How Do You Spell Relief? A-U-S-T-I-N
When you have as many reasons to look forward to arriving in Austin as I did today, you keep a constant eye on the speedometer, and that eye is ceaselessly disappointed. It was by no means a slow drive, but reduced-speed bridges across Louisiana’s wetlands and traffic congestion around metropolitan areas like Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, and Houston made for some uneven speeds, despite the fact that I spent nearly 500 miles on one road (I-10). Still, the arrival made it all worth it.
I was invited to join some evening fun at Knowbility’s John Slatin Access U conference, which meant a meal and an accessible movie Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, complete with subtitles for the hearing-impaired and audio description for the vision-impaired) were waiting for me at my favorite cinema anywhere, the Alamo Drafthouse. It’s an early day for everyone tomorrow, so I didn’t get as much time with friends and colleagues in attendance (Derek Featherstone, James Craig, and my Austin hostess with the mostest Glenda Sims) as I would have liked, but the familiar faces were a very welcome sight. But before we get all weepy-eyed about the virtues of friendship, I should also mention that the most welcome sight of all was my replacement debit card, which got to Austin even before I did. If there was an eleventh commandment, it surely would be:
Thou shalt not doubt the customer service of Commerce Bank.
Obey.
36 posts in this series
Rob Across America
Okay, I have to make this really quick, because I’m already leaving much later than I wanted to. Leaving for what, you ask? A month-long, cross-country road trip, naturally. I made a web site for it which is where I’ll be writing exclusively for the next month (not that you expected to see anything new here). My bitchin’ Corolla is leaving Philadelphia momentarily—jump in the passenger seat!
The 8600-Mile Journey Home (From Home)
I am taking the month of May to drive across the country and back. I got tired of the fact that friends from abroad have seen more of the States than I have, and this year is something of a crossroads for me for a few reasons, so the time seems right. Since I design web sites, it made sense to put one together to document the trip, so that’s what you’re looking at. It… See more →
It’s a Mental State
Beginning a road trip without sleeping the night before is not really what you would call advisable. And with the physical fatigue compounded by my anxiety over the scope of the trip and a number of last minute aggravations, hitting the open road was not nearly as cathartic as I might have hoped. It was actually downright awful.
This will be both the longest time I’ve spent on the road and the longest time I’ve… See more →
Five States’ Drive
My windshield gathered an impressive collection of insects today, arthropodal inhabitants of the five states through which Google Maps sent me (Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky). An apocalyptic downpour washed them all away, which would surely have made an anthropomorphized version of my windshield quite happy or quite sad, depending on whether or not it was the collector type.
Hopefully the good people of Florence, KY (Florentines?) will not be offended that I… See more →
Jesus Saves! Gretzky Scores on the Rebound!
The original plan for today was to visit my friends Shaun and Leslie in Chattanooga, but, before I could even contact them, their sixth sense had already told them to leave town at the exact time I would be arriving. So I needed to change my route between DC and New Orleans and find something else to do. When I told my hosts in DC I had chosen Kentucky as my next stop, they assumed… See more →
Into the Deep
The nine hours in the car today were not very fun. First came the late discovery that the drive from Nashville to New Orleans was going to be almost two hours longer than I thought. Next came the drive itself.
The weather was beautiful and Tennessee and northern Alabama were pleasant (or at least innocuous) enough to drive through. Once I was past Birmingham, though, I started noticing long stretches of I-59 densely lined with… See more →
Fat Monday
When this circular journey is done, I plan to publish some statistics and tips to help anyone who might want to try something similar. To whet your appetite, here’s a sneak preview: Try not to have slept in on the day you discover you’ve lost your primary point of access to your funds. You’ll need that extra time to fruitlessly tear your hotel room apart, swear a lot, and work with your financial institution to… See more →
How Do You Spell Relief? A-U-S-T-I-N
When you have as many reasons to look forward to arriving in Austin as I did today, you keep a constant eye on the speedometer, and that eye is ceaselessly disappointed. It was by no means a slow drive, but reduced-speed bridges across Louisiana’s wetlands and traffic congestion around metropolitan areas like Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, and Houston made for some uneven speeds, despite the fact that I spent nearly 500 miles on one road… See more →
The Stars at Night Are Big and Bright
I took one for the team tonight, folks. With apologies to the citizens of El Paso, their city is merely a stop on this trip, not a destination, so I didn’t bake in time to research local cuisine. I did get a very specific recommendation from Austin’s own Scott Sims about a good Tex-Mex place less than a mile from my hotel. But by the time I checked in, I couldn’t bring myself to get… See more →
Meet the New Mexico, Same as the Old Mexico
I seem to be hitting my stride; the four hours in the car today were nothing. The fact that the drive was equally as scenic as yesterday’s but more populated and less lengthy helped quite a bit. However, had I known what Albuquerque had in store for me, the trip probably would have seemed much longer.
