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!

West Out My Window

“My West Windows”

Filling our car windshield with a west-moving view of the United States? That dream! When Americans gained the ability to drive- and to build their own answer to the automobile, the self-made car men of old, building muscle cars to righteous freedom-now, the promises of a casteless system called. Now with wheels, you could make another part of the continental U.S. your next.

Home, this point in our story, is wagon-like. We begin our journey, passing my family’s house, remarking on a friend who lives behind a mud moat-hidden driveway off a country road. He believed in what we did as musicians; it made Steve and Claudia very happy, anyone wanted to make their own songs, and he latched onto a good one, “Dear Future,” and asked especially to record that. I’m glad we got at least the one try.

Active pathways to career progression, as it were, different ways of living, these were all offered as illusions in these years. Creativity found its way through us, one way or the other, and whenever free of worry, through the salvation of our own jobs out of our own homes on our own schedule, and all the times before that boon, many cool ideas were explored. Difficulty in developing: this was the very challenge facing the friends I knew who were parents, and the emergent identity of our communities, and developing creative projects to take out into the wilderness, like music tours, national comic books, a cartoon, a computer game driven by stories written as many choices to follow all around a haunted manor, even a documentary about continuing these pursuits over times of little glory; all in all, I still had to try the rest of my patience, four years after another illusion provided by promised long term unemployment benefits, cut down in winter by the new Congress, had placed me in a Waffle House uniform. That Waffle House is on the same highway we took out of town. There was no more visiting. We wanted to make Metropolis at night fall.



Home, now, is whatever is packed into the four -by-eight Uhaul trailer, and the 2004 Saturn Vue. Not so much a rocket ship, again, as a covered wagon. We drove about half our average speed, tops, along the curves leading up from downtown Summerville into 117. We drive past the place where we went out to cover and write the Tiny Homes story for V3 Magazine. We recognized the adventure scale of the mountain pass. Not relaxing, so much, but temptingly beautiful. I imagined my Grand Dad and his brothers and sisters, coming over here to the highway side to see the world from these Appalachian Trail foothills. I always found more mystery and romance in the Georgia land north of Rome, but never lived there myself. We drove steadily in the four o’clock hour across the Alabama Line. I thought of the creek where people in the Tiny Homes community might paddle and drift, crossing this line. Right now, this is our Tiny Home. We’ve homestead in Boulder.

We pondered: what makes one town, population 556- not ‘blow up’ as big as, say, Rome, 35,600? What makes you leave one town, be it five hundred, like the one Paw Paw left, or five hundred thousand, like St. Louis and Kansas City and Denver along our way? What makes the number of people stay small, some places, and what makes people, anywhere, decide they feel a ‘home’ call for them in some other city? Desperation? Something to do?

There probably were not five hundred people there when Grandpa, his four siblings, was it, and mother and father lived there. Still along those roads between Menlo and Lyrely you can find scenes untouched by five decades of human progression, buildings first hammered together over a century before. We ate some delicious fried green tomatoes served by a cute waitress, greens for me, too, and a cheeseburger for Marc, as I wondered what it’d be like to pursue romance from a location like this. But that was during the assignment- I remember how different Armuchee felt as we drove back into it after a day away in the mountains. I would’ve loved to go on writing assignments every week. I was glad to need a Moe’s Monday off for it. No contest.

He composed the driest and clearest prose possible. Grandpa’s hobby his last years was dedicated to study of the past, the lineage and the people they knew. The people more often than not could be found as names with a little, if any, dry detail, but I can’t deny he clearly found escape from grandmother’s Alzheimer’s, that long two decades of sliding out of ability to care for herself, imagining old times. Her living absence haunted our country home always. Your life is a lot different with your Grandmother involved, you know? I remember Christmas visits to Uncle Harold Gene and Aunt Vivian’s house. First I recall, Mom’s Grandma was alive, in a trailer in their back yard, before what became soy fields. She liked how my Dad would come watch Rasslin’ with her, on visits to the farm with Mom. I am happy we got together for those holidays, when the brothers and sisters were living. I could indulge two hours of writing of those visits. So, I’d come along these roads, or along some divergent, parallel choice outside Lyrely, where you pick up the highway further north, but we almost certainly were driven by Dad on 117. But really, I liked how well the family generally got along on road trips. Our family today, no exception.

