By this time tomorrow, Darlene and I will be on the road to Boston, checked into a hotel in Fort Morgan, Colorado. I just finished loading a Robert Ludlum book onto her Nano, and mine is full of podcasts. The plan is that whoever is driving will listen to the Volvo’s sound system, and the passenger will listen to something else on headphones. I’m not sure this will work, and I may get drawn into the Ludlum yarn instead of my usual diet of MacNotables, Adam Curry, Andy Bowers, Buzz Out Loud, and Loic Le Mur.
I get jumpy before a big trip, but today has been fairly calm. Maybe tomorrow I will go bats with anxiety and worry, but there’s a meeting of the condo association board that I’m on, so that will distract me right up till the moment of our departure at the end of the meeting. I always feel a big need to get my affairs in order before leaving on a long trip. Today I plowed through paperwork that had been composting since February of 2005, including the taping of old newspaper articles I wrote 39 years ago at The Woonsocket Call into a scrapbook. Well, that was a must! I tried to explain to Darlene why there was no point disuading me from any task which I thought I had to do today, no matter how irrational it seemed. Before a trip, I feel strong compulsions and I’ve learned not to fight them, as long as I leave enough time to pack my bag. And the bag is packed. Darlene went to bed three hours ago, and I’m headed there soon. We are very lucky to be able to do as much travel as we do. I can’t wait to pull out onto I-25 tomorrow night and get this new show on the road.