I Left the apartment around 9:45 am under overcast skies to stop my mail, pay my rent and pick up my car. I discovered that the post office won't stop your mail for less than three or more than thirty days. That puts a guy in my condition in a pickle, and so I just deferred. As I left the post office I made a conscious choice to travel via Prince to Wooster, rather than Houston to Thompson and as a result I ran into Ted Youngs, the last acquaintance I would see in New York before departing, with my mother. For those that know Ted they'll understand that he was the perfect last person to see before departing.

I made one last stop before picking up my car - I got a fruit smoothie of some sort from Lucky's and the juice making woman got all chill on me. When I went to load my car I found a parking violations officer on my street for the first time so I had to put my car in the lot across from me - $10 for ten minutes and I could barely get enough space to access my trunk for loading purposes - and the experience hardly went according to plan. My mother recanted her interest to stay in my apartment, even though I know she wants to, so I had to pack several weeks of her stuff as well and my visions of moving with free space in my trunk evaporated before I even left my block.

The only thing worse than the traffic heading out of the city was the route that I chose to take. I didn't consider how I was going to get north and east on gentle roads before leaving and as a result I ended up on the Major Deegan heading into traffic for the George Washington Bridge Access. Once I split from the 95-South traffic I was ok, I chose US 1 N and headed up through the Bronx into Westchester, passing New Rochelle and several other towns on my way to Rye and Rye Playland, which I believe is one of the oldest amusement parks in the United States. It was fun getting my mom's running commentary on the differences between Westchester today and 40 years ago and fun to see her discover the latinization and the siek-i-fication of the once European towns she knew as a girl. It meant something to her, I'm just not sure what. In Rye I had an itch to make some decent time so I hopped on the Merritt (Hwy 15) but didn't make it more than a dozen miles or so before I was exiting for Westport and lunch. We stopped at Acqua, a Mediterranean restauarant, in a mall just off the Post Road with a river view. I had an arugula and tomato pizza, my mom a sausage pizza. I liked mine more.

After lunch we got back on the Merritt in the direction of New Haven and Middletown where we picked up Hwy 66 in the direction of Willimantic, where we picked up Hwy 6. Travelling 66 was fun for everyone. Full in the stomach, my mom was dozing and I was enjoying the hills. My mom opened her eyes as we arrived in towns with names like Riverdale, Cobalt, East Hampton, and Brooklyn that made my mom doubt the authenticity of the places she was passing through. A few miles over the Rhode Island state line we picked up Hwy 102 and WGBH in Boston, by now it was around 6:30. As we tool up 102 into Mass, I had one of the happiest reunions I could hope to have with someone I don't know. Like clockwork, Eric Jackson's intro appeared at 7pm - I think it's a Horace Silver song, but I could be mistaken. I was a devotee of the show in college, I associate it with sunsets, warmth, happy feelings, and it's also where I developed a lot of my own personal jazz aesthetic. After leaving college I lost the impetus to hear Jazz, but I also lost access to the ultra-dependable Eric Jackson. It was cool. Since I couldn't have dreamed of a better soundtrack, the rest of the drive was groovy.

My mom was a bit shocked that I had managed to choose a route to Boston that took nearly 8 hours. But I also knew she liked it. We pulled in to the Inn at Harvard, where my mother checked in, around 8:30. All the time behind the wheel got me all good and settled. I had passed through a 250 miles and a dozen states of mind, each sequenced to the landscape. I'd stopped once for lunch, once for fuel, and once for a pit stop. All that couldn't prevent me from building up a mighty urge to relieve myself which I finally did do at the Inn. In Wellesley I'd said things like, "I've got to piss so hard my eyes ache," and in Cambridge I was murmuring, "if I can only relieve myself, I'll happily eat fast food." This point in its own right was funny, because most often I will happily eat fast food. Last night thought, avec ma mere, I had the opportunity for some tasty victuals and I didn't want to miss out. Time had passed to the point that we were both hankering for some speedy food and so we dropped in on Café Sushi, which my mom mistook for Sushi Roca. Aside from the shiso leaves that tasted like chemicals we had an enjoyable meal.

The head chef was a grayed man with a lot of life, and culinary experience, in him. His apprentice might have been his son, a wiry guy in his early 20s that was studying in art school out in San Francisco. The boy spoke with my mother about art, she had all sorts of trouble answering direct questions about her career. The man spoke with my mother about preparing lobster sashimi and soup from the innards. Start with kelp in water to make the stock, after 10 minutes add the lobster head, wait 5 or 10 minutes more and add miso paste. Finish with sake and correct seasoning as necessary. You can also had the shell from the body to the stock at the beginning if you'd like. He also told my mother how to prepare lobster sashimi, I didn't quite get it. He was definitely more specific than www.stickyrice.com on the matter though. Something about an incision between the body and the head, and then along the back of the lobster. There's got to be an elegant way to kill the lobster quickly before breaking it so brutally in half.

After my meal, which I chose not to end with an ume shisho handroll on account of the quality of the shiso leaves, I headed back to Laura's, unloaded, unwound and went to sleep. Oh yeah, one more thing, don't try to go from Hwy 102 to Hwy 16 without taking an intermediate road. It can't be done. Try 146A.

Sunrise @ 5am, saw a beautiful skyscape that I only wish I could bothered to photograph, but I was bushed. I remember dark purples, grays and salmon pinks brightening to light pink and then blue as if someone was adjusting the brightness slider in Photoshop. In the morning I dropped my car off at Brookline Foreign Motors, where I would learn I needed a new distributor O-ring and a gasket cover something or other; ate breakfast at the Greenhouse Café in Harvard Square - chocolate chip pancakes that I regretted less than I anticipated and coffee that I regretted more than anyone should (The first cup was fine, the second tasted like the house blend might include vegetable soup); and finally headed over to the Fogg Art Museum, where I didn't see some sort of exhibit about restoring Mondrian's paintings, but did see some Abstract and Concrete Latin art from the 1950s, from the whoever you call them from Venezuela, oh yeah, the Cisneros woman. I really have a block on their name.

In the afternoon I retrieved my car from BFM, paid Paul 26 dollars to change the oil and oil filter, and left with an annoying hiss in my air conditioner that I didn't fix because the rest of my family was so edgy to meet on time. So long as I run with the windows open and the air on high I'm alright. I hope I can get the problem straightened out when I get the gasket cover pan fixed. We did eventually meet up on time and encountered relatively little traffic as we headed up US 1 to 95 which we took until I-295 south of Portland. It was exactly the kind of drive I hated. Didn't know where I was, didn't need to know where I was. I learned no more about the composition of Maine than I already did know. The only consolation was that I took much of the same route that I used to take on the way up to summer camp.

It occurs to me just now that if I am ever responsible for shuttling children to or from a summer camp, or school, I'm going to make a point of going the most rustic way possible. It's far more interesting and it makes the destination seem all that much more worthy.

My sister and I checked into our room on the 4th floor only to later switch with Mom so she could get the marginally better view. My parents got theirs when I returned home from dessert and went to the wrong room because I forgot which end of the hall I was staying in. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We didn't go to dinner at J's, even though it was recommended to us by someone at the front desk of the Holiday Inn by the Sea. Or perhaps we didn't go there because it was recommended. Either way, we ended up at Boons, which is over 100 years old and still trading on the fact that they were one of the first restaurants to serve stuffed baked lobster. The prospect of eating lobster stuffed with crab doesn't appeal to me at all, so I think it's interesting that Boons is able to trade on their century old innovation, experiment or mistake. At least they're not promoting their crab and cheddar casserole; though on the menu it's thankfully not imitated elsewhere. Or at least I've never seen it elsewhere. The back porch at Boons is a fair and invited place to eat a lobster and some steamers, but the fact is that you could be elsewhere. While I didn't regret that we didn't eat inside tonight - because I enjoyed our meal and because our waitress was fun, I did miss out on the color that their red and white checker cloth tablecloths, white leather covered wooden captain's chairs provide inside. And that's leaving the wall art (giant blue lobster, relatively diminutive sailfish and portrait of two brothers done in cray pas) out of the equation. I had to console myself that I would see more of these dining rooms on the road and I'm sure I will. I had to similarly console myself about missing out on photographing the sunset and night's sky. I think there are a few more nights before the moon is entirely full, but then it'll be four weeks yet till we see that again.

Woke up around 8am, ate breakfast at Becky's - a commercial Street sandwich - egg, cheese, and ham on a grilled English muffin. After breakfast we walked over to the Casco bay ferry and headed to Long Island (see route for 8_2_am), crossed the island by foot and back again. Visual highlight was Shirley's flamingo display and wood/plastic nature display. Lobster roll at Spar was best I've ever had. I've only had one or two others. We headed by water taxi to Peak's where Jill looked at this and that and then we decided to not mussel because we'd been exposed to enough sun and were pdt (pretty darn tired). We headed back to the Holiday Inn by the Sea via the Portland fish market, where we would return the following day to purchase a ducktrap smoked salmon, and then promptly massacred the bed for a sixty minute snooze.

We woke at 6:30 to head over to the June Fitzpatrick gallery where a Jewish woman was paying homage to Mr. Baskin of Smith college with her prints which sold pretty well because most were only a few hundred dollars and none were more than $1000. Ate dinner at Jill's, which is a differerent place than last year and a different place than she will be living next year. We ate old cheeses, of which one was a wildly popular Humbolt Bay goat cheese. We prepared lobsters, which were fab, corn which was quite good, and snap peas with sesame oil and black sesame seeds. No question Maine is rightly more distinguished for their lobsters than for their corn.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel where my mother went to bed and my sister and father recessed to have a private conversation. I waited in the car for my father anticipating our drive to Freeport and planning our drive to Rockland, where we would catch the ferry the Vinalhaven. When my father arrived twenty minutes later I received a sermon on the importance of respecting my mother and the meaning of family. I yes'd my way through the sermon and we drove on to L.L. Bean, whose doors we finally penetrated as Thursday was about to become Friday.

Shopping at L.L. Bean is entering the womb that birthed Amazon.com, sort of. Open every moment since the early years of the last century, helpful and knowledgable employees walk the floor offering advice on what to purchase in each department of the store. I walked out with a tent, a pair of lightweight ankle high boots, a ground cloth, five polo shirts, one pair of light weight shorts, several car organizers, a lumbar pack and a dry mouth. By the time my father and I departed, we had re-bonded and were ready to sleep. It was only natural that both would now happen. It was past 2am.

On the drive home we were flashed by two girls standing outside a bar on Main Street and we got gas at a dark Mobil station before reaching I-95 South. The drive home was painless and I was in bed by 2:30.

I didn't even get to sleep four hours last night. But I did get to go to L.L. Bean last night, eat at Becky's the morning, ride to Vinalhaven on nearly the same powerboat my family owned when I was in high school, harvest lobsters from town and mussels from the mud, and eventually feast. I can't complain.

The drive with my dad from Portland to Rockland was fun, not brilliant, we had our mind on the ferry and a parking space. Even though we did board it, and relocate to more spacious environs, we never did end up taking the ferry. We ran into Lisa who mentioned that Alan had a boat which we would take over. (See today's route)

Regret of the day: driving past the stand that advertised wild handpicked clean blueberries. Apparently, this is the end of an always short growing season. As I head north I might have another chance.

I took 160 photos today. Or something obscene like that. I think Hunter Reno inspired me. I completed the trifecta tonight - third consecutive night of eating lobster. Tonight however the lobsters weren't the highlight. The mussels were. The cove bed of Vinal haven is composed of an incredibly delicious and exceedingly fine mud that makes harvesting mussels simple and keeping your shoes on difficult. To extract myself from the harvest position I had to adopt a sort of clown walk where I bent over and pulled my feet out of the mud in order to get them back to shore.

Coherence is missing. Might embellish and clean up tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to rest. Gonna check in with Heat Moon and his travels along the blue highways. I almost can't believe I'm about to head off on my own. I want to, but I need to rest first. A campground and soon will do the trick.

