Kansas, no place like home (Thoughts traveling from Rome, GA to Boulder, CO, conclusion)

There is not a lot to tell about what we saw on the way through Kansas and eastern Colorado. I can describe the exotic mountains and the way the highway climbs over these ridges without rail guards, where you can feel how, one turn of the wheel, and who knows how you’d do, making it down that slightly-dizzying slope? The highway was a means to an end. This was the day we finally saw our new home. I did not have the luxury of documenting everything in video and pictures; they might help, but I guess you must drive these things yourself.

We went into a McDonald’s to get her breakfast, rather than take the Uhaul through another drive-thru. This carryout order was our first time inside a restaurant in so long, and we were the only ones, no dining. The lady who took my order was very friendly; since it was so quiet, she pointed out, she brought our take-out over to me as I waited by the bathroom. I’d stopped to take a selfie in the silk scarf student Peter had sent me from China, and an N95 mask, sent by student Sophia and her Mom, when our country was hit hardest and masks, in competitive, limited supply.

I enjoyed a few fries, and her Quarter Pounder was definitely superior to the double cheese. I was trying not to eat too much. That morning, somewhere around my quick shower, I’d tried microwaving a cup of Mac n’ Cheese donated by Charlie. Then, I couldn’t find a spoon, so, I tried to make do with a toothbrush. That doesn’t work. That barely works at all! So, I warm up the Taco Bell layered burrito (what, rice?) I’d refrigerated after yesterday’s ride. I can’t spare the toothbrush, gunked in cheese sauce, from the trash. The burrito made an edible tool. I ate about half the macaroni cup using the burrito as snow lay settled outside our window in Salina, Kansas. We were on track to get out again close to eleven. I’d realized along the way, if you had to hit the hotel late, it’s better to stay and rest up the next morning. Your next arrival gets later, but once you’re behind the wheel, Rest is Gold.

I needed to put out a, I think, non-refundable $4.50 to guarantee I could get my Expedia reservation secured and, if we couldn’t make it, the money returned. When you are trimming expenses, you think you are going to make it to every hotel stop, because, why wouldn’t you? I misunderstood when I could cancel for full refund- if you go Expedia, you can’t, that day, sometimes, that must’ve been an earlier stop with those terms. So, rather than begin this day in Hayes, we had begun further east, 90 miles east, or was it 90 minutes, in Salina. I chose right, because Wednesday night was a day where I did not miss all the snow as I had hoped, but it’d been quite passable, but I had spent more time in St. Louis than I intended, and all-in-all, for every good laugh we’d salvaged on the way to find the Taco Bell in Missouri, all these steps had cost us about 12 hours drive-time. Maybe I thought I could make it as far as Hayes, even Wednesday night, but I was relieved, after turning around on that one early exit and highway, to get in and settle. What have I not captured? I didn’t quite put up every single photo of the Superman Square. I’ll put together a nice album of them in one last post.

I have quite a few for the Mittens Travel Shop. It’s so many posts and I’ll share them where else they’re appropriate.

I could mention the time we stopped in a Triple J, and she came out with some amazing coffee that empowered me to make it three more hours Wednesday night. That’s where I chopped the ice off the headlights. Wow! We’d developed an icy coating over the entire outside of Rom. Our car had a hint of voyaging cold space. Very regular Missouri and Kansas conditions- a surprise, a show of our vulnerability to the elements, unnoticed in the reliable safety of our Saturn.

On the long stretches of open highway, I want to tell you, I turned the mirror, so I could see how beautiful is the face of my passenger. I loved that gentle smile. After all, I could see nothing directly behind me over the Uhaul; I relied on side mirrors, at least one of which, I realize, is now cracked. A look at her, and I remember why I endure the drive. Yes, I’d love to have gotten more fit, had less belly to strap in! But when you see the person whose life will be better, if you do this thing, it all becomes meaningful.

I wanted to describe that, and the tightness in my hands, driving. I had to remember, especially after the four hour point each day, relax. Tighten up to keep the wheel controlled, but loosen the shoulders, roll the neck when you can; ease up on clutching the wheel you hold for dear life, as most everyone flies by even faster, and sometimes, as you take on the rocket role, yourself.

I thought of how, in thinking of what is best for us, I might’ve wished I could take everyone else- but maybe they are happy where they are.

I think I can wrap it up in one segment. Sometimes the days felt like two days- they all kinda did.

