Describe music that reminds you of a specific place you've traveled.

Modest Mouse always felt like driving music to me... maybe because it was always in the CD player on road trips in college.

When Melisa and I moved out west to Seattle after college it was part of the soundtrack of our trip and all of our wacky adventures, as we drove from Buffalo to Seattle on the I-90. The circus museum in Baraboo, WI... the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD ... Mount Rushmore and the Badlands in SD... Devil's Tower and Yellowstone in WY...

When we arrived in Seattle we had no place to live, Melisa had a job with the AmeriCorps on Whidbey Island... me, nothing. Just the few hundred dollars in our bank account and what we could fit in a van. It was all surreal, looking back. Pulling into the city we chose to live, but had never been to before... the mountains and the trees that just don't exist on the East Coast.

A friend of a friend lived in Seattle, so they let us sleep on the floor for a few nights while we looked for an apartment. That first night, appropriately enough, Modest Mouse was playing in the cafeteria on the UW campus. It felt meant to be... it was our first time seeing Modest Mouse (and many more to come... one of the great benefits of living out there at the time!)

It's the kind of experience you can only really have at that point in your life. I cherish those memories.