WHAT'S
NEW
The Archives
12/17/06: Road Trip - Week Four
10/23/06: Renaissance Faire; New Web Host
7/2/06: Road Trip - Week Three
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I
can't even believe it. After nearly three years of on-again, off-again
writing, researching and web design frenzies, THE
ROAD TRIP is finally complete! That's right, with the new addition
of WEEK FOUR, the narrative
of the trip I took in 2004 with my wife Lauren (who, it's worth mentioning
several times, was extremely pregnant at the time) has finally come to
an end. Weighing in at just over forty pages it is the meatiest entry
yet and, I think, comes with a fitting and hopefully inspirational conclusion.
Week One concentrated on Appalachia
and Middle America. Week Two
devoted a whole lot of web space to The West. Week
Three followed Lauren and I as we traced north along The Pacific
Coast. This latest entry sprints with us back across The Great
Plains. Amongst the highlights you'll read about in Week Four are
the main location used by Stephen Spielberg in his movie Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, the bar where Wild Bill Hickock was shot, a drug
store that made a fortune from ice water, and the bus Rosa Parks was riding
when she quite simply changed the world. As always you'll get some history,
some geology, some pop culture and a healthy dose of commentary on everything
from Montana speed laws to the ongoing plight of the American Indian.
In
addition to the different weeks, you'll also notice a tab linking to a
new Appendix, which is where I've
stuck various "wrap up" pages for your perusal. So as far as
the website goes, this baby is DONE. I seriously cannot believe it - if
only because this is the main project I've been working on for so long
now. It's always weird when something this big finally gets finished.
But the work is far from over. Now begins the daunting process of editing
and attempt to put all this text into book form and work on getting it
published... something that I have absolutely no idea how to do. So it
should be interesting to say the least. Whatever the outcome, thank you
so much to all the faithful readers, as well as the casual ones who wound
up here from a random Google search and wrote me emails telling me how
much they enjoyed it. You all gave me the hope to keep plugging away,
knowing that there was an audience for this type of story. I'll be sure
to keep you posted as to the book's status as it comes. Until then, enjoy
Week Four and the whole search for
Backroad, America.
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It's
been a long time between non-blog postings and hopefully it will be worth
it. I've been working on a long essay called CAMPFIRES,
WENCHES AND INTERSTATE TOURISTS which details a weekend Lauren, Allison
and I spent out in Lancaster County for the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire.
We camped, we hiked, we looked at lots of cleavage, and we made fun of
all the people whose idea of camping is sitting inside an RV watching
cable TV. The narrative of the essay provides the backdroup for plenty
of history, plenty of humor and a healthy does of commentary on the slow
death being perpetrated on Roadside America by interstate tourists.
In other news, I've been keeping busy both with writing and research for upcoming projects. My goal is to have the final installment of THE ROAD TRIP posted by Christmas. We'll see how realistic that goal is. After that it's time to start trying to get it into book form and seeing where to go with it from there.
I recently switched web hosting companies for this site and I'm still trying to work out several bugs that popped up in the move, namely links that have suddenly stopped working. So if you see any broken links, or pictures that won't load, or anything else that looks out of whack, please email me at guess(NO-SPAM)@hey-guess-what.com. Just remove the (NO SPAM) from the address.
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WEEK
THREE IS UP! WEEK THREE IS UP! My god, I can't believe it's been over
a year since I posted my last addition to The
Road Trip. I could list off the excuses, but blah blah blah, I've
been busy. But it's back now and better than ever. Week
One concentrated on Appalachia and Middle America. Week
Two devoted a whole lot of web space to The West. On this latest
addition, Lauren and I spent the bulk of our third week driving up The
Pacific Coast where we visited San Francisco, hostels, drive-through
trees, drive-through espresso huts, Goonies movie locations and
more lighthouses than you can throw a duck at. (That joke will make sense
when you're done).
Each progressive week
of this ongoing project seems to get more and more robust than the one
before it. Week One, which took us from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
through the World's Largest Ball of Twine and Monument Rocks of Kansas
weighed in at 
twenty-seven
pages. Week Two, which brought us through the Rocky Mountains, Monument
Valley and the Loneliest Road in America bulked up to thirty-six pages.
This latest installment, chock full of lighthouse adventure and history,
pop culture discoveries and a couple of holier-than-thou soapbox moments
took another forty full pages to tell the story. I'd always figured that
working on this website would function as the outline for the eventual
book I would write. More and more I wonder if I'm not just writing the
book now.
You
can jump straight to Week Three,
or start with the intro to the whole thing
and regain your bearings as to what exactly I'm trying to accomplish with
this project. So check it out and enjoy the ride with Lauren and myself
up The Pacific Coast. I swear, promise and cut my own wrists to guarantee
that the next installment will not take as long in coming as this one
did. Thanks for reading!
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