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.

Come Sail Away

And now for something completely different.

Things have changed since our last encounter. The ominous specter of law school became the best decision I’d ever made, as I spent the semester doing intense, yet intensely enjoyable learning and having all manner of new experience. And, in the process, I made what are sure to be lifelong friends. In short, I loved every minute of the past four months.

That said, it’s time for a break. 

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.

I Saw Below Me That Golden Valley

Finally.

After a week of delays, my Great Dixie Adventure culminated with a visit to Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, which was once again open for business. Well, at least the road was open for business. From what I could tell, I seemed to be the only person who knew about that, because I only saw 7 other people during my day in the park. This helped to provide an added measure of privacy and seclusion, because those are two things that Shenandoah, through an unfortunate accident of geography – doesn’t really have going for itself, most of the time.

On the Road Again

I have bad news and good news. The bad news: I appear to have grabbed the wrong AC adapter for my computer and for the moment I have no way to charge it once I use up the remaining 72% of the battery. It looks like I took the adapter from my old computer (you remember the old computer – that’s the one that died in the middle of Utah last summer. It’s the gift that just keeps on giving). Fortunately there also appears to be good news about the bad news: There’s a Best Buy about 20 miles down the road from the middle of Shenandoah National Park and that store purports to carry all manner of AC-adaptive thingers. So my new plan for tomorrow includes getting up a little earlier, doing the first half of the park as scheduled, then taking a 20-mile detour to Harrisonburg, VA before getting back on Skyline Drive and finishing the park in time to get to Blackrock Mountain by sunset. The most disappointing thing about this mistake is that it will certainly introduce more stress into tomorrow morning, much like my quest last summer to “do” Crater Lake one morning and get to a camera store before it closed that evening.

The real good news is that I successfully spent the afternoon in Gettysburg and then made it to world-famous (or not) Front Royal, Virginia without getting a speeding ticket (more on why that’s significant another time).

For I Must Be Traveling On Now

In the immortal words of The Lion King’s Rafiki, “It is time.”

Six months to the day since crossing the Delaware Water Gap and retuning To New Jersey after my 11,000-mile journey west, I again stand upon the precipice of another grand Elantra adventure. Granted, this precipice is not quite as steep, nor is the adventure quite as grand, but it is perhaps more necessary.

For schools in New England, the week of President’s Day is known as February Vacation – a 10-day school recess coming after the post-New Year depression and before the furious 6 weeks of instruction leading to April Vacation and which includes the first rounds of MCAS testing. As Gandalf would say, it is the deep breath before the plunge. Knowing that this would be coming, and suffering from premature cabin fever after last summer’s travels, I began contemplating plans for February Vacation in October. It was never a question of if I would be going somewhere; it was a question of where I’d be going.

The Threads of An Old Life

What a long strange trip it’s been. Over the past 36 hours things have changed drastically as I’ve been plunged headfirst back into the real world. In some ways it feels like I’ve been on the road for years and today marks the beginning of a new life. In other ways it feels like I climbed through the wardrobe into Narnia and while I’ve lived a lifetime in another world, only minutes have passed back here in reality. But to top it off, today I experienced a new phenomenon that really signals the end of the summer – stress.

I’m Not Dead Yet

The reports of my and my blog’s death have been greatly exaggerated. I know I haven’t posted in a few days even after promising that I would, but the truth is that, even though I’ve been plenty busy gallivanting around central New Jersey over the past few days, there just isn’t as much notable stuff to write interestingly about now that my trip is pretty much over.

On Thursday, my sister and parents took me to Joe’s Crab Shack for my birthday dinner. I’d only been to one Joe’s Crab Shack before – an experience which I’ll never be able to completely replicate, since that restaurant now sits at the bottom of Galveston Bay thanks to a hurricane. This time, it involved a big pot of shellfish and a certain person being forced to do a hula dance against his will all because he was fortunate enough to survive 27 years without dying. There may be pictures of that, but they won’t be appearing here. Sorry. But not very sorry.

Coming Home To My People, To the Place Where I Began

Oh, the irony! Naming a post after a song about the struggle for freedom among Soviet Jews in the context of an 11,000-mile journey across the Land of Liberty? Well, I’m doing it anyway. Maybe the juxtaposition of those two images creates a deeper meaning or something. You decide. I drove all day, so I’m too tired.

When I reached the Delaware Water Gap and my trip odometer eclipsed 11,000 miles, I realized that this was the first stretch of road on this whole adventure that I recognized from having driven it once before. Up to this point, everything had been new, even on the return journey, since I took I-70 west and I-80 and 90 back east.

Some magical things tend to happen when you cross into the New York / New Jersey / Connecticut tri-state area. As if flicking a light switch, traffic often comes to an immediate standstill just over any of the borders, for no clear reason. Drivers abruptly change from benign Pennsylvania driving habits to a strong-willed confident New Jersey mindset (and you also tend to encounter more assholes – they’re almost always from New York). People from other parts of the country complain that New Jersey drivers are the nation’s worst, but those people couldn’t be more wrong. The problem is that we all know where we’re going and how to obey the unwritten rules of the road, and you out-of-state critics just can’t keep up with us. To be able to navigate the most complicated network of interstate highways in the country, New Jersey drivers are definitely some of the best of any state.

And 10,000 More To Go

Greetings, faithful readers! Yes, I’m talking to all 3 of you. I come to you tonight from the parking lot of the Flying J service station in Spiceland, Indiana. For those of you who, for some reason, may be unfamiliar with the greater Spiceland area, that’s about 40 miles east of Indianapolis. My plan for today was just to get over the Indiana border, but then I decided I’d keep driving until the end of the Rachel Maddow Show (thank God for the MSNBC simulcast on XM!). As it turned out, just as she was getting to the Best New Thing in the World Today, this Flying J popped up right in front of me.

Today’s adventure seemed to have a natural division right around the Pennsylvania / West Virginia / Ohio border (Yes, I did say West Virginia. Who knew that WV was between PA and OH? So that brings the estimated total for the trip up to 21 states.).

Damn You, Ken Burns

Damn it, Ken. Why’d you have to do this to me? Why, of all the slow contemplative subjects in the American pantheon, did you have to pick the National Parks to document? And why did you have to show all 6 episodes of said documentary, not counting the multiple reruns between new installments, in stunning HD? Life for me was good, Ken. I had a dog, a decent job, and Hebrew School to look forward to twice a week. I had never considered making pilgrimages to any of these “sacred” parks, the way so many of the contributors to your program had. Why’d you have to go and screw that up?