This is where my blog lives. It is random and sometimes incoherent. Entries appear irregularly.

April 28th, 2004 - So I bought this scooter, a little Honda Metropolitan. It's white with a red stripe down its middle and it looks kind of like an old Vespa. Its fairings curve gently down from the handlebar. The rear end is rounded like an Airstream or, I suppose, like a toaster. The lights and gauges are all retro-round too. It was an impulse purchase, spurred by the image of Brittney and I zipping up Broadway in Arlington for Mexican food in the twilight of a summer evening. I have been riding it back and forth to work for a week or two now.

It'll do 40mph assuming you're fairly light and aren't riding into a wind. This is slightly problematic because Massachusetts actually defines a one-person vehicle that will do more than 25mph and/or put out more than 2hp as a motorcycle and requires you to register it as such and have the appropriate motorcycle license. The guys at the dealership poo-pooed that idea. My scooter is most definitely a scooter in their eyes, not a hog. So they told me to go to the registry and tell the people behind the counter that I needed a moped sticker. Then they told me not to go speeding by any cops. And though I'm normally a law abider and a good citizen, in this case I had to agree that what I'm riding is very different from a motorcycle and that the state's interest in having me register it as such is really just a ploy to ruin my innocuous fun.

I got the sticker.

I also got a big, ornery lock called the 'New York Fuggehdaboutit' for chaining my scooter to parking meters and stops signs and other allegedly immovable objects. I am told that scooters and motorcycles are stolen all the time. Maybe instead of the 'New York Fuggehdaboutit,' a name that certainly connotes safety from all of society's worst elements, I should have gone for the 'Mexico City No Mames Gue.' They invented theft in Mexico City. If New York was closer to the border, Mexico City's top thieves would have already nabbed J. Lo, P. Diddy and every last member of the Knicks along with their Bentleys and Rolls Royces and assorted bling-bling.

I keep my oh-so-effective lock in the scooter's small trunk under the seat. I put my helmet there too. The trunk is just big enough for a helmet and lock, or a bag of groceries, or a new born baby, not that I've checked. There's also a hook between the handlebars that will accomodate another bag of something you want to take with you. With a courier bag over my shoulder I can move quite a bit of stuff with my little scooter.

This morning, after 80 miles of scooting fun, I had to fill the tank for the first time. I shot down to the gas station on the corner of Boston Ave and Rt 16, popped the little plastic gas cap cover and stepped aside for the nice, Middle Eastern man who runs the station to dispense the petrol.

He looked at me and laughed.

'How much does it take?' he asked.

'Hmmm, well, I think the tank is 1.3 gallons, and it's just about on empty, so why don't you put 1.2 gallons in there?' I said.

A single gallon of urine colored gas squirted into the tiny tank, and I paid $1.80 and scooted away. $1.80. I'd done just over 80 miles on $1.80. My sense of environmental responsibility was deeply gratified, as was my innate cheapness. I'm practically whizzing around town.

April 27th, 2004 - Oh my god in heaven above. Does that qualify as taking the lord's name in vain? That is to say, have I used the lord's name in an 'irreverent or disrespectful manner?' Of course, one of the definitions of irreverent from Princeton's WordNet was 'not revering god.' So what I'm getting is that apparently it's not right to use god's name unless you're saying something nice about him, her or it, depending on your beliefs.

I don't believe in god. Nor do I believe in capitalizing the word god as if it was a person's proper name.

I mean, let's be honest, god came along way before English ever did. Even the idea of god, the Christian idea, came up way before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the North Sea and bastardized Latin and Greek into a new tongue in which the word 'god,' admittedly, must have been one of the very first utterings. Christian god, not the one they borrowed from the Jews, the one called Yahweh, probably started out in Sanskrit or Aramaic or even Ugaritic, an ancient language my friend Jeremy's father reads.

So god probably isn't even god's name. It's what people call god in our language because they either don't know or can't pronounce his, her or its real name. Maybe it's like that scene in Splash where Tom Hanks asks Darryl Hannah to say her mermaid name in her own language and she starts squealing like a dolphin and all the TVs in the department store they're standing in explode. I probably couldn't take the lord's name in vain even if I wanted to.

That's why I feel completely comfortable saying things like, 'Jesus Fucking Christ!' when I stub my toe, or 'God damn it you stupid piece of shit,' when someone cuts me off in traffic. Also, as I mentioned before, I don't believe in god, so I'm not even remotely nervous that some old man with a long white beard and billowy robe is going to strike me dead with a bolt of lightning. It's a charming idea though, isn't it?

My mother often exclaims, 'Jesus wept!' when she hears something that pisses her off. 'Jesus wept' is the shortest verse in the bible, and though the words are printed there in the hallowed book, I'm pretty sure the way my mom says it qualifies as 'in vain.' 'Hallowed,' for those of you playing along at home, means 'to make or set apart as holy' according to the American Heritage Dictionary. Usage example: Hallowed shit! I didn't mean to take the lord's name in vain when I said, 'Jesus wept!'

'Golly,' a word some people use in place of god, is really a poor substitute and makes you sound like a child actor from the '50s. Dictionary.com says it's 'used to express mild surprise or wonder.' I'm mildly surprised people still say 'golly.'

'Jeeze' too is lame. It's the cheater's formulation of Jesus, who was the son of god but was god also. I never quite got that one. Jeeze Louise, don't even start me on the holy ghost who I'm convinced got thrown in cause they needed someone to take responsibility for the third station of the cross.

Speaking of ghosts, I used to love Space Ghost when I was kid. He was cool and not at all scary like most other ghosts.

Getting back to this lord's name in vain thing though, the truth is people only ever take the lord's name in vain because taking the lord's name in vain is deeply satisfying when you're pissed off. To wit, no one ever takes Bozo the Clown's name in vain. No one says, 'Bozo the Clown damn it' or 'Bozo the Fucking Clown!' Really, when you're angry and you want to express it there's nothing like invoking the name of the holy, especially when you mingle holy words with words that are traditionally thought of as bad, words like 'damn' or 'fuck,' though this last word, also known as the 'f-word' or the 'f-bomb,' is sometimes sufficient all on its own without god's help which gives you some feeling for how powerful it is.

I really like when people try other lord's-name-in-vain dodges like 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph!' I mean, here's the thing, if you believe in god, don't you think he, she or it is clever enough to know what you meant? For christ's sake, don't patronize the almighty with wishy-washy lord's-name-in-vain equivalents. Just go ahead and blaspheme at the top of your lungs and then pray to him, her or it not to off you with one of those lightning bolts I was talking about before.

I think the best solution for this whole lord's-name-in-vain problem (and what an enormous problem it is, eh?) is only to allow the speaking of his, her or its name inside churches, aka houses of the lord. That way I wouldn't have to hear it in the pledge of allegiance, see it on dollar bills and coins or have the president of the United States invoke it at the end of every speech. People wouldn't 'god bless me' when I sneeze or 'for christ's sake me' when I screw up. In fact, maybe if people weren't always foisting god on me at every opportunity I wouldn't feel compelled to take his, her or its name in vain so much in the first place.

April 25th, 2004 - The first time I can remember feeling really depressed was when I was eight years old. My best friends in the world moved back to Mexico and left me to ride alone through the neighborhood waiting for nothing to happen. I went from knowing with absolute certainty what I'd be doing in most every waking moment (i.e. riding bikes and playing football) to absolute loose ends in the space of two weeks. I moped. I lost my appetite. I was miserable.

Depression visited again the summer I was fourteen. Too young to work, I spent the better part of May, June and July parked in front of the television watching Donahue and soaking in boredom. At some point I became so distraught over the utter monotony that I began to fear I'd kill myself, not that I was planning out how I'd do it, but I felt badly enough that I could see becoming that despondent. It was terrifying.

Throughout high school I medicated my depression and anxiety with vast quantities of Milwaukee's Best and leafy, seed-riddled marijuana. I was a late bloomer, awkward with girls and terrible in social situations, but being able to suck back a case of beer in a day and roll a tight joint won me a reprieve of sorts from the really intolerable cruelty kids were inflicting on one another.

At college the medications were even more readily available so I indulged enough to avoid noticing what a crappy job of 'finding myself' I was doing. If I was depressed then I wasn't aware of it. Actually, there were long periods during which I wasn't aware of much of anything at all, and one day I woke up and realized I had only a foggy notion of what I'd been up to for the preceding six weeks.

I quit drinking. Adulthood ensued.

And let me tell you, if adulthood isn't depressing, then I don't know what is. There is the humiliating experience of interviewing for and working at an 'entry level' job. There is the relentless pressure to do distasteful things like: pay rent, wear ties, wash dishes and clean the bathroom. You cease being cool. Cool, as it turns out, is unaffordable. As an adult I've been mildly depressed more or less always, a direct result of shoe-horning myself into careers I didn't much like and holding myself to standards no one could really meet. I have been cynical, sarcastic, pessimistic and borish. I have been down.

In recent years my depression has become more episodic. I am happy and well for weeks and months at a time. Then I go into a dive that can last for days, weeks or longer. Sometimes there are physical symptoms. I feel tired all the time, always on the verge of coming down with something but never really getting sick. I complain a lot. I take days off work. I can tell you I'm not a lot of fun to be around during these spells.

My wife though is very patient. She often points out that I'm depressed before it ever occurs to me that it might be so, while I'm still thinking my stomach feels a little upset or that my head aches almost imperceptibly. My father understands these things also. He calls on the phone to see how I'm doing. And as silly as it sounds, sometimes all I have to hear is that someone cares that I'm having a hard time and the mood melts. I feel better.

Now I know when I'm depressed, a bad, brooding, unshakeable mood settling in. I don't try to fight it so much anymore. Fighting never helps. Waiting is the best thing, laying low and waiting. Eventually something good happens and a switch flips somewhere in my reptilian brain and I'm back. As I envision it, depression results from thoughts getting trapped in closed loops, like cars moving slowly through the maze of one-way streets in Somerville. I always know where I need to be, but I can't seem to get there.

I'd really like this entry to be one of those high school style essays that ends with a paragraph about how I've conquered depression and how life is nothing but soft-serv and donuts, but you'd see through that pretty quickly, wouldn't you? The truth is, right now, I'm in a pretty good place. When I'm depressed it doesn't seem to last more than a week and more often it's only a day or two. But who knows why that is? Who knew eight-year-olds were suffering with mental illnesses that layed them low for whole summers? Who knew that Phil Donahue could inspire suicidal thoughts in middle-class adolescents?

