Motoring

This is the time of year I motor to the East.  Usually with a dog, and a lot of books on tape.  20 hours, more or less, Missouri to Rhode Island, through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.  Sometimes New Jersey if I take the southern route and sometimes Massachusetts if the northern.  Every summer, every one for years.

These are highways that I have driven dozens of times, starting in my Mom's Impala in the '60's, through my bachelor cars, the Mustang and the Thunderbird, through a raft of family wagons, minivans, SUV's.  Occasionally passengers, friends, hitchikers, girlfriends, spouses, children - and usually a dog or two.  This time, for the third time, Isabel.  She's a fan.  Her and me, we talk some, listen to stuff, and try at least once or twice to find a place where she can get serious about sniffing up the local fauna and flora.

The idea is to bring a car to where the family stays, then fly back home to the practice, then fly back for ten days or so, sometimes more, then drive back.  It's too focussed and compact to be an odyssey, but there is some of the road's mixture of romance and boredom and looking around, back, forward, inward, out to the horizon, up to the hills, and at the end of the trip out, the sea.