There’s a point in a person’s life, where it becomes easier to romanticize the past than it is to think about an uncertain future. The effects of nostalgia – or more accurately, a yearning for a mythical past that never really existed – have been discussed to death over the past decade or so. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is FRUSTRATION. This isn’t the future that any of us envisioned. I don’t mean in…
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in…
Sitting here now over a month after being home from our epic Hawaii trip, I can’t help but feel a bit of the same melancholy I felt five years ago at the end of our New Zealand trip, as there were quite a few parallels between coming home from that trip and this one. Both involved really rather epic travel itineraries that included long, overnight layovers in California. Both involved a lot of moving around, in a way Ariel and…
So here we are, at the Marriott Residence Inn right outside Los Angeles International Airport. Tomorrow, we board a plane to Hawaii, and I will finally complete a journey I started about 12 years ago. Tomorrow, assuming all goes well, I will finally set foot on my 50th state, which happens to be the 50th state admitted to the United States. Five years after reaching Alaska with Ariel, which was my 49th state (coincidentally the 49th state admitted to the…
Last year, at this time I was on my way home from a (last ever?) business trip in the far reaches of Virginia. Heading home after a day of meetings, I stopped at a local Target to pick up some Clorox wipes and Emergen-C. From there I headed to Shenandoah National Park to watch the sunset. I remember standing there, watching the sun go down by myself. As the sun sank behind the Blue Mountains, I had my own sinking…
As happens every year, December 21st has the distinction of having the most hours of darkness out of any other calendar day. It is also the setting of one of my favorite poems – Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost. A lot of people find this time depressing, especially those that suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. And to be sure, there is a lot to feel depressed about right now, with a global pandemic that is…
I’ve never been a huge U2 fan… I mean sure, Where The Streets Have No Name and Sunday Bloody Sunday were big when I was growing up and all that Mission: Impossible stuff was cool. And what teenager didn’t have With Or Without You or I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For on repeat at some point after being dumped by their girl/boyfriend. So when I saw I was passing near Joshua Tree National Park, like anyone who was…
After a short break from my epic solo road trip to fulfill a prior commitment in Washington, DC for a few days, I traded in my suits, conference centers, and luxury of sleeping in the same bed for three nights in a row, for t-shirts, dusty cargo shorts, and living out of a car for a month. It was definitely a strange experience to be heading (by train) to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, just a few hours from home, knowing…
As I was heading north through South Dakota on the “Road To Nowhere” (US-83) I realized I was only a couple of hours away from the North Dakota border. Not knowing if I’d ever have the opportunity to set foot in and get credit for a very remote state (I actually ended up in North Dakota seven years later anyway), I decided to go about five hours out of my way to check that box. As I neared the border…
When deciding to drive cross country, you’re going to want to pick out a few must-see locations on your journey and try to find interesting ways to get there. For me, I actually pieced together a few different routes using a terrific resource called RoadTrip USA. They have a list of many different routes you can take across the USA – primarily following old two-lane highways that predate the interstate system created in the 1950’s. I recommend this whenever possible,…