Ought to record conversation I had with Hunter Reno and Peter Rabbino. Our first conversation. Sitting on porch looking out on Long Cove, talking about choosing to live in Miami after having lived in New York. The conversation takes on new meaning now that I know that she is a model, has hosted Ocean Drive, the TV show based on the magazine on the now defunct WAMI. We talked about how you can be a big fish in Miami, how you can make a difference.

I woke up a few minutes before 6am feeling fresh and good. I read Blue Highways for an hour and then dicked around with photos for an hour before heading down and breakfasting with everyone. In the process I managed to miss Hunter and Laura's kayak in the a.m. It was sort of sneaky of my sister to not even ask me if I was interested in going. She knew that I was awake. I sense that she was glad to hang out with a 6'1" model by herself. I would have liked to kayak though.

During breakfast my father explained to everyone how to boil an egg perfectly by boring a hole in the base of the shell before dropping the egg in boiling water. I personally prefer the technique of placing an egg in a pot before putting the pot on a flame and letting it stay in there until the water has been boiling for a couple of minutes.

After breakfast Alan, Hunter, my father, and I headed in to town to do a garbage drop at the dump, check out a flea market and do a bit of grocery shopping. When we got back we headed out on a boating tour that basically took us around Vinalhaven island. It didn't seem that we went in a circle, but that's what the GPS said we did, so that's what we did. The morning was overcast and hazy, in a sort Maine way that nostalgia for my days at summer camp makes seem so perfect.

Once we got back from our boating tour, Peter, Hunter, Lisa and I headed to the quarry for a swim - perhaps the best swim of my life. Vinalhaven was once a major supplier of granite to New York, Philadelphia, and other areas on the east coast. Apparently Mr. Vinal was from Philadelphia. The granite quarries are now swimming holes that the locals frequent for refreshing dips. Today was a chit chat vibe. Lisa said, "when I was young there was a strong silent aesthetic at the quarry." A stout bearded man behind her said, "Sometimes there is a pot smoking rock and roll aesthetic, sometimes a family aesthetic, sometimes a silent aesthetic. These days it's always changing." There's nothing like sitting atop a granite rock with ten strangers having a chat about nothing to realize how odd it is that people in New York don't socialize with strangers. That you would chat with strangers is just one of a variety of signs that tip you off to the fact that Vinalhaven is more like of America of old than America of today. People wave at strangers when driving down the the road and leave their doors unlocked. Totally amazing. After returning from the quarry, I tried my hand, or rather my whole body, at clamming. The Vinalhaven mud, I should have known from the previous day's mussel huint, is a fierce for to reckon with. I went into battle unprepared and consequently harvested no clams, a large cut on my finger, and a very bruised ego. It made sleep an easy accomplishment that night.

Woke up around 8:15 and ate breakfast with my family, Lisa Versace and her husband, Alan Farago, before heading off on a walk through a birch grove near their home and then a walk through the Lane Nature Preserve on Great Spoon Island. Afterwards we headed back to the Farago house for lunch, a rest, and headed off to the Ferry. Unlike Friday when Lisa asked us to get off the ferry, this time she drove us there. My family debriefed on the ferry about our shared experience which we all agreed we that we enjoyed, and had a cup of coffee before parting ways around 5pm.

I headed past an open Auto Zone, which I may regret later, and on towards Belfast and points north around the other side of Penobscot Bay. I drove down Mount Desert Island towards Brooklin before heading north by northwest towards Ellsworth where I arrived around 8:30.

Daylight turned against me around 8pm so I started to get really flexible about where I was going to sleep. Northwest of Bluehill, which I visited to get a sense of the town that Mary McHenry came from. Mary doesn't play a large role in the play of my life, but if you could create a character about a shy virtuous intelligent pretty girl from another town that I could have a crush on and not tell anyone about, then you could make that roll about her. Part of her attraction was her mysterious provenance in Maine, a place that I knew of from summer camp and that held a large roll in my mind during my non-summers.

I found myself checking in at the Eagle Lodge thanks to the fellow at the Blue Hill Motor Inn who directed me to the Surry Motor Inn who directed me here, where I arrived in time to go to dinner at the Mex (www.themex.com) and arrive back at the motel in time to watch Six Feet Under and a bizarre comeback by the Cleveland Indians from a 12 run deficit against the 80-30 Seattle Mariners. It's been 76 years since any team came from a 12 run deficit to win a game, against the same Cleveland Indians who are now the comeback team. This last bit of information was provided by Joe Miller, color commentator for ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. I wasn't entirely sure that I made the right choice to choice to choose the $55 room over the $70 room, but I had already had my fill of Downeast charm in Vinalhaven and was happy enough to acclimate to being alone after a time with my family in a non-descript motor inn just down the road from the stop that L.L. Bean deigned to place a factory outlet.

Ellsworth is one of those places that seems to only exist in order to serve their main drag which has no establishments that reflect their local character. I was too hungry to do any real exploring, and a little spooked by the fog back on Mt Desert Island, so I headed for The Mex in order to get fed fast, without eating fast food. The service was fast, the place seemed convivial in a lodgish sort of way, but the experience turned out to feel soul-less, the result of knowingly being on the outskirts of somewhere. Efficient without being friendly. But I guess that's what you get at 8:30 on a Sunday night. As I wrote in my journal at the time, "Ellsworth is the town people stop in when they don't want to pay Bar Harbor prices, and the Mex is the restaurant they eat in when they don't want to eat fast food."

In reflection, I enjoyed being led closer and closer to my nights lodging based on people's recommendations of where I could find an expensive night's sleep. It was sort of the opposite of a typical New York experience. I can't help but feel like I left a few work related relationships unresolved, or un-tended, but I guess that is in part why I wanted to get out of New York for a while.

I didn't realize it when I left the Eagle Creek Lodge at 7:15 and headed north towards Eastport, ME (I thought), but I was going to have one ferryful day in front of me. I stopped at the IGA just beyond the town line for Lubec, ME, Eastern most town in the United States and purchased a box of chocolate frosted pop tarts, $1.99, ate two just in case I became hungry, and headed in to town. When I arrived I recognized something alluring in Lubec's border town nature, just beyond a small water divide I could see Canada, and I realized the bridge I had passed, if I continued on it, would have taken me into another country. The allure stems from pulling up in Fort Kent, ME after having canoed the Allagash river during my last summer at Camp Kennebec. Fort Kent, Canada had a dark and mysterious presence. There was a film where Sean Penn escaped from jail, I think in Upstate New York, during the pre-war era, that is how Canada felt to me from Ft. Kent. From Lubec, I got excited in a way that I hadn't been yet, to be in Canada. Or maybe it was just the first time I had seen a blue sky that day. After I recharged my camera battery a bit while drinking a cup of coffee at the American Cafe, I crossed the bridge and entered Canada at Campobello Island. I stayed at Campobello long enough to fully charge my camera battery and walk the Roosevelt property.

Campobello Roosevelt International Park is a worthy place to stop, if you happen to be in the area. As I walked through the cottage, a 32-room cottage, I was greeted by five different guides in various spots of the home who told me in various styles about the library, the dining room, the kitchen, and the second floor master bedroom. The Roosevelts spent most of their time here in the first decades of the 20th century. FDR returned three times once he was President. He stayed on a boat offshore at night. The older guides were able to make it seem like they were there to talk to you and you alone. The younger ones, teenagers, behaved as if someone hit the stop button behind their head as soon as I was spotted. The cottage faces Eastport, ME, where the Roosevelts would arrive by rail. They would then take the ferry over… The guides were good, but you get the feeling that the staffing of this project is some sort of boondoggle by Canada or a concession by the U.S. to get Canada to vacate fishing rights in the area. Sort of an appropriate memorial for Mr. WPA.

Campobello is the sort of place you can miss if you drive too fast, that's why the speed limit is 30 mph. After leaving the Roosevelt Park, I headed to catch the ferry to Deer Isle. The Deer Isle ferry doesn't necessitate so much as a wharf, just a few pilons that the boat ties up to. The cars load via concrete loading ramp that might also be used to drop trailer carried boats into the water. The ferry holds 18 cars or so, the crossing takes 20 minutes and costs about $8 US. My first reminder that I need to learn to make better conversation occurred when a man approached me to inform me that St. Andrews was that bit of land right over there. In a big city he'd be called white trash - he didn't have any teeth, he may have been wearing one of those hats that is foam above the brim, mesh in the other six panels - but he was as good natured as anyone could hope for. All I could muster was an, "oh, do you know where I could get a bit to eat on Deer Isle". In my defense, I was concentrating on photographing the shore. But still I felt like I needed to get in the spirit of the chat.

Whatever excitement for being in Canada hadn't fomented in Lubec was catalyzed by my drive across Deer Isle, a place that seemed to foreshadow all the good things I was to find in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia over the coming week or so. I saw dense stands of pine, rocky coasts, friendly people, and fresh sea food. During my time on the Island I managed to collect my first Canadian rock and have my first Canadian lobster roll $5.00 US; but I neglected to see the whirlpools off the West Coast or the largest living lobster in North America's first lobster pound. I also felt something uplifting about being in another time zone in North America - the Atlantic.

The uplift of my experience on Deer Isle brought me to the point of skipping rocks from the shore while I waited for the ferry to St. George. I don't think I had skipped a rock for ten years, my arm was out of shape, but it felt great. I think search for the skipping stones provoked me to collect another data point - rocks. As I pulled in to the ferry landing my engine was running a bit warm which slightly concerned me. I drove over zippy roads paved smooth from St. George to Blacks Cove where I went to catch the ferry to Grand Manan. In contrast to the stretch of US from Ellsworth to Lubec, the Canadian Hwy 1 was a vertible speedway. My first senses that I was in another country was the euro-styled road signs and markers for telecom buildings and post offices. I went to Grand Manan because I'd been having so much fun with my ferry experiences that I thought I'd go for yet another. It was also important for me to go to some place that wasn't really on the way to anywhere else. As an expression of intention if nothing else.

Aboard the 3pm ferry to Grand Manan I had my first encounter of substance with a stranger. His name was Bates and he was a sculptor from New York City on his way to the Sardine Can Museum, a workshop founded by Frank Zimmer, to spend a couple of weeks making sculptures from whatever was around. We chatted about traveling out west, following the blue highways. Funny how we lived 15 minutes walking from each other, he lived in the West Village on the corner of Hudson and Bank. On Grand Manan that would make us close neighbors, but where we were from that qualified as total strangers. Aside from the fact that Bates resembles Paul O'Neil and normally works in metal and wood, I knew little else about him aside from the fact that he's lived in New York for twelve years. I suppose that's a lot more than I would have know about him if we'd met in New York.

The Grand Manan ferry made the first two ferries of the day seem like dingies. This had a saloon and a reading room, all clean and comfortable. Might be that the comfort of the ferry encouraged me to do it, or perhaps it was some inner dare, but the next thing I knew I decided that it was time to start sleeping in my tent. GM has two campgrounds, The Hole in the Wall is an efficiency place with striking views off the cliffs on the northern side of the island. The Anchorage is a pretty urbane place with 2X and 3X hook-ups. (I didn't know what 2x and 3x hookups were so I had to ask, 2x = electricity and water, 3x = electricity, water, and sewer.) I took a campsite close to the entrance, but not far from the beach, plugged my camera battery in, and headed for the beach. Every step I took toward the beach brought me to some other place in my past. The campground is set on a wide open field protected from the beach and the ocean breezes by a forest of young trees that has a path cut through it for beach access. There is a playground in the path, near the bath shelter that you have to pass to access the beach. As I walked by the playground one kid mistook me for my father and he started giggling and told me so. Then the other five kids starting peppering me with questions, "are you my father?" "No." Are you mine" asked another. And so on. It was all kind of goofy and sort of funny. It reminded me of my third summer at camp chatting with kids at a campground while visiting Bar Harbor. A bit further down the path to the beach, I saw two dark brown rabbits sitting plaintively in my way; they reminded me of staying at a campground in the White Mountains as a 12 year old. Finding myself alone on the beach, when I finally go there reminded me of Outward Bound in the Everglades when I was Café behind the car wash / Laundromat because they were too busy, so I headed to the Fundy House where I was served by a fifteen year old wearing a Bud cap, a camouflage t-shirt sequined with jersey numbers, and dark denim jeans. Her outfit was a bit hodgepodge but striking because she wouldn't have been totally out of place in New York City. That is, except for the fact that she was wearing a floral print ruffled apron over the entire get up. I ended up waiting seventy minutes for the worst hamburger of my life.

