i'm here, i'm here, i've been here for a week now. and today marks the first morning that i haven't woke to bright sunshine piercing through my window. a welcome change, really. still, every day i blink myself concious in my squishy bed and the air temperature couldn't be better and i've slept so well.

i miss the knocking back of drinks, in every little town and big city across the country. for me, my dear, travelling became quite an addictive lifestyle. i always had plenty of time to enjoy the friends and the people i was visiting, with the smug knowledge that soon i'd get to enjoy the same fun somewhere else, with someone else. and i suppose that's how i've been living my life for a long time anyway. like you said: you can live and work within a sixty mile radius as if you're travelling the globe. enjoying the present, enthusiastic for the future.

the people, the people. i'm so lucky, christine, to have as many friends as i do sprinkled all across the country for the visiting and the chatting and the drinking. so lucky to have the time and money to make it happen. and i'm home, now. last night my longtime best friends (now my new roomates) and i went out for a few rounds of drinks at a great bar in glendale, red-lit and wooden like a boy scout cabin directed by david lynch. there's so much to explore and grok here, the roads and oh! the beaches, friends and mountains. i'm slowly building a new life. connecting to the surrounds, to work, to people. it's all travelling, i guess.

i just need to find a favorite diner.

and thus wrote ryan on 3/28/2002. +

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are you here, yet?

driving across the country is something i have always wanted to do, so i hope you don't mind that i have been living vicariously through you. i have been knocking back drinks and making jokes and telling stories just as you have. i've been looking out the window, watching the world go by, trying not to think about things too much. the only difference is my adventures have all taken place within a 60-mile radius.

part of me still wants to leave this place, but it is getting harder and harder to imagine life outside of here. for reasons practical: i've got a secure job. for reasons more precious: i've got a family and friends and a house and a neighborhood bar and a favorite diner and the sunshine. this month alone, i know three wonderful people who are moving closer to me and i start to ask myself, will i ever want to leave?

i hope so. i know there will come a time when something somewhere else calls my name and i come running. by then, i will be ready. for now, i am fine just where i am.

and thus wrote christine on 3/20/2002. +

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slowly and carefully, I'm making my way across the country. it's like you said - if I focus too much on the before and after, I might miss the during. so I haven't thought too much about the people and places I've left behind, even though I do miss everyone and everything. I'm looking forward to driving into L.A., in two weeks, but I haven't given too much thought to what life will be like there. I think that maybe more than anything else, good traveling requires a willingness, to live in the changing present. I've visited good friends and new friends and old friends, and every place that I've visited has felt like home during the time I've stayed there.

a friend of mine once told me she thought I would be happy anywhere. maybe that's true. place is incidental. there's so much to see, everywhere.

middle america posesses an often grotesque beauty, particluarly in winter: endless flatness, fields of dirt, billboards, straight roads, leafless trees, parking lots. but the small towns pack in politeness, something patient and simple. there's just so much space. even when dense, still there's space.

in just a few hours my friend jared and I head off on a 17 hour car ride from Urbana, Illinois to Houston, Texas. Toward a new temprary home and another group of good friends. before long, dear, I will be in California too.

and thus wrote ryan on 3/7/2002. +

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