On October 3, 2002, I started a new volume in my life's collections of books and chapters. After packing up my 1998 Jeep Cherokee with three seasons of clothes, a battery charger, mace, maps and a cell phone, I started on my 10,000 mile, 33 state trek across the United States.
I drove across the Humming Bridge in Georgetown with Kid Rock's latest album cranking in my CD player and headed north to party like a college kid in Orono. Then south a bit to play horseshoes in the back yard of my best friend's family's home in Farmington, Maine. Then I was off and running westbound.
In my journey, I learned so much about our country and myself in those days and weeks on the road. I learned how to drink wine in New York. I felt the mist of Niagara Falls on my face in Canada. I went on my first blind date and to a NHL hockey game on the same day in Detroit. I ate buffalo, met my first buffalo in person (not one in the same, I assure you) and saw the magintude of what men can accomplish on a mountain side at Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse in South Dakota. I found the Pacific Ocean in Seattle and watched the sun set over an ocean for the first time in San Diego and walked along the Hollywood stars. I learned what 7,000 feet above sea level looks while looking into the Grand Canyon and how magnificent the plateaus are in Santa Fe. I stood in the basement of the building, now memorial, of the Oklahoma City bombing and was served cornbread stuffing for the first time by Big Mama and her boys while on a pitstop for an oil change and photo developing in Alexandria, Louisana. And just as I found the elevation at the Canyon, I drove below sea level and ate crawfish in New Orleans. I looked out at where the first shot was fired on the coast of Charleston and mosied my way up to Laurel, Maryland in time to watch a little football with some guys who's mancave and bar rivaled any spot in town.
Ten years later, the world has changed. My universe has swelled with a plethora of great individuals and experiences that, when sitting in the drivers seat of my Jeep ten years ago today, I didn't know existed nor could fathom how they would change my life. I am confident that every single one of my stops along the road don't look anything like the way I have them postcarded in my brain. But that's alright. Change is good. I wouldn't trade away a minute of that trip, because without it, I wouldn't be who I am, where I am, what I am today.