During dinner I noticed that there was something about the way that people are attractive in New Brunswick, in spite of the fact that they don't have massively attractive features. It may be that nobody on the Island does, and that's the reason, but for some reason there is something in the way they don't try to hide their unattractive features that makes them more attractive.

New Word: Toponym - settlements with the same place name as somewhere else. Miami, OH, and Miami, FL are toponyms. This word is going to come in handy I sense in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.

Grand Manan was uneventful. Beautiful, but too foggy to be as beautiful as my parents made it out to be. I would have gotten off the island @ 11:30am, but my reservation was on the 1:30 so I waited - a blessing in disguise I'd say. I found out that my 9v AC adapter for my computer has a faulty contact and I found my digital voice recorder, even though I have nothing to say to it. I suspect that someone was looking out for me by hiding the dvr from me for the first few days of the trip. Once on the mainland I decided I'd head for the Fundy National Park - approximately 150 miles from Black's Harbour, the landing for the Grand Manan ferry.

I took the coastal route, which, I didn't know existed because my maps suck and my gps has only limited data, and which is only 50% coastal. It is 100% scenic though. I saw a tourist info stop near St. John's so I stopped there, figuring I could pick up a map or two - which I did. My stop on Campobello taught me the virtue of the tourist stop. At the tourist stop I overheard one of the guides telling another tourist about the Reversing Falls, which triggered my memory about why I was interested in Saint John in the first place, and upon hearing that the Falls would be reversing until 5:15 I cut my visit short and headed for the Falls, 10 minutes away. It was 4:45. The Falls reversal was waning so I was unimpressed, but while checking out brochures in the tourist info stop there I was approached by an exceedingly helpful young woman who asked me if she could helped me with anything. I said, "I'm looking to camp somewhere between here and Halifax (having learned it was 4.5 hrs away at the info stop just a quarter of an hour ago)." The guide chucked or maybe chortled, "Oh that's quite a…" I cut her off, fearing she might think me a fool, or an ignoramous. "Actually, I'm looking to camp for the night near Fundy National Park." "Oh, those'll all be booked up by now, but there's an RV campground in Alma. You can probably camp there. Have you seen the Recreational Guide to New Brunswick?" "Nope, and now that you mention it I'm beginning to realize that there is no way that I'm going to be able to get a campground tonight. "if I am willing to stay in a motel, can you recommend one?" The guide turns to the preceeding section of the same booklet and says, "If you look here you'll see all the lodging options arranged alphabetically by town, just like for campgrounds." Instantly I'm feeling dumb for not bothering to look for something like this before I left New York. It stands to reason that Canada would produce such a helpful book for each province. I guess that's why I stopped at the ranch style entirely tasteful and slightly modern info stop off of Hwy 1, just west of Saint John.

Trying to leave my disappointment of the reversing falls behind me, I was tempted to check my voicemail for the first time since I left New York eight days ago. As I listened to my voicemail I noticed my GPS was on the fritz. It may or may not have had something to do with dead batteries. I doubt it. For some reason the device worked consistently on battery power, but would occasionally shut down if it was car powered. No matter. It's hardly massively helpful in Canada anyway. Plus, I was on marked route.

I drove through fog along the coast and eventually sunshine in hills before arriving at the Alpine Motor Lodge in Alma. I took a feeble but effective shower in spite of the fact that I still have no shampoo or soap, and then I headed to the bar at the adjancent hotel where I met two girls from Long Island named Lauren and Pam. Lauren works for freshwater conservation and Pam works for marine. They're taking a one week trip now, but five years ago they did together what I'm doing now, but they traveled clockwise. I'll probably go to Utah on account of them, and Colorado too, in spite of the fact that we probably wouldn't talk for more than a few moments if we met in New York. Lauren's younger sister lives on the Upper East Side and laments the dating scene in Manhattan for the same reasons I do. She and I lamented the difficulty of how nothing sticks on the dating scene in the city and I was impressed by how many times she used the word nutured during the conversation. The bartendress, bar owner, and cook, who is the son of the bar owner's best mate all chimed into our conversation at various times. The bar owner, whose name I believe was Dave, told us how the bar laws have changed in Canada in the last 15 years. 25 years ago he said men and women had to go through separate entrances into bars, you couldn't leave your seat with a drink, and women couldn't sit alone. These days he said there were at least ten pubs in Toronto where you could walk around with a beer. Pam said, "In New Foundland (not prounced as expected by locals, but also not pronounced in a way that I can recall) you have to order hard alcohol from a different end of the bar than beer." Eventually we parted ways when I realized I was too late to eat in the local establishment and I'd have to head elsewhere to food. I had a double cheeseburger that was approx $2.50 US and a candy bar that was less than $.50. More than cheap enough to compensate for the fact that I drank three beers and ran up a $6 bar tab. I may be killing myself by eating, but I'm more than making up for staying in a motel tonight approx $45 US.

I'm going to go to sleep. Still not sure where I'm heading tomorrow.

I didn't quite clear the Cape, only made it as far as St. Peter's before deciding to call it a day upon noticing the MacDonald Hotel and Dining Room just off the Fleur-d-Lis trail that I was taking back to Port Hastings and off of the Cape. Hotel MacDonald has a bright yellow blue red and green tartan carpet on the second floor, a different bedspread in each room, doors stay open in rooms that are unoccupied. I paid $40.50 for my bed and I'd pay that again for my dinner. But first I went upstairs, showered, put on some city clothes (denim jeans, orange t-shirt, and blue faux velour pullover) which were probably too much for tiny St. Peters, and headed out to look for a beer. I found McDuff's, the towns Grille and Beverage Room. It was 6:15 on a Sunday so the kitchen was closed, but I was able to talk two Schooner Ale's out of them for $6.50. [See notes on bar in journal] Two beers had me hankering for a dinner. Appetizer was smoked salmon served on a bed of a dark green kale like lettuce, three balls of cream cheese shaped like bococcini, and a toasted piece of whole wheat bread sliced so thin that there was nothing I could really do with it other than eat it like a cracker. Main course was Mi'kmaq Planked Salmon, a salmon filet broiled on a cedar plank. Dessert was rum cake, a comparable to bread pudding - served warm with a rum sauce. It's been bothering me the last few days that I haven't eaten any salmon. I was under the impression that Nova Scotia is the best place to get smoked salmon in North America. I'll probably do better in Halifax, and either there or on the road to there I'll probably be able to figure out what it is that I've been thinking about the smoked salmon. Perhaps the best part of dinner was that afterwards I only had to walk upstairs to my bedroom to retire for the evening. Current Events: Kodak and Microsoft agree upon a software link in upcoming versions of Windows. I wonder what that means for Ofoto. Shark attacks in the news. Each time I turn on the TV, twice a week, there seems to be a story about another shark attack in the news. Last week it was Krishna, the Herculean New Yorker who fought off the shark that had his leg in its mouth. This week the seven year old Mississippi boy who lost almost all his blood and will take a year to recover. Stem cell research and the use of embryos for scientific purposes. I think it's asinine that GWB will fund the use of embryos that already are being studied, but not new embryos. I kind of wonder which way he really wants to vote. He's so shrouded in polls that one can't actually opine about the president's views. The artful speechwriter these days synthesizes public opinion polls and outputs words that makes it seem like Porgie is in line with the numbers.

I woke feeling good and went to sleep exhausted. In between I had one strange day, catapulted forward by mistake after mistake. As I was loading the car I was invited for a cup of coffee by the MacDonald's cook and I declined. It would be almost two hours before I could find another cup. After driving for a few more hours I got a call from a friend and pulled into a gas station to talk. After chatting about my trip and her life for half an hour I turned the key to start the car and discovered that my battery was dead. Good thing I was at a gas station, I got a jump and they wanted no compensation. I guess I was in some sort of space orbit after talking to New York and the dead battery and I missed the turn-off for Route 16 west and overshot the marine drive by 10 miles before I ended up in Canso. While there I left my car running, locked my doors and headed into the post office to mail off some CDs and decided to stop in on the visitor center. [See Journal for rest of commentary]

From one province capital to another over a lot of highways. This was in part choice and in part circumstance. The choice kicked in around 9:30 in the morning as I was pulling out of the Zeller's parking lot in Truro, listening to the CBC's Mary Ambrose interview the person that the film Fly Away Home is based on talk about how he's training Whooping Crane's to choose a new migratory route. I've been hankering for a bit of America and this was the last straw. I was deadest on heading westward and that left me only one option - to take highways. If there was any doubt that was my only option it was confirmed to me during my encounter with an elderly woman who would be a good emblem for most of the dining population of Hampton, right near Amherst, just off the c104 - much more soul and mind than body. Many where wearing hearing aids and heavy glasses. They all seemed happy and alert though. I'd guess they were all in their eighties. She saw I was studying a map and stopped to talk on her way to the door. She, "traveling?" Me, "yes, mam." "Where to?" "Back to the United States via Moncton and Frederickton. "You're taking the back roads I suppose?" Totally enjoying her inquiry, "Yes, mam." "Wouldn't be any other reason for a map these days." And then my club sandwich came, she wished me well, and she was off. That woman was probably as good as a homesteader. I bet if I asked her she would have told me she grew up without electricity. Or maybe that's just fantasy talking.

Anyway, I pulled out of the Diner at 1pm. I remember because it's easy to remember neat numbers like 1:00pm. I got back on the 104 and was past Moncton in another thirty minutes. It took me from Tuesday of one week to Wednesday of another to get from Moncton to Halifax. Returning took four hours. How's that for a contrast between the back roads and the highway?

I stopped off at the Visitors Information center located in the back of the Clancy's produce and take-out stand and asked about a night's lodging in Frederickton. It's a wonderful thing Canada's Visitor Information Centers - unbiased options for good place to stay for the evening. Further proof that Canada gives so much and asks so little in return.

My stay in Frederickton involved one encounter with two middle aged kooky guys from WI, who were probably seeing stars in the 60s, and no more dialogue with anyone else than, "what do you have on draft?" or "did I notice you have Schooner in bottles? I'll have one of those please." I did catch the tail end of a not very Acadian concert by the Officer's Square and I had a good laugh on account of the merriment of the small children entertaining themselves. No gameboy's. Just open fields to run in. I chose not to walk their 5km riverside trail because it was right next to a highway. I wasn't interested in their lighthouse museum. I took the self-guided tour that Frederickton publishes for their visitors. I wonder how many people they calculate that the changing of the guard at the officer's garrison brings to town, and if it brings anybody to town, is it fair to assume that they people never would go to London, England?

I drove a long ways today. Route 2 to Route 4 to Route 3 in Canada. After passing interrogation in Vanceboro, ME, "Where do you live? Where is your car registered? How long were you in Canada? Why did you go to Canada? What do you do for work?" I picked up route 6 in Maine and rode it for quite a ways. Interrogation at the border was much more intensive than at an airport, but at an airport they ask to see a passport and have to process several hundred people per flight that arrives at the same time. I get the sense the Vanceboro border might get a couple hundred per day.

It was worth the drive, for the cheeseburger I had at the L&M discount wherever my GPS says it is, for the views of Katahdin, for landing in Farmington, for lodging at the Whispering Pines in relative luxury, and for dinner at the Boiler Room, where I spent nearly two hours talking with Bruce Lamb. Bruce is 29, a recent graduate of the University of Maine, Farmington, and looking to get a job as a credit manager for Wells Fargo. He's from Rockland and has a wife, or girlfriend, and one year old daughter. He lives with his inlaws, and he gave me the low down on the place in a way that hope people will be willing to give me the low down in other places.

