Month: August 2023

I was on the road for almost three months this summer. There were positives and there were negatives, surprises and predictable bits. This short post is about the most impactful moment of the whole journey so that I can record it for myself.

I’d just finished dinner at a local Tex-Mex type of place in Denver near the end of my time in the city. I didn’t pick the place but I made it work. It wasn’t about the food anyway but instead about the people I was with.

At the beginning of my car ride back to my lodgings, the three people I’d had dinner with crossed the street in front of me. I don’t even know if they saw me. There wasn’t anything special about the moment—my friend was pushing his son in a stroller and walking alongside his wife. And still it hit me hard. It was an image of where my life isn’t, where I want it to be, where I thought it would be. I couldn’t think of anything else for the rest of the evening. Then the next day was a long and empty drive across Wyoming, which only let the image seep deeper into my consciousness. It wasn’t that moment alone that changed the final destination at the end of my road trip, but it certainly played its part in the decisions I’ve made over the past month and my plans for the months to come.

I spent most of last week sleeping (or not sleeping) on an air mattress while searching for an apartment. Bill was gone on an unrelated trip so his apartment was available. That part worked nicely. So did the search itself. I knew the area in which I wanted to live and what I was looking for in an apartment—size, features, etc. Then over a couple of days I toured every building in the relevant area and matched them against my criteria. At the end it came down to two buildings, but I’d have to wait several weeks on one of them. That made the decision an easy one. Then the complications started.

This weekend was move-in weekend for UNC, Duke, and NC State. That did not help me. I scheduled a move for Saturday using a moving company I’d used more than once before. It was on short notice so they wouldn’t confirm the reservation when I made it, no big deal. Then at 6 PM on Friday they called me to tell me that they’d been unable to find movers. Not great. The moving company told me that they’d rescheduled me for Sunday morning. This would’ve worked, but I’d also received an email from my storage facility on Friday. They would be resurfacing their parking lot on Sunday and so access to the facility would be very limited. This was the only time I’d received a closure notice during the months my things had been stored in the facility, because of course it was. This meant several more phone calls, emails, and text messages with the moving company to coordinate another reschedule. Eventually I got through to them and my things were moved yesterday. I’m still very much in the unpacking phase but I have version one of my workstation setup, cooked myself breakfast this morning, and was able to sleep in my own bed for the first time in months. Over the coming days, I’ll work to make this place feel like what it is—my new home.

There is a video on YouTube of a short speech by the British actor Hugh Laurie called “America is Too Big to Know Itself.” The speech is an ode to the cultural and geographical diversity of America. Even in a Starbucks and McDonald’s world, that diversity still exists. I’ve experienced it first-hand over the past three months as I drove a circuitous route from the Atlantic to the Pacific and then back to North Carolina. I made a conscious effort not to eat at fast food chains, or at least to avoid the national fast food chains I’ve had so many times. This meant some really good meals in places like Billings, Montana and Hood River, Oregon, and some not-so-good meals in some other places that I won’t name here. Overall that effort was worthwhile and if anyone takes a road trip I recommend it—stop just outside of town, do a quick search on the maps app of your choice, and give a local place a shot. If nothing else you’ll get the chance to talk to locals about their home.

There will be more detailed reflections on parts of the journey in the coming weeks in this column. This week I’ll just record a few of the summary figures. I did not count the total mileage of the trip but 9-10k miles in total doesn’t sound crazy given all of the extra driving I did when I was “stationary” in Austin, Denver, or at the national park destinations. I drove through 19 states, including 5 new states for me, and on 19 interstates (excluding any with triple digits). I explored or skirted Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Olympic, North Cascades, Yellowstone, and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks. I didn’t have any insane wildlife encounters by my subjective standards, but I saw plenty of animals, from and owl and bald eagles in Tennessee to bears, big horn sheep, and bison in Montana to marmots and grouse in Washington. I even added a new baseball stadium to my list when I watched the Twins beat the Diamondbacks in Minneapolis.

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts over the past few months. Most have just washed over me. On my latest extended drive, though, I listened to an episode of Hidden Brain that bucked the trend. I used to listen to Hidden Brain on a regular basis but hadn’t done so in some time. Now I can’t remember why.

The episode delved into the construction of arguments and how we often err when doing so. People making an argument will often stack as many supporting premises as possible in support of their conclusion. The underlying rationale is that more is better and each additional premise is additive and increases the strength of the argument. This isn’t actually what occurs, though, when people listen to arguments. Instead of adding supporting premises, listeners average them. This means that adding weaker supporting arguments is actually detrimental in convincing someone; a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. You’d be better off only given the strongest argument(s), even if there is only one, than in filling a quota of three or five with weaker arguments. The framing anecdote of the episode was congressional testimony concerning funding for PBS. There were hours and hours (not played during the episode) of people discussing different statistics and providing lots of different reasons why there should be continued funding for public broadcasting. It all blurred together and became noise. Then Mr. Rogers drilled a single point and only a single point and in doing so single-handedly swayed the committee members—a masterclass in persuasion.

The Episode is “Less is More” in case anyone wants to listen on their own podcast player.

This week brings a few reflections on my time in Olympic National Park. In short, it was worth the extra driving and detour west from Seattle. I committed to a waterfall hike on the first evening. This meant one hour of walking and three hours more driving. The extra driving was painful but it was worth it. This was a single waterfall trifurcated laterally. It was also very loud as it was close to the bridge over the creek that doubled as the observation deck.

The first full day brought some frustration as there were admission restrictions that I didn’t research in advance. This forced a reshuffle as I worked in the morning and my afternoon plans were pushed to the next morning. So on Friday morning, I beat the crowds and hiked up to Hurricane Hill. It was a great little trail and paved the whole way so that even strollers were able to make the trek. At the top of the ridge there was even a resumption in cell service (a text message came through), albeit cell service from across the water in Canada. You could just make out the outlines of some of the buildings in Victoria, a city I visited as a child. I did not take a ferry across the strait on this trip. There was some wildlife atop the ridge also. Most people were enthralled by the black tailed deer. Some of the children focused hardest on the marmots popping in and out of their holes and play fighting. I was most excited to see a grouse with four chicks scurrying about. I’d never actually seen one in the wild.

On Saturday, a day that ended up having about eight hours of driving, I was up before sunrise and off to visit the Hoh Rain Forest. It was a good thing I got there as early as I did; by the time I left the line to get in was something like three hours long. The fir and spruce trees in that forest were massive. Some were hundreds of feet high and could be made into tables large enough to house King Arthur and all his knights, not that anyone would allow the giants to be cut down. Then I drove down the far west coast of the peninsula and stopped at one of the rocky beaches to put my hand into the Pacific. This was a metaphorical completion although the real journey is far from finished.

I ended Saturday at Mt. Hood in Oregon. That marks the second new state for me on this extended road trip after New Mexico. This was a destination chosen for a two night stay and a little bit of rest after so much movement. Even at the end of July one of the ski runs was still open on the mountain. I took the chairlift up and down but was not about to venture onto the slopes for the first time.