Lucky to be unlucky.

Daytona Beach, Florida---Innocent enough: a simple hearing test.

Totally unexpected: the doctor ordering an MRI of my brain.

Returning from four months of driving the country, I had plans to handle a few things. For one, my health insurance cost which went up in price AGAIN, while I was gone. So my idea was to go to get current in every checkup from girl parts to hearing, and then make some changes to the policy. I felt great and every check up was coming back fine.

But I was not in the mood for what followed a simple hearing test.

One thing you always hear not to do, but do it anyway is Google your medical condition. Like not wanting to look at an accident on the side of the road you just can’t help it…you sneak a peek. And what you see is either a relief or traumatizing.  

So, rejecting the flashing lights in my head, I immediately Googled “why a doctor orders an MRI after a hearing test” and I had the same anticipation as the nanoseconds of anxiety prior to looking towards a roadside calamity: it said that I either had "a tumor or bad luck".

Hello trauma.

For the most part I consider myself a “lucky” person. Maybe it’s the glass half full thing but I tend to win a door prize or have that great parking spot open up. Suddenly for the first time, I was wishing for the “bad luck” option.

I really thought my return to Florida would look differently. Again a lesson to expect the unexpected. From the first day back when one of my renters went into full blown drama, I was inundated with a flurry of fires to put out. Everything from repairing 19 major or minor things around the house, to having to cut down my beloved hundred year old Bay Tree that covered half my back yard due to the Bay Tree decease that is sweeping the coast. For the entire first month of my return, I was in my own dodge ball game against life's throws and I've always hated dodge ball.
My plan to finish several stories from the trip and reconnect with local people had to be put on hold, which looked a lot like a disappearing act. I didn’t even change my voicemail message. Everyone that knew I was back was yelling at me to change my message.

Maybe I don’t really want to be “back” just yet. I’m certainly excited and eager for the “next chapter” in my life but it just can’t look the same: either the corporate disappointments that were the Tribune Corporation or the obsessive work culture that was the restaurant I ran. Like a boat stuck on a sand bar, as much as I wanted to plow forward…the boat must sit quietly waiting for the tide to rise and I had to wait for test results.

During those agonizing days of waiting, my thoughts went to the people I visited during my trip that shared with me their stories about getting and going through a diagnoses: a rare cancer for her, breast cancer for her, and her, and her, and her, and her, a stroke for him, skin cancer for her, throat cancer for him,  a heart condition for her… These were MY friends and those were all REAL and life threatening. How on earth did they do it?

I called one; my cousin, a breast cancer conqueror, and asked.

“You just do,” she laughed. “You really don’t have a choice you just go through it.”

Still, I am amazed and in awe of every single one of those I visited that had been through it: we sat and you shared those stories of living through the nightmare. To you I feel so humbled.

Then finally, after calling my Doctor's office four times, the results were in.  A lackadaisical medical assistant said, “Oh yes, here they are. (long pause) The results are negative. The comments say ‘unremarkable’.”

Exhale.

“I have an unremarkable brain!” I bragged to a friend that day, relieved and happy.

Happy, for the first time ever, to be “unlucky.”

State Crossing: Florida!

Heading Home

My last hike: a visit to some of North Carolina's hidden treasures

Atlanta, Georgia---It is day 130 and today I am driving home to Daytona Beach, Florida. I know, the name is 100 days but that's because it sounded better than 130 Days Across the USA...

Not all my stories are written but they are in my head and will have to wait until I get home.

Four months is one month longer than I originally intended but I let the road lead the way, still as I have continued to "friend hop" the prevailing thought looking back is: "there was not enough time."

In this coast to coast road trip, I have driven close to 12,500 miles so far. I have visited 293-ish people, however taking out a family reunion it still leaves me with well over 193 people.

Even with extending my time, I had to cut out going to the upper Northwest and the upper Northeast, two areas I would have loved to have gone. So Sheila, Noemi and Anne, I'm sorry I missed seeing you and where you live.

There are so many people's stories I did not write about because they were too personal. I hold them in my heart and I am honored you shared them with me. Your life's challenges were unexpected and yet I am amazed at each of you who have made it through and can look back at it all. A few who are still going through rough times, I urge you to hang in there and I earnestly believe in prayer so you've got mine.