The economy sucks. Southern Maine is an anomaly. In these parts the shoe companies have left, a few people get to work in mills, but most work for Walmart, Kmart, or some comparable. The Boiler Room, who happens to make a very fine scotch highlands ale and a mean buffalo chicken pizza, purchased the abandoned shoe factory building (Dexter I think) for a dollar and the state paid for them to renovate it. Bruce told me of his lobsterman friend and his partner in San Diego that gets nine dollars per pound for lobsters and only has to pay a nickel over boat price for the lobsters and a quarter per pound, purportedly, for shipping.

I learned all about how the lobster industry works. Bruce used to work as a sternman before going to Arizona for a couple of years. Sternmen, incidentally make almost their whole year's salary in August and September, when the catch is heaviest. Lobsterman, who love the water, go out almost recreationally in the early summer, they might bring in a couple hundred pounds of lobsters in June. His friend who fishes for export to San Diego once brought in seventy five hundred pounds in one day. All his containers were full, he had lobsters everywhere. He also grossed fifteen thousand dollars that day. After the harbour deducted for gas, bait, and whatever else, he had one fat check. Sternmen get approx ten percent of the gross. Marinas that provide moorings often stipulate that lobstermen have to buy all supplies and sell all lobsters to them. Prevents lobsterman from traveling the coast looking for the best price, which is set by buyers anyway.

I have more to say, but I'll have to save it for another day. I drove two hundred seventy miles, did a load of laundry, and took a shower. That's enough for one day. Plus it was an hour earlier in the Maritimes than it is here.

Some days just end up far far better than you ever would expect. This, of course, is about relativity at it's best and worst. If you're expecting rain and you get a drizzle, this is considered good. Low expectations that yield mediocre outcomes are considered a success. I wonder how not knowing how the day was going to end affected the way I approached the last hundred miles or so. I suppose I kept going believing I should find something better, but by the time I landed I would have accepted the least desirable outcome. Just to be done moving. The fact is, I ended up better off than I ever would have dreamed. This is what happened at the end of the day.

I pulled into the Regal, or the Royal, Diner in West Brattleboro because it looked like a can't miss kind of place. It was six p.m. and the lot was full of cars. On account of the ice cream I had a four p.m. I wasn't hungry, and besides I wanted to find a place to pitch my tent before I ate. Peace of mind and all that. The hostess immediately approached me to seat me, and asked me how many were in my party. "One," I said. "I'm not quite ready to eat yet. I'm looking for the town of Halifax, is it far from here?" "It's just five or ten minutes down the road." Me, "thanks. I'll be back in all likelihood."

I pulled back on to Route 9 and again headed west. I had stopped already at four of five motels to inquiry about rates, and I was feeling frustrated by now. Also, by now, the sun was angling to really molest a westward traveler along the windy and mountainous route. The driving and ceased to be joyous but the promise of five or ten minutes towards Halifax, where a campsite was marked, was satisfactory. The campground wasn't signed and it was hard to figure where it was, I stopped to ask a short fellow with close cropped hair and sun burnt cheeks if he knew where the campground was nearby. He said, "follow the road to where the pavement ends, past Halifax College, and down the road, about a mile or so." I took his directions into my road weary mind and reconstituted them so that I ended up driving a five mile dirt road loop and ending up right where I started from. In hindsight, I have to say this for the drive, it put me in a fabulous state of mind. Beautiful area Vermont is, and it was great to see such a classic bit of country.

I stopped at the Halifax Inn and asked the elderly proprietor Harry and his wife if they knew of a campground in the area. He said very straightly, "you mean the Moss Hollow camground?" As if I had lived in the area for the same seventy years he seems to have. I said, "If that's the name of the campground that's right near by." "Well, it's on Moss Hollow Road," explaining why he thought the first question was leading in a really stupid direction, "that's just down Moss Hollow Road, about a mile until the blacktop ends, then another mile until you get to the campground." "Thank you very much for your help, it's much appreciated." And it was because five minutes later I was there.

When I arrived a friendly fellow in jeans, a t-shirt with no sleeves, and ball cap emerged from his trailer to greet me. Me, "Hi there, are you the office." Him, "closest thing to one." Me, "mind if take that spot over there with the electricity?" Him, "be my guest. If you want, you can also go look at the tent sights just two tenths up the road." Me, "ok, but I suspect I'll be back before too long. What's your name?" "Willis." "OK, see you." Sure enough, I was back in about ten minutes. That's when the fun began. As I was finishing pitching my tent, from across the field a woman called out, "what are you doing for dinner?" "I'm going to head back into town and grab a bite." "No you're not. Why don't you come over and join us?" And so it began. She said her name was Linda. She sort of swallowed her last name and so I missed it. She is a fourth grade social studies teacher. When I found this out, I told her that I loved my fourth grade teacher. She said, "and you would have loved me too. If I was your teacher." First I met her husband of 29 years, Gary, a truck driver with the best job in the world, a shuttle route between the plant and the depot. Then, Joe, a stout fellow that oozes warmth. Later I found out that Joe is the director of a medical clinic. And of course, there was Willis, the fellow who oversees the campsite. Later, Andrew, Joe's partner, came out. Thus it was, those five regulars plus me.

When I talk of waiting for what goes around to come around, I'm officially recording that it all came around last night. My glass was never empty, and they fed me well. Pasta with fresh scallops, grilled salmon, grilled steak, and fresh boiled corn. Willis was the head chef, and probably one of the most remarkable men I've met in a very long time. He's a welder tester for the B&M railroad. That means he keeps their fabricating mill up and running in addition to milling all the timbers for the bridge repairs that they do. There are 3,500 railroad bridges in New England. Some are just a few timbers long. The one across the Connecticut as it dumps into the ocean is 6,000 timbers across. Willis makes sure they have the right incline in them and are notched correctly. When you look at his campsite and watch him prepare dinner, you get the sense that no detail goes uncared for with him. Talking to him, you get the sense that there is no detail he doesn't consider from the most recent bit of political intrigue to the broadest matters of the cosmos. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Willis is that he always makes sense. He speaks with about the most attractive accent I can recall hearing. It's TV or radio quality. With pride he showed me his campsite which has a small vegetable garden, landscaping in front of his camper, terraced steps with meticulously laid stones that serve as steps down to the stream, and a sand beach. (In these parts you can find people driving through on a backhoe at 7:15 on a Sunday morning.)

The meal was family style and after cleaning the dishes (my sole contribution) we sat around the firepit in those deluxe arm chairs that collapse for storing. I sat in a rocker version. Joe promised that the sky would clear eventually there would be fabulous stars. There was. This is when I learned that Willis considers his hobby to be astronomy. Not beach building, or cooking. Astronomy. He also let on that Timothy Mellon, his boss, is also a friend. Part of our fireside talk was about life existing in other galaxies. Willis laid out a whole bunch of qualifying conditions that showed he's often wondered the same thing. We all agreed that there had to be. Joe said, "Do you think there are six people somewhere looking down on us from some other planet?" Willis said, they'd be looking up, just like you are. From our conversation about planets, stars, solar systems, and galaxies, he said to all, if you remember just one thing remember this, "If you were to shrink the sun, which is ninety three million miles away, down to the size of a basketball then the earth would be the size of a pea, ninety three feet away and Pluto would be over 5,000 feet away. I think he meant that as a humbler. I was feeling mighty humble and appreciative already.

At some point in the evening we got to talking about where I was coming from and where I was going to and everyone heartily embraced the effort I was in the midst of undertaking. Linda wanted to know if I was educated. I told them Ivy League in a way that I've never used it before - it wasn't to show off, more to say that in some way they had made the right choice to have me into their evening. After I had also let on that I was in the software business Willis let on that he was sorry his daughter wasn't here tonight. I have to admit that I was too. He said that she's a really nice looking girl. I didn't ask how old she was, but I suspect that even though he's her father there was something in the way he said it that suggested that he knew what he was talking about.

And as was destined, we eventually all went our own separate ways. By this time it was after midnight and we'd been gabbing for more than five hours. Willis told me that I was welcome for coffee as soon as the door to the trailer opened. Andrew and Joe came over to my site to see what I was carrying, but also I think to make sure that I was ok.

And so it was that I came to remember one more time that the best experiences are not expensive, and can't be bought.

Landed at Brookside Campground. Not sure where the brook is. $20 for the night gets me access to coin operated showers I have no interest in using and ground that is covered in ant hills. Being philosophical about it, the lower I can go the freer I will be. I don't love where I am. I jerked spastically for a little while. Now that I am doing something as familiar as clacking on the keys, I'm alright. Unsettled by my environs I immediately set to work download images and track data and began considering a route for tomorrow. This was after I cleaned up my car. A spider just crawled across my computer screen. In the Amazon that would be charming. Off Route 32 South, near Hunter Mountain it is annoying.

Thing to remember: That anything exceptionally sweet is likely going to be followed by something comparatively less sweet.

Also, not everything needs to be remembered fondly. My morning drive, lunch at Bob's Country Cooking in Lanesboro, MA and the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert at Tanglewood should be sufficient memories. To think that I arrived in Tanglewood just in time for the final concert of the summer was nothing short of remarkable, when you think about it. It's been hot all afternoon. Doubtless this contributes to my mood. I recall a thermometer in Great Barrington, MA reading eighty seven degrees around a quarter till four this afternoon.

Further, the day's not over yet. Who knows what dinner will find for me?

Woke to rain at an indeterminate hour of the early morning. Eventually fell back asleep but was already edgy to get moving. The sound of rain falling on my tent fly is an an enveloping sound. It would be pleasing if it didn't forebode the potential for a drenching. I left the tent swatting the same tiny mosquitos I swatted on my way to bed the previous night, put my tent to bed in record time, started my car and headed south by southwest. I stopped for breakfast at a dinner near Tannersville and continued on the road a half an hour later, nourished by a couple of cups of coffee and an easy to forget ham, cheese, and egg sandwich.

The drive from the Catskills made No Name work harder than he has yet. Owing to my ignorance I feared for my engine. The fog was occasionally dense. I missed the first critical turn in my intended route to pick up route six in Pennsylvania and begin my westward trek across the northern portion of the state. Because I missed the turnoff for my tidy west by southwest route, I ended up winding around the Pepacton Resevoir which turned out to be a breathtaking ride. On account of the fact that I was only a few hours from Manhattan I kept moving, but made a note that I would return for a weekend sometime in the future.

I eventually crossed the Delaware River and picked up Route 191 South. I followed 191 for about twenty miles until it joined with U.S. 6, which I took into Scranton, stopping occasionally to find someplace to get my oil changed. Eventually, a few miles northeast of Scranton I finally got a bite at the ten bay service center for the Pep Boys. While waiting to get my car worked on I ended up chatting with a thirty five year old guy about his work on a commercial construction site in Fort Lee, New Jersey for Merck, the pharmaceutical company. He's a compliance officer on this particular construction project. He said he's never seen the earth catch on fire before, but it does in Fort Lee on account of all the Benzine and Mercury in the soil from unremediated pollution dumped in the 1950s. He commuted to Fort Lee everyday from the Scranton area because he preferred the slower lifestyle of the area. Also, his wife and kids wouldn't know what to do if they lived in Metro New York.

While waiting to retrieve my car I re-routed my trajectory towards southern Pennsylvania along Highway 11 via Wilkes-Barre, Berwick and Bloomsburg where I eventually pulled in for the night at the Magee Main Street Inn. Bloomsburg is a State University town and charmingly picturesque. I ate dinner at Russel's, a twenty year old local institution. The place has a disarmingly huge menu, comprehensive beer list and cavernous wine cellar. I choose to have a trio of soups to start, tuna and crawfish broth, mushroom with a veal stock red wine reduction and heavy cream gratineed, and a broccoli cream soup with cheddar. Each in it's own mini bowl, with it's own spoon. Then I had a spinach salad with hard boiled egg, carrots, mushrooms, and a hot bacon dressing. After the heavy soups I could have done with lighter dressing. This salad, while shockingly fresh, didn't hold a candle to the less fresh spinach salad that I had last week in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Still I found room for the apple walnut cake with sour cream icing. I washed everything down with a Yuengling lager that I had trouble spelling but no trouble drinking. I strolled Main Street up to the college and back down again, I regretted that I didn't have my camera to photograph the neon POLICE sign, opted out of an addition beer this evening and headed back to the hotel to get squared away and ready to start up again tomorrow.

