Ok. Here I go. Let's see what's so "great" about these "great lakes".
I had one parting thought just now that I just HAD to get down...
wouldn't it be funny if something BAD happened to me on the trip? What would happen to the works...they're poised to start their own journeys...

HAHAHaaaaa! I just wanted to register this for karma's sakes. See you in 5 days or so...(less if Chicago has technology)

Well, I’m off to Chicago. By minivan. Please hold all comments/outbursts/projectiles until after the speaker has finished.
Yes…12-15 hours (depending on which mapping program/amateur cartographer one consults) straight. Just a few months ago, I was thinking how I’ve never really taken a TRIP. You know…just dug in, gassed up the vessel, SoBe ADRENE-RUSH in hand (far superior to the comparatively vitamin-deficient RED BULL)…
Well, the call went out. It’s the last hour before I’m off to the asphalt sea. I had a night of excited restlessness…a seemingly dreamless state of semi-lucid miasma. I’m not sure how that bodes for this evening’s drive, but, hopefully, I can drive right through ‘till dawn in Illinois. To leave in the dark in one state and arrive in the light in another…like a slow motion blink while traveling at the speed of sound.
It helps to romanticize about it. So far, I like the Pirate analogy. Sure, these waters are well charted, and most of the mysteries have been discovered, debunked and documented, but I haven’t seen them. Maybe they’re all jaded…maybe the beauty of Pennsylvania is so intense, the travelogue authors held back intentionally, making it seem like a painfully dreary, unadorned landscape. One man’s hectare of grain is another man’s panoramic view of Eden, right?
Regardless, I’m bringing my camera.
As I was packing and finishing up loose ends (via e-mail…it’s more exciting to me if I pretend I’m going somewhere technologically retarded), I got another “the call”. It seems the producer that was heretofore brushing us off finally got a hold of my agent. He actually read the scripts. He loves them…ALL of them. He wants the completed scripts within the next week to bring to his partners for possible production.
Like a pirate on a spaceship, I now feel strangely out of place…
Avast…

The first word. Perhaps even before that...maybe the first keystroke. Every time, it never fails...the hesitation...the ambivalence...the dread of putting it down. Every time. That’s how I know I'm not a "real" writer. Before I start, I have such pent-up contempt for my own abilities. If I am allowed to incubate amidst the mire of outside influence for even a day's time, I return to this state. Who knows where it comes from. I've decided not to explore the origins of my doubt. It's all bullshit once I get going. A sentence is all I need to pierce the threshold and never look back. Until, of course, the next time. But once I'm rolling, I can't even IMAGINE that state of mind anymore. Like a curse lifted. I'm in a convertible in the painted desert, turning around and looking at something we passed miles ago, now on the horizon. What was that? Oh well...what's ahead is much more interesting.
What's ahead are the STORIES. Floating in from conversations in diners, in discretionary gossip in elevators, cell phone outbursts in public parks, half-remembered morning dreams, unearthed memories from early childhood...the crib...the womb. So many stories.
There is a common thread. Many threads. Connected by tone and "theme", maybe...maybe a more abstract component (gosh, let's hope so). The clues are there. Gotta' get the team together for one...last...case...