This has been an incredible journey. Much, much more than I expected when I dreamed it up making my list of people I wanted to find. Between the geographical beauty of our country and the incredible people and their stories along the way, I am blessed and a little overwhelmed by it all.

There have been people that I tried to find but couldn't, lost between my aging address book and land lines that no longer exist. So Con, Carol, Kathy, Fred, Ransom and Kevin, I tried but couldn't find you.

I am looking forward to going home and job hunting. I am ready to dig in and have a direction.

I realized when I was hiking in North Carolina a few days ago and put my hand against an enormous solid rock protruding out of the side of a cliff, covered with moss and water cascading down its side from the highlands above, that the past three years since I left my business,  have been a land and sea discovery. In my case, the sea came first. My year crewing on sailboats feels equal in relevance to these four months seeing America. And I would not have thrown caution to the wind in this case if it were not for the year of running the little oceanfront restaurant and bar after sailing, that drove me to want to get far, far away.

Waiting for me at my home are two roommates that I could not have done this trip without. Before I left I rented a room to someone I had recently met through business. She took the challenge of taking care of my house and has contacted me to read me mail that looked important and kept me updated on house issues. A month after I left another woman moved in. Together they have been a blessing because I know they are watching over things. They were really challenged when my house was being swarmed by Carpenter Ants and I was in Utah trying to buy pest control service.  So to "The Roommates": Thank You.

I still have eight hours on the road. I have been blessed by protection along all these miles and pray that the home stretch will be safe.

One way or the other, I'm heading home.

State Crossing: Georgia

State Crossing: North Carolina

State Crossing: Virginia

Insidious Invasions of Privacy



Washington, District of Columbia, USA---“Despite the protection against invasion of privacy afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, bugging is so shockingly widespread and so increasingly insidious that no one can be certain any longer that his home is his castle---free of intrusion,” the magazine article said.

“The government has been electronically spying on its citizens for years. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, has admitted bugging public and private phones and even rooms where IRS auditors called businessmen for questioning, on the theory they might reveal something when IRS men left the room,” it continued.

“…How to safeguard individual rights in a world suddenly turned into a peephole and listening post has become the toughest, trickiest legal problem facing the U.S. today,” the article said.

I’ve been on the road for over 100 days on my Coast to Coast adventure and I am now in the country’s capital city: Washington, DC and everything about it feels so powerful. It’s been years since I made frequent trips here to see a friend and knew the Metro like the back of my hand, but here I am, driving the streets in MY vehicle, thinking things like, “Oh look, there’s the Pentagon.”

And since it’s been nearly four months that I’ve been away, I have not watched the news on a regular or frequent basis. I’ll catch NPR when driving and when it’s available. But with five to eight hour drives as the average between friends, the radio station constantly fades out. There is an ignorant bliss about not knowing what’s going on in the world some times. I do miss it, but still after three years away from the 26 years of working around a newsroom, it just feels good to have my mind on other things.

But in and out of this trip has been the reoccurring subject of privacy. I’m somewhat of an open book and can truly say I myself am on the FBI’s most unwanted list. But one thing this trip has taught me is to wake up, grow up, and pay more attention. That there are some things that I brushed aside as paranoid or conspiracy theories that are truly real because some stories along this trip I can not write.

One place that I made time for in DC was the Newseum.  Open to the Public in April of 2008, the Newseum relocated from a five year history in Arlington, Virginia which had closed in 2002, to the prominent spot on Pennsylvania Avenue with an amazing 250,000-square-foot "museum of news" that shows five centuries of news history, exhibits and hands-on technology of today.  Having spent time around the newspaper business for so long and having a deep love for the media in general and newsprint in particular,  I was equally excited to go through it as I was saddened that newspapers jumped off a cliff the day they put ads on the front page and there is a spiraling decline in the news business and the attention span of the American public. That the hunger for those deep investigative news series that powered every young journalism student’s imagination and played out in real life so many times and so many Pulitzers ago, does not exist at the same level. I believe that the news business is still the best check and balance system towards our government and who knew that de-powering the news would not take censoring or enacting laws against it? Instead the internet simply diversified the news gathering to a point of super fragmentation and human overwhelmingness (yes, I made up that word) so that we all end up a little like me right now. Somewhat clueless as to what is really going on.

As seen at the Newseum: Actual taped Watergate door.

But as I walked through the Newseum, there were so many reoccurring themes. We think our problems are new and different than any other generation. But history recorded through the news seems to repeat.