Today was a freebie because I felt so good about getting my website up last night. I intended to sleep but didn't. I meant to avoid the Eggs Benedict at breakfast, but couldn't. Even though Hollandaise sauce is rarely as good as it should be, and I hunched the probabilities were even greater against this morning, I still ordered the Eggs Benedict. And it upset my stomach, just like I knew it would. I never know if it's the hollandaise sauce, or runny yolks, but I tried to stay away from both as much as I could. After breakfast I had a mini-quarrel with the hostess about my bill because she gave me a menu with outdated pricing information which suggested I was entitled to breakfast, coffee, and juice and and in fact I was only entitled to $7.50 in food, regardless of what I got. The allowance system is so much more inelegant. It can't hardly be worth the tackiness it creates.

After breakfast I grabbed my camera and strolled around Historic Bloomsburg. The homes along South Market street were impressive. I meant to make it all the way to Park that I'd been hearing about since last night, I had a feeling it might exude so sort of Progressive vibe, but I felt pulled towards the road so I doubled back to the hotel, grabbed my bags and hit the road. After an uneventful thirty minutes or so on the road I pulled up short at the signs of a large gathering around midday in Middleburg, PA. It turns out that it was the weekly market day, both the ordinary flea and green types as well as auctions. The fat hog auction was set to commence around 1pm. They were warming up the crowd by auctioning off family sized portions of green vegetables, a cauliflower for $1.75, two dozen green apples for $2.25. It was the first time I wish that I had a friend along with me because my photos and my descriptions will always fall way short of describing this most intensely rich experience. I also happened to pick up a second hand work shirt for a dollar. Great material, most exciting thrift purchase ever, trumping the Charles Bukowski novel Hollywood that I paid a quarter for in New Hampshire and the fur lined leather jacket I paid seventy-five dollars for a few winters ago in New York. I'm sure there will be more flea markets for me before this trip is out, but I suspect that was my last Amish flea market of the trip. Unless I get lucky in Ohio.

The market experience behind me I headed West once more. I passed through Middleburg, originally named Swineford, then Beaver Falls, originally named something else, then a town that was originally named Regester but no longer is. Each town announced its current name and original name on the welcome sign on 522 West. Each of these towns had a highly meritorious diner, the likes of which I didn't see again though their bounty for that concentrated moment suggested I might. I had the illusion that as I headed up that endless seeming valley I would encounter still more towns with still more charmingly named diners that I was sure were going to feed me well. The fact was I didn't and I my hunger came to a head as I passed by the something or other brew pub and restaurant. I know the name because I have the card. I had a turkey cobb sandwich, known in other parts as turkey club and endless cups of coffee. Sharon was the most attentive server that I've come across in a long while. She wasn't un-cute, but her speech made her near hideous. It was some terrible version of the mid-atlantic accent that you were in Delaware and Maryland crossed with a Mr. Ed 'awe Wilber'-like inflection. It got so I couldn't look at her. Still, in terms of finding the exotic amongst the mundane, her accent was a milestone.

Once back on the road I was tempted with road signs offering tours of caves and vintage automobile museums. I intended to pursue both but opted out of the Caverns once I had been to Swinton's Automobile Museum. I was charged a larcenous four dollars to look at a room filled with much automobile memorabilia. Impressive though it was, I wasn't really edified which I expect in exchange for giving money to a museum. I suspect my pictures explain my point better than I can.

I don't think I went more than another twenty miles or so before I became sidetracked once again with thoughts of ending the day in some optimal spot. First I checked out Hollidaysburg and though it had a quaint Main Street it was several leagues below Bloomsburg in attractiveness so I limited my trip to a stop in the candy store, ordered a freeze, and a bag of orange candy slices. Each was only ninety five cents even though it took the elderly soda jerk ten minutes to make the freeze and the bag of orange candy slices weighed half a pound. I took three or four sips of my banana freeze - one packet of sugar, chipped ice, ice cream, banana flavor, and a little milk - and decided that it would do better in the garbage can than in my stomach. Still the orange candies are good, on par for quality with the Swedish fish that I had in New Hampshire. I've come to suspect that main reason I don't eat much candy is because mass produced candy just sucks.

My GPS then told me that I could find a motel called Zepp's Inn just about ten minutes up the road in Gailitin or some such named town. I have a map of this one too so I'll be able to know the name. Zepp's seemed like it would be the kind of place where I would be able to find an inexpensive place to sleep or at the least it would help me figure out what the bottom level price for a motel in the area was. Or at least I thought I could based on the name. In fact, it turns out Zepp's doesn't exist any longer, but as a result of looking for Zepp's I found myself in a town that was a historical site because of it was the site of some turn of the 20th century railroad tunnels. Railroad tunnels I've discovered hold my attention only slightly less well than antique car museums, so off I went again.

I then noticed a campground marked on my map and after my success in Vermont I thought I'd go for that. It looked promising. Beautiful winding road towards Ashville that justified the entire northward digression from my westward progress, after refueling I headed for my mark. I passed a family of spotted deer that neglected to tell me I wouldn't be welcome at the coming camp site, they just darted off into the woods. Eventually I discovered I was at an impermissible Boy Scout campground so I turned around once more and headed for the Coal Creek Campground. An RV receptacle is what it is. Noticeably expensive RVs. I was going to leave on account of all the RVs and the dearth of tents, but I stopped into use the bathroom, noticed how clean it was and decided to stay. At fifteen dollars, you can't beat it in these parts. I think I'm going to build a fire tonight after dinner. Might even be bright enough to read by.

It's 9pm or thereabouts. I'm sitting in my car in front of my campsite in Ohio Pyle State Park, windows and sunroof open, extension cord plugged into power source, surge protector plugged in to extension cord. Adapters for camera, computer and Palm plugged into surge protector. I suppose the only way that I could be in a more ridiculous circumstance would be if I were also web surfing. Only a matter of miles and an incompatibility between Sprint Wireless Web software and my computer prevent it. I'm so tired I couldn't bother moving my equipment to the picnic table nearby. I wouldn't have bothered with the equipment but my tools needed juice. As I'm here already I'll reflect a bit on the day.

I woke at 4:30, first needing to pee, then frightened by some sounds just outside my tent that might have just been leaves getting stepped on by spiders but seemed to me like they might be mountain lions in search of easy prey, then by the need to go to the bathroom again. I did get back to sleep for a few minutes after the sun rose, but I was up for the most part. Broke camp around 7:30. Fabulous beautiful drive this morning for fifty miles or so through backroads on the way from Coalport to Johnstown. Stopped for breakfast in Johnstown, wrote ten postcards and then took the most circuitous route possible to the Johnstown flood National Historic Site (NHS). I didn't even mean to go there, I meant to go the museum. I suspect I was better served by the NHS. I saw a film and looked at the display to learn why Johnstown has become so closely identified with Flood devastation in America. It all goes back to a catastrophic flood on June 1, 1889 when 2,207 people lost their lives.

A couple of key points come to mind. The Fish and Hunt club appears on first review for being highly culpable for the dam giving way. The national park service does make note of their role in the display and the film, but they even handedly also mention the money that the fish and hunt club members raised for the survivors. If you live in the middle of a valley at the point that two rivers merge and are damned, you'd like you'd anticipate the negative consequences of the choice. In the 1880s it appears these concerns were beyond the residents of Johnstown. It seems like this was the sort of event that inspired Progressive Era reformers to get various legislation enacted. Strangely, before Doug and Zorb told me about the floods last night I don't believe I'd ever heard of the flood. Lastly, the National Park Service film on the flood is downright spooky and very well produced. Not nearly so whitewashed as I would have imagined. It sure was weird looking at a valley that was once a lake. It will serve as an interesting counterpoint to my tour of the west were I will be looking at many lakes that were once valleys.

After leaving Johnstown I continued to head south. I stopped at a real typical small town coffee shop where I had a patty melt, fries and gravy, and a coffee for four dollars and four cents. I then headed west to Ligonier where I missed the Fort where Washington fought off the British in 1785 and headed further south to the Younighima (sp.) river valley where I stopped to take a tour of Falling Water, the 1932 Frank Lloyd Write house built for the Kauffman family of Pittsburgh as a weekend house at an ultimate cost of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars which translates to six times over budget and six million dollars in today's money. I'm not one to like guided tours of homes, but the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy Guide did an excellent job. She had some southern hilltown spunk and was far from unattractive. She used adjectives that weren't reflected in her inflection like amazing and inspirational and fascinating but somewhere they still seemed appropriate. The only thing I didn't like was that the entire tour got railroaded into the softest hardnose fundraising pitch I've ever seen at the hands of a sweet sassy spunky elderly woman named Esther.

A couple of loose ends from previous entries: - Lynda, in Halifax, kept saying, "See, you can't say that New Englanders aren't hospitable." It prompted a brief conversation between Joe and myself. We finally determined that New Englanders are very warm, just more guarded at first than people from other areas. -Whatever else I wanted to record escapes my fatigued brain. At least I got this much down.

Not one of my better days. I woke to a rainstorm beating down on my tent fly, successfully extricated myself from my tent and my tent from its site in a moment when the rain abated and with minimal fuss I got my tent into my car and my car on the road. On the way down to breakfast I stopped off for a short walk to see Cucumber Falls, a small forty or fifty foot fall that becomes part of the Youghigheny (pronounced Yawk-i-gain-e) River a quarter or mile or so downstream.

I had breakfast at the Mill Run Inn in Ohio Pyle and afterwards headed up to Kentuck Knob, the I.N. Hagan residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1953 and purchased by Lord Palumbo in 1986. Like Falling Water from 1923 the house still has a sort of futuristic feeling. I suspect it always will. It's amazing to consider that Wright was born two years after the end of the civil war and never had a complete formal education. There's a lesson there.

The rest of the day was sort of muckish. I stopped at Fort Necessity and saw a ten minute film about Washington the surveyor and young military man. Then I drove on confused about where I was going, other than westward. I had a hard drive along windy roads in West Virginia, too hard to appreciate how beautiful they were. Crummy weather. Tired. Wound my way along the Ohio River. In Sisterville, a depressed town about forty miles from Hundred, WV, I caught a three dollar ferry to Ohio where I picked up route two from where it was almost a straight shot into Marietta.

By the time I got to Marietta I was so tired from the drive I could hardly think straight. I checked into the Lafayette Hotel, a historic hotel of America not unlike the Biltmore in Providence, just much less grand, and had a beer and a few chicken wings before getting my first hot shower in three days. It was only the beer and the wings that gave me enough energy to shower. Otherwise I would have collapsed into a heap. Four or five hours of driving a day is tiring. It makes it next to impossible to be a tourist at the same time. My GPS really helps keep me straight, makes navigation less uncertain, more precise. Reduces stress levels.

I dined at the Marietta Brewing Company, a decent place in a town that's less than intriguing, whatever Fodor's says. It should be noted this was the first town I was guided to by a book that is sold as a guide, and I suspect it won't be the last time, but I just hope I don't do it too much. The experience is so much less than when you discover a place guided by serendipity. My server at the MBC was Vernadette. Her name was the most interesting thing of the evening happening there. I watched the Little League Baseball World Series game featuring Danny Almonte on the mound for the team for the Bronx. He's amazing. When the game ended, I left. I was happy to be asleep by 10. And that's that.

Karma and fate brought me a touch south and several hundred miles east. Thomas de Monchaux, my friend and one of my chief inspirators, called me just as I was signing my name to my hotel bill. After a brief exchange I discovered he was only two hundred miles as the crow flies from my current position. Realizing Thomas was so close made a visit to Charlottesville the imperative I had been missing for days. Were I to know beforehand that the drive would take seven rigorous hours and would bring me along three hundred miles of mostly winding roads I still would have traveled east to Charlottesville to see the de Monchaux brothers. It's the first thing that made sense in days.

