I go by bus when I visit family because that's the way to get there with the smallest carbon footprint. Most of the trip was uneventful. Nothing inspired me to get my camera out until I had to wait in the bus station in Mobile, Alabama. While I was standing there they cut to a live news conference of the President talking about the oil spill.

After my sister picked me up at the bus station in Columbus she wanted me to take a picture of this billboard. She thought it exactly captured the blame for the oil spill. Thank you Chevwrong!

That reminds me of a joke. What's reincarnation? A nation that keeps getting into cars again.



Life on the farm hasn't changed much since last fall, except that it's very green now that there is lots of rain and sun.

  

The stated reason I went back early was to see Grace perform with her church choir.

The MPV was running a bit rough, so before heading for Virginia Bryant and Grace changed the plug wires. That helped a lot.

  

I've seen lots of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards, but I don't remember seeing another one named after Jimmy Carter, who is still the only President of the USA I've shaken hands with.

The dropped me off at my mother in laws. While I was there I took a walk. There are so many ways Glen Allen reminds me of Reston, where I spent the most sterile part of my youth.





The big reason I took that trip was to see Teresa's wedding. You can see most of my pictures of it by clicking above.

     

I got a ride from the wedding to my step mother's house with my Dad. The original plan was to go back to Georgia with Tonia, Bryant, Katie and Grace. The only problem was that their car died outside Centerville or someplace like that. I changed my ticket so it left from there instead of Columbus. Before leaving Evelyn's, she took me on a tour of the house. She has many displays of silver cups she won earlier in life. Tennis championships, beauty awards, and probably a lot of other things.

  

The last picture I took in Virginia was of these people playing video games at the bus station.

On the way back I didn't have any open space in my camera's memory. However, when I got to Dallas I saw this cop mobile and I just had to shoot it. I think it's battery based, but I'm not sure. Around San Jose there are green shirted people on Segways, there to help tourists find stuff and the like. I'm wondering if this machine serves a similar role. I had to delete a couple of things just to make space, but I had the time to pick throw aways so it was okay. Unfortunately, the cop never came along to answer my questions about the machine.

     

I saw this McDonalds that is tiny compared to all the buildings around it. I bet the lot it's on is going to be redeveloped soon.

Leaving El Paso, we passed a big power plant. Aside from the big wires going in and the smokestacks, you could tell it was a power plant because it had a HUGE sign that said "POWER PLANT" on it. If I cross the country in a Greyhound bus again, I'm going to try and get a picture of it then. California utilities don't put signs like that on their plants, at least not that I've seen.



I ended up getting home a day earlier than I was expecting to. I turned on the TV not long after I got home and Obama was still working to focus attention on that gusher a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico. It reminded me of talking to EB one time. She said that if someones intestines get pierced, digestive tract contents leak into the blood and do very toxic things. Seems to me that's what's going on down there. The analogy is particularly good because the sea is about as salty as our blood is, and oil can be thought of as partially digested dinosaur era biomass. The asphalt that comes out of oil refineries is the crap at the end of that food chain. Anyhow, as I type this I'm starting to hear more and more stories about bad things happening to wildlife because of the oil spill.