Who knows why I'm sharing this with you, except that it's been on my mind. And maybe it's a sign of some nascent mental health that I can tell you these things without the slightest discomfort. Or maybe it's that I've been thinking a lot about the child Brittney and I are trying to make and wondering if I'm going to saddle him or her with this same problem, if there's anything I can maybe do about that...other than tell them what I've been through myself.

April 20th, 2004 - ALI BOMAYE! ALI BOMAYE! ALI BOMAYE!

After the final bell, but before Muhammad Ali was proclaimed winner of the 'Rumble in the Jungle,' the ring filled with people wanting to touch the champion. Eventually a platoon of white-helmeted security guards formed a cordon around Ali, and slowly he made his way out through the crowd as they chanted. ALI BOMAYE! ALI BOMAYE! ALI BOMAYE! (Ali, kill him!)

I watched the fight replayed on cable tonight. It reminded me of sitting on the couch with my father as a very young child watching Ali fight on Wide World of Sports. Dad was a big fan of the champ, so we rooted against Frazier and Spinks.

After the 'Rumble in the Jungle' they showed the 'Thrilla in Manilla,' a far better fight, Ali, at 32, outsmarting and outlasting Frazier to win by TKO after 14 rounds. It was the third of the classic Ali-Frazier fights, and it was the biggest sporting event in the world that year.

Despite following Sugar Ray Leonard a bit in the '80s, it's been a long time since I considered myself any sort of boxing fan. Brittney hates it, thinks it's brutal and stupid, so I don't ever watch the crappy boxing that's on now. The big fights are all pay-per-view, so I skip those too. Maybe it's that boxing has lacked personality for too long. Mike Tyson is the closest thing to a charismatic hero the sport has created over the last two decades, and he's more of an anti-hero, a lightning rod for all those who love the sport's savagery but especially for those who hate it.

Ali was more than a star athlete. He was a mouthy, charming iconoclast who said things like, 'praise be to Allah' and 'I proved that Allah is the one true god,' on live world-wide television. It not only stunned white America, it gave black America a brave voice to follow whether they were interested in the teachings of Elijah Muhammad or not. Can you imagine a star athlete being allowed to extoll the virtues of Islam on live television now? The program directors would cut away in a heart beat.

You know, I have no clue how my father became such a big Muhammad Ali fan. Ali was cocky and brash, not the type of person who normally draws Dad's respect. The workmanlike approach of Joe Frazier would have been more in keeping with Dad's sporting aesthetic. Yet it was Ali's name he whispered to me while shadow boxing in the kitchen, ducking his head to the left while catching me with an open-handed right upside the head, then laughing.

Now Ali is 62. Dad is 65. They both have Parkinson's Disease. Ali vibrates in his chair and is barely audible when he speaks. Dad shakes so hard he has trouble reading the paper.

To be honest, I had forgotten who won both the 'Rumble' and the 'Thrilla.' I was pretty sure Foreman and Ali fought only once, so the eighth round KO that Ali sprung on the younger, more powerful Foreman wasn't that big a surprise to me. But I had no idea which of the Ali-Frazier fights the 'Thrilla' was despite having seen them all way back when. I found myself rooting for the champ all over again, just like when I was small. I almost called my Dad to tell him it was on, but he knows who won, and he never stopped rooting for Ali.

ALI BOMAYE! ALI BOMAYE!

April 19th, 2004 - Today I went to work in a dead man's shirt. Lauren e-mailed me about a month-and-a-half ago saying that her brother-in-law Jeff had all these clothes from his grandfather who just passed away and they didn't really fit him. Jeff is shorter than I am and maybe a little bit broader at the shoulder. I replied to Lauren's e-mail with a cursory interest and forgot all about it, but the next time I was over at her place she produced a bag full of long sleeve shirts, two in plaid and one with stripes in an unopened package. I tried one of the plaids on and it fit me well, so I took them home with me.

Last night I laundered and ironed Jeff's grandfather's shirts and wore one of them to work today.

This isn't the first time I've worn a dead man's clothes. I used to wear a couple of suit coats I got from my own grandfather after he died. I also had a Navy P-coat and regulation blue Navy jacket that belonged to my mother's first husband the pilot who father my brother and then went down at sea off the coast of Spain in '62 or '63. Then there are the piles of garish, old shirts and pants I used to pluck from the rack at the thrift store when I was in college. But maybe those don't count.

With the suit coats and Navy issue stuff I got from my family I always felt a little bit reverent when I wore them. I was conscious each time I put my arms through the sleeves that they had belonged to a real person, in the case of my grandfather someone I knew well. Wearing that stuff felt like a sort of tribute to the dead men it belonged to. In fact, I've outgrown it all now, but I keep it in the closet in the guest room because I don't feel right throwing it out, or putting it into thrift shop circulation for that matter.

Oddly I didn't feel reverent at all about the polyester pants and polka-dotted shirts I got at thrift stores. At $2 and $3 a pop, they felt more just like cheap clothing, amusing answers to budgetary and fashion questions that needed answering. I laundered them before I wore them too, but mostly to avoid getting scabies.

So when I carried Jeff's grandfather's shirts out of Lauren's apartment in a plastic shopping bag I didn't think much of it. They were nice enough shirts. I probably wouldn't have bought them for myself, but for free they made nice additions to my wardrobe.

That changed when I ironed them. Ironing is a mostly autonomic function. The steamy appliance passes back and forth over the cloth of its own accord, sighing and hissing as the wrinkles disappear. Ironing busies my hands, leaving my brain free for other stuff.

I began thinking about how Jeff must feel giving away his grandfather's stuff, like scattering the old man's ashes, like erasing all the details of a picture that took a long, long time to draw. But what else are you going to do? Despite the fact that I've hung onto a couple of my own grandfather's coats, there's not much sense in keeping these things around. They are not the person who's passed on. They're just things.

I didn't know Jeff's grandfather. I never met him. I never even heard Jeff talk about him. As I stood there pushing the creases out of his shirt tails, I wondered what I could possibly deduce about the man from the simple clues in his collars and cuffs.

Then I realized that I actually know quite a lot about this guy. We were, after all, the same size. We shared a bodily dimension. The world felt, to some degree, the same for each of us. And so, I know how far he had to reach across a table to get the salt and pepper shakers. I know how a standard, queen-size mattress felt beneath him. I know what angle the sun had to strike to make him squint as he walked down the road. I know these things implicitly. By extension, I know Jeff's grandfather pretty well.

As each shirt was finished I hung it, facing left on a wire hanger, buttoned the top button to keep the collar from wrinkling as it hung and put it in the closet with my other shirts. This morning, I got up, walked the dog, showered and went to the closet to dress. Solemnly but happily I pulled the red and brown plaid I'd first tried on at Lauren's from its spot and put it on. I buttoned the cuffs.

When I walked through the kitchen door at work, someone turned to me, a fresh cup of coffee in their hand, and said, 'Hey, nice shirt. Is it new?'

And I said, 'No. As a matter of fact, it isn't.'

Thanks, Jeff.

April 18th, 2004 - Fifty pages into Catch 22 I was thinking, 'wow, it really hasn't hooked me yet. I hope it gets better.' At the time I was holed up in a Super 8 in Albuquerque trying to kill time until we could move on to Las Vegas and Tucumcari to the East. If a book's opening chapters can't keep you entertained in a funnel of boredom like Albuquerque, it doesn't bode well for the remaining pages.

But Brian Donohue told me HE was reading Catch 22, and, I thought anyway, he said he was enjoying it. I decided to press on, despite the presence of five or six other untouched novels in my bag.

I moved on, slowly. By the time we got to Little Rock, I was hardly 100 pages in, and I ran for the shelter of a New Yorker with a Jonathan Lethem short story in it.

After another hundred pages I was just about ready to give up, to put it down in favor of RK Narayan or John McPhee. But you know, I really almost never put a novel down before it's finished. The process of identifying books I'm interested in is fairly complex and by the time I plonk my money down on the counter and walk out with it, a book is usually pretty well vetted. Also, I'm stubborn. I maintain this unreasonable belief that every book has something to offer if you've only got the patience to find it. Brittney thinks I'm silly. I probably am.

In my defense though, Brian Donohue, whose taste in literature I trust more or less completely, was reading Catch 22. There had to be something in there worth persisting for, some bit of classic American style or some rye comment. Something.

Still, I couldn't escape the feeling that Heller's book was dated, that maybe Vonnegut had done the same subject matter in the same style, but a whole lot better. And because I'd read Vonnegut front to back I didn't need to read Heller.

Then, 300 pages in, the tide turned. The disparate stories concerning Heller's myriad characters suddenly coalesced and the plot thickened substantially, like heavy cream under the relentless beating of the whisk. Yossarian, the main character, transformed himself from quirky womanizer to sympathetic everyman. Orr died. Nately was killed. Colonel Cathcart upped the number of missions again. I began to care.

By the end the pages were turning themselves. I got it. I understood why Catch 22 is a classic and why Heller deserves to stand next to Vonnegut in the pantheon of great 20th century American writers. Moreover, I felt vindicated, my faith in the quality of a book rewarded and my vetting process confirmed as sound.

Oh, and I found out that Brian never finished it. He just couldn't get into it.

Brian, if you're reading this. Finish the book. Finish the book.

April 15th, 2004 - 'He didn't have the stomach for it.' That's what it would say on my tombstone, if I was going to have one. Everyone has their physical vulnerability. Brittney doesn't sleep. She gets headaches. You? You're ugly. Achilles, he had that heel. I have a bad stomach.

The A&E special about me would feature my oldest friends waxing nostalgic about great times I missed out on because my digestive tract was in upheaval. In fact, if you watch the video of our wedding there's a segment in which my friend Charlie talks about how bad my stomach is/was. Next to the link that brings you here from my friend Marc's site is the comment, 'You'd be angry too if your stomach was filled with badgers, acid and C. Thomas Howell.' That Marc, what a scamp!?!

I bring all this up because I spent much of the night last night slinking back and forth between the bed and the bathroom. As if you wanted to know. As if you cared. Well, I'll spare you the details, but I will say that I'm in the market for a new toilet, one that's more comfortable for sleeping on.

I don't know why I don't own one already. It's not as if my stomach only recently went bad. It's been this way as long as I can remember. My father's stomach is bad too. It's genetic. Abdominal pain and discomfort are in my DNA.