It became such an obvious choice to head east because I knew that Thomas and Nicholas would surely give me the resolve I was seeking to continue my journey westward. Just as I need to stop regularly for fuel and food, I also need to stop for inspiration along the way. I'd been doing really well on my own. My daily encounters had been more than enough to propel me forward each day down unfamiliar roads to unanticipated places. My problems started when I started studying my available guidebooks to help me pick a path across Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky on my way to St. Louis, my next waypoint. Pennsylvania had been treating me well without any assistance from guidebooks. Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts had as well. New York was a special case. I tried to get away from my hometown state as quickly as possible, I feared getting sucked back into the gravitational force of New York way before I was ready. Weeks of successful traveling without books intended as guides didn't prevent me from thinking that Ohio would be more easily navigable with the help of a book. In fact, the Fodor's guide book only fucked my shit up.

I landed in Marietta on the twenty second because that's where I thought I should go. I had neglected to consider the Alleghenies which I would have to cross there as a significant presence. I didn't pay them the heed they were due and ended up in Marietta dead tired and exhausted. I was expecting charming brick buildings as Fodor's had promised. Instead I found a massive strip mall that dwarfed the charm of the brick buildings to the point that I didn't feel like I was in a charming town at all. After dining at the Marietta Brewing Company the night before I didn't have any lust to leave my room the following morning. Instead, I stayed in and hacked away at images and tried to sort my health insurance coverage out. I stayed in so long that noon came and I still hadn't left my room. I had to call for a late check out when my first back up effort failed, as I intended to burn before departing. If my first back up didn't fail I may have been on the road before Thomas reached me.

The way he reached me. After a few minutes of appropriately banal conversation Thomas asked me what I was thinking about. I started to construct some sincere answer about being at a crossroads when I ultimately realized that connecting with Thomas was crucial and that doing it on the phone would be a massively poor simulacrum for face to face contact. So I headed East. I wind around and around, yet still I haven't gotten to the point - how Thomas and Nicholas have encouraged and inspired me. In early July I once returned from a few days in Connecticut to find Thomas and Nicholas's possessions in my apartment though I thought they'd already left. By phone I found they were in the neighborhood so I skipped out to meet them at Café Café. We gathered lunch at Gourmet Garage and took it to Spring Street to eat. As we were talking I let on about how I wished that I had some way of creating a database of memories and observations about the cross country trip that I intended on taking but hadn't planned out. Nicholas suggested I look into GIS and that was it. Some GIS research led me to discovering the ArcView Explorer and then discovering that the application was entirely not suitable for my purposes but entirely amazing. A GPS receiver though, I decided, would be entirely suitable tool for a journey and a wonderful accompaniment to my digital camera that I already knew, trusted, and loved. The GPS in my mind was more useful for gathering tracks about where I'd been than plotting routes to where I was going. I'm not sure that I would have chosen to bring a GPS were it not for Nicholas. But this is the past.

For the last three weeks I've diligently gathered my positional data, unsure of the impact the data was going to have. Today I started to compile it. The effect was like unfurling a spinnaker sail while heading downwind. Just being in Charlottesville has been like a tonic for my soul. Watching my trip line form, and watching the de Monchaux's share my excitement at seeing the line form gave me all the strength I needed to plow forward across the country and back again. Last night I arrived in Charlottesville a few minutes after eight pm, surprisingly just as I had promised Thomas I would six hours before. Before I could even orient myself Nicholas already had a glass of wine in my hand. It took me a quarter of an hour before I had my bearings under me. By then I had already said my hellos and we had already begun our dinner on the roof of his apartment looking over the Charlottesville Mall. Nicholas made a characteristically fierce pasta Bolognese. Perfectly al dente spaghetti. Rich and robust sauce. Thomas corked off to bed around ten p.m. and Nicholas and I traversed the Mall for a drink at ES Café, the surviving portion of the failed Eastern Standard restaurant.

As we talked it became perfectly clear that Nicholas must be a masterful teacher. Though I only know him as a friend, he has an amazing ability to inspire others. I talked with him about my trip, but mostly about the fact that I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I asked him what he would choose if he were to choose for me. He sort of tilted his head to the side, pulled on his hair and said, "I dunno, I suppose that of all the people that I know you would be most likely to complete a dissertation because you seem to have a single minded devotion to what you do in the way that few others do." I told him that one of the major reasons that I'd be reluctant to teach is that I have such a low tolerance for mediocrity and hardly any patience for others. He tried to get me to believe that it was this very quality that would make me such a respected teacher. I actually believed him in part because I didn't have any reason not to. Ack. Basta for now.

My first entry in four days, no significant journaling either since Friday, this is the first major discontinuity in my trip records. I've been resting at the apartment of Nicholas de Monchaux, taking advantage of the hospitality, inspiration, and friendship that he and his brother Thomas provides. Since the moment that I arrived on Friday and Nicholas handed me a cup of wine, their generosity has been superb. I only imposed for as long as I did because they made it not feel like an imposition.

The feeling of comfortably sharing space with others made me realize that my efforts to cure my loneliness over the past several years have been somewhat misguided. It's a pity that circumstance prevented me from having roommates as good as these two because I suspect that the course of time might have been altered by such a positive friendship.

The day before yesterday Nick and I hiked through the apple orchards on Carter Mountain. Yesterday saw I saw Monticello. Today I am going to see the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Aboriginal Art. Apparently UVA has the largest collection of Aboriginal art outside of Australia. 6,000 pieces originally collected by Ruhe, an anthropologist and then later added to be scion of industry John Kluge. Afterwards, I'm heading off. South by southwest towards the Cumberland Gap on my way to Kentucky.

I think it might take me two days to reach the gap, but when I do I will have passed through, successively, Warm Springs, Hot Springs, and Boiling Springs. I get the sense that all three towns were encountered on the same expedition, named successively by virtue of the fact that the preceedingly extreme modifier had already been taken. That, or the names are the result of a turn of the twentieth century marketing ploy to attract people to Virginia to cure what ails them.

After I cross the gap, I'm going to wind my way aimlessly through Kentucky on the road to St. Louis. From St. Louis I'm going to head North by Northwest via Iowa and Lincoln, Nebraska on my way to the Badlands of South Dakota. I'll be propelled by my sixteen valve engine that has been fixed by Wayne, lord of the Foreign Auto Center. I have a deep and abiding respect for men like Wayne, or Jeff Block at the Swedish Solution in Miami, that keep cars running for less than it seems I should cost. I thought I was going in for one set of repairs, I ended up requesting a much larger set, received my car back in perfectly running condition for a fraction of the price I thought I would spend.

I left Charlottesville around two p.m. I suspect that I left my check book behind. Tomorrow, I'm going to give web banking a new try if I am unsuccessful in finding my checkbook. I drove two hours to Lexington, via the Blue Ridge Highway - the southern companion to the Skyline Drive which I traveled north on from Charlottesville in June. I arrived in Lexington just in time to find the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee and visit the museum below, all thanks to a conversation I had earlier in the day with my high school friend Liza Gallardo Walton who attended Washington and Lee. The museum was sort of amazing. The lineage of W&L compares to the Ivy League schools of the north. Even though it's mostly the Ying to the Yang of the North, it feels more like some alien branch of an otherwise known thing.

fter strolling through the museum, Liza gave me a guided tour of the area surrounding the campus via telephone. On her suggestion I checked in to the McClelland house, for fifty five dollars a night I'm sleeping under a handmade quilt on top of a four post bed in a recently carpeted room appointed with all sorts of antique tables and bureaus. My room has a private balcony with four rocking chairs where I sat reading the prologue to Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists by Paul Russell Cartwright after I napped in bed for an hour.

AAt Liza's suggestion I had dinner at the bar at the Palm's, a Lexington institution since 1981. Again I drank America's oldest beer, Yeungling's, the lager I discovered in Bloomsburg, PA and drank again in the Yougioheny River Valley. I liked it most the first time I had it and successively less each time since. Still, there are few beers that I would choose over it on a hot day. I ate a horseshoe burger, a local contrivance that I surely won't repeat - a sirloin burger topped with BBQ sauce and cheese sauce served atop Texas (thick cut) toast, smothered in onion rings.

After dinner I headed back to the Inn and read once again in the rocking chair on my balcony. After a bit, I had a lust for wandering and a similar lust for Dewar's whisky that propelled me out of my rocking chair on my stroll about town. The stroll was short lived, I settled into a wood paneled screw-joined bar adjacent to the Southern restaurant where I sipped two Dewer's as I read the book about Lewis and Clark. During the first drink I listened to a reasonably attractive blond with a nice figure and good complexion and most of all pleasing voice that didn't bespeak an upbringing in just one region of the south as she spoke about various engines in cars she's owned and would like to own. It appeared that she was speaking with a past employer and his wife. Maybe the couple owned a restaurant in town where she used to wait tables. She made multiple references to her current circumstances where she was making a lot more money than she used to but she never hinted at what it was that she did now. After they left she turned her attention to the GQ magazine that she brought with her. For reasons that are entirely beyond me, I couldn't bring myself to talk with her. I think there was something in her persona that was too materialistic and which I judged too harshly to allow myself to talk with her. She was an easy target, and a somewhat desireable one, but it was one of those unnatural, obvious moments where I had no subtext for a conversation so I just averted my eyes from her direction and focused on my Dewer's and Scotch, trying to say with my body that I'll talk with you if you make the first move, I'm shy because I'm not from here, but she just got her tab and left. I couldn't have cared less. Except that I'm writing about it now.

After the blond left, out of a crowd an older gentleman emerged, and introduced himself in a barely audible voice as Jim Calhoun, of the Maryland and D.C. area. He wanted to know who I might be. He asked if I was reading the bible. I told him I was reading a bible of exploration. He asked if he should know my name. I said he shouldn't. He offered me his phone number and suggested I should come over some time soon. I said I didn't think I'd be able to visit this time through as I was dead set on heading south towards Kentucky. He said, "not even for a quickie?" I said I was neither prepared, as he could see I had no means for recording his phone number, nor inclined for that matter. As he left he gave me a handshake that was slightly too long for my taste and an indeterminant facial expression in response to my wishes of happy hunting. After he departed, the bartender apologized to me that I had to deal with him. In the bartenders apology I thought I detected something interesting about the neighborliness of the area. He wasn't about to be rude to the highly inebriated cruiser, in spite of the fact that the cruiser was out of line himself. Liza promised me the people of Lexington would be very friendly to me. I just didn't know this is what she meant.

I'm bunkered up at the Carriage House Motel. Thirty seven dollars for two double beds including tax. I ate take out from the Peking Garden, seven dollars and five cents including tax for some skinny noodles with beef and vegetables. On account of the lack of a bar in Lebanon, which seems fitting, I purchased two thirty two ounce Old Milwaukees at the Acme super market across the street. One dollar and seven cents each. I could have also eaten at a local pizza place, or Hardee's or Pizza Hut. As far as I could tell there are no more choices in town. I watched Ed and the West Wing and the Diamondbacks are starting to take on the Giants, as the Cubs have pulled just pulled even with Giants in the wild card race with less than thirty games to play this season.

The woman at the check-in counter at the motel reminded me of the Latin version of the asian character that gets parodied on Mad TV by the Jewish comedienne. She kept insisting on using my name when she spoke to me, reading my first name as John off the registry and making a big deal out of the fact that it was Josh. I was road weary so it was quite an uncomfortable situation.

Today's drive was quite fun. It helped me get my rhythm back after my lengthy pause in Charlottesville. I stopped this morning at the Natural Bridge where my heart first sank at the site of blatant commercialization of the place and then came back into my chest as I descended the 137 steps from the visitor center to the valley where it was a short walk to the Natural Bridge. It's allegedly one of the Seven Wonders of the World - a tribute that surprised me but which seems understanding. Who decides what the world's wonders are anyway?

After walking around the area of the Natural Bridge I got back in my car and started to hunger for some back roads. After traveling down route 11 for a while I decided to bypass Roanoke when I saw that Orvis advertised two locations in town on a billboard and decided to head up towards the West Virginia state line to pick up a road that traveled down the length of the Thomas Jefferson National Forest.

I had a joyous experience capturing unexpected views of the Shenandoah Valley as I wound towards Covington and then south towards Paint Black, Boiling Springs and Sinking Creek. I'm holed up in this all too American town because I was really enjoying myself on the road and passed up some good campgrounds around Rocky Gap. It's just that I hadn't had any real farphegnugan for a while but after putting my cars in the hands of European Auto Center in Charlottesville my car is running as well as it ever has.

