66 days

66 days! 13,093 miles! Done? On Thanksgiving Eve, I pulled into a driveway in Irvine , CA. Earlier that morning, I left Flagstaff, AZ, on what would be my 66th and final day of this chapter. Riding in solitude, I pondered whether I would actually be finishing my adventure if it were not for this Thanksgiving holiday and my cousins' request for me to join them in celebration. I was conflicted. I wanted to keep going, perhaps turn north again and head toward San Francisco. I also knew that I had to get back to normal life and, you know, figure out what to do with the rest of mine. I needed to get on with things. As long as I was on the road, I was free, delaying the reality of what awaited. I knew that several weeks worth (or more) of catch up was awaiting me when I eventually rejoined the world. I needed a place to live. I needed to pursue my creative endeavors. I needed to stress about the undiscovered country.

Alas, the odyssey is not over. Instead, it is just beginning. From the moment I began this adventure back in mid September, I was planning the next trip...and the one after that. Though the next odyssey will not begin tomorrow, it will begin soon. The more I saw, the more I realized there is to see. The more I saw, the more I wanted to see. The more people I met, the more people I wanted to meet. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. We are an beautiful and incredible country!!

My video recordings that are posted to this blog cover only the first half of the trip. As I get settled back into life here in California, I will be posting the second half of the trip on this site. So, just because I am done does not mean that new material will not continue to be posted. Stay tuned.

Thank you to all who I saw and visited with along the way. My life is enriched by my personal relationships with all of you. Thank you for your continued support and interest in this trip.

-Joel

McConnells, SC

Me, dancing with Jean Wheeler, organizer of the Marine Corps League Birthday Ball that I attended last night. She is a fabulous dancer and wore me out...she's 70!!!



I'm currently in McConnells, South Carolina visiting my aunt and uncle. The three of us danced up a storm...I, in a borrowed suit!! Tomorrow, I'm heading to Florida!

This is a short clip of my aunt and uncle dancing to Somewhere Over the Rainbow last night. It was taken by my digital camera and therefore not as clear as my former videos. But it's still beautiful!! It's dark and may only show well on certain monitors. Let me know if you have trouble seeing it.

More videos coming soon!!!!

Yellowstone

Alright- the second video posting of the day (be sure to scroll down to see the other).

After we left Little Big Horn, we camped at a truck stop off I-90 in Montana. The next day we rode through Yellowstone with the overall goal of seeing Old Faithful and getting out of the park before the sun went down. So far, Yellowstone was the coldest part of the trip (and I was just in Boston two days ago!!). Ultimately, I decided after this day to turn south and east. I was cold until I was in eastern Colorado and out of the Rockies.

Hope you enjoy....

Little Big Horn

Hey all,
To catch everyone up, I just finished spending a few days up in Boston and Connecticut visiting a cousin and some friends. I'm now back down in Delaware and will be headed to Arlington, VA tonight to see an old Marine buddy. But first, lunch in Philly with my uncle.

Here is a video from my visit to Little Big Horn from three weeks ago. It's by far the longest video (around 9:45) and as such has gone against my better judgment of keeping each clip between 5 and 7 minutes. Please let me know if the length detracts from the entertainment value; I hope it doesn't deter you from watching it!!

More coming...

Rushmore

This is the third video of a long line (I still have several more at various stages). Be sure to scroll down to see the two from yesterday.

This one is of Mt. Rushmore. The guy I'm with is Brad from Vancouver. He and I met outside the Badlands and we traveled together for a few days before parting ways in Idaho.

Again, to alleviate any confusion...I'm currently in Delaware with my brother. I'm heading up to Boston today to see several people.

Black Hills

Okay...second video post of the day. The reason this one took me so long is because I had a specific piece of music in mind. Unfortunately, I didn't have the piece of music with me and it took forever to find it and incorporate it into the video. My loss of momentum in posting videos is due in part to not finding this piece of music for so long. Hopefully, you find that it was worth the wait.

I'm also experimenting with higher quality videos. The trade off, of course, is that computers may or may not be able to keep up with the buffer. Recommend you close all other applications before trying to play this. Please let me know what you think of both the quality and the music selection. I'm not sure how much quality is sacrificed when uploading to YouTube.

For those interested, the music is by Michael Nyman and it's called Musique a Grande Vitesse. The label is Argo. It's my favorite modern classical piece!!
Take care,
Joel

Wounded Knee

Alright, I know it's been a while. So to catch everyone up. I'm currently in Delaware with my brother and sister-in-law. Shortly, I'll be heading up to Boston to visit some more folks. I left Louisville a few days ago.

This video is from Wounded Knee. After getting out of the Badlands in SD, I found a museum for Wounded Knee. I was so intrigued by the exhibits that I rode the 90 miles south to the site of the massacre. I'm glad I did it.

There are many more videos to come. Stay tuned.

City, Suburbs

My visits in Chicago have lead me to two different places in the City and two different places in the suburbs. The contrast is very interesting. I'm currently visiting with my buddy Dan from college, whom I haven't seen in over 7 years. He bought a three story house on the west side of Chicago and turned it into a rental property in which he currently resides. The location is right where the old ghetto used to be and is still in the transition section of the developing western sprawl and poor sections of the city. Driving around here can be quite interesting. Learning about the development and history of this area from someone who has been in the middle of this transition is incredible. He has hired and fired dozens over the last two years in the upgrade of his property. Many that he's employed have been killed or have gone to jail do to the drug business which is still rampant on many blocks. His story is incredible...very inspiring. It would make a good movie.

