"Today the American dream is savage, unfocused and delusional."

-Hunter S. Thompson

Well, I finally did it, and in a much more expedient manner than I thought. I took flight from the Sunshine state and now I'm sitting comfortably in my parents home in Connecticut, eagerly awaiting to pick up the keys to my new home in Mansfield Massachusetts tomorrow morning.

This was the fourth and hopefully final time I've made the journey to or from south Florida to or from central Connecticut.
There has been a lot written by much more gifted and articulate writers than me about actually traveling on the ground and seeing a swath of the country for yourself, and having crossed the nation in both an airplane and an automobile, and I can definitely say that air travel helps perpetuate the illusion that the world was a smaller place than it was a hundred years ago. There's just as much surface area on the earth as there's always been, and viewing the country from an airplane window, it is all but impossible to see the forest for the trees.

Now, depending on the chemical balance of your peers in High School and College, you've probably heard of people taking trips across the country (or for the slightly more affluent, Europe, where the history comes from,) In the vein of a watered-down "Vision Quest."
Of course, in the end, any self-discovery or moments of personal revelation attained are largely incidental. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. And short of airline travel, one of the least spiritually fulfilling ways to experience the grandeur of the United States is the Interstate Highway System.

Now I'll spare you all the arguments that the Interstate system has wrought financial ruin for some. In the city of my birth, Hartford Connecticut, the bifurcating of the city via the construction of I-84 served to further divide the impoverished Black community from the affluent business community, according to Tim Page in his book "Parallel Play."
If you want further discussion of how the Interstate has spelled ruin for the American small business, you may view the 2005 Pixar movie "Cars,"... Or, better yet... Read a book by someone who knows what they're talking about.
I don't need to tell you, dear reader, how commercialization is depriving America of it's individuality and is blighting the landscape with a stultifying plight of conformist ennui.
Take this for example.

Where would you say this town off the Interstate is?
This could literally be any city in America. Without local flavor or distinct, regional identity, this small town in South Carolina is quite literally "Anytown USA."

Now I could kvetch about this subject ad-infinitum, but I will not, not here.
For this particular journey up north was one of the greatest journeys of my life, and I shall explain why.

I woke up at 6am after getting about 6 hours sleep, and cheerfully bid goodbye to the small island I called home for the last 3 1/2 years forever, with an improvised goodbye salute provided by John Williams and played at maximum volume on my antiquated car stereo system. [link]

Driving 186 miles to the Tampa Airport, I then waited to pick up my dad so that we could make the journey together.
Having acquired my travel partner, we popped a Bill Bryson book into the car stereo and began to make our way up 75, north, to put the hostile alien land of Florida behind us.

Remember earlier in this blog when I was bitching ceaselessly about the bleak and soul-crushing nature of Interstate travel in the face of our modern, consumerist society? Well I told you that story to tell you this story.

Deciding to forgo the toutes we've previously tread that took us through Orlando, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville to get us out of Florida, we decided to drive an alternate route.

My father has driven all across the country and all over the world. On the inane streets of Los Angeles, the utterly brain-bending cul de sacs of New York City, the grinding gridlock of Boston, and the sheer, impossible speed of the German Autobahn.
Of all the places my father has driven, the place he cites as having the absolute worst drivers on the planet is unquestionably Orlando Florida.
I don't know what it is, nor how we miraculously survived so many near-miss accidents over the years, but if I can recommend a vacation to anyone, my experience on the Orlando roads has caused me to bump the countries premier tourist trap down the bottom of my personal list near Moosejaw Saskatchewan and Ellsesmere Island, north of the Arctic circle.
So any trip through Florida where we skip Orlando makes me inordinately happy.

And much to my surprise, Route 301 is actually quite beautiful.

And beyond that, the entire rural route was almost completely free of congestion, but the commercialization ubiquitous to the interstates was practically nonexistent. For the scant few chain stores we encountered, we encountered equal, if not more amounts of independently-owned businesses, sex shops and churches.
It was glorious.
It was all real, it was all honest. True, it was clear from the plain evidence that this part of the country was hit particularly hard by the economic blight we've all been subject to as of late. But say what you will about the residents of Florida, they are tenacious and they DO endure.
Having survived hurricanes, alligators and West Nile-carrying mosquitos, these hearty, salt-of-the-earth, utterly honest and (good god I'll never forgive myself for saying this) Real Americans will weather any storm.