Tomorrow I'm going to cross the Cumberland gap into Kentucky. I hope that is the historically significant gap on the westward route because I went out of my way to include it on my route to Missouri. I'm feeling like my mojo is coming back after a waning period.

Yesterday I completed my traveler's kit. Mostly. I purchased a stove for making coffee and other hot things, a lantern to attract insects at night, some storage containers for sorting gear, a mess kit, salt, pepper, sugar, coffee and a chair. I'm not sure how much I needed these things, but it makes me feel more settled at a campsite.

From the moment I returned from my Wal-Mart expedition until the time I went to bed, I was ceaselessly in the company of the Green family. When I pulled up at the site everyone wanted to see my photos and while I was showing everyone the computer a card game broke out. Then Ed came over, and he and I chatted some more. He told me that he had a master's degree in History, an MBA, and that before he worked in rehabilitation centers as a counselor he was a cabinet salesman. We tried to explain to each other how it was that we became travelers. For him it was his divorce from his first wife and the realization that he could make his life anew. For me this trip is about remaking life, but the urge stems from learning the preciousness of life through experiencing the death of a close friend just a few months before graduating from college. We put on temporary tattoos. The next generation all demonstrated a wonderful spirit. The mood was good. I excused myself to shower. I came out in a Hawaiian shirt to remarks about cleaning up well. It felt good to be clean it had been so hot yesterday. When it got dark Ann and Karla and Monica lit a fire. I sat down with them. We talked. Time passed. After the previous night's drinking episode I had no lust for alcohol at all. We sat and talked and various siblings came by. I could sense everyone was clinging to the last vestiges of summer.

I spent much of the evening with Betty and with Noel. In spite of the fact that they kept remarking on how I spoke. Noel seemed to really have my number, calling me out on using big words. I tried to explain that it wasn't to show off, rather it reflected an obsession to come to terms with the world by naming it. Betty really liked it when I used the phrase 'sympathetic disposition' and she even asked me to write it down. The funny thing was that she took the phrase to describe herself, as in "I have a sympathetic disposition." I meant it as a way to explain how people that didn't know each other could get along very well in spite of the hence to forth unfamiliarity.

I don't know what words to use to describe the Greens, I've never met anybody that I've connected with so much but am still unlikely to ever see again. I think that is sort of what haunts me at the moment.

Mistakes: Not trying the rabbit prepared by Steve, the eldest sibling. Not going swimming last night with Noel and Annie and Betty.

Today I woke before the sun was above the trees, fixed myself some coffee with the eagerness one reserves for the first and last day of elementary school, discovered I had some pathetically bitter coffee on my hands, tried to read in my new Wal-Mart folding chair and then it began to rain. I packed up in the rain and said goodbye to as many Greens as I could find and then I headed off for Illinois.

The first part of the drive was in rain, until I saw the Ohio, then the rain stopped and by midday the sun was blazing. I suppose the most interesting part of today was the variety of landscapes I past. From tobacco country to corn country in the hooks of the Ohio while in Kentucky to a combination of forest and grassland once I crossed the Ohio into Illinois and I began to imagine Dinosaurs roaming the land, then bison, then prairie schooners. The roads were a bit erratically marked on my GPS so at various times today I followed my GPS into places that no small car should go. Once I found myself in the blasting area of a coal mine in front of earth moving vehicles that had tires larger than car. Almost all the eighty or so miles I drove in Illinois today were unpaved. My tires show the wear they've been getting on the back roads. I wonder if there is an equivalency of wear and tear on pavement compared to unpaved roads like one hundred miles of unpaved roads is equivalent to five hundred miles of paved roads. Or something. My tread doesn't feel the same as when I began the journey. Still holds the road just fine. I'd love to have six more inches of ground clearance under me. Or a better understanding of the sort of wear and tear the underbody of my chassis can withstand.

I stopped for the night at the Egyptian Hills Campground on Egypt Lake in the Shawnee National Forest. I'm paying twelve dollars tonight for a serviced site. I paid four dollars for a case of Milwaukee's Best. Two seventy five bought me a microwaved 'jumbo cheeseburger' and a bag of chips. (Memory: Sam's choice ginger ale costs forty nine cents for a two liter bottle in Hardinsburg, KY. I wonder what a liter of Seagram's costs at a Korean deli in SoHo.)

I've been here since four thirty but it took me for ever to settle down. I was an hour or so too long on the road today. This site is quite nice. I can see the water from here. I'm shaded by a big tree from the direct sun at my picnic table. The caretaker gave me firewood that he chopped. He was also the microwaver. The burger plus a country time lemonade plus a beer holder that says 'Home is where you hang your @' cost five ninety three. I gave him seven dollars and then as he was making change he told me I gave him one dollar too many. He didn't realize that last dollar was tip. How do people make do here?

It'd be nice if my thoughts were more organized and the things that I wrote were more publishable. The simple act of writing feels so good, the best palliative for my nerves that I know. And strangely I've known it for longer than I've regarded it. I think the way to approach writing is to consider the process to be analogous to making whisky. These essays that I write each night are akin to the Brewer's beer, the undistilled mash that tasted like flat stale beer but which contains the full potential for making great bourbon. Editing for purpose is the aging and fermentation that happens when you add the yeast. Killing the essay and making it anew is akin to the distillation process and letting a finished essay sit is akin to aging the whisky in casks before finally mixing it together in a fixed publication form.

Tonight I made my first open fire in who knows how long. Probably since I was fifteen at summer camp. One more reminder of why I'm so grateful for that wilderness training. Makes me feel like a man to be so self-sufficient in the out of doors and those that know me back home probably have no idea how I live for making fires. This one burned hot, and long and was composed in such a way that it seems like it will consume itself almost entirely, leaving only ashes of the former branches. My computer bag is getting dewy so I'm stopping for the night.

My best solo evening outdoors last night was followed by one of my better out of doors morning. I woke to clear skies just a few minutes before six, headed down to the marina store and founded the proprietress in much better spirits than last evening. The cranky, short tempered, unsolicitous woman of last evening was replaced by a much friendlier version of herself. Perhaps the absence of the worker man had something to do with her improved mood. We spoke of current events, shark attacks, stolen tow trucks in L.A., the stupidity of George Bush; and we spoke of travels. Each summer she used to take two weeks when the kids were younger to go somewhere. She used to live in Oregon. She told me to go to Crater Lake and the Oregon dunes and she said it like she loved being in these places. I'd have gone anyway, I suspect going to Oregon and not going to those places would be a gross oversight.

The drive to St. Louis was less interesting than it could have been because I neglected to load my GPS with the regional map information for the area around St. Louis so I was flying blind more or less from Red Bluff, IL onward. I did have a funny moment when I crossed the Mississippi near the town that gave birth to Popeye, but then crossed back as soon as I got into Mississippi because I felt like I needed to drive into St. Louis from Illinois. For whatever reason. It might have even been the wrong choice, but it was a choice that I had made days before when I studied the potential routes into the city and from the Mapsource perspective it was the right choice. What it came down to was choosing between the Illinois River Road and the National Route - for some reason I chose the Illinois Route. In retrospect, I suspect that it took me further from the river than the National Route would have, but as I already said, oh well.

Right around the moment of my junction, Route 3 ran right next to the railroad tracks which ran right next to the Mississippi and I thought it was pretty darn need to see the parallel presence of successive means for enabling the transport of goods, all laid right there next to each other. Sort of the great proof for the thesis that roads are where they are for a reason.

I arrived in St. Louis around three p.m. purchased some Benadryl to combat the itch plaguing my mosquito ravaged ankles and then headed over to Tim Garrett's pad, moving North east across the city after crossing the Mississippi on I-55. I met Worku, Tim's roommate. Worku and Tim met through their Church and Tim invited Worku to room with him after his brother moved out. Worku seems to never be without a smile - we got to talking when he very warmly came over to chat with me after I'd been working for several hours armed with a mug of coffee, a plate of Tim's mother's home baked cookies which I remembered from college, a bowl of sugar for the coffee and spoon for the sugar. It was a first rate gesture of hospitality. We chatted together for a bit - he explained that he was preparing to help African immigrants re-settle in the United States. It's hard to get at everything that he's experienced because he seems to hide so much behind his smile. He explained that he moved to St. Louis because it was a much easier place to live than Washington, D.C. where he settled when he arrived here three years ago from Ethiopia. He told me that he hates the winters and loves to look at green things and mountains, because it reminds him of home. He's planning a trip to Atlanta and New Orleans to see something of this country.

Tim came home around six and the rest of the evening was a reunion in the grandest form. We haven't seen much of each other for the last five years save for inebriated conversations at the annual Brown Campus dance. Still I wasn't surprised in the least that the distances that we had crossed in our own lives would give us more to talk about rather than less.

Tim is a fellow whose friendship I inherited from an earlier time in my life when college gave people friendships without having to try too hard to make them. In fact, in the case of Tim, I had to do nothing to know him - he was one of the first year students under my watch when I was a resident counselor during my sophomore year of college - and so I had no choice but to get to know him. Still, that I was given the opportunity to know him is one of the truly wonderful things that I accrued from my times at Brown.

We chatted for hours before we finally got out the door to dinner - mostly about what has happened to me on my trip so far. Then we started talking about Brown, and the east coast, and New York City, and the difficulty of forming preferences when others have differing opinions. I've got too many things in my head to deconstruct this idea, but it has something to do with story by a writer who tells a story about man who always displayed the proper cultural props for his dinner guest of the evening - the right coffee table books, the right cd's in the changer. Mike Palmer can tell me what the book is, who the character is. We talked about them at Keith's birthday picnic with the other fellow whom neither of us knew beforehand.

Dinner was at the Schlafly Tap Room. I had a salad, my first raw vegetables in days, and we shared a ticky tacky toffee pudding - delicious. I met Heather, Tim's girlfriend, who is a fourth year medical student at Wash U. We all talked for a bit. They extracted some Tony Robbins stories from me - a matter that I've avoided talking about and thinking about for so long that it almost felt alright to talk about that period of my life. I'm not sure if I would have been able to in proximity to where it happened, but two major rivers and one mountain range away from the scene of the time, I was happy to talk about Tony Robbins for longer than I can remember.

I woke today before eight and futzed around with email and did some research on the web before hustling myself into the shower in time to get myself out the door before ten am. I'm still baffled about how I managed to sleep until noon yesterday. My objective today was the Jefferson United States Expansion Memorial and whatever else that brought along with it. I can't remember ever not holding The Arch in awe and near disbelief, always looking forward to the day that I saw it in person with the adult version of the child-like enthusiasm reserved for such important firsts as entering Disney World for the first time. I ended up spending about four hours at the memorial, so suffice it to say I had a great time. Note to the initiated: don't expect to have a cup of coffee once you get to the Arch like I did. While you can purchase breads and processed meats in The Levee, a feeble replica of a nineteenth century general store, you can't get any hot caffeine on the premises.

When I arrived the first thing I noted was the trademark Eero Saarinen style that I can't describe in words but which is hard to miss if you've ever been inside the TWA terminal at JFK. (What where the circumstances under which his father chose to accept the position as the head of the Cranbook Design Institute and move his family from Scandinavia to Michigan?) I purchased a ticket to ride the tram to the top of the arch (see pictures) and to see two films - one film was on the American West and the other was a documentary about the building of the Arch. Both films would bring tears to my eyes and then once I got started apparently I couldn't stop, tears would well in my eyes a third time today; it's hard to convey with words how moving it is for me to come in contact with all these historically relevant places that previously only existed in books for me. The first time I experienced this phenomena I was driving through Civil War battle sites in West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania on my way from Miami to New York in late June - the leg which I suppose is the true beginning of this journey. As I passed Appomattox, then Harper's Ferry (not civil war but still), and then Gettysburg I was overcome by the realization that the carnage of war was conducted in such pastoral beauty. I thought the emotional welling up inside me had to do with the fact that I was looking at battlefields, but I had the same feeling today inside the Westward Expansion museum.