I can’t help feeling close to my Dad’s spirit, on these drives. I am glad I became a good driver for him, and for me, and for the lady co-piloting with phone directions to check off the miles between the four highway turns between us and I-24 up to Nashville.

I remember hearing about ‘Adairsville’ in the early direction discussions, where Mom and Dad tried the routes suggested by Paw Paw. All I really got was a picture of another country town, always pine trees, in reality, the one hosting Alpine School in the days my Grandfather White was a school boy. And a word association that evoked the corner box illustration on each month’s Daredevil comic book. I had maybe ever seen even one in real life. Back then, every single comic book delivered such an impact of information collection, I’ve successfully recovered my childhood from around these and other natural pleasures, too.

Then, we pass the metal knight- we had not planned to stop, we’d planned to spend about six hours driving- but he was on the left facing west. Then, individually-colored store fronts stand out on either side of the highway, as you go through the tourist heart of Mentone, Alabama, west of the fields where Roy William White grew up. The 1960s Flower Power aesthetic, charmingly alive on the Alabama line; how could I not think of Janet and Gill visiting there, and memories their happy journey evoked for me? This was one place cool to take a date. This was a way sign for us, what belonged in our new way. Yes, there had been Trump signs in and around town, privately, and that would be a thread all the way to the upside-down distress-style flight of the American flag on the corner by the Deer’s Trail gas station. But that just goes to show, how normal it is to be part of that craziness, in the region given to us both to begin life.

I surprise us both, adjusting to the open highway back over the corner of the state back across Georgia and quickly then, Tennessee. We were on our third state, less than two hours after we finally dropped off our key with Candace. From here the journey resumed its westward characterization. I pause now to watch the gentle snow joining the first coating to stick since our arrival, lying on the banks and parking lots here east of the Flatirons. I have to lean up to see the mountains at 9 AM, because there’s a fog-like snow cloud shroud that makes the entire skyline, gray. The striking image, then, is the snow along the pine needles. A sight like this, where we left on day one, would be a wonder. The needles have all the snow cover they could hold- frozen now, as it’s still probably twelve F at most, which is nearly negative that, Celsius!

My west window, now, has the first of five mountains where I think we will find a lot of adventure, and we will become very healthy here in the city by their side. The mountain passes, there in Tennessee, seem cleaved by dynamite and careful chiseling, though these highways likely did begin where water ran downward. Even our lives, another humble passage of water to another place of less resistance. Lazy water. I asked how the phone charge looked, as I digested the first road snacks- all pastry, Goldfish, things you needn’t refrigerate- I’d shared with my love. Then, could she put on “Steel Wheels”? I hadn’t listened, I realized, since I was still a high schooler! One play through the album took me to the heart of Tennessee, across some bridges of notable size across a river landscape. I thought of our nephews and niece who had lived up this way, the visit to see DJ, the one camping trip where he sadly couldn’t join us, but, we were all together, the biggest group of the family for the last time, really, including cousin Heather and Eric/ Sara. I drew the creek there at the campsite, where Row and her sisters played. I see Colorado whiteness now, and wonder when I will first draw its wild places? Jeremy Justice had asked what were the ten haulin’ ass Rolling Stones tracks for driving, and along with the classic rock staples, I volunteered two numbers off ‘Steel Wheels.’ It was nice to make contact with those memories, as I effortlessly remember so many of the lyrics I’d once read inside my cassette. That was me and my friends, marching band that year, ’89, jamming out on the bus. .I enjoyed the quiet times, too, which set up the circumstances making a visit to a Love’s truckstop like a trip to the Varsity. She helped me realize we’d left our vitamins behind.

All my ill-temperedness was over, no longer would I sweat the small stuff, as so much of my subconscious energy had gone to converting me from a Roman to roaming. “Roman to Roaming.” We hoped we could find vitamins in a mart that size. I looked at the map on the way to our first bathroom, and realized how far I’d driven away now from my Mom.

I soon joined her, picking out hot dogs at a social distance. Man, they were good! The promise they might be delicious, the thought of the different kinds, was in a way more satisfying than my chili dogs were, but hers were exactly what she wanted. We enjoyed them out in the parking lot.

She watched at least two occasions where someone took money and then worked out, surely, a drug deal.

