The Train Pulls Out of Kankakee...

Less than twenty-four hours but more than six hundred miles since I told Dan Markel that I would just as soon not do blog posts that are purely personal rumination, I feel obliged to say something about the longest solo drive I have ever made in my life.   I am now safely down for the night in a Holiday Inn Express somewhere in Mississippi, having left Indianapolis at 7:00 a.m. today.   In no particular order of importance:

1.  If tonight I'm staying in a Holiday Inn Express, then tomorrow when I arrive I should wait until Dean Ponoroff is out of the office and then slip into his chair.  When somebody walks in and asks, "are you the dean?" I can reply, "no but I stayed in a. . . ."

2.  My son and I went to see Talladega Nights:  The Legend of Ricky Bobby a couple days ago.  When I arrived here, I could not bring myself to eat dinner at the Applebee's.

3.  This is the first time I have ever stepped foot in Alabama or Mississippi.  The model of the Saturn 1-B at the Alabama welcome center near Huntsville is cool.  I wasn't so sure about the three sided pillar just across from it that says:  "Alabama:  we dare to defend our rights."  (For the record, I have Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota to go.)

4.  Pilot truck stops have the best coffee.  The one outside of Louisville also had fresh bananas.