Ticket was purchased at 10:27am, so I had a half an hour before the American West started which I consumed on the first wall of the Westward Expansion museum. I headed into the Odyssey Theater a few minutes before the lights dimmed. The film was masterfully directed - before the film even opens the special effects people bring the audience through a tunnel worthy of being the central prop on any psychedelic trip which ultimately ends in the National Park Service Logo - hard to explain but alon worth the trip - then immediately the film opens in Napoleon's Headquarters in 1804 and the French Minister of the Exterior informs Napoleon that Jefferson has accepted his asking price of fifteen million dollars, and then follows this by telling a clearly troubled Napoleon that he "picked the Americans" pockets. These words don't console Napoleon, who is looking over a crude map of the Louisiana Territory and asks the Minister if the Territory is beautiful, and the minister yes, but entirely 'sauvage,' uninhabitable. Who can blame Napoleon for selling out, his finances were depleted, I'd imagine (I know nothing of French history), and Nouvelle France might as well have been the moon filled with green cheese to him. You really have to wonder what would have happened if the French didn't sell out. War I'd guess. Or if the Russians hadn't sold Alaska. I suspect the choice of America to go to war for the State of Texas is as good an indicator as any of how a nation operates when it believes it has a manifest destiny to settle all the land from coast to coast. One interesting note: Nowhere today did I see this term used in the context of westward expansion. I guess the term has become so un-P.C. that even the National Park Service won't use it. The film traces Lewis and Clarks journey west, then the journey of stage coaches over the Oregon Trail, then the Mormons on their way to Utah, the the Chinese on their way to work the railroad, then the plot lines start tying together. The horrors of the West are omitted from the grand cinematic ouvre with a harmonizing theme, but the beauty is striking. I think my tears welled at the though of all the mountains I would cross and the valleys I would see in the coming weeks and months. I was overcome with the feeling that I too should winter in the west before continuing my journey, who knows how things will shake out.

The ride up to the arch was an adventure all to itself, the "unique" tram system is a series of eight cars, each holds five people precisely, and the journey to the top of the six hundred foot arch purportedly takes four minutes. I suspect that it took less time than that. I rode with two couples, one young and one old. The older guy was a really annoying loser who videoed the movie that was shown before we boarded, and then narrated the ride up to the top, shining his camera on the white wall as he said, "we're going up to the top now, you can't really see much of anything." If you ask me watching the guy was perfect justification for opting for only still images of a vacation. He was slightly overweight, an inch or so over six feet, receeding hair parted to the left and back, wire frame glasses that made him squint all the time as if he were constipated. His wife didn't seem to care much for him either. The other couple seemed to like each other more, but not by much. I was glad to be free of them for a few minutes when I got to the top.I only stayed at the top for a few minutes, I got a real rush out of the views to the east and the west, and I was so caught up with capturing the moment that I forgot to soak in the fact that when I looked over the west I was looking at where I came from and when I looked out over the city and on to the horizon I was viewing the roads I'd be following in the coming days. Luckily, I can re-examine the moment now through the images I captured. (Is it a photograph if there is no film?) The Documentary on the making of the arch was also amazing, it chronicled the feat of getting all these stainless steel sides together and placed correctly as self-standing legs. You don't want to touch this because it's very hot, a tube is the hardest shape to make, glass wants to end up as globs on the floor.

I'm still getting used to the fact that it's already September, let alone by the fact that by this time next week the month will be more than halfway gone. I made some sort of commitment to end this trip by Thanksgiving because I thought I couldn't think of a more fitting time to culminate the journey. However, I'm no longer certain I'll be able to do this trip justice, and make it home in time. I figure if I'm not going to make it back in time, then I better miss it by a mile, less for everyone else's feelings than for my own. There is no more sacred family moment for me than Thanksgiving - the feast to end all feasts, the moment of togetherness that surpasses all moments of togetherness. I will be able to console myself however in the knowledge that if I do indeed miss Thanksgiving for the first time in my life I will be missing it for the best reason I can think of, even if I can't think of how to say what that reason is.

I'm not sure whether or not yesterday and the day before is going to get a proper computer entry. It could go either way - it might make it in because it is the meatiest writing I've done on this trip or I might leave it off because it is the meatiest writing I've done on this trip. Certainly I have a feeling that the day's entry contains the most likely punch line for this trip that I ever could have imagined. Seems unfair to ruin the suspense of what is going to happen to me after this trip by giving it away in a moment of clarity attained in West Plains, MO.

The only ones that would have a clue as to what I am up to right now are the members of the Green family originally of Holy Cross, Kentucky because they are the only other ones that have seen me compute with a cloth draped over my head to block out the ambient light that would otherwise make it impossible to see my computer screen. They saw me do the same thing last Sunday as I caught up on the day. Trust me when I say that I never thought I'd be sitting on the back fender of my car, hatch ajar, notebook on my lap, towel on my head, in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Harrison, Arkansas in the early afternoon on a Sunday. Yet these are the circumstances that I find myself in because I left my USB connector cable in the home of Pat Garrett and Jessica Coffin. I came to the Wal-Mart today in Harrison because it was on the way to Eureka Springs and I needed a way to transfer my photos to my computer. The floppy disk adapter for the memory stick is as retrograde a piece of technology as I've ever seen. It takes half an hour to transfer fifty five megabytes of photos. It doesn't bother me much. I'm grateful not to backtrack and happy to use the time to write. Also, I stopped to pick up a pair of Serengeti driving glasses because I think the yellow lenses will improve the view as I head North and into the Fall.

I don't think that there is anyway that I could possibly make it across America without patronizing Wal-Mart. Things I've purchased at Wal-Mart so far (as complete a list as I can recall): eight D cell batteries, one pouch of beef jerky, one collapsible camp chair, one camera tripod, one retrograde floppy disk adapter for memory sticks, one Coleman florescent 12 v rechargeable camp lantern, one Coleman eight inch diameter bowl shaped burner, two bottles of propane fuel, one small mess kit, salt and pepper, one stainless steel coffee percolator, clear storage containers, opaque storage containers, sunglasses, oatmeal raisin cookies, chocolate chip cookies. I'm sure I'm not half done.

I wonder what I traded Lake Stanton for tomorrow because trading it for Lake of the Ozarks is not even up. A hundred miles back at Lake Stanton I could have set up camp at noon at the edge of a lake, ten miles from a town with all requisite supplies, and spent the day reading and writing and swimming. Instead, I drove on, trying to get closer to Columbia, because that's where I was supposed to be, not in southern Missouri. I figure I'll start slowing up when I get into the High Plains - I figure the open spaces will suggest it. Anyway, contrast where I could have been with where I am:

I'm sitting at a picnic table at the Riverview Campground just off US 54 in Lake of the Ozarks. The site is fine enough. My tent is staked in clean soft grass, the campsite loop is divided by a stream, and the RV inhabitants look entirely trustworthy. There's even a good looking laundry facility. That's where the charm ends.

It's impossible to separate this relatively decent campsite from the strip of road that I navigated for the past twenty miles. The road travels over and around what is a rather beautiful lake. The shore is littered with condominiums, and the road with tacky shops. Or that's how it appears to my eyes. Now I don't know why I would expect lakeshore to be any less developed than ocean front property if local authorities are only able to sustain a community based on tourism, but I never expected to see a landlocked version of Myrtle Beach, SC - the first comparison that comes to mind.

I'm not sure what else to say other than to describe what I see with my eyes. I'm sure people are real friendly, both those visiting and those that operate the attractions they're here to see. It's just that there is nothing in the surround area that smacks at all of authenticity. I guess that's fine because an authentic place is just about as subjective a concept as wilderness. Holy shit, that's it - I'm having the same sort of trouble with civilization that tree hugging environmentalists have non-pristine 'nature'. Except, I'm not really having trouble with it. My heart sinks in the communities that are so dependent upon tourism that they seem to have lost their link with their past. I'm still able to enjoy myself here. I suspect however that I would have enjoyed myself all the same without promises of waterparks, golf and movie theaters. In fact, the way I plan on coping with the complexity of my evening's spot is to go see a movie. I may as well while I'm here right?

It's all different now. The last time I wrote in my computer the world trade center stood proud and gleaming at the foot of Manhattan. To the terrorists who broke the hearts of America I suppose you can say that the towers stood boastfully - a symbol of the wealth and depth and breadth of America. New Yorkers took so much for granted before Tuesday September 11th. You had to take things for granted, the pace and excesses of the city demand that you take things on faith, most people that inhabit the island depend on others for every aspect of their life - from providing their food to cleaning their clothes and their homes, to securing their streets and keeping the lights blazing at the foot of the city. I left the city on my journey in part to go find America, an idea that was wrapped up in doing things for yourself. In leaving, I took one major thing for granted - that New York would always be as it was when I left, that the lives of my friends, associates, and acquaintances would be as they were when I left. The city is not the same. The people of the city are not the same. I am not the same.

When I left on this trip I said confidently that I didn't know where I was going or why, but I would now what it is that I'm looking for when I find it. I veered off into the Maritimes to pursue beauty and to get perspective, to try to gather some material against which to measure America and after twelve days abroad I ached for the homeland. As I drove across Maine into New Hampshire, down into Vermont, across New York into Pennsylvania, across that state briefly into West Virginia and Ohio before backtracking across West Virginia to Charlottesville, west across Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, down into Arkansas before heading back north towards Jefferson City, MO where I was just across from the state capital when I heard ABC news break into the 8 o'clock radio hour announcing that a plane hit the world trade center. For the first half hour it seemed like a mistake, then the second plane eliminated that possibility. Curious bewilderment became fear and sadness. The losses were incalculable to my planning mind. I couldn't think of the outcome I could only cry.

My story is an unusual one for a New Yorker. I was not in the city. I had not recently left the city. I don't intend to imminently return. Still I ache as if I was there and as if I am there. I feel like I am anywhere and I feel like I am nowhere. After six weeks of having profoundly geospecific experiences I suddenly feel like I am having a national experience. I weep and tear up just like people all around the country and as the television shows me, all around the world. After wanting to probe the crevices of new places, I just want to get to comforting surroundings. I mean this in no selfish way, but my trip has sustained a direct hit to its integrity. It will continue, in a new form.

I spent that morning at a bar in Columbia, Opies or something like that, watching on TV what had only been a radio show for me for the first few hours of the tragedy's unveiling. I met Steve Ornes. I was relieved to share the day with him. I went to the journalism school to pick up an application to the graduate program. When I entered the campus I was stunned by the beauty of the main academic building at Mizzou and the columns on the Green. I was too dazed by the facts of the day and heat of the day to absorb much new information about columns and buildings. Dinner with Steve was the first time all day that I hadn't spent lost in the facts of the day. After dinner we played pool. It felt like a mistake. Everyone in the pool hall had their minds nowhere near the facts of the day. MTV played on the TVs, the first place I'd been where every TV wasn't tuned to the news of the day. Eventually I slept. The next day I woke and shoved off for Kansas City, it was the first of several days that were based upon not wanting to be where I was, but not really wanting to be where I was going either. I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that I was driving across Missouri and up Iowa and Nebraska. I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that the glorious weather of the summer was turning against me, cold and wet.

I glanced at the Harry Truman Library in Independence. I thought it would provide solace and comfort. Instead the stunning innocence and simplicity of Harry Truman depressed me. As portrayed by the impersonator 'reminiscing' about the life of Harry S. Truman, his innocence was even more depressing in light of the prior day's events. There is a tremendous arrogance in not believing that something was about to happen at moment from fundamentalist antagonists. Looking at one of the heroes of 'the greatest generation' makes the roots of the arrogance clear. I'm not sure, nor capable of passing judgment on, whether Truman's simplicity and bravado was the appropriate way for his time, certainly it was a circumstance of his time. It's shocking to me that it takes the first war of the twenty first century to bring the nation into a post modern ironic sense of our identity. I wonder what effects this moment will have on architecture, fashion, and all the other factors that influence the way people live. Will this be an ultimate version of post modernism, now that nobody can cling to the irony free past which was so much simpler than this world which we now all know that we live in.