All business as usual, with a Mom and little girl going inside, too. That place was about 70% masked, maybe two dozen people in our time there. I’d written on Facebook about some neighbor walking his dog in the Redmond Chase parking lot, wondering for a moment if he might’ve become a friend. On the road, you don’t have that illusion at all, which is kind of better, as it is true, you will not see the vast majority of the people you are meeting, again. Whether they worked in the store, frequented it, or lived in the far-away, rich-looking hermitages of people in south Tennessee, you'd remain forever after, barring viral transmission, far apart, more likely a memory of the traveler.

I left the South happy, playing "Get Out the Mad House"- "Hold On To Your Hat"- my way of living it this one day. We'd talked about the social madhouse so much, and now, we were feeling a growing sense of ease. We're leaving behind expectations of who we're supposed to be, says the Marc Kane. Covid probably eliminated beforehand any thought of a four or five day trip, enjoying these cities. How nice, to have looked in on Nashville, but we had no plan to unpack and unhitch.

If you were simply on vacation driving, you could rest day one near Nashville, and day two, near St. Louis; but navigating the innards of those cities is a challenge its own, which we intended to generally bypass. The longest parts of the trip, for me, were usually whenever we were in some kind of city limits. You could go to Kansas City for day three, and I can’t-say-where on the line between Kansas and Colorado, but further west, for sure, than Hayes, you go somewhere out-of-the-way and chill, before the excitement of the drive into Boulder! Yes, it would’ve been lovely to arrive there by 4 PM, on any day. Even topping eighty across western Kansas, however, couldn’t put us in shot before that last challenging wave of fatigue hits during a rush hour, on the elevated highways outside Denver! Now there, even, might have been a great Day Four stop, to come to Boulder on Day Five, totally relaxed, safe, sound, and able to unload and return the Uhaul by 6!



> Yes. That would’ve been nice.

Three days? Nasty.



But this reduced the coronavirus risk, and despite the hitch hick-up, we’d had the trailer by sunset on Monday, and Mama followed my nervous drive back to make her single ever visit to our Redmond Chase Apartment. It was just as well, because there wouldn’t be any more memories made there. The resolve matched the brutality of the task, but it was all made of free will in the face of adversity. The sights of Nature seen in a single day would’ve taken aback a traveler, a century past. But after we took a chance finding an exit with gas by passing along the edge of town, we figured our way back in the I-24 direction. I was still nervous, but she had more distance inside the gas station than I had, she said, by the pumps, so, good. Word of advice: alert your bank, espcially if you're on a long-term trip or permanent move, so your zip code will match your billing address.

Now, every time we re-assured ourselves of the right direction, there was a renewal of forward intent. Every time you’re sure you’ve taken the right exit ramp is a small, personal human victory, in a day and age where a trip like this is largely taken for granted as possible. Utterly sober the whole way, I remember being in a good mood again as we pressed on through state four, Kentucky, but I really wanted Kentucky to simply end. Dark miles of pastures and woods, I felt the wear of each passing vehicle now, and of passing each vehicle, which at least offered an adrenaline shot. Fight-or-flight, reawakens, as you try and roar down an highway, safely, re-assuring yourself with estimates then, finding Paducah is still indeed some ways south of Metropolis. It’s getting late, for a day that began with a couple or so hours’ teaching, a forty-five minute phone call, my last lapsing upon our foam mattress we’d leave, lots of packing into the trailer (begun by a third the night before). I only wish we’d gotten somewhere early enough for me to seriously go get the big container of her MK Jades out of the Uhaul, that night and the next. Hard to say what besides bringing that big guy up into the Saturn with the cats would’ve saved it, though. I didn’t mean to live our lives so recklessly as to cost her plants their lives. They were sacrificed to last-minute expediency, so the guitars stayed in the Saturn and came in with us at night. At least once, though, I brought the one box of plants. That box, which stayed in the back of the car the whole time? Still living.

I’m sorry I don’t have the most interesting parts of the conversation then, but we didn’t find our Super 8 until a quarter to eleven, I believe, Central Time, but even if it was quarter to ten, eight hours mostly spent driving, now. This was a preview how B.S. the average rate is represented in Google Direction time estimates! I think an hour came from roads I didn’t intend, usually related to stops and starts, definitely including those, but clearly this first quarter of our journey kept us out later and in more frigid temps than I’d planned. My grouchiest couple of moments the whole trip were probably muddled away somewhere entering a Super 8, though I was otherwise just glad to be in off the road. Next: I'm Here To Destroy Superman!