up your architecture.

Let me say this much. If you are ever within an hours or so drive of Lynchburg, Tennessee, do yourself a favor and stop off at the Jack Daniel's Distillery. I don't think you will regret it. Even if you're not a huge fan of Jack or other liquor, it's a really fascinating story and a really interesting tour. As I've mentioned before, I went up to visit my friend Patrick in Huntsville, Alabama with the intention of seeing the Smashing Pumpkins tonight. Well, that kind of went south when SP drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was taken to the hospital complaining of chest pains. Long story short, the date was rescheduled, but I decided to go up and visit Patrick before he moved back to the Twin Cities to take an R & D job with 3M at their headquarters in Woodbury, MN just east of St. Paul.

Anyhow, since my father is a big fan of Jack and of Clint Bowyer here is a exhaustive visual account of our trip.

Arriving in Lynchburg

The end of our pilgrimage

I knew it was going to be good when I saw a Toyota Prius with a Minnesota license plate in the parking lot

The Visitor Center at the Distillery

Good Ol' Uncle Jack

So that's why the bottles are so funky.

Here are the ricks of sugar maple that are burned down into the charcoal Jack is filtered through

Charcoal waiting for delicious Jack to drip through it

Uncle Jack hanging out by his secret cave of watery goodness

Jack's original office: an American historical treasure

The safe that Jack kicked which resulted in him dying of Gangrene. That's a shitty way to go. Death by toe.

The process expedited!

The Single Barrel light at the end of the tunnel...

You can read more about Single Barrel, but it's basically a hand picked barrel by the Master Distiller that is fully-bottled and you buy the whole kit and kaboodle. They keep a tally of people that buy them. Maybe this is why the ol' No. 07 is doing so well this year...

Anyhow, the tour takes you through the distilling process from the creation of the charcoal they filter through to the storage of the barrels and finally into a little saloon which houses a replica of the Richard Childress Racing, Clint Bowyer piloted, Jack Daniel's sponsored, number 07 Chevy Monte Carlo!

Go Clint Go!

The Upside-down 20 that our friend Nicole loves so much.

Finally, on the way home, I got a chance to talk to one of my long lost Hands On friends Tosh. We were both driving long distances and therefore had the solo mind juices flowing and we talked about many things, one of which always seems to stick with me and that's what a strange country we live in. In any other area of the world (besides China and Russia, but I'll leave those for another time) the states in which we reside would be separate countries who may work together with their neighboring state, but would retain their own distinct culture and flavor. While you could say that is true of our united states called America, I wonder how much it really is true. Do we just manufacture some of the "culture" associated with our states? Are we as distinct as countries, or no more so than the tourist traps we tout on our Visit (fill in the State) commercials on television? Mississippi certainly has a different flavor than Minnesota in some respects, but are the two that different? Think of the Coast as the North woods, Jackson as the Twin Cities and the vast tracts of land in between as the low-density, small town areas and you basically have two states that are mirrored by the Mason Dixon Line at either end of the Mississippi River.