found us again as we raced ahead of a cold front and my flu oozed back into action; we had found a hostel in Kitty hawk, North Carolina and spent another couple of days in warm air and indoor plumbing.
Strangely enough we had sheltered just a mile from the location of the Wright brothers first manned flight, a tiny bump in the flat landscape being the highest point on the coast, all the way to Florida.
The hill should have had a sign welcoming us to the precarious, just above sea level, landscape called the South; I made a quick mental note, if tsunamis are coming, this is the last hill till we hit Texas.
Welcome to the South!
