Evelynn Starr

So where do I start (again)?

Loyal readers will keel over in shock that this blog has once again risen from the dead. Last year I promised pithy commentary on a regular schedule but just trying to sort through my thoughts completely stressed me out. I left you all on the edge of your seats on Opening Day 2014 at Fenway Park. Hope none of you fell off. (And after their World Series victory in 2013, the Red Sox had a disastrous year.)

Not making any such promises this time around.

It’s road trip time. Two years in Boston have come to a mostly satisfying close… satisfying in the sense that we all survived the winter from hell without freezing to death or by killing ourselves while jumping from windows into 25-foot banks of snow. I have no idea how human civilization has thrived in these latitudes for so long.

It is time to move on and resettle in a more habitable place. We are transferring to San Francisco. And to get there we have decided on a typical ‘Murcan thing to do: Road trip.

5,000 miles, 16 states, 18 days.

The Dalai Lama says everyone should visit at least one new place every year. Our route will take us through the heartland… and to a bunch of places this Yankee has certainly never been. I honestly can’t remember when I last set foot in a red state and in the next couple of weeks I will probably spend more time in them than I may wish to remember. But on the other hand I’ll be seeing some great old friends and anyway, it’s important to separate the politics from the place, right? There’s a lot of beauty out there in the middle of the country – Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Arches National Park – in addition to the right honorable hog-castrating Senator from the great state of Iowa.

(And by the way, I do personally know some Oklahomans who would vote for Elizabeth Warren in a heartbeat. So much for stereotypes.)

So as three guys from a moving company load our worldly possessions onto a tractor-trailor that we hope to meet in one piece on the left coast three weeks from today, I want to write about some of the stuff we will see, smell and experience as we cross this vast continent from east to west. I’ve never traveled coast-to-coast by land, and I am sure I will learn a lot of really cool things along the way.

Because the journey is the destination. And because as one friend said to me recently: “….You can’t really know America until you have driven across it.”