Did I mention how most often, we lived completely present there on the road? Did I say the mood was good most of the way, and for every pang of conscience at leaving people behind, there was still a bright hope for what life could be like, in the new city?

Even in the modern era, with Internet and pictures, leaving is a bit like dying; a way of life is passing away.

I felt reverence for it. I couldn’t be superficial, as though we were only going for a vacation somewhere brilliant.

Have I mentioned how much I understand the ritual now of a Going Away Party? How much I see you need that time spend once again, one more reminder, one more exchange of what is now, what will be, what was? How much the person leaving really needs that gathered offering of Love and Kindness, because there is a burden in each isolated quest we take away from the tribe?

How I thought of the little favors, like the road snack food, the visits I’ll miss. There’s something profoundly sad, at the same time we’re driving towards one more possible place for our dreams. Even with the pandemic on, we would at least once a month or so go down to visit, even if I wondered often were we being cautious enough.

The hardest part, for me, was dealing with what our absence would mean to other people. I was sorry for everyone now who at least took comfort in us living nearby. Now those visits were no longer among the possibilities when this ended. All the maybe-friendships, now packed away. I realized a good many people I thought I’d see down the road, I’d never seen, likely, again.

I want to say, the issue really is, how can I show my appreciation, and see my friends as part of what makes their city, good? Take the friend who came to our apartment, Mo, so she could pick up her signs. With those signs, she let people know she was running to be Superior Court Clerk. I am so proud of her! We were all reminded, four out of five people who vote in Floyd County, vote for a Republican- maybe, no matter what. They are very tradition-oriented, and rather than understand what Democrats say, it is easier to not think about politics and try to vote best for whomever will keep everything as much the same as possible.

Here's the book, based on Volume ONe of these columns! Mo is the central friend of the people I liked most in Rome. She makes Rome seem like a place something special can happen. Thanks to her invitation, we met her friend, Erin, who led an effort to raise money to help people affected by a tsunami in the Phillipines. Bridge The Sea: we hoped it would be only one of many times we would play original and cover songs, for a good audience. I like the idealism of Erin, Mo, and Mary, who made the extra effort to come talk and sit with us during the pizza dinner after we played, on the top floor of Mellow Mushroom. We had made a new music demo at a studio that fall. Maybe we had not planned to stay in Rome, and living with family, we tried living away in Rockmart and Cedartown, which were so far from what we wanted to do and see. But even in those towns, someone is always trying to make something colorful and special exist. I will tell you about the Rock and the United showcase of artists, from that first year, sometime. We hoped to be part of whatever there was. We didn’t know how sorrowfully lonely it would be from my perspective. I have always been amazed how the Marc Kane never seems to need anyone but me. If you had to need anyone else, Mo and her friends, like Thomas, her husband Hai, Jeremy, Mary, Erin- her bandmates!- those were cool people, friends with pretty cool people, too. There was a time for parties, occasionally, and there is more to tell. We both have known how difficult the Coronavirus era has been, how very against our feelings and reflections were these times in Northwest Georgia. “I will be sure to tell people out west how there are unique individuals,” I told Mo, “different than what you might think everyone’s like.” (And truthfully, outside our region, how many people really had an idea what we were like, so much as we seemed to have, ourselves?)

“Yes,” says Mo, “we’re hidden here!” And ‘hide’ is exactly the feeling, describing how hard we are to find.

“We’ve all gone through a trauma together,” Mo wisely put it. “The day is coming, when we start to see what artists make, to finally respond, share our observations of this time. A lot of artists are in stasis right now. But the trauma is lifting. One day there will be a lot to say.”

It’s true. I dropped off a painting we made, over the summer, for Mo’s charity auction. I took the Girl Playing Tennis over to the road perpendicular to that modest court in the park. When I left the painting- in a wrapper provided when my friend Mark England had mailed me a manuscript about Egyptologists encountering vampires during Victorian adventures-I realized sadly how, this whole time, Tom and his family hadn’t been a mile away. The street to his house could be reached just off Redmond Road. Early on, he’d suggested, when he saw us hilariously trying to learn Tennis, that we could all gather in the yard and talk one day- that should be safe. He and Katie were on a stroll, her on her bicycle. My request to find the house specifically wasn’t seen, once, and he wasn’t home the other time. It’s a pity, because we all needed a change.