I knew next to nothing about Albuquerque before today, and I now know slightly less than nothing. The little… See more →
Wayne Across America
Despite the Philadelphia International Airport’s best efforts to the contrary, my traveling companion and longtime friend Wayne Kobylinski arrived to meet me in Albuquerque today, only about three and a half hours late. This meant our drive up to Flagstaff was much darker than it was originally intended to be, which gave us a chance to learn not only that one of my headlights is out, but that Arizona is less beautiful when you can’t… See more →
Hole
In AC/DC’s 1976 classic “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” the late Bon Scott gleefully lists a handful of his favorite methods for ridding his clients of their enemies, including concrete shoes, cyanide, and TNT. He makes no mention of the Grand Canyon, probably because its Arizona location is geographically inconvenient for an Australian like him. But boy was he missing an opportunity.
Most people who visit the Grand Canyon are stricken by its arresting natural… See more →
A Plan for Mother’s day
It is Mother’s Day, and I am far away from my mother. She and my godmother, my Aunt Pat, are celebrating with the family today just outside Philadelphia, PA. I am at the Grand Canyon, and according to Google Maps, the distance between the two is about 2,020 miles as the crow flies. I’d love to spend the day with them and be back here in time to get to Las Vegas tonight, but it’s… See more →
Ready to Burn
Last night, we ate Italian food at a western-themed restaurant run by Asians. This can only happen in America. Early this morning, Wayne’s stomach revealed itself to be decidedly anti-American. His freedom-hating innards kept us from getting back on the road until well into the afternoon, but we prevailed in their crusade against our schedule, arriving in Las Vegas shortly after seven o’clock.
To get as well-rounded a Vegas experience as I could in the… See more →
Right Turn Only
We have reached the ocean! I was excited to begin the historic documentation of our discovery of America’s west coast, and perhaps begin plans for the construction of a city here with a thriving entertainment industry. I guess I missed the issue of National Geographic that covered someone beating me to it. Apparently I have friends here, too!
Imagine my surprise when I set foot in southern California for the first time and found it… See more →
City of the Angels
Yesterday, as we sped along I-15 en route to LA, signs started pointing us toward a ghost town called Calico. Naïve tourists that we are, we were startled to find people working there and asking us to pay them six dollars for admission. A town with employees, an infrastructure, a web site, and its name painted in giant letters on the side of a mountain can’t rightly be described as ghostly, so we continued on… See more →
The Left Coast
Today’s drive was by far the prettiest of the trip so far. If I could, I’d take it out to dinner and a movie. I’d bring it home to meet my parents. I’d buy it a blood diamond and audition wedding DJs with it. We’d honeymoon at Disneyland, put a down payment on a mortgage in a Toll Brothers gated community, and have cute disagreements over paint chips. We’d have three kids named after our… See more →
Xanadu
Among thousands of acres of land, a private airstrip, several species of exotic wildlife, and many millions of dollars worth of imported works of art, today belonged to Hearst Castle. I’m speaking, of course, of the incredible and excessive home that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst built for himself over the course of more than twenty years in the early-mid twentieth century. As far as I know, it is the closest thing this country has… See more →
The City
The ninety-sixth episode of Full House, which marked the series’ halfway point, was called “Matchmaker Michelle.” In it, the youngest Tanner child decides to fix up her father with her preschool teacher, who is a generation older than him. What I find really interesting about this episode is that the catalyst for Michelle’s desire to find a new mother is her friend Teddy, who asks why she is always the daddy when they play house.… See more →
Doing Battle with Boredom
Neither Wayne nor I was prepared for how quickly northern California surrenders San Francisco’s unique metropolitan vistas to what I’ve come to call “New Ohio.” Flat, unremarkable farmland for miles, as far as the eye can see. The scenery eventually gives way to an astonishing panorama of snow-capped mountains, forests, lakes, and hills, but we were initially unsure of exactly how long the bland, agricultural nothingness would plague our eleven-hour drive, so we needed to… See more →
Oregon Thanks You
Our spectacular Portland hosts were two of the 75,000 people at today’s Obama rally, which gave us just the right amount of time to handle a dire laundry situation and give the car some well-deserved love. After digging for quarters for the washer/dryer and replacing some fluids at Oil Can Henry’s (the automotive equivalent of an operating theater), we were ready for a glimpse of Portland before moving on to Seattle in the evening.
That… See more →
North by Northwest
The ease with which “Pacific Northwest” is abbreviated to PACNOWE made us feel unwelcome before we even got here, but we were able to resist obeying that imperative long enough to have a very fun day in Seattle.
