Manchester

Leaving Nashville everything felt a little different. As if all of my ideas about the trip, all of my motivations, all my joys and my worries, had been put in a different pot and shaken around, so that while they all still exist, they're now seen in a different line, and a different light.
I look back now onto certain places that I've been and certain focal points along the trip's timeline, and it seems like a different trip. Like something that happened years ago. I'm in a completely different place mentally than I was a couple of months ago.
In Nashville I was treated like a king. But I feel, more than ever, alone. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a kind of warm, solid way. As if my solitude, my time away from everyone that I know, has become a friend in itself. I don't know. It's odd, trying to describe how I'm feeling.

The first day out of Nashville I walked through the towns of La Verne and Smyrna, and everyone seemed to recognize me. One man pulled over and got a picture of his four or five year old with me, and told me how exited they were to see me. 'You don't know how cool he thinks you are,' the man said, pointing at the kid.
Walking through Murfreesboro, the next day, I ran into a couple of homeless people, who quickly tried to adopt me. They wanted me to follow them around to some shelters in the area where they said I could get a bed. 'Lady at the Room 'n Inn will put you up for a night,' a lady with no teeth was quick to offer. 'And if you promise to try and get a job they'll let you stay for a couple of weeks. But-' and here she gives me a wide grin '-she doesn't like it if you're keeping a bottle under the bed.' In truth, it felt good to know that I can still be mistaken for a hobo.
A few miles past Murfreesboro, a car pulled over a hundred yards up the road from me, and an old lady stepped out and set a McDonald's bag in the gravel. She glanced up nervously, then reached back inside the car and pulled out a fountain drink and set it down, too, before hopping back in the car. As the car passed, the driver, another old lady, waved. 'A little something to eat,' she called, and the car drove off. I sat down to have an unexpected lunch break, and a man on a bike rode up. 'You the guy who's walking across the country?' he asks. 'Saw you in the newspaper. Brought you some snacks, if you're interested.' He unstraps a backpack and pulls out some granola bars and fruit, along with a book. 'Thought you might want something to read, too.' He's actually from Colorado, he says, and we talk for a while. He offers me a place to stay for the night, but it's only noon, and I opt to keep walking.
The next morning, in the little town of Beech Grove, I wake up behind a Church of Christ and get some breakfast in a general store next door. Several locals sit at a table next to mine, and somebody recognizes me as I'm getting ready to go. A couple of the others remember seeing me on TV once they think about it.
A mile or two down the road a car pulls over with two of the people from the store inside. 'Can you take donations?' they ask, and a lady holds out a handful of bills.
Later in the day, as I'm nearing Manchester, another car pulls over, driven by Lynn Taylor, who works for the local newspaper. 'Somebody up at the Beech Grove store said you were headed this way,' she says.
In town, she takes pictures of me at the Veterans' Day gathering, and then treats me to lunch at the Greenleafe Inn. 'I know the owner, here,' Lynn says. 'Let me see if I can get you a room for the night.' She takes Rodney, her friend, in the kitchen and comes back smiling. 'You're staying out of the weather tonight.' She's gotten me dinner and breakfast, too.
As we're eating, a man from the local TV station is shooting film for an advertisement, and when he hears about me he wants to get the story. So I agree to another interview.
Yesterday afternoon the rain came in, and I sat in my hotel room, warm and dry. Today it's still raining, but I'll be heading out, shortly.

It's odd how things have worked out lately. Everything is so much easier in the east than it was in the west. It's hard to believe, now, that there was a time when I had to ration peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and when water seemed precious. Everyone tells me that I'm doing something special, but anymore I just feel like I'm on some kind of weird vacation.