Day: big fat ZERO

Greetings from…

Highland, California!

Due to Snafu’s I won’t trouble you with, we are still in California.

Grrrr!

At one point it seemed as though we might be able not leave at all!

If you know me well in everyday life, you know that I have a hard time sitting still. My mind is always halfway into what’s next and I can’t do any one thing effectively for very long. The same wanderlust that landed me in LA and has me embarking on this journey.

You can imagine how I felt sitting here all day not going anywhere. For weeks I could see it vividly in my mind, us rolling down the highway our playlists going our eyes taking in the deserts California, Arizona and New Mexico.

At this point things have worked out –potentially. We can’t leave till tomorrow morning still and I can’t quite allow myself to believe it completely till we actually are rolling down the highway.

Our new route is in orange. The old one left is the dotted pink line.

I am going to have to change our route a bit. No more time for scenic drives, now it will have to be Interstates. Balls to the wall the whole way :(

Want to hear God laugh? Tell him about your plans.

The funny thing—that’s ‘funny “hmmm” not ‘funny’, “ha ha”—is that I have been pretty well organized for this trip. It’s seems unfathomable that it came unglued so easily, so early on .

Exactly ten years ago made this same trip for the same reason—my parents’ 40 anniversary. I left directly after work one day and drove for the next thirty or-so hours before spending a night in Iowa. 

I did very little planning. My old car, was a stick shift, had no AC, no cruise control, only a cassette player and its cooling system was dying gradually throughout the trip. On the way home, I stopped at every single rest stop in the state of Nebraska to add cool water to the radiator. Everything I needed I got along the way. I even got my hair cut in Waterloo, Iowa.

Yet, even with not a lot of money in my wallet, I was never impeded. When it was time go, I went.

I have been using the day of waiting to work on my road trip playlists.

I had created previously a master playlist with everything I wanted—over four-hundred songs/1.3 days worth of music according to iTunes. Today I broke those tunes up into 11 sub playlists. A general list for general all purpose travel music. Other playlists “Desert Day”, “City”, “Momentum” (for songs that have that an extra push… for the times when we need one), “Nighttime” and “Rain”.

There are three albums we are planning on listening to from start to finish. Iona, "Book of Kells", Jim Schreck, "Atmospheres" and a Dubb/Reggae version of "Dark Side of the Moon" called (of course) "Dubb Side of the Moon" By the Easy Star Allstars. I know, a Reggae version of The Pink Floyd classic sounds like it would be horrible but it's actually really, really cool!

Also a friend of mine handed me some disks the other day of stuff he had burned for our trip. I have no idea what's on those disks but I can't wait to give them a spin!

I’m in better spirits now but I was not so cheery last night and the first half of today let me tell ya. The emotional drain along with a nearly sleepless night, has me struggling to stay awake as I write this.

Fear not though. I am a very good long distance driver. I know my limits and when to stop.

We'll be driving hard but that doesn't mean I'll be driving at excessive speeds, just that we'll be driving very long days without much stopping. This new route is admittedly pretty boring and one I have taken several times before. If we get outta here successfully tomorrow morning, like a prisoner released, I will see even the most mundane sights with eager eyes.