My heart swayed by the utter honesty of rural Florida in sheer contrast to the overly-shiny, overly-sanatized Florida we're all too used to, me and my dad skirted the border and headed on up into Georgia where we enjoyed a rather nice dinner, served by a waitress with the most charming and infectious southern accent you've ever heard in your life, and from there drove until finally stopping to rest in South Carolina.

Rising at 5 am the next day, we hit the road with deliberate haste, pushing my old yet impressively reliable Subaru to it's mechanical limits.
With bold bellies filled with waffles from one of the American Southland's most notorious establishments, it's eponym coming from it's most popular confection and also featured in a song by "The Bloodhound Gang," [link] we watched as we sped along under the breathtakingly beautiful skies of Dixie, Bill Bryson's anecdotes about his merry misadventures in Europe serving as the perfect counterpoint for our urgent sprint up America's eastern seaboard.

Driving along, we passed countless billboards for a tourist trap all too familiar to those who have skirted the distance of I-95, "South of The Border,"

Why the borders of North and South Carolina would be of terrible significance, nor indeed why they would be the ideal spot for a vaguely shady tourist trap is beyond me. Hell, I wouldn't even be mentioning it, let alone featuring a picture of it it didn't create such a vague, cheap veil of mystique about it by heavily advertising itself everywhere in a 50-mile radius, (Yes, I'm certain in the ocean too.)

Well, in any case, just north of "South of the Border," was... well... the border, of North Carolina.
We passed through the Tar Heel State, where we saw more state troopers than we did during the whole rest of the journey, on, up into the Commonwealth of Virginia, where the high point of the day lay waiting.

Now please, allow me another small, tangential rant (Just a small one, I promise!)

The whole point of this journey was to move me and my few material possessions as far away from the island where I spent the last 3 1/2 years of my life as possible.
I won't go on too much about how unfavorable my situation was, but I'll leave you with the statistic from the U.S. Census Bureau that the median age on said island is 60...So needless to say, being forty years younger than the average resident, friends and a meaningful social life were scarce at best.
This was the principal spur for me putting so much time and effort into my digital presence here on DA. Even stuck on a desolate island, physically cast away from my ideal peer set, I had a legion of seriously sharp, cool, awesome people at my fingertips. DA, in my experience, has a larger-than-average percentage of users with above-average IQ's and creative insights, hence why I wanted to belong to the community so badly upon first discovering it and the ceaseless joy that I've gotten from doing so.
And in my 3 1/2 years as a member on this fine, fine sight, perhaps one of the best, sharpest and all around most exceptional friend I've made is none other than
And she, as luck would have it, is temporarily residing in Virginia while she awaits her Visa so she can depart with her husband to Bulgaria.

In spite of the short time we were allotted to break bread together, me, my dad, Kayleigh and Boyan all had a most wonderful meal where gifts, jokes and witty repartee was exchanged on every subject from music, work, travel and out own respective, creative endeavors.

Having a chance to break bread with someone who has not only has served as a trusted confidante for me in my literary adventures but who made me look forward to checking my e-mial every day was the indomitable highlight of this particular journey.
Say what you will about friendships forged online and their tenuous nature, but meeting a virtual friend "IRL" (To use the proper parlance) made me happy. Even her husband was bright, funny and charming. Someone who I've never had the least bit of contact with was nothing but kind to me, and after our abbreviated meal, both me and my dad left feeling quite enriched for having taken our small detour.

Having completed our stopgap in fine Fairfax Virginia, we proceeded to speed around our Nation's capital. We then moved onto the sate of Maryland, home of two of my very dear Deviant friends, and
Now, I love these two ladies to death... But now I'm seriously convinced that their state is out to get me, as we encountered the worst traffic in Maryland than we did anywhere else on the journey.
Okay, maybe it had something to do with us trying to drive on the Interstate in a heavily-populated area around rush hour time. I don't know, I never finished reading Tom Vanderbilt's book.
And in any case, I took special care to say "Hi" to the state that houses two of my favorite Deviants.

From crowded Maryland, we skirted through Delaware, we crossed over the river named (creatively enough) the Delaware River, onto the mighty land of...

Birthplace of Kevin Smith, one of my very favorite creative minds, the Garden State was kind to us and offered us a smooth ride down it's eponymous turnpike, as well as offering a staggeringly beautiful sunset to bookend our morning greeting from South Carolina.


