10:56 am. I’m sitting in my car on a deserted block of Grand Island, Nebraska. I’m staking out the dodgy Vietnamese restaurant across the street, waiting for it to open so I can eat lunch before a long drive along highway 2 through the empty Nebraska prairie. I’m camping tonight, …
L and L, Lawrence and Lincoln, the two cities recommended by Midwesterners back at the Yellow Springs Brewery. As I have never visited Kansas or Nebraska, I spend one night in each L. Together, the two cities resemble Austin, Texas. Lawrence is funky, or at least this Bourgeois Pig coffee …
On my ten thousand mile journey, I shot pictures with a Canon Rebel DSLR camera as well as my iPhone. The phone’s camera may be worse than the DSLR camera, but the phone is more portable and discrete. Plus, I can readily send the phone pictures to friends via text …
I have driven enough. Midwest cities merge into Great Plain cities. I no longer know what I come here to do, or even where here is, except that I should see the center of this country in summer. Ever since the Firefly Festival in Vermont, I look further over the …
In the morning, I say goodbye to Rene and his two kids after a few battles with Quentin on the Wii. I’m sad to trade this home for the loneliness of the road, especially now I lack friends until California. There be a long, open road ahead of me over …
In this St. Louis house, everyone wakes at six. Six is far too early. I roll out of bed later, then tentatively find breakfast and mayhem. Children like me; I can be their goofy older brother who doesn’t yell or forbid, unlike their father. We take the kids for a …
I leave Ray’s town on an appropriately wet Monday to get back on the road. Before departing, we three eat a last breakfast at the Sunrise Diner. Afterwards, Ray takes me to an auto-parts store in depressed Springfield for oil. This case of oil shall be my totem to get …
Early July 2014, I drove west from my parents’ house in Massachusetts back to my apartment in San Francisco. Over three weeks, I hit four more states new to me: Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. I avoided the Rockies as my ailing car struggles up hills. I camped when I …
100 days on the road feel like years. I have done much, I have done nothing: Ticket to Ride board game in Seattle, running riverbanks in Missoula, comic books in Toronto, platonic solids across the country, anniversary dinners, art museum adventures with my parents, 3am Times Square madness. Yet constant …
I return to my brother Ray in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and his happy routines. I meet him at the Yellow Springs Brewery where he serves me a beer before he gets off his bar shift at 7pm. He and I are both weary from driving. I woke this morning in …