Teh Road

(This is an email I sent out to my family, it's a summary of the trip from SLC to Ithaca. I'm gonna post it in installments because of the length, so it might read a little awkwardly, but whatevs.)

Well, after an intense four day drive across the United States from SLC to Ithaca I'm all moved into my new apartment in the Commons. The Commons used to the main street in Ithaca, but was closed off to traffic and is now a two block pedestrian zone. It's full of little local shops and restaurants and bars, and there are tons of people out just walking around or hanging out when the weather is nice. As I type I'm sitting in my living room, which overlooks the western end of the Commons, and it is so damn cool to be able to say that!

To begin, fitting a year's worth of things into my little four-door Saturn proved quite tricky. Dad was a very shrewd car loader though, and with his assistance we fit all of my clothes, guitar and guitar paraphernalia, coolers and boxes with food for the road, and various other boxes full of of stuff into the trunk and backseat, along with a pretty sizable and very heavy TV securely strapped in with seat belts.

Initially I was pretty worried about the trip, as I'd never driven more than a few hundred miles in a sitting before. I had awful visions in the days before the trip of me rolling my car somewhere in Nebraska, having to escape the wreck by dragging myself over broken glass and twisted metal as the car burst into flames. I was also completely paranoid that my car was going to get broken into and all my stuff taken. Both mom and dad had told me in the days leading up to the trip about a friend who was moving to Boston with his wife for grad school. After leaving their car and U-Haul trailer unattended for a few minutes they came back to find the trailer had been snatched. I laid awake for many hours thinking about this, wondering where to park my car in big cities, thinking about how to hide the fact that I had a car very obviously packed to the brim with expensive things.

I started out in silence in the morning as I made my way from my dad's to my mom's house to say goodbye, and as I drove along I heard a mysterious squeaking coming from the right side of the car. I hadn't heard it the day before, and was completely at a loss for what it could be. The only thing I could think of was that my brakes were worn too thin, and that the feelers were scratching along at the rotor of the wheel, warning me that the brakes were almost gone. Thoughts of having to end the trip early, rescheduling hotel reservations and calling friends in different cities to cancel meetings swirled around in my head. At a stoplight I jiggled around with a few things stashed in the front seat. The squeaking was, of course, a pot lid rattling on top of a pot. I grabbed the lid and slotted it somewhere in the back seat, and traveled on in silence.