When I was in college it was much worse. Back then I was drinking like my insides were on fire and I needed to put them out. The mix of alcohol, stress, nicotine, caffeine and, let's be honest, the occasional, illicit stimulant sent me to the emergency room on more than one occasion. My friends worried. My parents, unaware of what I was consuming, were worried too. Heck, I was worried as I watched twenty pounds melt off a frame that couldn't really afford to lose ten. I would sometimes go days without being able to eat a proper meal then. I was constantly nauseous, constantly running off to the bathroom. Leaving my apartment was an exercise in advance planning and hope. Once I kicked the alcohol, nicotine, speed and caffeine to the curb things smoothed out (so to speak). I returned to a more straightforward, stress-induced state of indigestion.

Which is where I am now and certainly where I've been since I returned from the Southwest nearly two weeks ago.

If I fail to achieve some form of greatness in my lifetime (a fate I fear more and more), I will chalk it up to digestive difficulties. Then again, I recall a professor once telling me that Martin Luther wrote many of his famous theses while straining to empty his bowels on an old, German commode. And a quick Google search teaches us that Jim Cash, one of the co-writers of the hit film Top Gun, died of a stomach ailment. So maybe there's still hope for me.

Interestingly, I find that when my stomach is upset, I also have bad dreams. I careen through nightmares and then wake up and my stomach is eating itself and I lurch out of bed and down the hallway and you know what comes next. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you are one of the lucky few with a cast iron constitution. Something else disturbs your sleep. I can't even imagine what.

You know, I don't even know for sure that it's my stomach that causes the problems. The stomach is only one of the links in the acid-soaked chain of the digestive tract.

This from the Colorado State web site, emphasis theirs:

Foodstuffs entering the stomach have been, to at least some extent, crushed and reduced in size by mastication, and impregnanted with saliva. The stomach provides four basic functions that assist in the early stages of digestion and prepare the ingesta for further processing in the small intestine:

It serves as a short-term storage reservoir, allowing a rather large meal to be consumed quickly and dealt with over an extended period of time.

It is in the stomach that substantial chemical and enzymatic digestion is initiated, particularly of proteins.

Vigorous contractions of gastric smooth muscle mix and grind foodstuffs with gastric secretions, resulting in liquefaction of food, a prerequisite for delivery of the ingesta to the small intestine.

As food is liquefied in the stomach, it is slowly released into the small intestine for further processing.

Maybe that's it. Maybe I lack intestinal fortitude. Don't forget the liver and pancreas. They produce the bile salts and enzymes the small intestine needs to break down fats (or so the folks at Colorado State have told me). All I can say for certain is that somewhere between entrance and exit there's a problem, one that's exacerbated by stress and sometimes by massive quantities of raw fish.

Come to think of it, my eating habits should be entered on the list of suspects. I am known at work as the guy with the stinky lunch. I once overheard one of my co-workers say to two others, 'Ew...gross...don't eat that. Give it to John. He'll eat anything.' And I will, assuming it smells ok and someone else has eaten it at least once before me.

Note to self: review eating policies, specifically foods proferred on a dare.

The last thing to consider is my stress level. What stresses me out? Well, there's traffic. Traffic gets everybody worked up. I hate traffic. This morning alone I sat in traffic for over an hour on my way to work. Also, inconsiderateness. Like when someone cuts over into the breakdown lane, speeds past you and then cuts back into the line of cars farther down while you wait (im)patiently in line. I hate that. I get really, really into giving sanctimonious speeches to inconsiderate people in my head while they're busy not considering that I exist and might want to get where I'm going too.

Work stresses me. Marriage stresses me. The dog stresses me. Family stresses me. Television boils my blood. Don't even bring up politics, but if you're going to bring up religion you might as well talk politics first, because religion sends me right over the edge. I have fits over pollution, littering, smoking, corruption, dieting and the ads in the Parade magazine in the Sunday paper. I mean really, who the hell is buying those stupid angel figurines? Not even Ask Marilyn could answer that one. Whoever you are, cut it the hell out.

In short, the world is like sandpaper on the tender lining of my digestive pathways. I am abraded. I am rent asunder. It is all YOUR fault.

Forget, 'He didn't have the stomach for it' as an epitaph. Instead, maybe I'll have, 'You made him sick, and he couldn't stand it anymore.' And below that, in smaller letters: 'And for christ's sake learn to parallel park.'

April 13th, 2004 - I seem to have caught the travel bug. Prior to my recent cross country jaunt I would have called myself a homebody. Comfort and routine is what I liked best. But something seems to have broken inside me, somewhere between Salome, AZ and Las Vegas, NM where the need to improvise my life on a daily basis drove the last vestiges of routine and comfort from my road-addled brain.

I've been home ten days and already fantasized about trips to Greenland and South America. Before I left there was talk of a business trip to Los Angeles, a trip I normally would have dreaded. When I got back and found out the trip was off I was, shockingly, disappointed. And I don't even like LA.

Yesterday I wrote about settling back into my old routines. Today I want to tell you that I sort of hate those routines, even though one of them is washing up the dinner dishes and coming up here to the office to pound out this blog. The boredom and desperation I felt before the trip is back much sooner than I expected. I feel the need to shake things up.

To travel.

This will be good news to my wife, who likes to go new places and see new things. She has struggled through the years just getting me to take vacations. She's pushed me out the door to Mexico and to Europe. It will be bad news to the dog, who seldom gets to come along and really is much happier living within the boundaries of his own well-maintained urine marks anyway.

Of course maybe it won't be travel that breaks my routines. Maybe it will be the conception of a child or a new job. Maybe both. Maybe life has a hanging curve ball I haven't seen yet. I've been taking pitches an awfully long time, but you never know, do you?

Actually, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'why not just change your routines? Do things differently. Start a new hobby. Learn another language.'

I thought of that. The main character in one of John Barth's early novels starts new habits, like smoking, just to break them, just to rock his world a little all the time. I think it was The Floating Opera, but I forget. Unfortunately it's not that simple for me. My brain craves familiarity, patterns, routine. I'm compulsive about most everything I do. I don't have Tourrette's Syndrome, but I kinda understand what it's about.

Maybe I was right last week when I said the effects of a trip last twice as long as the trip but then fade. If so, I've got five more weeks of this wanderlust to work through. If I can knock my wife up and find a new job in that time maybe I'll never need to travel again.

April 12th, 2004 - First day back at work. First train ride in. First 'brain dump' from project managers covering for me. Calls to the client to alert them to my return. Sifting and purging of e-mail. Shopping for groceries to jam in the over-stuffed office fridge. First copies made, documents shredded. First communal candy scarfed down between meetings. Shipments received and sent. Train then bus to get home. Kiss wife, pet dog. Reentry nearly complete.

My day was like a long string of amino acids folding itself into a funny shape to make a protein and bonding itself to the real world again. I fell back into routine that naturely, that easily.

Today had no high points, no low points. It was like a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, one piercing note that seemed to go on and on but then suddenly ended. I was a spectator. I watched my day on a small, black and white TV hooked up to a noisy, old VCR.

The best thing about today was reading on the train. I'm in the middle of Catch-22, which, I have to admit, really didn't grab me at first. But it built its momentum slowly and now, 300 pages in, I think I've connected with it. I'll finish it, I'm sure. I just got off the phone with my friend Brian who felt the same way about the book. In fact, he read the first hundred pages twice and then put it down. I was relieved not to be the only one who didn't think it was brilliant. Brian thinks maybe it's just dated. I think maybe Vonnegut just did it better.

Billy Pilgrim came unstuck in time. Today I think maybe I know how he feels.

April 10th, 2004 - A quick accounting of certain salient details of the last thirty days:

Rivers crossed: Colorado, Rio Grande, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Susquehana, Hudson, Connecticut and Charles.

Overall impressions: It seems our rivers have all been so dammed and drawn upon that none of them makes a particularly spectacular sight anymore. I mean, I'm sure it depends on where you cross. The Connecticut, where it separates Vermont from New Hampshire is quite beautiful. The Mississippi is impressive from the gondola strung up for the 1984 World's Fair. The Colorado probably roars away at its headwaters. But by the time the interstates get to them, they're mostly flat greenish-brown canals.

Names used to address the dog other than his given name, Eddie: Licky McFarter, Tiny Fucker, The Stankinator, Little White Dog, Poosniffer, The Lickinator, The Crapinator, The Eddie Alarm Clock, Buddy, Little Bastard, Sleepy McStink, Muddy Paws, Barky McIrritating, Stinky, Stinky McStink, Sweetboy, Stupid Little Dog, That Goddamn Dog, Tiny Polar Bear, Fart Lover, The Fart Monster, Tough Guy, Marky Mark, Edson Arantes do Nacimento.

More about Eddie: He is a comedian. Actually, he is both members of a comedic team, the slapstick guy AND the straight man. He loves to have his teeth brushed, mostly, I think, because I use poultry flavored toothpaste (mmmmm...chicken). He demands a lot of attention. Often he will walk right up and stare at you, unwaveringly, for a solid minute. He is a master of psychic warfare, combining his stares with whimpering, poking, pacing and other distracting behaviors until he has irritated you into letting him outside so he can bark his head off at passersby. He loves sticks. When you throw a stick for him he barks his head off as he chases after it. Once he's scooped it up, he prances around with it like its some kind of bowling trophy. He only drops a captured stick when you promise to throw another one for him. Alternately, he deposits used sticks in the river where neither you nor another dog can get them. If he can't have them, no one can.

New bird species sighted: Scarlet Crowned Kinglet, Roadrunner, Pileated Woodpecker.

More on my nascent birding hobby: Holy crap! Birding is a lot more complicated than I thought. I find myself unable to identify specific species of sparrows. In fact, exotic species are much, much easier to identify than common birds, all of which I have no clue about. We have a bird feeder hanging from a tree outside our dining room window. Two-thirds of the seed I put in it is gone, and yet I've only seen birds on it once. I couldn't identify them. My favorite birds are waterfowl. I'm not sure why, but there's a narrow canal near where we walk the dog during the week, and I've had some success parsing different species of ducks and mergansers down there.

Days worked: 0.

Thirty days off and I feel neither well-rested nor more relaxed. I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. I wasn't particularly stressed out before.

April 8th, 2004 - I listened to way too much Condoleezza Rice today. It's like someone made a really bad record called 'Equivocating Bureaucrat' and it got stuck on infinite repeat in my stereo.

'I don't recall,' she said. 'Our problems were systemic,' she said. 'We had a plan,' she said.

And then I listened to too many other people talking about Condoleezza Rice, saying how sharp she was, how confident, or how arrogant and unapologetic. Some were paid commentators. Some were callers on phone-in shows.

'Condoleezza! Condoleezza! Condoleezza!'

