It is strange, now. My happiness (as artificial as it may be) is starting to wear off. I guess it's the part of me that wants to stay rooted. Inertia.

I don't know why I can't keep my eyes forward. I am dwelling on how there will be no one to see me off, and that there will be no one, no special someone at least, who will be waiting for me.

I can picture it now, as I ring on the doorbell, my sister opening the front door. "Oh, it's you. What took you so long?" Probably as she is on her way out.

No. Now I am glad.

I'm going home.

Whatever that means.

I think, I hope, that my spirits will be better when I am upon the open road. I don't know why I am compelled to do this, to traverse two-thirds of this great nation, to parallel as closely as I can the route of those intrepid pioneers of the Dust Bowl era (ah well, I never read The Grapes of Wrath.) I mean, I do not really intend to stray off the Interstates (but still, that song floats around in my head...)

Hmmm. I wonder if I should have shot for Joplin, MO? Instead, I am going to strike out for Springfield, MO (in vain hopes of running into the Simpsons.) From then on, I intend to stay true to the lyrics of the song: A night in Amarillo, TX, followed by a night in Flagstaff, AZ, before swinging through Barstow, down to San Berdoo. (I anticipate a clusterfuck, although hopefully, traffic will be mostly Vegas-bound) Now that CA-210 is completed, I will really be paralleling Route 66 all the way to just short of downtown L.A.

If I had someone with me, I might actually do the original Route 66, but as it is, all I really want to do is get home. Even if it is with the usual trepidation.

Ah, me. It's not so much that I don't get sad as often. It's just a lot easier to bounce back.

I've spent a lot of time avoiding the demons lurking in my brain. They will be, for better or for worse, my only travel companions.

And, appropriately so, I will mention the following poem:

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. —J.R.R. Tolkien