Only Hate the Road When You’re Missing Home

I’m back.

My return journey, including a compelled overnight stop in New Jersey, has deposited me back in Boston, where I’ll have to settle for this boring view from my apartment:

In the past, the return journey has always carried with it a sense of dénouement – gratitude that this happened but disappointment that it’s over. But this time was different. As must as I enjoyed all the sights and experiences of this trip – and I did – when I took that eastbound ramp onto I-70 out of Terre Haute yesterday, I felt nothing but excitement. I knew that in only 2 days I’d be waking up early and once again stumbling down Mission Hill and up Huntington Avenue towards NUSL. I knew that soon I’d be back in my routine of morning classes, afternoon reading, and evening freedom. I knew I’d soon have the chance to complain about classes and professors to people who felt the same way (or who would tell me I was wrong). And most importantly, I knew that soon I’d see my school friends and classmates again and have the chance to share with them more of the “Breakfast Club moments” that made this year so special – and that every mile I drove would bring me closer to that. My speedometer rarely dipped below 80.

Back to the Future

I don’t usually make concrete New Years’ resolutions. I do, however, find some meaning in that moment when the calendar rolls over to the next year. It’s a time to reflect on the past year, put away its baggage, turn the page, and look forward. With all that in mind, while I wanted to add a final chapter to the story of Steve and the Magical Boat, after the new year it just felt strange to cross that line in the other direction. So I was ready to be done with this trip, for blogging purposes at least.

But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

We’ve discussed this before, but let’s take a moment to revisit one of the purposes of this whole operation I’ve got going on here. As all 3 of my longtime readers know (actually, now that I think about it, there may be more like 6), I’ve always tried to use this space to capture my impressions of an activity, a place, or a time, and to preserve them. That’s why I often stay up far too late just to be able to write an entry on the day its events occur (protip: you can tell how late I stay up by the quality of the writing, which is inversely proportional to the number of hours since I last saw the sun). Even when my computer self-destructed in Kanab, I made sure to write out the day’s entry longhand on a legal pad (why I thought to bring a legal pad on that road trip is still a mystery).

That’s why, when I got home from the Land of the Midnight Derricks and was too tired to write anything coherent, I resigned myself to the fact that the moment had passed and that the last day would just have to remain a mystery, much like the last day at Yosemite (when, by the way, I climbed up 1,000 feet in a mile and a half. There. Now it’s in the blog.).

But apparently my mid-sized sedan full of followers is a vocal bunch. So, since today’s New England sowgasm has left me with an unplanned day at home, I figured I’d give it a shot.

Where did we leave off?

The Highway Sets the Traveler's Stage

So here we are. My journey has all but come to an end as I pause in New Jersey before completing the last leg back to New England (and before soon embarking on a new long-term journey to Boston). After a mundane driving day (I thought about waking up early to give Shenandoah one more shot at a sunrise but chose instead to sleep until a normal hour), I thought this space would be better spent reflecting on the tumultuous experience that was the past week.

We Have Come This Far, Always Believing

What a strange day. It didn’t really have a beginning, since I went right from writing last night’s post into watching breaking news coverage of what at the time looked like a random crime spree around Boston but that was getting national coverage because all the media in the country was already there. When I decided to go to bed around 2:30 that was still all it was.

From there, things got weird. The first important piece of information is that the Motel 6 sheets were made of some strange material that got much warmer than most sheets. The other key piece of information is that the TV in the room had no sleep timer. Combined, these factors led me to wake up several times during the night to adjust the heat, while also hearing a version of the story that was slightly different from the last one. It wasn’t until 8:00 when the alarm went off that Morning Joe proclaimed “it’s all connected, folks.”

Fire & Rain

We awoke this morning in a fog. It was a fog so thick that the outside world seemed almost to fade away, leaving only Latke and me as survivors within our front-seat universe. Nevertheless we set out, treading slowly and carefully through a world indifferent to our plans and itinerary.