Am I even spelling it right? It sounds like a bacterial infection your condominium might pick up after a few too many drinks and a one-night-stand with a studio apartment. Rice is also an unworthy last name for a first name so multisyllabic and hard to spell. She should change her last name to Schmondoleezza. That would be fantastic. After that, she should marry George Stephanopoulos and become Condoleezza Schmondoleezza-Stephanopoulos.

And why the hell is everyone so upset about what Dick Clark says? American Bandstand's been off the air for a long time. True. Those bloopers shows he's always hosting really blow, and I know he runs a chain of cheap shit burger joints in the midwest, but if Kenny Rogers can sell fried chicken unabashedly are we really going to put up a stink about it?

All kidding aside (mostly), the 9/11 commission and these ridiculous hearings have been a waste of time. The families of the victims will walk away feeling that Washington's partisan bullshit got in the way of them learning anything substantive about the government's failure to protect their loved ones, and the already-very-deep division between the democrats and republicans will have grown even deeper. This is Monicagate and Whitewater four years later. This is the Warren Commission even less interested in finding a culprit.

The tragedies of 9/11 aren't about intelligence failures or miscommunication. 9/11 happened because 50 years of US foreign policy has gone down in the Middle East like all of Vanilla Ice's comeback records, and that's being unkind to the Iceman. Neither the democrats nor the republicans can claim a monopoly on American arrogance. At least Vanilla Ice has a clue about how he's perceived in the great big world outside.

April 6th, 2004 - We got back from wherever the hell we were about 6:30 Saturday evening. I was/am exhausted. I've thought too much about the trip, how it ended and how it might have changed me. Since Saturday I've just been sleeping a laying low.

Much as I predicted in a previous entry, I've already begun to forget about how hard it was being on the road like that and dealing with things like Nancy's illness and the logistical meltdown at the end. Now the adventure of it stands out in my mind, and even as we drove back down the Mass Pike toward home on Saturday I began to think about my next trip.

I want to go to Greenland.

The thing about an experience like the one I've just had is that it does change you, but only for a little while. The shear force of a daily routine wipes out the altered perspective of a three week trip in under six weeks. In fact, you can quantify it pretty accurately. The effects of a trip will last 2x the length of the trip once you resume your normal activities. So I've got four or five more weeks to glean what I can from what I've done. I don't think I'll get to Greenland in that time frame.

Part of what I've been doing over the last few days is reorienting myself to my normal life, that is to say I've been trying to do the same things I always do, but in different ways. I'm trying to think differently about the same activities, come at them from different angles, be more thoughtful and less rote.

In general, at least for the moment, I'm worrying less. If there's one thing I got from the trip, it's this, that most of my anxiety really is unfounded. Since most of it is related to having to deal with the unexpected, a trip on which almost nothing expected to happen happens is like the ultimate aversion therapy. At one point, sitting in a Blake's Lotaburger in Grants, NM, I realized that I had been improvising my life pretty constantly for a little over a week, dealing with things as they came rather than according to a plan. I suddenly felt really good about myself, if not about the overcooked burger I was shoving in my face. Nancy getting sick was a bad thing, except that it served as a sort of atom-smasher for my deepest neuroses.

Gosh, I hope it lasts.

April 2nd, 2004 - Travel is the process of becoming comfortable in a place other than your home, the process of accepting where you are and being there. You know you're travelling when you stop asking, 'Where the hell am I?' You know you're travelling when you're riding in a van and drinking a Yoohoo and turning down the generous offer of a strip of honey pepper beef jerky, when you're sitting in the restaurant (there's only one) in the Little Rock airport eating a French dip sandwich, when you've let slip you're very carefully cultivated standards of cleanliness and are washing your face in the bathroom at McDonalds.

In a few days I'll be home, smelling of hotel soap and rental car. My wife will see that I've let my beard grow into a silly but as-of-yet-unseen shape. And I'll look around the house to see what's different, the piles of paper that live on the flat surfaces near the front door and on the stairs (bills to be paid up in the office) reconfigured or maybe even cleaned up, stacked somewhere else. The dog will go into a jumping, licking apoplexy, so glad I'm back, though wholly unaware how long I've been gone.

After three weeks on the road, I think I can say I am travelling now. I have stopped questioning so many of the odd places I find myself. I am comfortable performing morning ablutions in truck stops or in the bathrooms at the backs of convenience stores (how convenient!).

And now that I am officially travelling, now that I've broken myself of the comforts and habits of home, I am dying to be home.

April 1st, 2004 - New Mexico was amazingly beautiful, like a giant slide show. At the crest of each hill the shutter opened and another technicolor masterpiece slid into place. On Rt 104 from Las Vegas to Tucumcari we kept having to pull over to take pictures. Stopping takes time. Stopping gets in the way of going, but there was too much to see, too much to try and capture not to stop.

Conversely, the Texas panhandle is flat as a skillet and amazing in its own way. To one side of the van cattle-cropped grass stretched away to the horizon without a tree or shrub to break its green momentum. To the other side of the van, the same. Nothing but flat and green.

We are driving east now without stopping to refill water bottles or make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I won't pretend to understand why the Brain Tumor Society cancelled our trip after we'd already logged 1000 miles through desert and mountains. I just know we're done and driving home. My travelling companions have been passing time in the van by villifying the leadership at the Society and sifting through the wreckage for explanations. Me, I'm trying to see the country we're flying across. I don't have the energy to be angry.

We entered Oklahoma in the dark (which sounds much dirtier than it actually was), so I'm not really sure what it looks like. I'm writing this from a suite on the fifth floor of the Marriott in downtown Oklahoma City. The bleeting of the inbound Amtrak woke me at 7:30. In the shower I thought about the bombing at the Murrah Federal Building, and decided I had no idea what motivates people to blow things up, to kill other people with impunity, as if some idea they've hatched in their tiny little heads is so important that it justifies mass murder. I hope I never have an idea like that.

It is, to be honest, really nice to be headed home.

March 30th, 2004 - I've told enough of this story already I'm sure, but let me share just a couple more things.

We were back in the ER yesterday, another 13 hours of waiting for a long enough lull between car accidents and shootings to get Nancy a few minutes with a caring and compassionate physician. We sat with her for a while in the afternoon while a woman in a silky, rainbow-colored blouse sketched people in the waiting room and a harpist plucked away at uplifting favorites like Misty and Three Coins in a Fountain. They were both paid to be there, on grants from the hospital administration.

At one point, during a break in the music, the rainbowy, sketcher lady stopped what she was doing, looked over at the harpist and said, 'Do you know Stairway to Heaven?'

Classic.

Later, when I was actually inside the trauma unit, looking for Nancy in the maze of curtained cubicles and examination rooms, I came upon a man splayed out on a gurney in the hallway. I realized quickly he was strapped down, and shortly after processing that information he squirmed himself into an almost seated position, looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Hey, Babe,' and then closed his eyes and collapsed back on the gurney.

You would be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) by how many people are escorted into the emergency room in handcuffs by utility-belted state troopers or city cops. After a few hours I started to feel strange for not being cuffed myself. When you make eye contact with someone who is shackled (and why wouldn't you? It's not like they're going to get up and hit you), they invariably look away, trying to look casual, like they're not in handcuffs, not just getting patched up on their way to the pokey.

We got out of there around 2am last night. I hope we never ever have to go back.

March 29th, 2004 - A lot has happened in the last four days. Where to start?

I guess the big thing is that Nancy got sick and we spent Friday and all of Friday night in emergency rooms in first Grants, NM and then Albuquerque. She was short of breath and experiencing chest pains. In Grants they thought she might have a pulmonary embolus, a blood clot in one of her lungs, but since they weren't sure they stuck her in an ambulance and shuttled her into Albuquerque where we did the big town ER on a Friday night. Oh boy, there were some prize cases there. I had an extended and very one-sided conversation with an old woman in a pink bathrobe and sunglasses who was irritated that she couldn't get any pain medication (or more pain medication anyway). Even through the sunglasses I could see she had pupils like dinner plates.

At some point in the evening's events, Nancy was in such pain that the attending decided it would be a good idea to shoot her full of morphine, which knocked out the pain she was feeling. Actually, it pretty much knocked her out completely. When I got back to the hospital at 3am, after a quick nap at the Super 8, she was squinty eyed as a hamster and I had to shake her for a full minute before she realized I was in the room.

'It's time to get on your marshmallow pony and ride home,' I joked.

'Ok,' she whispered and drifted away again.

Two hours later, and after several breaks in the non-action during which Nancy vomited the taco dinner they'd fed her back in Grants, she was stumbling out of the hospital between Brian and me. Around 6am we were back at the hotel and thinking about sleep.

So all that fun aside, we also made our way from Snowflake, AZ to Albuquerque, NM and saw all the beautiful shit along the way. We met Jacque (pronounced Jackie) and Raymond Chavez in St.John's, AZ at Jacque's Cafe'. They made us a free breakfast and smiled us on our way.

We drove across the indian reservation at Zuni Pueblo and saw the towering mesas of western New Mexico. We breathed the thinner air at nearly 8,000 ft and began to work our way down the old Route 66. In Grants we checked into a motel that boasted 'that classic Rt 66 style,' which seemed to equate to cinder block construction and particle board furniture weathered and distressed over a period of roughly sixty years. I've come to see it less as a 'style' and more as a way to market delapidation. But maybe I'm jaded. Maybe it looks differently from the cockpit of an RV.

From here we're going to pick our way across the rest of New Mexico, trying to stay near enough to major cities that we can get Nancy decent medical care without having to drive for two or three hours. The ride has come of its rails a little bit, and we're just going to try to ride a bunch of miles and pretend they add up to state crossing. In Amarillo, TX we'll get back on schedule. Probably.

March 25th, 2004 - Eastern Arizona now, up on a plateau covered in light green grass, horse and cattle farms marked off by miles and miles of barbed wire. Everywhere there is land for sale, 40 acre parcels as low as $295 an acre. Long rows of mailboxes cluster at the ends of dirt roads.

It is shockingly quiet. The wind whispers past occassionally. Birds sing sparingly. Every five minutes or so a car hurtles past, 70 mph.

Since we've been out here it has been hazy. Every day we see beautiful country stretching to the horizon, but the mountains and valleys in the distance are always subtly obscured by a thin fog. It ruins our photographs. Nearer to LA we assumed it was smog, but now we know better.

Still, we snap away with our cameras compelled to try to capture what we're seeing, the tiny shutters failing to get the light just right. The long distance details are all lost, the bits out on the horizon that make the scenes particularly striking. I've taken to photographing the mailboxes and fences instead of the sweeping vistas. Hopefully I'll be able to cobble them together to give a decent overall impression.

