The Plan

Or, The Birth of the Blog:

Yesterday I returned from a road trip to Washington, DC, stopping on the way back in Waynesboro, VA. Zach and I wanted to visit our friends, who work for the newspaper. We swapped stories and future plans.

I was asked what was on my horizons, and I answered that I had decided to leave Cincinnati and move back to Bellevue, Nebraska. After I said that I planned to take a long road trip back, zigzagging north and south on my way west to visit as many friends as possible, Tony offhandedly mentioned that I could make a blog out of it.

"Yeah," I said, caught off guard. "You know, that's not a bad idea."

And now here we are.

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The trip isn't for another few months. September 1 is the official beginning of my self-imposed unemployment, the unofficial beginning of this meandering journey home.

So while I obviously can't regale you with tales about my road adventures (yet), I will from time to time provide updates on my preparations. In a way, I guess this isn't just a travel blog--it's also a "selling as much of your possessions as you can" blog, a "what it's like to work for 80 more days knowing you're going to leave" blog, and a general "countdown" blog. I'll try not to bore you--for the trivial and the ebullient, look at my regular blog.

There will be plenty of reflection, sure. But I want to keep myself to the nuts and bolts--the 5 W's, that which is absurd, bizarre and most important, that which is distinctly American. There's a lot of weird stuff in the Midwest and Heartland. I want to inventory at least some of it.

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Okay. That's as close to a mission statement that I'm gonna get. From here on out, it's all about the big trip.

I'll be in touch.