Discovery and the Cross Country Road Trip - Part 1

8 hours and 56 minutes. 530 miles. I've made it to Atlanta. Traversed out of VA, through NC and SC, and down 107 miles of Georgia.

License Plates Seen: CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, LA, MA, MD, MO, NC, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV, and Ontario. I have not yet seen CA. I cannot WAIT to see CA.

It's great to be on my own for the start of this trip. I've been living out of a suitcase and sleeping all over DC for 3 weeks, and while it was great to stay with so many friends, it just feels so good to be able to talk to myself again without fear of interruption from anyone other than me!

I spent half of my trip today listening to a book on CD entitled, Horatio's Drive. It's the story of the FIRST ever cross country road trip. The year was 1903, and our friend Horatio drove from San Francisco to New York City. His goal was to do it in under 90 days. I took him 72, and cost him over $8000. He traversed over 5000 miles - no paved roads, few signs, bad maps - and used approximately 800 gallons of gas along the way. And in some places, because of price gauging, the gas cost him as much as $6/gallon.

I *ONLY* have 3500 miles to drive, and gasoline is *ONLY* going to cost me about $2.50/gallon. (Today it was $2.59/gallon in South Hill, VA and $2.42/gallon in Greenville, SC.) And luckily I have miles and miles of paved road to lead me along my way. (Although some of 85 in North Carolina leaves a lot to be desired...) I have an iPod (his name is Wilson) with 2600 songs on it - thanks to my favorite guy from Pueblo, CO and the beautiful LGA's computer surgery skills. And I have maps, my friends. And what's more, I can read them.

Yes, my trek will be much easier than Horatio's drive. But I don't think it should be deemed any less inspring. I think William Least Heat-Moon, author of Blue Highways and commentator in the film version of Horatio's Drive, sums it up best:

"There's nothing that we can do that is more American than getting in a car and striking out across country. I think as a nation we can think of few things that draws us more strongly than a piece of roadway heading we know not where. This is the way we grow up, this is the way we enter our history: get in a car and find the country."