Ft. Saint John, British Columbia Canada

We're on the Alaska Highway! Officially closer to our destination than home. Today was definitely better than yesterday, in spite of the fact that the prices up here are murdering my budget. Gas is over $4.00 a gallon and the cheap rooms are still over a hundred. But there is really good candy.

Saw some great scenery along the way. Frank has been the main camera man, as I'm still a novice behind the lens, but I've taken a shot or two. You may have noticed there hasn't been much talk about what's to come in Alaska. That's because I'm really not sure. Maybe next time.

Edmonton, Alberta Canada

I usually update at night, before bed, but all I wanted to do last night was sleep. It wasn't a particularly long travel day, but it was exhausting. First things to have gone wrong--trouble with the debit cards we use for gas. It's a nightmare scenario that might mean we're paying out of pocket the rest of the way. On top of that, the weather was alternately gorgeous or horrifying. Almost went off the road at one point in a  violent hailstorm. On the upside, we saw the world's biggest dinosaur at some town called Drumheller. 

And Frank sprang for dinner at Outback last night. Still, I hope today is better by a measure. We will finally get to the Alcan today. Next stop: some place called Fort Saint John.

Great Falls, MT

Not much to report today. Drove like bastards through the eastern plains of Montana where there is nothing but cattle fields. Even less to witness at seventy-five miles per hour. Drove through rain and sun and snow and more rain and only three towns in three hundred miles. I can't believe my folks ever considered moving here. There was occasionally some nice scenery, but mostly just grasslands. Had a decent meal at a place called Jakers. There were slot machines in the waiting area. Every other building has a casino, which I assume just means more slot parlors.

I'm finally focusing more on what's to come than just the road in front of us or the next hotel. Shit is getting real. And real expensive to boot. Hope I find a job ASAP when I get to Talkeetna. Tomorrow we cross into Canada, hopefully it will be as pain-free as possible.

Circle, Montana

We stopped at this rest area outside of Circle, Montana. On the wall just above the urinal I spotted the following graffiti:

"Curse the fates that bind me to this cowboy life"

Fargo, ND

1400 odd miles from home. A great distance achieved. Truth is, I slept through most of it. Frank was a trooper. The big push is over though, and most of the rest of these traveling days will be spent over reasonable distances. My arm aches. Getting tattooed for six hours on the inside of my arm two days before an eight day road trip might not have been the best idea. But I'm actually glad I did. Have at least SOME sense of completion before leaving home it worth the pain and discomfort. Things on the road are getting less familiar--different stores, different faces, different beds. Onward, through the fog.

Monroeville, PA

I can't promise coherence or lucidity. I can't promise all the details or even all the facts. But I can promise honesty. Even if it is not the whole story, it should be the truth.

Leaving today was rough. After Fucking Pittsburgh I am not exactly anxious to hit the PA Turnpike again. Packing was an ordeal, and a mess. And I had to keep stopping to spend more time with Shaft. I was choked up most of the day, thinking about leaving without him.

Saying goodbye to the family was a bit of a challenge in itself. Probably because having them right there is all I have ever known. By that point I was just ready to roll. Familiar roads with a familiar traveling companion, but strange possibilities around every turn. Tomorrow is gonna be the big push out west. Early to rise, quick to ride-farther west than I have ever driven. Let's go.

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.

You fairly ruffled my savoir faire there, Dean my man.

 Whetting Vows

When one is preparing to take a vow, to put the full measure 

of one's self behind a statement and a promise, it is best to

make sure everyone involved knows exactly what those words mean.

For instance, some people are uncomfortable in the presence of the divine,

but I am a self-assured, some might say graceful, heathen.

I can appreciate the beauty and majestic wonder of the universe

without being collared by this or that version of the story.

The awe does not strike so hard as to bring me to my knees,

the mystery does not make me tremble.

So when I say you are a Goddess, I am not trying to elevate

you to impossible heights; it simply means that I am willing

and ready to worship you for all that you are.

On occasion I can be happy with my words.

Usually if I write something that makes me say, "that's good," 

I almost immediately remember One Train May Hide Another.

Then I'm back to the blank page, starting again.

The rare occasions when my vision is not snapped back

to empty spaces, when I am truly satisfied, it is because

I have used words to adorn my life with thoughts of you made tangible.

Meanings become ciceroni, showing art in the letters' dyslexic gallery.

So when I say you inspire me I am not calling you a simple muse who

ignites passions. I actually mean you grant the possibility of greatness

to that in my life which is otherwise unexceptional.

Love is why the thesaurus was invented. It is so many different

things to so many people that even context cannot hope to contain its chaos.

Because of this fact, it is apparent to me that love is everything:

corruption as well as beauty, madness as well as joy, 

pain as much as comfort, god as well as godlessness.

Love is the universe explained by a language other than mathematics, it is 

the meaning of life distilled from all philosophy. 

So when I speak of love, I am not confining myself to the

sweet-as-a-lollipop dream any more than I am the dark and frightening

specter of obsessive need. Both live within love, so I mean both 

and everything in between.

The soul is a child of love, so it makes sense that 

it is almost as hard to be clear when talking about it. 

Most people wonder if there is a reason for us to be here, and 

how our soul might figure into that reason. 

It is perhaps our worst instinct that we separate ourselves from one another 

so much that people cannot fathom the soul as part of something larger, 

a piece of everything rather than the whole of each of us.

Fragmenting the spirit, making it an identity instead of an origin

is an insult to life. So if I say "your soul" or "my soul" I do not mean to 

slight you by implying that you are separate from me, only that the portion 

which animates you has been shaped by different waters.

We toss around the word "forever" as if we actually had a shot

at understanding it. Luckily what humans lack in scope we make up for

in arrogance and self-delusion. What first comes to mind when I think of 

forever is the moment between the birth of a child and 

the first time it cries out to the world. But relativity plays too big a part 

in that scenario for it to really encapsulate forever.

I suppose the best solution would be for you to close your eyes and think

of what forever means to you, and then multiply it by however many

there are of everything, including molecules, wavelengths, and seconds 

and then realize that all this doesn't even get you to forever's first birthday.

Then you might catch my drift if I say forever.

Once the lexicon is set and agreed upon, the big meanings

sorted out so all the lawyers are happy, only then can we get 

down to our vows. And with all the t's crossed,

and all the i's dotted, hopefully I can speak and be understood

as clearly as any man who has ever spoken.

Because it is important

Because my words are my vow

Because I really want you to understand...

You are a Goddess

You are my inspiration, and

I will love you with all of my soul

forever

1.9.09

manic