I think the haze might be part of the overall plan to draw people into Arizona's hinterlands. By defying capture the views demand people come to see for themselves. Cheap real estate hooks them while they're here.

Despite Arizona's charms, we'll move on to New Mexico in the morning. I'll take pictures there too.

March 24th, 2004 - We're seeing a lot of strip malls. In fact, this might as well be the Strip Mall of America Tour. Tonight we went to a pharmacy to buy postcards and after browsing their selection of religious and inspirational figurines, I got bored and went out to see what else this particular shopping center had to offer. There was a Mexican/Chinese restaurant. You don't see that often. There was a also a place called Smiley's Showcase, which was a shop dedicated to scrapbooking supplies. The front window had written on it, in big bubble letters, 'Scrapbookers Cut Corners!' There was also a framed, autographed picture of Marie Osmond.

You think I'm making this up. I'm not.

I don't think you actually need to go very far to find stores like this. Just up the street from our house in Massachusetts there's a place called Cozy Corner and Making Scents. It's a paint your own pottery/make your own smelly candle place. I've never seen anyone go in. I've never seen anyone come out.

Who owns these places? And who is the bank manager who loaned them the money? Are the Japanese involved? Maybe aliens came down from outer space and took over the government, and they opened all these wacky, pathetic businesses to distract us from noticing that we're now ruled by extra-terrestrials.

Extra-terrestrial is how I feel in Snowflake, AZ. People looked at me funny in the grocery store, that sweeping look that starts at your feet and ends at your head and is followed by a look of slightly bemused incredulity. I went out to the parking lot and watched a guy clean his windshield over and over until he ran out of fluid.

During the day we drive through the space between towns and we see amazing things, hundred mile views, prehistoric rock formations, giant cacti, long stretches of sandy nothingness. At night we drive into the peopled places and we see the strip malls. That part of America is mostly the same all over.

Except for framed, autographed pictures of Marie Osmond. That you don't get just anywhere.

March 23rd, 2004 - Phoenix gave us two straight days of stifling heat and 20 knot headwinds. We fell behind in Phoenix. Along Rt 87 north to Payson the wind whispered through the tall grass growing along the shoulder, 'what's your rush?'

My father called. My wife called. Where are you? Are you having fun?

I can say this: I am somewhere I've never been before, somewhere I never even thought of being, somewhere I can't quite put my finger on, even on the US Road Atlas that has become my almost constant companion.

The desert keeps changing. It was dusty canyon lands in eastern California. Then it turned to pebbly sand with cacti, ocotillo and other hard scrabble varieties, peaking out between low, dry brush. Then came the saguaros, the big barrel cacti we all know from cartoon representations of the west. In the mountains east of Phoenix, the roller coaster road to Payson, the saguaros faded and stunted pines took their places. Little round shrubs began crawling over the sun bleached grass.

I am having fun. Like the cacti, it peaks out from the dense brush of hard work that sprawls across our days. I am having that sort of fun that's more apparee eeeedulityedut in the rear view mirror. Once my brain has had the chance to slough off memories of stress and sleep deprivation, only the fun will be left. The future will, no doubt, burnish the present to a glowing shine, and I will remember this trip as an epic and carefree adventure. Do you know that kind of fun?

After four nights in Phoenix we are moving steadily east again. I was a little sad to leave the Best Western that become a sort of home base for us, even if I spent all four nights tossing and turning on the couch. There's a weird tension developing between staying and going. The more we go, the more my brain aches for a break, the chance to stay in one place for two or three nights. But then the longer we stay, the more I panic that we're not making any progress toward the east and home. Maybe now that we've left Phoenix's gravitational pull we'll settle back into the schedule that promised to get us across the country in the first place.

Tonight we're in Payson near the Mongollon Rim. People refer to this area, unashamedly, as Rim Country.

March 21st, 2004 - My left arm is really tan, the hairs on the thick part of my forearm beginning to go blond. I am coming to understand my job here, to navigate, to keep water bottles ready, to spread the lunchtime peanut butter. A well-tanned left arm goes along with the responsibilities.

Yesterday we took a rest day, which felt good in my toasty, tired brain. Unfortunately we spent much of the day cloistered in our hotel room and didn't get any of the day off stuff we needed to get done, done. We didn't do laundry. We didn't figure out where we're going to stay for the next week. We didn't make any media contacts or write any of the letters we meant to write. We watched TV. We ate McDonalds.

Maybe the trip has finally broken us. After spending a week or so trying to preserve our home routines, the stiff-sheeted reality of sleeping in a different bed every night has settled in. We're also breaking each other. There is no personal space in our tiny van. There is no break from the togetherness of the team. There is no where else to be.

Today I drove the riders out to Tonopah, and they rode back to the hotel from there, roughly 60 miles. After showers we went to Chico's Tacos and Brian ate the biggest burrito any of us had ever seen. It looked like a length of fire hose. It was as long as my forearm. He had some nachos too. I was very impressed.

In the evening we met with Bob Brandkamp, the guy I wrote about the other day who is walking across America. He interviewed us for a piece he's working on for public television. Talking about what we're doing was good. It gave us each a chance to put some of this in perspective. It also held up a mirror to our evolving group dynamic. I think we might be bickering more. Regardless, we went and ate overcooked ravioli at The Old Spaghetti Company for dinner.

March 20th, 2004 - Having been to the end of Martin Road, on the Morongo Indian Reservation east of Palm Springs, to where pavement becomes sand and loose gravel, and having lost the riders in Banning, CA just before another seemingly endless straightaway turned to dust, my previously mediocre sense of direction has improved. That's why now, standing on the balcony of our eighth floor suite at the Best Western Central Phoenix, I can look left and know it's west, where we left Riverside and Rubidoux and Indio and Blythe, where Andy and Larry sit in the dim comfort provided by the giant 'swamp cooler' in their roadside junk shop in Bouse, AZ. We've come from the left and remember it in detail.

When I look right my stomach flutters a little knowing that we're about to come to some steep mountain climbs on our way to Payson. Beyond that is Show Low, AZ and Gallup, NM. Where we'll stay after that I haven't figured yet. I have visions of more little motels, like Sheffler's back in Salome where the pool looks more like a cement pond and the carpeting is older than I am.

Ultimately, when I look right from the balcony though I see Little Rock where I'll board a flight back to Boston. Despite the adventure I'm having, I would be lying if I said I wasn't really looking forward to being done, to seeing my wife again. I guess that's just how I am, one of those people who is always more focused on the ultimate destination than the road that leads to it. It's one of my character flaws. Even I can see that being so goal-oriented is a subtle form of death wish, death being the ultimate destination. And I hear the food the sucks there.

Today is our first rest day and we're each hatching overly ambitious plans for how we're going to spend it. There is some talk of going to a bike shop and having the bike's tuned. Nancy wants to find a tack shop so she can buy some horsey shit to take home as a souvenir. Bill and I have discussed the possibility of taking in a Suns game tonight. Brian has joked about renting bikes from a local service and taking a guided tour of the city.

A nap is probably what we all need, even though we slept in until 7am this morning. I think the riders are discovering just how tired they are after covering 380 miles in 6 days. Me, I knew I was tired all along, and I'm only driving the van.

March 18th, 2004 - Adventure, it turns out, stakes its claim at the intersection of fun and misery. What I am having, out here in the sunburnt Southwest, is most certainly an adventure.

Today for example, we set off from Vidal Junction, CA, which is a gas station with a mini-mart and a fruit inspection station. Inside the station, officer Bob Granger was busily slicing up grapefruit, checking for flies or bugs of some sort, and then shovelling it, still dripping, into the garbage can. Outside, Johnny, the South Texas trucker who was hauling the fruit smiled for a picture with Nancy, and then saved a couple of pieces on their way to the trash to share with us. Johnny didn't give his last name. He just said, 'I'm a fruit runner.'

After not too long we crossed the mighty Colorado River, which forms the border between California and Arizona. I was underwhelmed. Perhaps it's all the dams and irrigation drawing off the river's once powerful flow, or maybe it's that rivers that run through deserts get built up into something much greater than they actually are. Either way, the Colorado was neither very wide or fast running. I didn't even stop to snap a picture.

Then came Parker, Arizona, where we met Gene Bingham of Utah. Gene and his wife winter in Arizona. He was intrigued by our cross-country quest and gave us two dollars, but only after confirming that we weren't taking wages off the top. As we were packing up again, Gene toddled back over and handed us five more dollars. It was from Don and Shirley, who are from Wisconsin. They liked Nancy's smile apparently.

We lunched in Bouse, AZ. That's where we met Andy and Larry. Andy is what a marketing professional might call a purveyor of vintage goods. His place, called Andy's Stuff, offered old exercise bikes, shrink wrapped packages of bungie chords and an impressive selection of pocket knives with patriotic symbols on them or else motorcycles. Andy said he was born and raised in New York, though now he has a southern accent of some sort. He wore a trucker's cap and was missing his two front teeth. Larry, his sidekick, was from Monroe, Louisiana. He came to the desert two-and-a-half years ago and stayed because the dry air is good for some respiratory problem he suffers with. We ate PB and J in their dusty parking lot and drove away with a three dollar donation and a nice pocket knife with a trout fishing scene on it.

By this time the heat was really becoming unbearable. I sat in the van and sweated. The riders, trying to finish off their distance for the day, took deep breaths of the heavy air and drank warm sports drink they described as pre-mixed piss. They knocked off at the 60 mile mark, and we were all pretty miserable then.

We drove down to Hope and turned onto Rt 72, which we took north to Salome where we had rooms at Sheffler's Inn. Sheffler's, as it turns out, is the only motel in Salome, and it has seen better days, probably about 40 years ago. Nancy and I took our room keys quietly and went off to a pair of shag-carpeted caves smelling distinctly of disinfectant. We were, to say the least, non-plussed.

Dinner presented a problem too, because there's only one restaurant in Salome, and the woman in the motel office didn't recommend it. We made plans to drive the 45 miles to Quartzite in hopes of fairer fare. Then, with the prospect of another hour-and-a-half round trip in the van daunting us collectively, we walked across the street and peered sheepishly into The Salome Cafe. The waitress/cook said, 'you can sit anywhere.'

Then something happened. I can't quite say what it was. Maybe it was the chicken enchilada and beef tamale dinner special we all had, or maybe it was just that things didn't, for the moment, seem to be so bad. We ate and talked and laughed and started to unwind.

