Hello everyone and welcome to this introduction to the podcast edition of this week's program.

I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.

I'm sad.

I'm coming to the end of the great John Steinbeck, 2024, Travels with Charlie Journey.

I've gone 18,000 miles.

I've got about 600 more to get to the end,

which is in Salisbury, North Carolina, the home of one Russell Eagle and his wonderful wife,

Liz Eagle, and they're going to take care of the rig, the airstream, for the winter, because

there's no point in taking it to the sub-arctic land of North Dakota.

And so we are together, Russ and I. We've been together now for most of the last two weeks.

I was with Russ and Liz and our friend Sarah Vomer in New Orleans, and that was mostly a

gastronomic tour, although we did some civil rights things there. And then I caught up with

Russ in Shreveport and had extraordinary adventures there and got to Shreveport where Liz, Eagle,

has a family farm. And so we spent the night there, had a great time with her sister, Sandra. And then the following morning, Russ and I got in the rig.

I never thought I'd get him in the rig, but I did.

I actually, and when he got into the truck, into the GMC 2013 pickup,

typical Russ, he said, man, I never expected it to be clean.

You know, he's seen the chaos of my life on various occasions, but I actually

stopped in Texarkana and spent three hours not only repacking the rig and cleaning it out,

even including the floorboards, because, you know, Russ is a fastidious person. But anyway,

I did that, and so then I came and we've been in it since. So we went

from there to Jackson, where we went to the Medgear Everd's home, which is a national monument

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