The Road Begins

Here's my new car! Dodge Avenger - like it? Love the fact that it is burgundy - like Jack and Neal's car in 1949.... So, decided that best thing to do is press on. Renting a vehicle for a week (or so) probably has the least financial impact compared to other options (e.g. renting for the whole time), and having to return it to Toronto hopefully will only put us couple of days behind schedule, which hopefully we can make up by adjusting the route - especially the side trip bit to Merton's monastery at Gethsemani. It puts me in mind of the back-and-forth journeys between Rocky Mount and NY with furniture for Kerouac's mother (Sal's aunt, in the book).

Also reminds me of the beginning of On The Road where Sal/Jack starts his first journey west by heading north and getting trapped in the rain in the bear mountain wilderness and having to take a bus back into NY with a bunch of school teachers. Thing is: we're doing this trip to be on the road, and whatever happens, we're going to be on the road - even if part of the time we're having to make a frantic dash back to Toronto to return this car and pick up my car. It's still the road, right? We'll still be listening to great sounds, drumming on the dashboard, gabbing about life and whether and how and when we got "It" - you know "It!" Like life, we get thwarted sometimes, we think, and yet we're still here, we still have this day, we're alive, and no-one and nothing can take this from us. Only we ourselves, if we squander it being preoccupied with things not working out as we wish.

Above picture was taken soon after entering the States when I stopped for a coffee on I-90 with another 700km to go to get to Lowell where I cannot believe I actually am now. As I got closer, and the darkness came, the sky seemed to take on a luminous quality. Very striking particularly when I first saw "Lowell" on the signpost about 50 miles out, as if the horizon where I was heading was hallowed in glory - must have been the glow of a full moon radiating through the clouds, and I thought of Dr. Sax and the shadow disappearing in old milltown Lowell, where I now sit in a house in the heart of Centralville.

Some more snapshots along the road:


And I particularly like this one taken across the dashboard:


Both the above shots taken on the road traveling I-90 in New York State.