Click on picture for full blog written by: The Upstate Under Your Nose:
The Adventures Of An Upstate Family Wandering Off The Beaten Path

Click on photo for full blog written by: The Upstate Under Your Nose:
The Adventures Of An Upstate Family Wandering Off The Beaten Path

Do the words bag and rag rhyme with the words leg and peg..?
If you were born and raised in the Pacific NW, then YES, they do!!
I was a teenager before I realized that not all of America refers to soda as pop, but it wasn’t until age 34, as I was stepping across southern California, that my walking friend Shay Emmons noticed that we say bag differently than the rest of America.
It happened all of the sudden, as I was broken mid-sentence: “Ha! Wow! What did you say!? Say that again!” Shay said.
“Say what again?” I asked, quite puzzled.
“Say bag!”
“Bag?” My confusion continued.
“Haha! I love the way you pronounce bag!” she remarked.
I was still confused. I didn’t understand the difference between my pronunciation of bag and Shay’s.
“You say  bayg [like 'leg']. The word is bag,” she clearly explained, pronouncing the “a” as one would in the word bad.
“So, you don’t say bayg like the word leg..?” I asked her, ignorant as ever.
“No. The word is ‘bag’ [like 'bad'].”
That was three years ago. I had no idea we say bag any differently than anyone else, and even if both pronunciations had otherwise been pointed out, I’m sure I would have just assumed it would be a word with pronunciations as flexible as the words either or route.
But no, across the years and the miles since, I’ve found that Shay’s bag is clearly the winner– and since then, I somehow notice every time the word is about to come out of my mouth. And I’ve been saying bag Shay’s way– as I’ve preferred to assimilate across the States more so than stand out with my unique local pronunciation.

BEST EVER 7-minute short documentary on the Walk…
Directed and produced by filmmaker Daniel McCord, as part of his 12-in-2012 series.

Happy Valentine’s Day!
After reaching North Carolina’s Triangle on foot, I’ve made a detour to visit mujer maravilla. All the stars lined up for this one: Kristian, a Carolina friend who’s been doing documentary film work for the walk, is attending a conference/workshop in Atlanta over the next several days, and while here, we’re planning to interview some of the many people I met in the Peach Capital.
Having recently spent weeks in Richmond to assist family post-surgery, it now feels like something of a volunteer service reward to rewind the miles a bit to the city where I met Rocío.
Having reached NC’s Triangle on foot, my Chariot and the majority of my stuff will remain garaged with great hosts in NC till I return, later this month, and ultimately continue the footsteps from where I’ve left off. In the meantime, I not only have some catching up to do with Rocio, but with blogging as well!

STATUS: ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~ ♥ ~

“Excuse me– are you really walking across America?” a bright-spirited woman asked me, as I was shuffling my way through downtown Spartanburg, South Carolina, last November.
“I sure am.”
“May I ask why..?”
A journalist by trade, Emily Carter Dodson was attending a nearby conference, and using her free time to roam downtown Spartanburg before dark this cool autumn evening. Though we only spoke briefly, she told me she was a writer, and that she planned to look me up online and potentially write a story.
This was the beginning of dozens of e-mails over the course of the past couple of months. Emily wrote a full-page article about the Walk for Forsyth Woman magazine, and invited me to stay with her parents upon arriving to the Chapel Hill/Durham area.
Last night, I finally met her parents, Winslow and Harriet, and I also caught up with Emily again for the first time in months. They all have such sweet souls!!
Winslow & Harriet have hosted many exchange students over the course of the years, and given that I spent a year as a high school exchange student to Brazil, it was quite easy to quickly form a bond with this shiny pair of ultra-kind, veteran hosts. And how could I do anything other than smile widely at being invited to a Fat Tuesday parade with them on their first night?!?
I won’t be leaving North Carolina’s “Triangle” (Chapel Hill, Durham Raleigh) anytime soon, and they are in the process of organizing speaking appearances for me before I leave the Triangle.
Great times keep getting better– I love this family!