At one point a guy came over to talk to us, and I felt sure he was going to be some lunatic and, in a sense, I was right. He saw that we were riding bikes across the country, and wanted to introduce himself because he's walking across the country. Our cause is brain tumor research. His is mental illness, and he turned out to be an endearing and passionate guy whose story was compelling enough that I, at some point, said to him, 'wow, what you're doing is completely inspiring. I'm humbled by what you're doing.' Those of you who know me should be made aware that I uttered these words with not even the faintest trace of irony.

You can check out what he's doing here.

After dinner we wandered up the street snapping pictures and breathing the now much cooler desert air. Then we went back to the motel and sat in the lawn chairs parked out in front of the rooms. We talked to some Canadians who are riding motorcycles around the Southwest as part of their yearly vacation. And we talked to each other about our life plans and about what books we like to read.

I was, for the very first time since leaving, relaxed.

March 17th, 2004 - We drove out of Blythe before sunrise, and I watched the big, bright sun breach the horizon in my rear view mirror. I had to roll the windows down to let the cool desert air into the van as we zoomed past all the 18-wheelers crossing the sand from Phoenix to LA with all manner of freight and fuel.

We turned into Joshua Tree National Park and headed north on the road that splits it in half. Strange, gnarled cacti and giant rock formations right out of the Flintstones dappled the sand. To be honest, the landscape is beyond my powers of description. Nietszche said something like, 'language makes common, that which is uncommon.' It's better you go see Joshua Tree for yourself. I'm not even sure the snapshots I took will do it justice.

At the end of the park I dropped the riders and they headed east on Rt 62, which is a pencil line on the map between the much larger highways 10 and 40. It rolls and squiggles, and it's mostly cooler because it's a bit higher up. Honestly, I can't imagine there are much better cycling routes across this stretch of California. When I imagined this trip before boarding the plane back in Boston, this is exactly what I saw, me, cruising through the desert with the windows down and the music up loud. It's cliche', I know, but maybe that's why it feels so right. I stopped 15 miles ahead and pissed in the sand and not a single car passed by.

Just after noon, with the mercury rising, I looked off to my left and saw what looked like a dry lake. My New England brain thought it was a snow field, but I quickly adjusted and realized it must have been a big salt flat. Somewhere up near our turnoff, I passed a single dead tree covered in people's old shoes, the laces tied together and flung over the barren branches. A trio of college-aged kids stood near it, taking pictures.

At Vidal Junction, we racked the bikes and quit for the day. The riders had come 93 miles and, I suppose, so had I. We drove back down to Blythe, showered up and hit the Sizzler buffet again. When we walked in, they recognized us.

March 16th, 2004 - The morning was full of adventure. We crossed the Morongo Indian Reservation where the tribe operates a casino and is building a hotel, but hasn't yet decided to pave all its roads. We came to a number of clearly marked throughways on our map that turned out to be washed out dirt roads in reality. We spent an hour or more just trying to find a paved way through that wasn't an interstate. After crunching up a few miles of rutted cart paths, part of which led through a thirty foot wide, cement, rain culvert, we gave up, racked the bikes and drove off in search of asphalt. We must have violated the rental agreement on the van about six different ways before that though. If the first couple days felt like long bike rides, today the trip has become a full-fledged odyssey.

The entrance to the valley that Palm Springs sits in is carpeted with thousands of tall, white windmills, spinning in the heavy breeze. None of us had ever seen anything like it, so we took pictures out the window of the van.

In Indio I drove to the end of a long road that ribbons along I-10. Looking out the driver's side window I couldn't help thinking, 'goddamn, there's nothing but sand here.' Just then I came to a sign that read: Indio Hills Golf Club. If it was a joke, I didn't get it.

The riders really suffered today. The temperature flirted with 100 all afternoon, and there's no shade anywhere. At lunch I worried a little that this trip is beyond them. Then I mixed up another batch of sports drink and moved on.

We made our way up a few more roads that ended in loose sand, and then decided to cut bait. We drove on down 10 to Blythe where we have a pair of free rooms at the Best Value Inn tonight and tomorrow night. Blythe is nice in a why-the-hell-is-there-a-town-here kind of way. The people at the inn are smiley and nice, and the staff at the Sizzler treated us really well, too. It was nice.

March 15th, 2004 - From the corner of Euclid and Edison in Chino, miles of dairy farms offered up their sweet and sour stench. I rolled down the windows the better to smell the shit. Not surprisingly the grass grows tall and bright green despite the encroaching desert.

I have noticed that Californians are completely fetishistic about their cars, or more often, trucks. They bump past, bass pounding the pavement, hubs glittering and gleaming. Even the cars that aren't status symbols are inordinately clean. I watched a woman vacuum out her Chevy Corsica at a gas station in Rubidoux.

We made our way up through Riverside, where we stayed last night, and out again, past orange groves heavy with fruit. Somewhere beyond that in either Moreno Hills or Moreno Valley I saw the US Bureau of Land Management office. Having recently read John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid, I couldn't help thinking of Floyd Dominy, former head of the Bureau, the man who tamed the Colorado River with a series of dams that made life possible in this part of the country, South of Big Bear Lake and North of Lake Elsinore.

In the grocery store, where I bought fixings for peanut butter and jelly, there was a guy behind me in line with a two gallon jug of wine who professed to be a big Celtics and Red Sox fan. Like me, he is perplexed by Danny Ainge's personnel moves and thinks the last straw was the Eric Williams for Ricky Davis trade. He has never been to Boston.

As we moved on through through the hills, we found ourselves wrapped in mountains, snow-capped peaks standing like gate keepers at the end of the valley. The riders were quiet, hoping they wouldn't have to climb them.

We lunched in the shade of a willow tree by the Fisherman's Retreat on San Timoteo Canyon Road. The Retreat is an RV park with a series of man made ponds, stocked with fish. Denizens ride golf carts around, casting into the still water from the roads that ring the oversized puddles. I wondered why they didn't just light sticks of dynamite and toss it in. I suppose then they would have to get out of the golf carts to collect their bounty.

We ate while mile-long Union Pacific freight trains rumbled slowly past.

The afternoon brought us into Banning where we met a guy on a bike who owns a carpet cleaning business. His brother-in-law had a brain tumor removed by a famous doctor at Loma Linda. He led Nancy, Bill and Brian down some local roads, and I lost them. But we caught up in time to decide it was quitting time.

We drove on to Indio where we'd begged a pair of cut-rate hotel rooms. Dinner was at Coco's. The waitress looked to be about twelve.

March 14th, 2004 - It hit me square on the chin this morning. I've come on a cross-country bike ride, and I'm not going to pedal a single stroke. We had been so busy making the minivan feasible as a road vehicle after the Airstream fell through (Did I mention that the Airstream fell through?) that I didn't have a minute to think about what we were going to do once we actually left.

What I did was watch Nancy, Brian and Bill ride away. Then I reached over, pushed the button to engage the hazard lights and rolled out after them in the van. I didn't expect to feel pangs of jealousy. I didn't expect to feel lonely so early in the trip. But almost immediately I was there. When we got out of Beverly Hills and through the sketchy parts of East LA, the riders fell into a proper pace line and I thought, 'Damn. I wish I was with them.'

Los Angeles is a bizarre, sprawling kind of city, and I was reminded that little of the sprawl we inched our way through would be there if someone hadn't had the bright idea to divert the Colorado River and bring water to what was formerly desert. The industrial area out past the fringes of East LA actually seemed like a desert, so barren and inhospitable.

After that we got to Brea and then Chino Hills and the hills started to roll. It was a nice a place to be riding a bike, or so I gathered from the broad smiles pasted across the crew's faces.

We ended by racking the bikes and driving on to Riverside where I'd begged us some rooms at the Marriott. We had dinner at Fatburger and then came back to the hotel, all so tired and the riders so sunburned, that stupid jokes begat wild laughing fits. We're all still working our way through the jet lag and the stress of getting ready to go.

So this is it, the first travel day, 50 miles behind us and 3750 left to go.

March 13th, 2004 - Here I am in Los Angeles. I flew first class from Boston to Chicago, thanks to Brian who expended some no doubt hard won air miles to upgrade us. The guy sitting next to me wore a Rolex and the unmistakable musk of a generous quantity of liquor, quaffed at the airport bar pre-flight, and then sweated out. I thought I might be in for a second class experience there in the front of the cabin. Fortunately, he only attempted a little conversation between requests to the stewardess for another vodka tonic. Still, in that time I think we managed to fix what's wrong with baseball and determine that Cabo San Lucas is a good place to play golf, smoke Cohibas and get shit-faced with your buddies. The last thing he said to me was, 'It'll be a 144 hole death march, my friend. A 144 hole death march,' and then laughed. I got the sense he was driving himself home.

From Chicago to LA I got bumped to economy, while Nancy and Brian pitched camp in first class again. This time I got a middle seat, which I salvaged by sleeping through fully half of the flight.

On the ground at LAX it seemed to take forever to taxi over to the gate, as if we had landed in Hollywood and then had to drive down to the actual airport. Then our bags took their sweet time in coming. Their arrival was followed by the long, slow process of getting three people, five months worth of luggage and two boxed bicycles to the nearby hotel. The eastern European cabby didn't know where we were going, which was odd since he only had to drive about 3 1/2 minutes to get us there.

If this sounds like complaint, I apologize. It's not. I passed through this relatively brief period in my life in something of a late night haze. I nodded affably to passersby. I smiled at the hotel desk clerk. My body was on the West Coast. I think my brain was still somewhere over Idaho.

After the comedy routine of schlepping our luggage up stairs, I stripped down, jumped in bed and wondered what to do next. After stiff-necked dozing on the plane, I wasn't sure whether sleep was the logical next step or whether I might just nip down to the hotel bar for a nightcap. I compromised by watching the last few minutes of Conan O'Brien, an oddly awkward interview with an enormous professional wrestler who calls himself Big Show.

With the light out, I lay in bed and composed letters home to Brittney and brief, silly poems about Chicago businessmen and vodka tonics. Eventually sleep arrived, and though fitful, I awoke this morning with the feeling that I'm ready to start this adventure, ready to grind up all these new experiences to pull out little bits of happiness and perspective.

March 11th, 2004 - One nice thing about preparing to travel is that at some point there's nothing left to do but go. Having attended the organizational meetings, talked about logistics, gathered my essential belongings and purchased postcard stamps, I think I am finally at that point. Tomorrow I fly to Los Angeles, where I'll climb aboard a 26' AirStream Motorhome and drive approximately 1800 miles East to Little Rock, Arkansas. The trip should take about a month, doing 50-100 miles a day. My friends Nancy, Brian and Bill will do the entire distance, 3800 miles, from LA back to Boston. Oh, and they'll be doing it by bike.

