Last night on the road

Turns out there’s not a whole lot of free time on a roadtrip! When I’m not driving, I’m either visiting with my hosts or totally exhausted. I stayed with family in Indianapolis and St. Louis, friends in Kansas City and Boulder. (I was on my own in a hotel last night in Moab but had no time to write since it was essential I make a beeline for the hotel pool upon arrival.)

Today I’m two hours east of Las Vegas in St. George, Utah. And tomorrow I will drive to Bishop, California – my final destination! I started my drive seven days ago and suspect that I’m feeling more prepared than had I flown here. I've watched the landscape and the people change before me. From the bushy green mountains of West Virginia to the (never ending) fields of Kansas to the commanding Colorado mountains which gave way to the white rocky desert of Utah. I'm beginning to see how it all fits together and how I may have gotten from a fourth floor walk-up in Brooklyn to a bungalow in Bishop.

I've been hyper focused on my goal each day for seven days: wake up, drive, gas, bathroom, drive, food, gas, drive, bathroom, drive, unload bags and bikes, sleep, reload bags and bikes, drive, you get the idea. But on the longer, straighter roads, I've had space to wonder what life will be like when I actually get to Bishop. It's been an adventure getting this far and yet I'm very aware that it's just the beginning.

P.S. There are some bonkers landscapes in this country. Take Utah for example, never have I ever had the inclination to blast the entire soundtrack from Mad Max Furiosa... but that happened today. Polaroids from today's drive:

Polaroids from driving through Utah on July 25, 2024

I head west tomorrow!

My mom is signing my scrapbook which means it’s my last night in Raleigh. In the last two weeks I’ve:

• Moved out of my studio in Brooklyn

• Driven a U-Haul box truck on the BQE (and nine hours south to Raleigh… but most notable was merging onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway)

• Bought a Subaru like all the rest of my car-owning friends

Phase 1: Move out of New York. Phase 2: Buy a car. Now for Phase 3: Drive across the country to a little desert town.

I’m headed to West Virginia tomorrow, just to get a few hours underway, and I feel a lil nervous!! How weird to drive not knowing the place at the end of the road. It’s reminding me of the feeling I had as I rode out to volunteer at a goat farm in Spain this past October.

My friend drove me deeper and deeper into the arid hills of rural Andalusia toward a village even some Spaniards hadn’t heard of. I asked my friend, “Did you ever put a lot of effort into doing something and have no idea what it would actually be like?” As I fearfully watched the arrival time tick down on our navigation, my friend told me of the time he accepted a job in Argentina and moved his life across the ocean. His story of risk didn’t exactly ease my nerves, but it reminded me that I wasn’t the only one to make choices that totally freak me out.

The goat farm ended up being totally beyond awesome, by the way. I milked goats by hand, learned to make cheese and yogurt, harvested tomatoes and almonds, cooked family meals and spoke lots n lots of Spanish; And the experience was hugely influential in my decision to leave New York.

So as I recall the nerves of driving out to the farm, I also remember that the times I’ve felt most nervous tend to result in the experiences I remember most.