I enjoyed a wonderful second Saxapahaw experience last night at the home of Julia Marina & Dakota– and Katja, 11 months old and a fireball of energy!! Aside from being great hosts and conversationalists, sharing their interesting life stories, they also inspired me by making their own kombucha, pasta by hand, laundry and dish soap, finger foods, and much more!
I plan to follow their DIY lead in these areas + more, when I next plant myself somewhere for months or years…

I spent some good time playing with Katja last night and this morning. It about broke my heart earlier today when she was outside, saw me walking away with all my gear, and started loudly whining.
Luckily, tonight’s hosts also have a very lovable furry fella: Banjo, a five-year-old lab mix, very predictably playful!!

To avoid the morning precipitation, I left early this afternoon for 14 wet, gray miles today into Carrboro. I’m now on the western edge of North Carolina’s “Triangle” (Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh), where I’ll soon be entering another holding pattern…

There’s no serve-yourself food bar quite like a grocery co-op serve-yourself food bar. As Steve & Phil invite me into their cozy Carrboro apartment for a night’s rest, we detour to dine together at the local grocery co-op. Interestingly, once again I’m seeing far more grocery co-ops as I proceed north (a great thing!!). For sake of comparison, the entire state of Texas has one grocery co-op. (Yes, in Austin.) Many states still don’t even have one. Luckily, however, the co-op and farmers’ markets trends have been steadily growing over the years, as more people demand better quality food choices…

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I was unsure how I was going to set out for the 30+ miles this past weekend between Elon and Saxapahaw, as I saw no town conveniently located in the middle. At best, I could hope for somewhere safe to pull off of NC Hwy 54 and sleep somewhere hidden, outdoors over the subfreezing Saturday night. Friday night at dinner, however, Elon hosts Tony & Megan began talking up Saxapahaw. They had a plethora of great things to say about tiny Saxapahaw’s culture and its progressive cultural movement: great people, culture, food, etcetera– a community which revolves around the central, one-stop General Store. Saxapahaw is invisible on the map until you zoom in, and even that it’s not on Hwy 54, it would only add 2 miles to reroute through Saxapahaw for a night.
“Saxapahaw General Store is on Facebook,” Megan pointed out, so I simply decided to write to the Store on Facebook, telling them my story and that I’d be seeking any assistance they could offer in finding me a place to stay Saturday night.
Jeff Barney, owner of the Store, wrote me back within the hour, warmly inviting me into Saxapahaw, assuring me that they could find me somewhere to stay “within the village.”
After 17 happy-yet-arduous miles Saturday, I arrived to the Store an hour after dark, and the entire crew warmly welcomed me in, serving me one of the most delicious, appetizing and filling meals of all my miles on the road. It’s of no surprise to me that the magical hub of the tiny, close-knit, unincorporated “village” was profiled last year in the New York Times, and six months earlier, in the Washington Post.

New York Times Link

Washington Post Link

…

It’s basically like having broken my left leg, when it comes to the Chariot which has been carrying all my stuff for the last 2,000 miles. The spring steel support suspension of the Chariot snapped last night, shortly after I arrived to Saxapahaw. Online, I found no one who sells replacements for these parts–not even the company that manufactures them. This meant that the best I could hope for was to hobble it forward on one wheel. Not a viable strategy for my next few hundred miles of walking. This immediately became a very, very serious hurdle (how was I going to continue forward?!?), and I had no idea how this could turn out. However, in the face of every challenge lies an opportunity…

(Yes, there’s a reason I’m writing this in past tense, and I’ll soon find the time to elaborate… )

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Why would I ever need anything from a car dealership while on a cross-country walk..?
Well, I haven’t, till today. On my way out of Burlington, NC, the flat tire that I had grown tired of re-inflating mile was about to be history. I had a spare tucked away, and even though digging it out and changing it is a time-consuming process, once I did so, I found that my replacement tire tube was only good for the front tire– too small for any of the main wheels– one of which needed urgent service. There were no sport shops or hardware stores anywhere in close range on today’s 17-mile route. However, just over another mile down the road was a new car dealership, complete with an auto service department. I figured I’d try seeing if they had any cans of flat-tire repair fluid. They didn’t, but told me that they could order some and have it delivered within just a few minutes. So that’s just what they did, refusing to charge me a dime in the process. This saved me potentially hours of potentially walking miles out of my way to try to find something to repair my tire. These Road Angels keeps appearing everywhere– I love it!