We're raising money for The Brain Tumor Society, a non-profit dedicated to funding basic research aimed at finding cures for the different kinds of brain tumors. We're also raising awareness, though somehow I think that's a more difficult chore.

Nancy and Bill have brain tumors. Or rather, Nancy has a brain tumor, and Bill had a tumor (or maybe two, I forget), which he had taken out a little over a year ago. Now they're letting themselves in for a bunch more suffering. From sore muscles, and sore asses and sheer fatigue.

Anyway it's a good cause, and I think it will be a good trip. I would be lying if I told you I wasn't going for the pure adventure of it. I mean, I believe in the cause, and I'm happy to help, and I'll certainly do whatever I can to make the riding easier for my friends and to get perfect strangers to part with their hard-earned pocket change to save a few lives. But the prospect of driving across a vast swathe of the country I've never seen before was the real enticement for me. The opportunity to drive a little, read a little, maybe even do some writing, while slowly wending my way across the Southwestern desert, that's what drew me to the project. This is a way for me to vacation and serve my fellow human simultaneously.

The people at The Brain Tumor Society keep thanking me, and I feel a little pang of guilt every time. Because while it's true that I'm giving up a month of my time (and pay) to support a cross-country charity ride, I'm also really looking forward to going. 'Sure. No problem,' I say.

Today, the people at work threw a little going away party for me and for a woman from the LA office who has been visiting for the last month. There were chips. There were dips. There were cookies with M&Ms in them. It was nice.

I spent the evening packing up my clothing and electronics. I'm taking even less stuff than I imagined I was. My laptop, camera, tape recorder and Palm Pilot all fit in a small padded bag that slips into a slot in my backpack. My clothes are all shorts and t-shirts.

On a side note, I wonder how much stink is too much stink when you're travelling with three other people. I'm guessing I can get away with stinking pretty badly, since they'll all be smelly from riding and glad to see me at the end of the day.

So I've finished up at work and packed my stuff. I bought stationery and envelopes to write letters. I bought stamps. Brittney got me a new, compact toiletries bag. I have a stack of books to read, a journal to write in and a CD case full of driving music. I have tried to foresee what my days will be like. I have dreamed of rolling into an Arizona gas station, pulling up at the side of the lot and settling in with a book and an hour before my cycling charges will arrive for a rest. My ticket is in order, and I've e-mailed the various essays and short stories I'm working on to a web-based account I can check from the road.

This time tomorrow night I'll be high up in a plane wondering what state we're over. I'll have a book in my lap and mine will be one of the few overhead lights still illuminated. I will have just finished a small cup of ginger ale with sour ice cubes in it. The plane will be making its shooshing, flying sounds. That will be the moment I finally feel I'm travelling.

I can't wait.

March 10th, 2004 - I'm speeding through the days now. Quarter-to-eight Friday night our plane leaves. Until then I'm stumbling through, barely noticing what's going on around me. On the train, I can't concentrate on my book. At work, I can't focus on the spreadsheets or checklists that get me through my everday. I'm eating a lot of junk, nervous eating. Today I ate half a bag of wasabi chips.

I've begun assembling my pile of gear. I got a new cell phone last night. I spent about half-an-hour installing the software for my digital camera on the laptop Brittney brought me from her work. I've stashed my hand-held tape recorder in the pocket of the laptop bag. Will I use all this stuff? Maybe.

I've only just begun to think about clothing. How do you pack to go away for a month? I'm going to warm weather places, so shorts will be necessary. But I'm having trouble shifting mental gears to go someplace where it's already spring, if not summer.

A big part of my problem is expectations. I have this vague notion that I'm going to get a lot of reading/writing/exercising done while I'm on the road. I get these ideas every time I approach a big block of time off from work, but my plans seldom pan out. There's always so much else going on.

My fellow travellers are all complaining about the same things. They're having trouble sleeping. They're terrified they'll forget something important. They have the added worry that they're not in nearly good enough shape to pedal all the way across the United States.

For me, the pressure is more about using this experience for some sort of creative inspiration. I'm all bunched up over whether or not I'll be able to produce some good work of some sort out of it. And that's probably not a great attitude to go in with.

Also, I am seeking omens. Yesterday I saw a baby's high chair set up beneath the expressway, as if someone was going to cart their child out into the noisest, most littered area of the city to play choo-choo with spoonsful of pureed carrots. This morning I passed a black woman in a bright green wig, smoking a cigarette outside the homeless women's shelter near the office. Of course I decided in this space, last September 18th, that all omens mean the same thing: 'Live now. Die later.'

I need to show Brittney how to update this space in my absence. She'll be away herself for a bit, so there'll be no action here unless I get really antsy and decide to try to upload this blog file from the road. We'll see what I have time for.

March 8th, 2004 - When you've got a dog on a leash and you walk up on a gaggle of Canadian geese, they teeter totter away from you while twisting their necks around backwards to keep an eye on the dog. The dog strains at the end of his tether because he thinks he might want to eat one of them. And when you breach their perceived zone of safety they beat the air with their wings and flap themselves a safe distance away. They have a band of white tail feathers that spells the letter U as they tuck them between webbed feet to achieve lift off.

I imagine the U as a sort of accusation. U asshole. U intruder. U interupter of breakfast. U filthy, little dog. U devious predator. And, depending on how many geese are there to assail U with their Us, this might go on and on. U mouth breather. U pair of earthbound boobs.

Eddie, the dog, looks up at me as if to say, "Why didn't you let me eat one of them? I could have caught them. I'm really very fast."

And though he hasn't actually said any of this, I reply anyway, "You don't want to catch a goose. They'd bite you and you'd get all confused. You always think you want to catch whatever it is you're chasing, a squirrel, a chipmunk, a rabbit, but in truth you'd get there, you'd arrive, and then you'd have no clue what to do next because you have a belly full of kibble most days and you don't really need to eat birds or rodents. Take those geese for example. They'd kick your little ass. I don't tell you this to wound your pride. I'm only trying to save you the ignominy of having a big bird humiliate you in front of all of his friends. I'm looking out for you. Seriously."

But because Eddie doesn't speak English very well, he only looks up at me and his eyes say, "You idiot. I'm a dog. I don't understand you, and even if I did, you're fooling yourself if you think the ferocious carnivore in me wouldn't find a way to kill one of those damned geese. You should realize that this outcome is bound up in the nature of our two species. My eyes face forward. My teeth are sharp. Their eyes are on the sides of their heads. And they are delicious. You don't speak dog and you don't speak goose, but the geese and I, we understand each other. That's why they flew away while you just stood there holding the end of this stupid leash."

March 4th, 2004 - Tonight I ate like I used to eat with my friend Charlie when I first quit drinking. I went out with my friend Sherrill from work. She's in town from California, so I asked if she wanted to grab a bite. She said she was craving a cheeseburger. I took her to Bartley's Burgers in Harvard Square.

Now, if you've never been to Bartley's, I should set the scene a little. It's a place that actively refers to itself as a landmark. You kind of suspect it's turned into a little bit of a tourist trap, but the food is so good and the menu is so exactly what you want it to be, that you forgive it's self-styled posturing.

Inside, the tables are all packed together, and they don't hesitate to seat two seperate couples together at a four top, because hey, you're all there to eat, right? The walls are covered with goofy, collegey posters and almost-clever political bumper stickers. It's loud. The waiters and waitresses are calling out orders. The cooks are screaming, "Pick up!" The diners are yelling at each other to be heard through the din. It's charming.

The menu features burgers, though they do all sorts of sandwiches and meatloaf and fried chicken and other comfort food too. Still, the main attraction is the beef, and they offer all sorts of wacky combinations, each one with a name like, "The Elvis Burger" or "The John Kerry" burger.

This evening I selected "The Viagra Burger," which consists of a big beef paddy topped with bacon, blue cheese, lettuce and tomato. I got sweet potato fries on the side and a large lime rickey to wash it down with. My heart fluttered as the waitress took the order.

After polishing off the big, sloppy plate full of artery-clogging goodness our server, Erica, tried to put the check on the table. She said, "I'll just put this here, and you can pay whenever you feel like it." From my years in the restaurant busines I knew what she really meant was, "You're done. Now get the fuck out of here so I can ring up another $30 worth of grub."

I smiled and said, "Why would you put that down on the table when it doesn't even have the pie I'm about to ask for on it?"

Instead of pie, I had a sundae, a tall one in a frosted sundae glass with chocolate syrup, nuts, whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on it. Sherrill had pie.

After the burger, bacon, blue cheese, fries and lime rickey, the ice cream went down easy. It was only when I got up to leave that I felt as if I might have shortened my life ever so slightly. I overtipped Erica, and we walked out into the cool Cambridge air.

That's when I started thinking about the way Charlie and I used to eat. We would roll into a sushi joint and order like 80 pieces of raw fish and then once they brought the giant, wooden sushi boat platter all laid out like some bizarre Japanese Christmas dinner, we'd frickin' destroy it, wasabi and soy sauce flying, pickled ginger clinging to our chins.

For a while we were going to this little hole in the wall place in Brookline called Sushi Nagoya. It's gone now, but back then, I'm talking about '94 or '95, there was this little old lady that ran the show. Anyway, one day after a particularly virtuosic performance, she came toddling up to the table with a sheet of paper, pointed at it and said, "I think maybe this good deal for you guys!"

It said: Summer Special Sushi for Four - 100 pieces of nigiri with miso soup and hot tea.

At diners, Charlie would order three eggs over easy with bacon, toast and home fries, and then just when the waitress was turning to the next person, he'd say, "And give me a half stack of pancakes and side of a hash too, please." We'd go out to nice restaurants and order four appetizers to quaff before tucking into massive steaks with blue-cheese butter and garlicky mashed potatoes.

The MO was: eat massive quantities, conspicuously and self-consciously. We did it because we were used to drinking that way, and it felt good to be able to do something over-the-top without throwing our lives into drunken chaos. Actually, I shouldn't speak for Charlie. That's why I did it, I mean, beside the fact that I love food.

I'd like two dozen cherrystones please, and a cup of clam chowder. Then I'm going to have the fried clam dinner with a lemonade.

I'd like the full slab of baby-backs please, with a side of fried okra, some hushpuppies and a rootbeer.

Give me two orders of fresh spring rolls and the vermicelli with barbecued pork, oh, and a ginger ale.

I'll have the bouillabaise to start, and for dinner I'd like the rare tuna steak with wilted bok choy and cous cous.

Stir fried spicy rice cakes and the salmon bi bim bap, please.

