Gone Bloggin'

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Seems like everyone has a blog nowadays. I read them, like everyone else, but I've never published my own before. I've got plenty of opinions, as my fiancée can attest, but I never quite imagined that anyone would like to read them on a daily basis. Even after reading my friends' blogs, the idea still seems strange.

Fortunately, inspiration came to me in the form of a travelogue. Actually, a few travelogues. I've been reading some of these lately - Blue Highways, On The Road, The Lost Continent - and they inspired me to take my own swing 'round the circle. And while I'm not as down-and-out as William Least Heat-Moon, or as much of a beatnik as Jack Kerouac, or as widely read as Bill Bryson, I can at least string together enough sentences to make up a passable blog.

So, this summer I will enter the blogosphere in the form of a travelogue. My route is largely open to chance, but the basics are forming in my mind. I'll go from Philadelphia to Washington D.C, then to St. Louis by either U.S. 40 or U.S. 50 (U.S. 40 is the route of the National Road, but 50 looks more scenic). From St. Louis I want to travel up to Omaha by some yet-unknown roads, then out to Sacramento along the route of the first transcontinental railroad (roughly I-80). Then I'll drift down to Berkeley to stay with an old friend there, and later drive up the Pacific Coast to Aberdeen, Washington, where my sister lives. Aberdeen is the terminus of U.S. 12, on which I plan to drive across Montana and the Dakotas to Minneapolis and Milwaukee. After taking the U.S. 16 ferry from Milwuakee to Muskeegon, I'll traverse Michigan and Ontario to Buffalo. After that, I can't say. If there's time, I'd like to see the Atlantic Ocean as well as the Pacific. If not, I expect I'll drive back to Philly. I have to go back to work some time.

I haven't taken my computer on the road very often, but with the profusion of wireless hotspots and internet cafés, I hope that the mobile blogging experiment will be a success. I can't promise that the adventure will be wacky or exciting, but I'll do my best to make it literate. I hope you'll tune in.