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Constant Readers,

I have been back home (sweet home!) in Davidson, N.C. for over a week now, so it's time to wrap up my Road Trip Summer 2009 travel blog, and send it to archives where it will live on for the future reference of posterity (mine if no one else's!) at blogs.davidson.edu/roadtrip (which can be reached geographically on the Davidson homepage by clicking News, then Blogs). But first, some notes:

• I am, unsurprisingly, a couple of shades of tan darker than I was in June, in spite of SPF 85 ritually slathered on every day on the road. (I was especially diligent about my ears, so that I will not have to wear Band-Aids on them when I am an old man. Not a good look.)

The sun-protective Tilley hat I left town with on June 13 turned out to be too floppy for an open car at 75 mph, so I did the baseball-cap-and-bandanna thing most of the way. Additional tip for those without auto AC: A bandanna (pictured) dipped in icy cooler slush helps keep a body cool on those long summertime hauls. Dodger wore sunscreen, too, on the pink parts of his delicate l'il snout. Here at the moment of our return to Davidson, his cruise control is still set on "Squirrel!" (July 24, photo by Bill Giduz '74)

• I am greatly enjoying preparing all my own food, in my own kitchen sweet kitchen. Nothing out of a can shall cross my lips, and lots of fresh summer fruits and vegetables shall cross them often. (That last week of hard driving put me over my annual limit of drive-through gut-bombers and Beanee Weenies in a tent. Hellooooo, farmer's market!)

• At my office sweet office, I'm adjusting to sitting at a desk again (I am up to a half-hour at a time without jumping up and running in circles like the dog), to central air-conditioning (my hands and feet got cold the first few days), and to long pants (creased khakis instead of wrinkled camp shorts that smell like gasoline and antifreeze).

• My laundry is done, my friends are hugged, and the Comet sits quietly in the rain under a cheap spun-bond cover from the WalMart in Flagstaff, Arizona---just until I can figure out how to zip back up the rear window that came completely aloose from the canvas in a high wind on Route 66 near Tulsa. That was a full day, I recall.

Oof. By the time I had made it through all the storms of south central Missouri in my leaky old Comet ragtop ("Dodger, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"), I was very happy to have gotten two last Davidson invitations for lodging on my way homeward. Thanks to Curtis Bickers '93, for a redux of my westbound visit to his gracious Memphis home. And big thanks to my dear, fun and funny classmate Linda Cassens Laforest '85, who had called me up on a rainy, Motel 6 kind of a day earlier in the week to ask when I was coming through Oak Ridge. O, happiness! Dodger and I were plumb tired of Motel 6 by now: Kingman, Ariz., Gallup, N.M., Goodland, Kan., Lawrence, Kan., St. Robert, Missouri... Nice as it is to see that dog-friendly sign from the interstate, it's not home. For instance, I would never have such a thing as that bedspread in my home. Please. Come to think of it, I would never have that bed, either. Ah, well. Motel 6 is, like WalMart, what it is: When you need it, it's exactly what you need, but when you're done, you don't want to just hang out there. So anyway.

When I blast e-mailed Kansas and Missouri alumni before heading east from Colorado many miles ago, Davidsonians came through. My thanks to all who offered to meet for coffee or a meal or more. My only regret is the need to keep the miles rolling in this my last week on the road, so I won't get to visit with you all personally. So many alumni, so little time... One who responded to the call was Andrew Campbell '00. He opened the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History in Lawrence to me for a private tour on a Monday, when they are usually closed. Andrew is collection manager for herpetology, which made for an appetizing tour before lunch. Mmm, tastes like chicken! (Andrew avowed that he has probably heard every tastes-like-chicken joke there is, and with some 360,000 reptilian and amphibian specimens under his TLC, one of the five largest such collections in the nation, I believe him.)

After miscalculating mileage in a big square state yet again, I had the beginnings of a massive tension headache by the time I hit Topeka from the far western reaches of Kansas, nearly 400 miles of gripping a 42-year-old steering wheel in high plains winds. So as I passed Topeka for the last 15 miles into Lawrence and saw the big, green, federally funded interstate reminder of the KU men's basketball Jayhawks' successful 2008 run, I gritted my teeth and resolved to dig my dirty Davidson T-shirt out of the trunk for my the duration of my stay here. That'll show 'em. It helped that George Thompson '84 had earlier said by phone that he proudly wore his Davidson shirt during that tournament, even tho' he is employed at KU. Anyway, a spritz of Drakaar Noir at my Motel 6 did a fair job of masking the gasoline and other fumes embedded in the wrinkled gray athletic T that I had found behind the spare tire, and off we went for a libation on Massachussetts St., the heart of Jayhawks territory.