Quotes from the magazine article talked about individual rights being the trickiest legal problem facing the U.S. today. Was this a story about the recent events with Edward Snowden unveiling secrets of our government’s scope of surveillance on its citizens and the world?

No.

I was quoting LIFE magazine cover story “Electronic Snooping Insidious Invasions of Privacy” and the inside articles “Snooping Electronic Invasion of Privacy” and “The Miniature Tools of the Eavesdropper’s Trade” by John Neary dated May 20, 1966.

A purchase along my trip, one of the Presidential Libraries were selling LIFE for $5 each as a fundraiser.
 I took a small collection home including this one.

 

 

Photo Essay: Washington DC

 

Washington, DC---Exploring the Capital city never gets old. But many new things are here since the last time I visited. My cousin's Kid, Rachel and I visited the Presidential store near the Whitehouse as well as found a smart car and drove to the Newsuem. Awesome.

 



 

 

 

 

 

Presidential gift shop

Part of the Berlin Wall (Newsuem)

The actual door that was taped, starting the Watergate investigation. (Newsuem)

A Florida voting booth (Newsuem)

Complete with hanging Chads (Newsuem)

OJ Simpson's suit from day of sentencing. (Newsuem)

Mr. Big

Annapolis, Maryland---The TV show “Sex and the City” was an HBO hit series because so many women could relate to what the foursome clique of women were going through. Between their four personalities my friends and I would compare who we were most like and what we could best relate to.

For me, I had a “Mr. Big,” a man in the series that weaved his way in and out of one of the girl’s lives. He was the one that was emotionally bigger than all the other men that she dated.

My Mr. Big was someone I met at 21 and fell so hard and so deeply for, he changed everything. After I met him, I changed my Spring Break plans to go see him. When we broke up once I flew 1500 miles to fight for the relationship. When I graduated I moved from Kansas to Florida to date him with plans that we would get married. But his behavior on a day to day basis was totally different than the one year long-distance relationship that we had had and I ended it and he went on with his life moving far away.

Deep in my heart I thought he would change and come back for me. And he did change, but he didn’t come back for me.

Years passed and a card here, a letter there. A wedding announcement came and then a baby announcement.

But the marriage ended and we would have a loose connection of infrequent texts or emails, crossing paths at various times. I once watched him with his sweet yet feisty mother and realized he really did turn out to be the man I once thought he was.

And now I’m near where he lives and after four months of being on this trip I thought we would certainly go have coffee or lunch and get caught up in person.

One thing about this road trip around the country of following a path of friends and relatives and having my People Count at 226 so far, is that I am being more open than I ever have been. And that means realizing that what might have once been a friendship is not meant to continue. That our connection was something to be left in the past.  So yes, sadly there have been several people that I realized our time was behind us and that I needed to let them go. Just that. A clearing of the cob webs of my life and making room in my head for the new, positive, future of people I choose to have around me.  This is really hard for me as I have been a "friend collector" my entire life. Putting someone behind me is new to me.

So after sending a countdown of texts as I got closer to Mr. Big, I am in Annapolis and anxious for him to come meet me. Then I get this text:

“Would you like to road-trip this direction for lunch tomorrow? A couple of us have a Friday ritual, walk to local farmers market and take back to office. Not much on the excitement scale but pleasantly social and it is one time I can commit. My colleague is diabetic, so lunch usually holds firm at 12 noon if able. “

My reply text:

“No. I do not want to drive 11,532 miles and be 30.7 miles away from you to walk to a farmers market at exactly noon with people you work with and spend 30 minutes just to be around you. Defining moments says it all. Good bye Mr. Big.”

This Defining Moment only took me 32 years to get. This was not an angry moment, not at all. 

I only realized something huge about me. I had made “Grand Gestures” my entire life for this person. That it was always me making the big effort.  And although there is history, that still does not make it right or healthy for me.

These past four months on the road alone have taught me so much. Letting go of people is the hardest lesson of all...but it's time.  Good bye Mr. Big.

Photo Essay: Annapolis Sailboat Race

 

Annapolis, Maryland---The Annapolis Yacht Club Wednesday boat races took place with between 110-120 boats participating.  The finish line was only a few hundred feet from a bridge spanning the water so the finish line was very exciting to see multiple classes of boats drop sail and turn away.

 

 

 

State Crossing: Pennsylvania

State Crossing: Ohio