Traveling. A New Start.

(This is long, under the cut are the stats from my trip to Santa Fe.)

Every morning I get up and think "today I'm going to update the blog."

Seriously, that's what I do every morning.

Then I eat breakfast, hang out with Nena before she leaves for work and sit down to work on the mammoth blog entry that will herald my return to the universe.

But, that never happens. I'm just not feeling the post. It was going to be a long one about driving down from Chicago to Santa Fe and all the things I thought and felt along the way. Maybe I'll finish it some day. But I don't really think so.

The drive down from Chicago was amazing and cathartic. I spent the first day thinking about high school and the person I was when I was an 18 year old kid who didn't know shit about shit. I passed exit signs for hometowns of people I used to know and who used to know me. I thought about things that didn't matter 10 years ago and matter even less now, like who I went to prom with and people I was nice to and mean pranks we never did pull off on people that deserved them only because they were teenagers like us, occupying the same histo-industrial space as we did.

I drove that first day thinking about who I was and who I've been during my time in the Midwest, and who I was as I left this region of the country that I've always called home.

By the time I got to Fesser's place in Springfield, it felt good to be there. Good to be spending time with an old friend that'd never disappear like those exit signs along I-39 or 55. We spent the evening doing things we've never really done, but should have started doing long ago. We sat around and drank beer and watched the Home Run Derby (one of my favorite sporting events of the year) and talked about things that didn't really matter.

The same way I spent much of my month in Chicago hanging out with Gunder and ChückGünder talking about nothing important and everything that matters, I spent a night in Springfield making up for lost time with a friend I don't spend nearly enough time with.

When I left in the morning it was raining, not a hard rain, but one hard enough to make the drive out of town an adventure. As I sped up, the rain began to pick up speed to match me and by the time I was wondering what the hell kind of directions Fesser had given me (really good ones as it turned out) visibility was a luxury I couldn't really afford.

I made my way across St. Louis, cursing my lack of familiarity with the city and the way it killed my chance to stop and fully take in the beauty of New Busch and the Arch. I know I'm a Cubs fan and I'm supposed to hate all things redbird, but I'll be damned if that isn't a beautiful new stadium.

And on and on across the Mississippi Valley one more time. On this day I found myself wishing that someplace, somewhere I'd taken the time to read a geologic history of the United States. Something that explains how things got to be the way they are and what things were before they were what they appear to be today. Something about glaciers and pressure and time. I think I'd like that book, though I don't think I'll ever be in a position to write that book.

By the time I got to Springfield, I was amused with myself. Two quick drives down in as many days and a nice place to stay in another town named Springfield.

It was good to see Cheryl and meet her new friends and sample her new life, but I couldn't help but feel slightly out of place the entire time. This isn't a knock on Cheryl or her hospitality at all, but, well. Springfield wasn't where I wanted to be. A bar in downtown was even less where I needed to be. I'd much rather be home with my wife, or catching up with old friends and this was, in reality, neither of those things.

That's why I went to bed mentally preparing myself for one last day on the road, a non-stop shot from Springfield, to Santa Fe.

I got up the next morning and drove. I drove it like I stole it, I drove like my life depended on it. Artoo was in fine form and Maxi proved himself a fitting successor to 'Turo, though I still missed him dearly the entire way.

As I made my way across Oklahoma I found myself thinking "wow, this place is really beautiful." And it is.

I stopped in Tulsa at the sketchiest Citgo on the planet and bought a few Snickers bars and Monster drinks and some salty snacks meant to get me to Santa Fe in one piece. An hour later I was stopped at a Cracker Barrel in OKC for my only real meal of the day before heading out across the plains again.

Western OK, The Panhandle, Amarillo where I stopped for gas one last time and decided that this was it, I was ballsing it all the way home. It was early in the evening and I could be home before 10p if I hustled.

And I did. Into New Mexico and up the gut to Santa Fe.

Now I'm home, wondering what I'm going to do now, what comes next and how long we can afford to have me unemployed. The answer is not long so we're working on that. I don't think I'll be teaching again this year, but hope springs eternal. And now that I have the monkey of this entry off my back maybe I can get back to other blogging.