Fucking Pittsburg

Today was the day I left New Jersey, ostensibly for the summer. The tense of my language here will be odd at times because I am not actually writing this on the day it is about. I'm writing about it in some vague, unnamed time between now and then. The future past.

I've never been much of a journalist, in the blogging sense, or any other for that matter. I was conscientious enough to buy a new paper journal for the trip, which I have more or less kept. My amazing friend and tattoo artist extraordinaire Scott Bramble suggested that I simply photograph the pages of this diary and post them online when it seemed appropriate. Sounds like a cool idea. However, somewhere along the way I decided that those thoughts were for me, alone, and that if I was to share anything about this journey it would have to be in some other medium. Hence, my second official attempt at an online journal. For those of you who endured the years of my rambling, incoherent, and extremely infrequent attempts to document any/everything in my life on LiveJournal, this will hopefully not be more of the same.

In the ways that I have grown as a person, I have regressed as a writer, and vice versa. That is to say, I am older, but my writing is less mature. I may be more aware, or compassionate as a man, but as an author it is even more about me than ever. And though I may know more about language and the effect of words on the people who read them, I am woefully ignorant of my own impact on the people I know and love. Thankfully a great many of them (you!) are more than willing to prop me up and cushion the impact of daily living with love and kindness and thoughtful word and deed. It is to all of you I am the most grateful.

The trip to Alaska is something that has been brewing for years. I have a dear friend, Natasha, who has spent her summers in Talkeetna, Alaska for the last five or so years, and since her original journey she has been telling me that I have to go. That the experience will change my life and that the beauty and joy of nature, combined with the discovery of new places and people, will make a fold and ripple in my brain unparalleled in my own lifetime of experience. Or something to that effect. When I did finally decide to go (the whys will come later, I promise), I kicked around the logistics a bit and settled on the idea that I wanted to drive there. This is not the easy way by any stretch of the imagination. Alaska by plane is a mighty journey, and will cost in the neighborhood of $800 as of this entry. By car, it's somewhere in the realm of $2000, if you want to stay in a hotel by night. If you're willing to camp out (or sleep in your car) it will be a bit cheaper, but the gas alone is gonna be over $900. Enter Frank, an old friend and New Jersey's own Mad Max of the Blue Highways. Frank is a road trip junkie. A serious road hog. Neal Cassady without all the daddy issues. He has driven in every continental state in this union but two--Idaho and Alaska. So I asked: "Would you be interested/able to drive to Alaska with my silly ass?" And sure enough, he was. Having someone to split costs with really made this trip an order of magnitude easier to pull off, and for that I am grateful. Frank and I have travelled a bit in the past, and our friendship has been a rocky one at times, so there is definitely a bit of trepidation as to what the road will bring out in each of us, but I am absolutely grateful for his companionship.

Now, about fucking Pittsburgh. The title of this little entry is based entirely on a minute detail of the trip. A bit of irony so fluffy and inconsequential that it doesn't really bare mentioning, except as an example of the old saying: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan. The plan was to leave Friday, the 30th of April. It was going to take about 8 days to get where we were going and we were gonna push hard the first few days. The Alaska Highway (or Alcan) alone is over 1400 miles and we've got a hell of a long way to go before we get there. Frank, who is really the planning ninja, came up with the idea of getting a leg up by leaving Thursday evening and driving the relatively short distance of the Pennsylvania Turnpike (a shite drive by any worthwhile measure) out to Pittsburgh, thereby giving us a good head start on our first rough day. We were aiming for Fargo, ND that day, and it was shaping up to be a grueling experience, every little bit out of the way would help. To sweeten the deal, Frank also said he would absorb this night's hotel stay on his own. No way I could turn it down. All of this was just a nice little way to start off. HOWEVER, because I am insanely paranoid about my decision to show up in Alaska with no job or place to live and very little in the bank I decided to work every day that I could before leaving. For those that aren't in the know, my job title is chauffeur. I drive for a living. Typically this involves hundreds of miles a week around the Key States area, mostly to the local airports. Back and forth to Newark and Philadelphia are bread and butter to me. While I have had occasion to go as far as D.C. and Connecticut, it's mostly just Jersey, Bucks County, Philadelphia, and NYC. Can you see where this is going? How Pittsburgh became Fucking Pittsburgh in my vernacular for the foreseeable future? Well let me just tell you that Wednesday the 28th of April in our year of the lord 2010 my last scheduled full day of work before the great Alaskan adventure was to begin comes around and my company sends me out on a trip to, that's right, Fucking Pittsburgh. I am making the exact same drive that I am scheduled to make the next day, basically the whole of the PA Turnpike, and then just turning around and coming back. It's one of those things that sounds too ridiculous to be true, and yet, it is my first proof that expectation and reality will be like repelling magnet ends for a whole bunch of this trip. It's a proud, blue collar town. They have six Superbowl wins. It was rated America's Most Livable City in 2009. My own father was born there. And all I can think is, Fucking Pittsburgh.