But from smooth to downright pulse-renching, the New Jersey Turnpike turned from our passive friend to our irate companion as we approached one of the world's most populated cities and one of the nations most populated states.
Now, we all know trying to drive in and around New York is crazy, but even keeping this knowledge in mind, that didn't stop me when a Volkswagen Touareg driven by, what I can only guess was an escaped mental patient suffering from acute Schizoaffective Disorder came screaming past us at a respectable fraction of Mach 1 from screaming a healthy "JEE-SUS!!!"

Thankfully though, the Touareg's actions did not phase my dad in the slightest, and this alone I think should be proof enough of what a stone-cold badass my dad is.

We could argue about who is the best driver in the world, but I assure you, my father earned his professional title of "The Yankee Driver" ten times over long, long ago.

navigating with deft skill, we came around New York City itself.

After negotiating a clusterfuck of traffic on the George Washington Bridge, (And waving a quick, symbolic "Hi!" to my Manhattan-dwelling friend ) We were navigating through the twisting turns of the Henry Hudson parkway, performing feats of driving skill that one would hardly expect from an aged and heavily-laden Subaru, and at long last, in the dead of the night arrived in my homeland, the land of my ancestors, that true land of the elite and the wise, the Nutmeg State, Connecticut.

I don't know what kind of Guardian Angels have been guiding my dad's driving hand over the years, nor indeed how they continue to guide him and give him the astonishing skills behind the wheel he possesses, but suffice it to say... I remain impressed.

In any case, after 40 hours on the road and 1,820 miles added to the odometer of my Subaru, we arrived back at our homestead in the enchanted woodlands of central connecticut, among the High Elves and other fairy creatures we share this magical land with.
Me and my dad, joined by my mom concluded our long journey with a little Single-Malt Scotch, and a soak in a hot tub on the crisp March, New England evening.

If there is a better way to end a journey, I have not discovered it.

Did I become particularly enlightened on this cross-coutnry trip? Not really.
Did I get any more insight that would add to my patois and help me among erudite conversations among my avant-garde friends? A bit, maybe.
Did this mark the end of a chapter in my life and usher in a new point of discovery and opportunity? God I hope so.

Well, in any case, I sit here on the cusp of moving into my new home and selling my services on the open market. One adventure ends, and another begins.

But before I wrap up here, I should take the time and say a few words of thanks.

-Thank you Subaru, for making long-lansting cars built for longevity. A fifteen-year-old car performed in the same league as younger, more sportily-designed cars on this journey many a time, and it was a great relief.

-Thank you Bill Bryson for writing and narrating such wonderful books that helped fill the long hours of travel with humor, knowledge and generally stellar entertainment.

-Thank you Garmin. Your GPS navigations system got us out of more than a few tight jams and helped keep us on track, onward toward our ultimate goal.

-And thank you 5-Hour Energy Drinks. As advertised, you provided a prolonged, sustained period of concentration for both driver and navigator on our journey with, as promised, no debilitating crash later (neither sugar nor automotive.)

All in all, what with the many sights taken in, the wonderful meeting of two truly amazing people who I've known only through the medium of the internet previously, the great distance covered, the conclusion of such a staggering journey and the final, perfect toast, yesterday was unquestionably one of the best days of my life.

Now, one adventure ceases and a new one begins. Starting soon, I shall be a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This is where I make my stand, this is where I build the life I've wanted low these past 3 1/2 years, with any luck.

Else the =SilverVulpine a liar call; So, good night unto you all!



[link]

Out of the mist of history he'll come again
Sailing on ships across the sea to a wounded nation
Signs of a savior and fire on the water
It's what we prayed for, one of our own

Just wait though wide he may roam
Always a hero comes home
He goes where no one has gone
But always a hero comes home

Deep in the heart of darkness sparks a dream of light
Surrounded by hopelessness he finds the will to fight
There's no surrender, always remember
It doesn't end here, we're not alone

Just wait though wide he may roam
Always a hero comes home
He goes where no one has gone
But always a hero comes home

And he will come back on a crimson tide
Dead or alive
And even though we know the bridge has burned
He will return… He will return!

Just wait though wide he may roam
Always a hero comes home
He knows of places unknown
But always a hero comes home

Someday he may carve his stone
The hero comes home

He goes and comes back alone
But always a hero comes home
Just wait though wide he may roam
Always a hero comes home...