One carnitas torta with a pupusa on the side and a cold Sidral.

On one hand, there is gluttony, and over-indulgence. On the other, there is a profound love of and appreciation for food. I see the potential for really eating like I used to drink. I also see eating good food as a celebration of the life I nearly lost control of all those years ago. While I tore myself down with drinks, I built myself up with food.

Tonight I am very large.

March 1st, 2004 - Happy St.David's Day everybody! My friend Shawn, who lives in Indonesia, sent me a press release from the Welsh First Minister's office talking about all the stuff the world has to thank Wales for. He sent the English version and either the Batak or Bahasa Indonesian version, I'm not sure which. Either way, I am currently accepting notes of gratitude on behalf of my people for the invention of the steam train, microphone and fiber optic cable.

I celebrated St.David's Day by riding my bike to work for the first time in a very long time. It was a bright, sunny day with the temperature in the upper 40s, and I thought, "What the hell? It's St.David's Day!" Unfortunately, Boston's slightly demented motorists weren't in the same buoyant and joyful mood I was. They drove so as to endanger, prattling away on their cell phones and generally paying traffic signs and signals no heed. I was forced to ride very defensively and I couldn't help but conclude that most of the loonies on the road must not have been Welsh.

Welsh people, as a rule, drive very well, except of course when they don't.

For lunch, I microwaved a package of steamed, glutinous rice cakes filled with shitake mushrooms that I bought at the ginormous Oriental grocery around the corner from the office. I topped it with dried, sugary haw strips and prawn crackers, both from the same grocery. It should be noted, just for the sake of clarity, that Wales is not in Asia and my culinary choices today in no way reflected the deep sense of pride in my heritage you might have expected on such an auspicious day. Welsh Rabbit, which is, in essence, a cheese sandwich, is not readily available in the neighborhood I work in. Glutinous rice cakes, dried haw and prawn crackers are.

I refrained from answering my phone with a hearty, "CYMRU AM BYTH!" all day, because I thought it would just confuse the non-Welsh people who call me. 'Cymru am byth' means, 'Wales forever' in Welsh. Usually when I try to say something to someone in Welsh (I only know a few words), I am forced to explain not only where Wales is but also that, 'yes, there is a language called Welsh.' Those who are already aware of these two facts invariably say something like, "yeah, Welsh, that's the language where it's all consonants and you spit all over people when you talk, right?"

To which I reply, "Yeah. That's the one," and then mutter "asshole" under my breath.

I have this crazy idea to do a "you might be Welsh if..." bit just like Jeff Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck if..." bit.

It would go something like this: "If you're name is Jones, Williams, Davis, Lewis or Evans, you might be Welsh. If you enjoy choir music and don't know why, you might be Welsh. If wool arouses you, even slightly, you might be Welsh. If you think the English are a bunch of pale, cold, humorless boobs, you might...well...I guess that could be anybody, couldn't it?"

St. David, or Dewi Sant in Welsh, was one of those wacky, dark ages clerics who evangelized across South Wales, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and adhered to a harsh, ascetic lifestyle. One of the miracles he's credited with is causing the ground to rise beneath his feet so that all the dirty, smelly Welsh hill people around him could hear the sermon he was delivering. Oh, he was a charmer that Dewi Sant. You better believe it.

Now, on St. David's Day, the Welsh wear a leek pinned to their shirt or jacket. Sometimes they substitute a daffodil for the leek, but I think that's pretty ridiculous. If you're going to do it, go all the way, go with the oversized scallion.

I didn't wear anything pinned to my shirt today. My co-workers already think I'm an asshole. I didn't want to confirm it for them by walking around with a wilting onion stuck to my front. Instead, I just thought about being Welsh a lot. OK, I didn't actually think about it all that much. That's why I felt compelled to write this entry, to share my cultural background with you, my Internet friend. CYMRU AM BYTH

February 25th, 2004 - I'm losing my grip. This morning, for the first time ever, I missed my train stop and rode on into the depths of South Boston before realizing my mistake.

There I sat in my usual spot, a corner seat on the east side of the last car on the Red Line, elbows on knees, head down, nose in book. The automated message pierced the train's rumble between each station, "NEXT STOP DOWNTOWN CROSSING...NEXT STOP SOUTH STATION...NEXT STOP BROADWAY...NEXT STOP ANDREW..."

This last announcement took its time traversing my synapses. Andrew. Andrew. Andrew.

"Where in the hell is Andrew?" I thought.

Then it dawned on me. Andrew is Andrew Square, South Boston, one little box past the one marked Broadway on the color-coded map prominently displayed in each car. Broadway was me. Andrew is beyond me.

I got out in Andrew Square, climbed the wide, tiled stairs to street level, crossed to the other side of the station and then descended again to catch an inbound train back to where I should have been. It took about ten minutes for the next one to show up. I spent nine minutes and forty-five seconds cursing myself for being such an oblivious boob. The other fifteen I devoted to trying to understand the rapidfire conversation of three old guys nearby. I couldn't make hide or hair of it. Then I realized they were speaking Spanish.

The whole incident had me reconsidering a recent proposal I made to Brittney for revamping Boston's completely underwhelming and wholly mismanaged subway system.

First of all I should explain that the primary reason I like to commute on the train, even though it usually takes longer than driving would, is that it gives me an hour-and-a-half of reading time you just don't get behind the wheel of a car. (The other reasons, in no particular order, are: 1) it saves gas 2) it diminishes traffic 3) it puts you in close contact with your fellow urban dwellers 4) it's dirty 5) it's underground 6) it's a good place to get free newspapers 7) eavesdropping 8) the smells 9) the music 10) not having to deal with the very real nightmare of parking in a city in no way setup for that activity).

So since reading is so important to me on my daily commute, I proposed that the T (that's what we call our Boston subway system) designate certain cars as reading cars. Passengers choosing to ride in them would be bound to follow the same behavioral dictates as library users. I could then read in silence instead of being interupted every few seconds by the inane blatherings of college students or the collegial ramblings of co-workers fresh from the office. With the number of serious readers on the train here in Beantown, how could the reading car not be a huge hit?

With that in mind, I also suggested the T have a couple of cafe cars on every train. That way people wouldn't have to stop somewhere on the way to work to get coffee. Instead they could save time by buying it in actual transit. The T would then have more money to employ workers to clean up all the styrofoam cups that end up on the floors of the trains and stations anyway.

They could have cars for all those obnoxious assholes who insist on honking into their cellphones all the way to work too. I don't really understand why folks feel the need to talk on the phone all the time, but I can tell you that, when they're doing it at high volume in the seat next to me, I usually feel a need to grab the phone and stick it up their inconsiderate ass. I'm funny that way maybe. I'd give these people their own car (or cars even), if only so I knew how to keep them the hell away from me.

I'd also have a car for people who want to listen to their headphones too loud. The whole point of a personal stereo, as I understood it, was to be able to take music with you anywhere you went without subjecting others to the intrusive blare of a ghetto blaster or boom box or whatever the hell those big portable radios are being called now. Apparently I was wrong. The point was to demonstrate for the whole world that you know exactly how to deafen yourself by passing 134 decibels of some shitty music through tiny, little speakers strapped to your head.

Lastly, I'd designate one car for the homeless. That car would be a little warmer than the others and the automated announcments wouldn't play in there. The homeless don't care what stop is next. They're riding from one end of the line to the other and then turning around and going all the way back. I'd pull the seats out of the cars too and replace them with benches, cushiony ones. I figure it's no good pretending they don't sleep on the train. We might as well make it comfy.

Come to think of it, they should probably just pull all the seats out of the reading car and make us read standing up. They should turn up the volume on those announcements too. I mean, once you've weeded out all the coffee junkees, cellphone abusers, walkman users and homeless from my morning commute, it's gonna take a bomb to get me off that train at the right stop, isn't it?

February 23rd, 2004 - There's something about having sunshine blown up your ass that makes life's less palatable tasks seem like a tray full of tasty hors d'oevres at your best friend's wedding. No one really likes shovelling shit, but if someone comes along and says, "Gee, you're just about the best shit shoveller I've ever seen! Everyone really likes and respects you because of your amazing shit shovelling!", well then you smile, wipe the sweat off your brow and get back to shovelling.

So this morning I wake up in a most foul mood, dreading the work day for all the horrible people I'll have to deal with, not to mention the stultifyingly tedious to-do list perched next to my keyboard. But then I spend five minutes in the boss's office hearing about how I've gained quite a reputation with even our most difficult clients and how he's worried that the news of my imminent month off won't be received well by a number of them. And suddenly it doesn't seem so bad. I'm making phone calls and checking things off my list and doing what I need to do.

I'm such a slut.

I remember nearly keeping some of worst jobs I've ever had (managing a restaurant and then a retail store) because the horrible, repressive, skin-flinty people I worked for took half-a-minute to tell me how good I was at [insert name of soul-sapping, low-level managerial task here]. Now, in neither case did my employer offer me more money to continue performing so stunningly, but the simple grace of being praised was almost enough to make me cast aside concern for my fiscal well-being, not to mention my withered and only-barely-intact dignity, to stay at the otherwise thankless job ad infinitum.

Later, when I got into software project management, my friend Pete came to interview for a position just like mine and asked me if I could tell him anything about the job that he hadn't heard from the other interviewers. I turned to my whiteboard and said, "Pete, I'm going to write something here, and I want you to think about it. Don't say anything, but know that your feelings about what I write will determine whether you can handle doing this job or not."

I wrote: I eat shit for money.

He said, "Sign me up!"

I went on to become a product manager there, eventually overseeing development and business strategy for the company's flagship product. All because people told me I was good at what I did.

I was miserable.

In fact, I have usually been miserable in my work life. I attribute that to: 1) being lazy 2) having a problem with authority 3) thinking I'm smarter than everyone else 4) taking jobs for the money instead of because I was interested in doing them 5) caring too much 6) being unable to separate work life from real life 7) general and undirected striving 8) being something of a perfectionist 9) being impatient 10) resenting people who have more money than I do 11) feeling entitled 12) being too goal-oriented and not enjoying process of getting to the goal at all 13) needing variety in my life 14) thinking too much and doing too little AND 15) having a fairly low self-esteem and so being particularly susceptible to exploitation by even modest amounts of flattery.

Having said that, who doesn't like hearing nice things about themselves? No one, that's who.

I wonder if maybe my head will explode the day someone tells me they think I'm good at something I really love doing, like a massive short in an, up-to-that-moment, negative feedback loop. I think I'll take my chances, because staying at unpleasant jobs for all the wrong reasons is sort of like having your head explode very, very slowly.