Sadly this morning at 6 a.m., I bid adieu to the ACE Hotel and Swim Club on Palm Canyon Drive, and began loading up the car for the blistering 220 miles to the Needles, Calif. Motel 6. As is my custom, while approaching my 67 Mercury from a distance, I scanned the pavement under the ol' girl for unfamiliar puddles. Uh-oh. Driver's side gasoline hose leak on the firewall, rubber must have disintegrated in the heat. Not a thing you want to have to fix yourself in the 115-degree desert, so off to the Vista Chino Shell station I was, with John Gilmore '69 and my new best friend Antonio Romualdo to the rescue. Soon enough, I was comfily ensconced in Antonio's plumaria-scented garden, for a bonus day in Palm Springs.

We ended our San Diego stay, a petite week, by one more festive visit to Dog Beach before heading up the coast. Sure enough, exiting the accursed I-5 to the Pacific Coast Highway, we saw signs to Doheny Park and Laguna Beach, and the Beach Boys started belting out "Surfin' Safari." I did not plan it, honest, my playlist did it on its own. I kept the volume a tad down for fear of being considered uncool by California standards, but beefed it back up when I saw a restored woody with a rehabbed surfer at the wheel headed back down PCH to Doheny. What are North Carolina license plates in Orange County, Calif. worth if you can't play your tourist music as loud as you want, hmm? Anyway, I put some 20-year-old ghosts to rest in Laguna, then got caught in Pageant of the Masters traffic, thence sucked up toward L.A. before deciding to barrel east on the 10, to the welcoming hospitality of John Gilmore, M.D. '69 & Cie in Palm Springs.

Chris Gunn '84 turns out to be a treasure trove of Davidsoniana. He's been in Flagstaff since the turn of the century, directing the Counseling and Testing Center at Northern Arizona University, a mile from his house near downtown. He's clearly a globally civic-minded person, doing what he can to act locally. For example, he converted the 1973 gas-burner furnaces in his home, even though the windows are single-paned. And he replaced the water-intensive grass yard with volcanic pebbles and a naturalized plant mix. Recently, his production company, Shot By Gunn, produced this montage of public art in Flagstaff, Public Art Personalized, with music by his Davidson classmate Pat Donley.

I like to say "Albuquerque." "I knew I shoulda taken a left toin at Albuquoiquey." ---Bugs Bunny, in that one where he goes across the country by tunnel and pops up in a cave. But it sure is a hard word to type. Anyway, a couple of us showed up for the impromptu happy hour at Seasons here last night, with a surprise visit by Gov. Richardson. Today, Dodger and I are off to the lava flows and the Petrified Forest, thence to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon!

If anybody knows how to throw a good party, it's Herb Kincey '57 (see prior post for pix). Cold cuts and cold beverages provided a solid base for the pot-lucky portions of the repast, from cornbread and buttermilk pie to southwestern rice'n'corn salad and a potato dish that was delish. Most importantly, the baker's dozen size of our group of alumni and friends allowed everyone to get to know everyone, explore mutual connections of Davidson and otherwise, to reminisce about the past and mostly to share a bit about our present selves. We talked some about what we did for a living, of course, but one telling conversation centered around the importance of how we even phrase that kind of question. For example, rather than blurt, "What do you do?"---especially these days when some people are not doing as much as they would like to in the paycheck department---we agreed it's more polite, not to mention more fun, to ask, "How do you like to spend your time and energy?"

When I arrived at Lai Thai restaurant, Victor '82 and Sarah Mumy Hawk '82 and their teenage son Brett had a plate of pad thai---my favorite, extra spicy---already ordered and on its way to the table. In the course of our dinnertime conversation, I learned the Hawks have a daughter, Rebecca, currently enrolled at Davidson, who was in Yukon for a few weeks before returning to her summer job at WDAV 89.9 FM Classical Radio, a listener-supported service of Davidson College. Small world! I guess I should have known this already, but on the other hand, there's only so much online snooping that is desirable before presenting oneself as a road-weary houseguest.