The Digger Diner, along Highway 156 in Poplar Branch, North Carolina. I stopped here for a delicious breakfast and received great service and a lot of encouragement from the staff:
The "Digger" of Digger's Diner refers to The Grave Digger Monster Truck. I can't say I've ever been a fan of Monster Trucks and the Jams but millions of Americans love this stuff. The diner is one part of an entire tourist venue all built around the Grave Digger.
My bike is dwarfed by the rear tire of Grave Digger! I was curious to know how this monster truck was given this name so I did a little on-line searching... Nothing to profound, but I had no idea that there's been many versions of the Grave Digger for over 30 years! The first driver of the mud-bogger truck was Dennis Anderson who had pieced together a 1952 Ford Pick-up truck with a modified Chevy engine. Apparently he told his first competitors that, "I'll take this old junk and dig you a grave." I'm sure my nephew DJ will enjoy this post!
Okay, back on the bike and back to my reality:
Powell's Point Baptist Church sign had the message, "Happy Birthday America, God Bless the USA."
I stopped at a gas station's convenience store for water and Gatorade and noticed the reporting of the July 4th Celebrations in the weekend edition of USA Today. As we celebrate our freedoms, Egypt's democracy may be in jeopardy, looks like Alex Rodriguez used his 'freedom' to cheat by using performance enhancing drugs, and surprise... America is obsessed with celebrity scandal. I get frustrated with the bubblegum reporting that the media fills print and air-time with. When real news happens it is often distorted to serve someone's agenda. It becomes hard to know what to believe. The Americans that I've met during this bike tour are intelligent, good people and most of them that I've spoken to are deeply concerned about the country that they love and call home. Most of them feel the same way I do about the media. I've seen so many people roll their eyes and turn away from televisions reporting about the latest Hollywood train wreck. Maybe that's why so many American's like monster trucks... Flashy, fast, big and exciting, loved by kids, but beyond the technology of the trucks, it is simple. When the rest of life gets complex beyond belief, when politicians disappoint, when athletic heros fall from grace, sometimes it is good to fall back on simple.
At the start of Wright Memorial Bridge which brought me to the Outer Banks.
I visited the Wright Brother Museum and Flight Center in 1986 and decided to visit again. There was a display entitled, "From Kitty Hawk to the Moon in 66 years." This is really quite amazing when you stop to think about it. We are living during a time period of rapid, amazing advancement.
In the face of all this advancement many people are acutely aware of how we've really blown it... the drug culture, the fast food nation, the environmental disasters... for me it all comes down to a question of ego. We think that we can make it better than God who made it all in the first place... take wholesome food and modify it into obesity producing, diabetic and heart disease rendering, carcinogenic junk... use pesticides, herbicides and hormones to manipulate the natural balance that the earth provides... and don't walk or ride a bike, instead drive a car everywhere... do all of these things and then inject and injest drugs because your body needs help... all of this done in our ego state, thinking that we can do better than the Creator. EGO = Edging God Out.
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