Mitt liv som Tobin

We've been having excellent luck finding places to stay using Couchsurfing, a website which is basically a database of people who are willing to host random travelers in their homes for a night or two. You have a profile (e.g., mine.), and you search for others by location. In that sense it's a "social networking" site that actually accomplishes something useful. It used to be that hostels were the cheap and avant garde alternative to expensive hotels. Now couchsurfing is the cheaper and more avant garde alternative to hostels. Or: Just-in-time hostelling, to put a buzzword on it.

Right now we're staying with Jason in a nice apartment in Memphis. He's super friendly and generous and turns out to be a physics major with an interest in differential geometry. We just stuffed ourselves at Central BBQ, apparently voted the best barbecue in Memphis. Jason also told us about a co-op here in Memphis that was not previously on our radar; we'll have to check it out.

We haven't seen much of Memphis yet--we arrived in the dark--but so far it kind of reminds me of the California central valley: the way the fog clings gathers low on the ground, the ridiculous sprawl, the reportedly high rate of crime. I hope our stuff is safe in the car overnight.