Ticking.

The official count down of Ness and i leaving Virginia and start anew in San Diego to wait out our last year in the States has begun. Japan is inking closer, yet somehow my enthusiasm hasn't jumped. Our days, these days, tend to be about more frequent chatting on about how we are going to clear the house and what we will be taking and when we should start packing, no action has been taken to actually do any of it as of yet. Mostly due to we don't leave for San Diego until August; so the rush of packing and moving is not needed.
What does have me excited is instead of boxing up our things, sending them to our new home (once we find a place) and then flying; is we plan to throw it all in a moving truck and driving across the country. An excursion i have never done before and one i am looking forward to, since it may be the only time in my life i get to do so. It's the great American road trip, wrote and romanticized by the first beatnik and Godfather of the counter-culture Jack Kerouac.

Heading off subject, or actually starting one; what is it about the road trip that entices American's so much? We have books about them and an over flowing catalog of movies that make them seem exciting and nearly romantic in the very act of moving across long spans of landscape and seeing sunsets over different mountains ranges other than the ones you grow up around. "To travel is joy. Passing witness of a rock, a river and a mountain in the beating heart of ones country is near the expression of love of seeing the adventure of life." A passage i once read in a book, who's title i have forgotten, yet i see what the author intended, but at the very heart: i don't. I lived in California, in the very middle of it and to get anywhere of real substance you will have to travel over an hour or three to get there. And i can say for myself only, that after the first thirty minutes i am already wishing our destination was closer. But i feel that is because i had been on those same roads numerous times. To this day i could drive from my hometown to my old home in Fremont without any reference as a map or a GPS, even if they changed the signs or closed down one of the major freeways, i could still manage to get there through other means than the main path. Digress.

Back when i traveled from CA to Salt Lake City for a wedding i was truly excited, for one at the time it was the furthest east i would have ever traveled, where before it was Death Valley. Once i had come down from the Sierra mountains and the long, lonely expanse of the desert opened up and then the ocean of the salt flats; i was ready to stop moving and just get to where we were going. I feel that somewhere on the road back to CA that will happen, that somewhere during our days on the road the excitement will cease and my longing to see the Pacific, to recognize her lovely curve of California's frame will grow to a thirst for our drive to end.

For man that has been waiting for more than two years to get things moving along; traveling is just more waiting, it may be waiting while moving forward, but i have seen the landscape, gazed at all the sights here it's time i see the next destination before we get to the last one.