May Tripping

From the home base in Old City, I traveled over 5,000 miles across the Eastern United States throughout the month of May as abstractly illustrated in the above SnagIt Editor on Google Maps digital visualization. In real terms, I made round-trip visits from Philadelphia to:

• Atlantic City, NJ
• Charlotte, NC
• Nantucket, MA
• New Orleans, LA
• New York, NY
• Rideau Ferry, ON

As much as my itinerant nomadisticity was a journey of man on wheel, rail, wing and hull, what strikes me here at the end of it all was the gastronomic effort involved in literally eating my way through May on the road. En route I sampled an awesome array of distinctly North American cuisine in all of its regional splendor. While the exotic wonders of cajun cuisine in New Orleans, buttered chip wagons in Canada, and Nantucket's amazing Portuguese bread command respect, the core of the culinary experience was far more American: lite beers (and lots of them) plus hot meat, cheese and white bread. 

For the most part I try to watch what I eat. But healthy eating, like exercise, piano-lessons, non-fiction reading and prayer, is a routine easily toppled by the flux of travel. Simply stated, the road is an excuse to scarf all the junk food you can handle. And so this May I happily gave-in to the impulse to eat, and eat I did to end up here in June counting back on the previous month and realizing that I ate literally 3 home-cooked meals, had red meat almost daily and can count among that total cheeseburgers from 10 different sources and 3 philly cheesesteaks (my normal total on both of the above is like 1 per month).

Beefy Highlights:

• Hot barbecue brisket at the random strangers house in New Orleans on the recovery from being rocked by Pearl Jam at Jazz Fest.
• Returning to the fast-food burgers of my youth: Wendy's 1/4 Single with Cheese, A&W Papa Burger, McDonald's Big Mac.
• The simple, yet technically advanced burger at the Crepe Cellar in Charlotte, NC - hand-packed patty, fried onion strings, gruyere and a truly wonderful bun make this the only one I'll refer to as the French Onion Soup of cheeseburgers. 
• Not 1, but 2 cheesesteaks at Cosmi's - Philadelphia's best 'Philly Cheesesteak.' (Suck it Pat's and Geno's!)
• Memorial Day Natucket grill-o-rama featuring classic, hand-made burgers on the grill with sliced tomato, grilled onion and pickles and the best weather anybody's seen on that island since the New World was discovered.

It's been real. 

Now as my brother says, it's time to be a homeboy, and for June that means getting back to leafy greens and high fiber to hopefully undo some of the massive damage May must have done on arterial walls and GI tract.   

Road Trip: Bringing the Ill to Philly

It was coolish, clear and bright in Southeastern Pennsylvania when we woke up and drove the remaining 70 miles of our Road Trip into Philadelphia to deliver me to my destination and btw, spend Independence Day, in the experienced old city where it all went down over 200 years ago.

I've taken all kinds of approaches to the 4th of July, but generally skewing away from any challenging pursuit in favor of drinking and relaxing. As I've got older, fireworks even, have taken a back seat to the aforementioned lack of effort. Really, what better way to commemorate the legendarily dire struggle of our ill-equipped forefathers, facing the longest of odds against the world's greatest army, for the dream of a freedom we now take for granted, than barely lifting a finger?

But then we were in Philadelphia and I thought, well, this is an opportunity for a new, high-minded kind of Fourth of July. And we went for it and 'did our thing out front,' per the advice of living-in-the-moment master Ken Kesey. The result was a steaming-rich slice of Americana you can't get outside the 215.

Being that we needed our beauty rest and we're late to rouse after a large day of driving on the 3rd, we didn't get into Philadelphia until around lunch time, which was fine because the day's first priority was cheesesteaks and the first decision was Pat's or Geno's?

We weren't alone in this determination and found ourselves in a busy Italian Market neighborhood with both Pat's and Geno's sporting horrendous, multi-corner lines. Some clown from a local radio station was broadcasting Pointer Sister's tunes at ear-wrecking volumes in front of Geno's, so we retreated to Pat's and braved the line. 15 minutes later, we were mowing down steaks 'whiz wit,' spicy cherry peppers, fries and cokes. Satisfying. Delicious.

And perfect brain food for the introspective afternoon that followed, where we found our way north and east up to Independence Mall to soak up some meaningful history. We'd missed the parade (probably a good thing) but there was still plenty of historically-themed stuff going down around Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center, which offers a pleasant and educational stroll through an air-conditioned glass corridor with more than you could ever want to know about the Bell.

We did the tour, marveled at this Bell which has achieved more as an inanimate object than most of us could ever hope to, including serving as an inspiration to nascent democracy around the world, and then posed with this awesome Colonial American to capture the moment.

By this time our feet and brains were aching, and I had a lump in my throat from all the nostalgia being a lot to handle and making me feel sad and guilty for the comparatively little that I've sacrificed for this country besides tax money. My grandfathers both answered the proverbial call of duty and spent their lives battling America's foreign enemies. What proxy in my modern life is there for this kind of sacrifice? I thought about it for a second and remembered the call to arms of late is simple: consume, for the benefit of America, consume. And away we went to the bar at Jones, where the 4th of July as I know it officially began. I started to cheer up as we drank American beers from local brewers like Victory, Yards and Yuengling and watched the Phillies stick it to the Mets on tv.

From there the only thing we could do was eat and drink some more to kill the time until the free Sheryl Crow concert and fire works at the Art Museum at 10. So we decided to take advantage of Philadelphia's fantastic BYOB tradition and drop in on the Jamaican Jerk Hut where ridiculous island-style decorations and a reggae band stand liven up an empty lot next to the restaurant with rastamon vibrations. The chicken's ayrie and so is showing up with your own bottle of Mount Gay and ordering cups of juice alongside dinner.

Them belly's full, we joined the throng in the streets headed for the Art Museum and caught the tail end of Sheryl Crow's free set culminating in an encore, which I called, of 'All I Wanna Do.' But then she tacked on a second song in the encore and wrapped up her show with a Zeppelin cover, 'Rock 'N Roll,' which, alright, I dig it, but shouldn't any musician prefer to close with their own material? Or was Crow really saving the best for last?

After fireworks the crowd of probably 250,000 (since I'm really good at estimating large crowds in the dark you can trust that stat) dissipated back into the City and we along with them headed to South street to close out the night with yet another Philadelphia tradition, 'the special,' at Bob and Barbara's. The Special, at any Philly bar that honors this savvy order, is an ice-cold can of PBR accompanied by a shot of Jim Beam, and at $2.50 per Special at Bob and Barbara's it's an economic way to get your drink on.

There we spent the rest of the night, jamming on with the house band and their slippery smooth instrumental grooves on old '70s hits from Stevie Wonder and Al Green to the Chi-Lites. God Bless America.