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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.

Way back in May, as I planned this transcontinental voyage, Carol Higham, adjunct assistant professor of humanities at Davidson and a good buddy, piqued an academic interest in my yen to, as Horace Greeley is purported to have said, "Go West, young man." Okay, I'm only somewhat young, and Greeley is not the original author of the quote. The important thing here is that Carol told me about her new Western U.S. history textbook, Conquests and Consequences, co-written with William H. Katerbery of Calvin College. Even more important, she brought a laser-printed galley proof to my office, for me to pack along in the trunk of my Comet. I could picture the stack of sheets blowing off a campsite picnic table in Colorado, so I paid Central Services in the college union a buck fifty to wiro-bind it.

In my six weeks of drive time across the United States of America this summer, geography was not the only thing I covered. I was all over the musical map, too: rock'n'roll (of course); country (unavoidable, and fine by me---most days); jazz (for short periods); classical (not available in some states); get-it-on blues (void where prohibited); pop (exact definition depends on the town; I heard some fine nouveau-California-pop songs in San Diego that I haven't heard before or since); and that egregious call-in show with easy-listenin', lovey-dovey "Delilah" (you can run but you can't hide). Okay, there was no rap or hip-hop on any of my playlists or stations, so I guess I wasn't all over the musical map. So sue me. Stuff works my nerves.

Kansas is a very, very long state, even at 75 mph steady, in a hefty crosswind. Happily, Jesus is everywhere. I missed my favorite shot of Him, plainly and exquisitely painted onto a billboard poking up out of the greening summer bounty of the earth with no verbal interpretation, just a very happy and welcoming, hippie-style Jesus holding a stalk (whatever) of wheat and smiling at me. I liked that Jesus. This more personalized Jesus, below, which I did manage to capture on pixels, runs a close second, even if the godsmack message and Photo-Shopped halo, not to mention the blood-red ray of---something?---shooting off of His---heart?---are a bit much for my tastes.

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.

Dear Dad,

Here are some sights that did not make it into my camera, and assorted adventures from my travels in recent days, in no particular order:

In the summer of 1989, at age 26 with six-pack abs and a flattop haircut, I quit my North Carolina newspaper job to drive 14,000 miles in three months around the United States of America in my trusty, rusty 1967 Mercury Comet Caliente convertible with a tent in the trunk. Ever since then, I have been sorry I did not brave a two-state detour one hot June day on the way to L.A., to go see the Grand Canyon. I was 800 miles late for a cat-sitting date in the City of Angels and still had to make my way across the Mojave Desert....

 

James Dean wannabe, ca. 1989