Most of the day was spent at the Experience Music Project, a museum housed in the first Frank Gehry building I’ve gotten to see in person. The building’s effect was much what I imagined it would be:… See more →
In Montana, No One Can Hear You Scream
To leave Seattle and stay in the US, you must go in one of two directions. Since we came from the south, our Seattle exit was east, which pointed us homeward for the first time. Whether spurred on by that closing gap, the first full day of miserable weather, or just the way people drive in this part of the country, the uncharacteristic patience I’ve displayed behind the wheel over the past 6,000 miles has… See more →
White Is the New Yellow
Apparently, a visit to Yellowstone National Park in late May is best experienced atop a tauntaun. Maybe everyone in the world knew that, and you all assumed Wayne and I did, too. “Surely they’ve packed hats and gloves and snow boots for their May road trip,” everyone would have said to themselves, had it been obscure enough a detail to even register above their subconscious. We appreciate the benefit of the doubt you didn’t even… See more →
Ode to a Town Best Forgotten
Montana and Wyoming are not unattractive states, but as the mountains flattened out to hills flattened out to farms, the scenery was getting tiresome. It rained all day, at times hard enough to completely obscure the tiresome scenery, not to mention the unlit motorists with whom we were sharing I-90. So pretty much everything about the drive made us look forward to ending it. We did so upon arriving at Gillette, Wyoming, where we chose… See more →
Lurking in the Mist
One of the things that makes this country fun to explore is that its size and history imbue it with much variety, both in terms of terrain and culture. In these few short weeks on the road, I’ve driven through forests, plains, bayous, deserts, and mountains, and seen communities, food, art, and architecture representing dozens of cultures from across the globe. Surprisingly, the only thing that’s been mostly consistent has been the pleasant weather. Until… See more →
Making Lemonade
Today’s plan was to squeeze a few of South Dakota’s less time-consuming sights into the 600+ miles between Mount Rushmore and Minneapolis. The first stop was Wall Drug, a drug store cum souvenir stand whose quaint roadside advertising has a blast radius reaching for hundreds of miles. The amount of time we were willing to spend browsing jackalope shot glasses and listening to children wailing about the injustice of being denied miniature, personalized South Dakota… See more →
I Shop, Therefore I Am
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and if the freedom our generations of soldiers have fought to defend is encapsulated by one thing, it is the option to ride a Spongebob Squarepants roller coaster within shouting distance of dozens of fast food vendors and a vast selection of clothing assembled by Indonesian children for pennies. Hardcore consumerism has been the crucial ingredient most conspicuously absent from this trip’s American story, and so today, we memorialized our fallen… See more →
Sweet Home Chicago
Excluding Philadelphia and New York, I have spent more time in Chicago than any other city. Whether it’s the preponderance of outstanding architecture, the thriving art and music scenes, the general cleanliness and friendliness, or the fact that everyone I know here has an outspoken affection for their home, I always look forward to the next visit. Our Chicago hosts, my dear friends Lauren and John, barely bat an eyelash anymore when I show up… See more →
From One Great Lake to Another
There was a three-mile stretch on I-90 today where, according to signs, we entered Ottawa County, then entered Sandusky County, then entered Ottawa County again. Rather than focusing on the apprehension of this hoax’s perpetrators, state troopers preferred to make an example of the least reckless speeder Ohio has ever seen. The fact that we got pulled over on the day we chose to rock the Police box set cannot possibly be a coincidence.
Earlier,… See more →
Ride the Skies
We went from 0 to 120 in four seconds today, and there wasn’t a damned thing the Ohio State Police could do about it. The Corolla had a relaxing day in a parking lot while Cedar Point’s world-class roller coasters satisfied our need for speed, height, and ear-splitting shrieks of mirthful terror.
All but one of the park’s most intense (5/5 on the “High Thrill” scale) coasters were conquered. The one that got away was … See more →
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Wayne hopped on a bus bound for Columbus this morning. He then flew from there back to Philadelphia, from which he’ll fly to San Francisco on Saturday for a week-long family vacation in northern California. You may recall we spent some time there recently. In the parlance of his students, Wayne is an all-star partyer.
My party is almost over, and as much as I’m really looking forward to getting home, I’m oddly apprehensive toward… See more →
Pahk da Cah in da Hahvid Yahd
For my first visit to central Boston, just last year, I approached from Logan International Airport, northeast of the city. The entire five-mile ride was underground, which wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if I had been on a subway, but I was in a cab. I knew I was traveling through the results of the Big Dig, Boston’s impressive system of tunnels named after area politicians, civil rights leaders, and baseball players. But experiencing it… See more →
Stunt Driving Toward the Finish Line
The best and most substantial part of today’s drive from Boston to New York City was through Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway. Enclosed by trees reaching over it and divided by a wide, grassy median, it is not only easy on the eyes but stimulating to the imagination: At any given time, you expect and almost hope Robin Hood and his band of merry men will pull up alongside you on horseback and cheerfully relieve… See more →
Home Is Where the Party Is
Brooklyn is not terribly far from where I live, so waking up there this morning made a clear enough impression that I would be arriving home today. But I still just couldn’t get my head around the idea of being home and staying there. Perhaps in a subconscious attempt to slow the approach, I made a few stops on the way. There was a very nice breakfast with Stan and Shawn Morrison at DuMont in… See more →
Crunching the Numbers
Over the course of this trip, I kept track of a lot of numbers: Mileage, itemized expenses, gas consumption, and more. I was curious how everything would add up at the end, and I thought it might be useful information for anyone who wanted to do a similar road trip. If that’s you, and you want your trip to be exactly like mine (which would really require you to go back in time, access my… See more →