Tom got his friends together, apparently before and early on in the lockdown spring, to record his wife singing beautiful and upbeat country and folk standards. Now, like my copy, he was giving away the printing, an amazing gesture to have on hand. We were happy to get it, even if our CD player didn’t work, darn it. Art had lived during this time. Artists would have something to say. It wouldn’t all be in reply to our culturally-embattled Corona response. Some would simply be there to remind us what life was like, before.

I looked, but the book I’d dedicated to her daughter the year she was born, I couldn’t find where I thought I left it. Why had everything stopped coming together in Rome? The book was begun for my friend, T.J., another, gone-too-young ally, most greatly missed. That’s why I began writing posts just like this one: I intended to catch him up on my life, as I’m doing, here. I admitted I was sorry to go, because now when the pandemic was over, I would still not see the friends I moved to town to spend the last year with. The waiting for someone as outgoing as I had been excruciating to accept. The chance to begin again would probably come sooner in Boulder than Rome- the sheer number of people, vaccinated- but who knows.

I sat at the doorstep, with the lady, her purple-streaked dyes, expressing to me how happy she was that we found a place in Boulder. It sounds like the kind of place we might all like to go live, you know. She was the person who gave out our names again. It was her friends who wanted to make a documentary, one I am now gaining a new life to provide an ending to that footage, if we can get together again.

! And any time we played live, even just with friends, we either had Dixie and Charlie present, or to thank, or even remembered in a song. They did the most to make Rome feel like home, even when the time we’d meant to go, passed by, on resources again promised and taken away. They offered company and tried to make it more than life somewhere, stranded and unappreciated.

I felt most sorry for Dixie and Charlie because we were about the only company, and were good company at that. Our visit the week of Christmas was laugh-a-minute for long stretches. I will miss their friendship in person. I miss going home with groceries donated by Charlie because it is good to be loved that way. I wish I didn’t have to make anyone sad to make this move. How do you move on to a better life, guided only by a feeling and some fore-knowledge, without making people sad they don’t know when you’ll spend time together again?

The other reason I want to hang on to the details is, this is likely the last trip like this we’ll ever make. Maybe we’ll move across the country again one day, and maybe not, but I want to savor this one. It carried a sense of loss, along with so many happy thoughts. I realized, one more day, and never again would our home in Boulder be imaginary. This last time, we’d try to picture Boulder and what we might do there and what life might be like, and from this day on, we’d have a solid idea of our home and our new stamping grounds.

I want to catch that feeling you get when you unpack for the night as lightly and logically as possible. You know morning will come, and if you leave anything, you’ll never see it again. She went back in to the Metropolis Super 8 for our phone charger! It was tough enough that our cigarette lighter doesn’t work, so we had to conserve our phone, the main source of tunes, and only source of directions.

We had to take care in the stores. Our trip inside to order McDonald’s was the first time we’d been inside a restaurant together in a year. It’s hard to imagine we’ve been hearing about this, so long.

Under the contemporary situation, it was a small relief to have just a cursory glance at the news. We drove across long miles with Trump billboards and yard signs- never Biden/Harris. The White House was busy making government work again where it did not, yet we talked daily, but now with good-humor, about the Republican Party’s Trump question. Somehow the anger and fear and concern were now set-aside, for the directness of watching the road, staying present, feeling the potential danger and imagining, in too-tired a state, the hitch detaching and sitting suddenly in front of anyone behind us. That minor catastrophe was no real threat, and I resolved to stop the dark fantasies about side-swiping vehicles. I can barely understand how I can function with so many disturbing images, keeping me awake and alert with low-level stress. You’re in the middle of something you can’t simply stop; you’re obligated to see the whole ride through. The biggest blessing out there, in between displays of Nature, is the ability to go as fast as humanly possible!

There’s really only the non-masker graphitti on back of a truck, Badfinger and Stevie Wonder tunes in a groovy 70s set that included “September”- one of the quintessential 1970s songs, by Earth, Wind and Fire.


Around noon, there was the elk we saw running across a snow-dusted field on her side, and the store where you could go upstairs and take a walk through what I believe was the actual taxidermied heads and bodies of the wildlife nearby. I was eager to go up and do that one; we were distanced, the animals took you to all those places in Kansas/ Colorado you might never seen, and honestly, anywhere safe and out-of-the-weather was welcome, so, perfect.

Deer Trail, our last tank-up, where I discovered our license plate, gone. She bought some stones for her plant pots, decorated by the store clerk, who painted them as animals.

