Back to traveling. Just for a bit.

Road trip to Boston with Jenna, because she’s just become a teacher, and everyone’s very proud. We took Route 20 to the East Coast. Eventually, we will go the other direction, so we can say that we did. Just not right now.

Have been living on antidepressants, oreos, potato chips and coffee. Listening to Dolly Parton and Queen and Sam Smith and James Taylor and We The Kings the entire category of music which we affectionately refer to as “dad rock.”

And the driving. So much driving. We take shifts resting every hour but it’s still intense. The cities are the worst, but the back roads twisting through the New York/Massachusetts border are something else altogether.

Got lost without cell service looking for a place to camp in a state forest. Successfully became unlost.

We took a detour over to Amherst to visit the philosophy department where one of the Feldman brothers worked for a long time. Fred wrote Confrontations With The Reaper, which is one of the books I’ve been reading for my directed study on the philosophy of death. He’s gone now, but we found the department where he used to work, and we stopped to say hi. Jenna puts up with this and is rewarded for her patience when we stumble across a library that is 26 floors high. There was a teenage mutant ninja turtles sculpture on the second highest floor accessible to the public. I thought I could feel the building swaying under my feet.

Survived rush hour traffic in Boston. I never want to do that again.

Made it to the beach and took a walk along the sand. The sun was setting. I found some interesting rocks. Actually, I think what happened was that I took off my shoes and stood with my feet in the water and looked across the harbor and eventually I looked down and went “ROCKS!!” and started picking up pebbles in ruddy orange and soft green and mottled purple until my pockets physically could not hold any more.

And then we went back.