Note: I am publishing these posts with a delay of a week or so, because it is difficult to find fast internet connections and time to write while driving 10 hours per day. I still don't have an internet connection, but the laundry-mat down the street does, so I'll be posting daily from there, and wearing really clean clothes. This post is from August 29th.

Well, we're finally on the road. All of our stuff is in the trailer, and we're in the town of Amsterdam, somewhere in upstate New York. It took most of the day to load the trailer, so we didn't leave Christine's place until seven PM. It was a ton of work, between yesterday emptying all my stuff from my place, then today moving my stuff from the rented Penske into the Broadway Express truck and moving all Christine's stuff from her fourth floor apartment into the truck. We got a couple hundred miles done, which is a start. Motels are a lot more expensive than they used to be. For "America's Best Value Inn," the normal rate is over $90. We are paying the coupon rate of $75, which is slightly better, but not like the $19 I remember paying for a North Carolina dump-tel ten years ago or so.

Before the trip, we decided to buy a GPS system. Like most people who buy one of those things, the first thing we did was to mess with the language settings for the voice. It's amazing the options available: Estonian, Hungarian, and so on. I had it on Italian for a while, but I got tired of translating the sinistras and destra s. We settled on "British English," which uses all the same words as American English but in a sophisticated and snooty English accent attached to a lovely female voice. We've named her Agatha.

Agatha is getting bored. Life as a GPS can't be that exciting when the route involves several thousand miles on the same road. She's gotten to the point where she'll once in a while tell us not to take an exit, just for something to say. "In one point four miles, there is an exit on the right. Keep left." I wouldn't be surprised if she starts telling us little anecdotes, just to pass the time. "In point seven miles, keep left at Oneonka. You know, I had a sister lived around those parts. She was a nurse practitioner down at the V.A. Hospital. Me and her used to have a great time with the boys down by the saloon. You know, I think it was about..."

Anyway, those are the kind of thoughts that pass through your head when you are faced with fifty-odd hours of driving. Stay tuned. It only gets weirder.