This song reminds me of something the Marc Kane said in reply to it. "That's a little how I feel," she said. "Free of people's expectations. Like I drove miles away from what they thought I should be, what I should allow, who they expected me, and family, to be!" Aside from feeling tired and confused and getting a bit turned-around out of highway uncertainty along S-431- my God, what if this wasn’t the way to Boulder? Are we looking instead for the place to pick up U.S. 36?

She tried taking us along an alternative through a town, to pick up 36 and drive straight in. I was sorry I hadn’t mapped the specs of the road bypassing Denver, but I thought it’d be as simple as following an exit. Why keep the way to Boulder a secret?

Was there a way to pick up with the narrative about Superman's visitors in little Metropolis? You could make it car thieves, you could make it weed traffickers, but you bring Superman into their path a couple of times, I guess. Be funny if they drive on to Colorado and forego their heist. Then Superman happens along with their stolen license plate, outside Denver?

It is a land of gigantic proportions out here. As the sun sets, and you are weary, you do not want to be caught in the speedy rush hour traffic!

I felt nausea just looking how high up these roads are suspended. It’s beautiful, but not what you want to drive, tired. Not when you are trying to go to fix what has gone awry in your body.

But rather than detail all that, let me say, she grew tired, and uncertain of her ability to help, and needed a bathroom stop, where we could re-orient. As she went inside, I felt a wave of compassion for her. I imagined that dear woman, stuck here at the kindness of strangers, if I simply couldn’t wait to get back on the road. This was a sign, if I could utilize any human quality, now, Patience. Think of all the long miles she’s come with you, I thought. Think of the sacrifices she’s made to come to this new home, so far away. I thought of how vulnerable she was, after embracing this journey without hesitation- after mulling over all our options together with me, for all these years. I thought of how very much she deserves this last trek to her new home. She deserves the best life she can find, there. Now, endure whatever turn-arounds there might be, figuring out which crossing exit is the one we need, ignoring the time and resources spent looking for another parking lot off another road where we didn’t really belong.

Traveling seems to be everything. But you are actually almost Home.

Now, this, too, can go towards the end:

I did try to order us delivery of a new mattress, to go with our successfully-packed frame, from Broomfield, CO. I stayed up a little extra long to concentrate on that, before bedding down in Salina. Already it was Thursday, so, the soonest I could get it delivered would be Saturday, the 31st. If I thought that was bad, wait ‘til I found out that order was canceled, and my recognition of it that night hadn’t gotten it put through, so, we ‘d be spending five nights on a palette. But thanks to this Thursday drive, now we were going to actually make it. Somehow.

I did consider getting one last hotel room- we did get a call in Salina from our Hayes reservation. So, we burned one, anyway, but it was like $46. There were other losses to be revealed in the transit, and there was exhaustion from all it had cost us in every way. But we didn’t stay somewhere comfortable with iffy-Wi-Fi; she was teaching by 1 AM Friday morning.

Upon arrival at Lashley Lane, we managed to unload the entire UHaul and Saturn, in time to also carefully back out of the complex parking lot, and find Drift before they closed. They were very friendly and helpful. I soon discovered nearly everyone working with the public’s very pleasant, out here.

I think I was running on the push to keep moving through Friday, when I got up, delivered the Uhaul across town, and got new Insurance. I remember how it felt, driving with that Uhaul empty behind me now. It felt like a natural part of the whole, almost like a companion to me in my days of need. As I gave it up, the fellow who unhitched me, Jason Robinson, told me his story of making a similar-length drive from California, in the middle of bad Utah snow weather with his classic car towed behind his Uhaul truck. He told me where he now lives and hangs out, an open offer to be a friend, not twenty-four hours after arrival. >My body, still riding on the cocktail it summoned to surmount our trial, soaked in the pleasure of the sunny day and the promises of that talk and sights of South Broadway, even stopping for what was surely to be a necessary Starbuck Espresso in the very-nearby King Sooper’s before turning home. Illness was finally to catch up with me, but my first memories, the sweet-looking neighbors and the big white dog on his walk, the multitude of mirrors, our Cosmo Pizza (I felt guilty for not eating more cheaply, simply), the sheer motivation to see it all through, had established the real ending of this trip. I was here two more days before I realized fully, we were not packing out again in the morning, everything we own on wheels. Home to stay!