With visions of ice cold beer and Roman candles still dancing in our heads, we set out on the road again.

Maker: Dan Date: 2/96 Begun: 9:02am Ended: 10:56am Miles Covered: 131

West Memphis, AR – The "Jeremy Has a New Girlfriend" mix. Dan starts it off with song after song of love but, surprisingly, does not choose to include "Lady in Red."

We stop for gas at a Love’s Travel Station and both get laughed at by the women working the counter even though we enter at separate times. Were they laughing at our New York plates, or maybe our citified duds, or maybe they somehow knew we were two huge nerds on a road trip listening to mix tape after mix tape, unaware and indifferent to our surroundings? That must have been it. Some trucker, most likely the one who had "If you have nice hooters, honk, if you have great hooters, show them to me and I’ll honk" written on the back of his truck, radioed ahead and let everyone in a ten mile radius know that we would be heading into town. With our Converse shoes and sideburns, we had "mix tape geeks" written all over us. We reeked of magnetic tape and rubber cement. The ladies of Love’s couldn’t stop themselves from laughing at us and, really, can you blame them?

Maker: Dan Date: 12/95 Begun: 10:58am Ended: 12:33pm Miles Covered: 114

Little Rock, AR – Damn! We got out of order. Another of the rules for this trip had been broken. Somehow Dan’s tapes have gotten somewhat out of order and now we have to go back in time tape-wise to make up for the error. We are also in the midst of a block of Dan’s tapes so that his don’t get ahead of Jeremy’s. If that happened, we would end up switching back and forth between a Dan tape from late 1997 and a Jeremy tape from early 1999. No, we can’t have that.

Maker: Dan Date: 2/96 Begun: 12:34pm Ended: 2:51pm Miles Covered: 126

Hope, AR – The roads in the birthplace of Bill Clinton could use some work. This tape features snippets of Josh’s prank call to a local grocer. After every few songs comes another bit of conversation featuring Josh asking the world’s most helpful and confused grocery store worker such questions as, "Do you have saturated fat?" and "Do you have helmets?" It is still brilliant in it’s complete absurdity.

We decide that Pitchblende is more blue collar than most indie rock bands of the 1990s. They’re working class math rock.

Sulphur Springs, TX – This country is huge. You really realise that when driving through Texas, a flat, sprawling behemoth of a state. Dallas looks nice enough from afar but really, who gives a fuck about Dallas? It seems like a complete wasteland for culture and all the young punks who live there must take their new boots and contracts down to Austin first chance they get.

We pass Six Flags and Hurricane Harbor wishing we could stop but there’s no time. We have mix tapes to listen to. Oh well.

Maker: Dan Date: Early 96 Begun: 12:21am Ended: 9:40am Miles Covered: 105

Arlington, TX – Post baseball game blues. It started out well enough with an easy exchange of Saturday night tickets and the sounds of the Smiths, Rush and Hindu Love Gods on the loudspeakers, but the game seemed to last all night and nothing exciting happened on the field. The highlight of the night was the vendor who, late in the game, walked around yelling, "Semi-cold beer here!" We had hoped to get to Austin by this evening but things aren’t looking good. It’s been a while since Shellac graced our ears but their power is still being felt. "If we come across "At Action Park" on this trip," Jeremy declares, "there’s going to be a fistfight."