At any rate, tomorrow I'm off to Louisville.

Chicago

Hey all,
It seems that my friends and extended family have all had daughters. Last week, I spent two days in Windsor, Colorado visiting my cousin and her family, the Leonards, and their 15 month old daughter, Anna. I next went to Chicago, traveling 1060 miles in two days to Montgomery, Illinois to visit my goods friend from college, the Nebens, and their beautiful five month old daughter, Ella. I've bounced around over the last several days visiting multiple friends in and around the Chicago area. It's been great! Currently, I'm with the Drachlers and their two month old daughter, Alana. I could probably stay for another week; there are so many people here that I know. In all this visiting, I've gotten even more behind in my posts and videos. I still have videos for the Black Hills, Mt Rushmore, Little Big Horn, and Yellowstone to post.

From here, I plan to head down to Louisville, Kentucky to visit the Stempiens and their son, Joshua! Then it's out to the east coast for a week.

Hope everyone is well!!

Joel

Badlands

After seeing the Prairie House, I went through the Badlands. Here are some highlights. Again, this was about a week and a half ago.

Little House

Hey Guys,
Sorry for the long stretch of not posting anything. I'm currently in Chicago...should be here for another 4 or 5 days. I'm about two weeks behind on some of these videos, but as I edit them, I post them. Let me know what you think.

Minnesota, South Dakota

Here are some highlights from the trek across Minnesota and South Dakota. Beautiful country. Let me know what you think.

Route 2 to Superior

Hey all, here's another one. This one took me forever to edit but I think it's one of the best yet. Let me know what you think....

Cold

Well, Brad and I made it through Yellowstone yesterday. It was cold. As we crossed into the park on the eastern side, it was like someone turned on the A/C full blast...in the middle of winter. The ride into and through the park was incredible. The mountains are truly majestic and give you a sense of awe. It was 98 miles from the eastern entrance to Old Faithful and we made it there an hour before the sun went down. In Yellowstone, it would be easy to spend an entire week. There is so much to see: hot springs, geysurs, incredible wildlife. But it was cold and that was all the motivation we needed to not get stuck in the park past sunset. Out here, when the sun goes down, it goes from cold to bone chilling, at least on a motorcycle. Fortunately, we made it out of the park just after sunset. In Western Yellowstone, we stopped for dinner and to get warmed up. After dinner, Brad and I parted ways. Brad headed north to return home to Vancouver and I headed South towards Salt Lake City. I decided that the three or four days of being constantly cold was not worth getting to see the western side of Washington and Oregon. I think I'll wait to see those states when it's warmer.

The cold is a very good motivator. It will be nice to get somewhere warmer.

To The UP

This is a video of me heading over the Mackinaw Bridge up into the Upper Peninsula. The UP is as remote as northern Maine. Beautiful country.

Deer God!!

One...two deer began to cross the road in front of me this morning. I slowed down. If there were two deer, there were probably three or even four. Where was the third? A quick scan to the right put my mind at rest that it was only two and not more. I stopped honking my horn and held my speed...45 mph. The two were already across the road, not about to turn around and come at me as I approached. The third deer popped onto the road as I had just let my guard down. He was there, well hidden and decided to come out on the road just in time to hit me. I had nothing to do except grip the handlebars and wait for impact. Swerving was not an option. I was too close. Luckily, the deer saw me and decided to step it out to the other side. I thought that I might clip his back leg as I went by. I didn't. Brad, the guy I met from Vancouver whom I've been traveling with, tthought that I hit it. My heart almost burst from my chest, such was the adrenaline rush!!

Yesterday, we saw the Battle of Little Big Horn. Today, we head into Yellowstone. We are truly fortunate that the days are warm and clear though last night was very cold. This is a beautiful part of the country. Perhaps I will move here, move into a secluded cabin and become a hermit. Write a manifesto. Study math. Send packages. Just kidding. I would never write a manifesto!

I have many videos to edit and post. Soon.

Request

Hello all,

I have a favor to ask. If you find the time, please comment on my posts. Comments on my posts will provide two things. First, it will let me know what audience is looking at the material. Second, it will promote dialague and hopefully give me good suggestions on how to improve the content in future posts. I welcome any and all types of comments and will make every attempt to respond in the same thread. If you just want to say hello and/or ask me a question about my experiences, by all means, comment. If you want to tell me my material is great, sucks, or is just plain mediocre, by all means, comment. I am eager for feedback. In no way feel that if you comment, it needs to be a long well thought out post. A one sentence comment is perfect.

Many thanks to those who have already commented.

Thoughts On Creativity

I sat in Kadoka, South Dakota eating a continental breakfast and debating with myself. Should I stay or should I go? Why am I even doing this trip? I generally knew the answers, or thought I knew the answers to these questions. I should stay and catch up on writing about the previous three weeks worth of experiences; people, places, things. So what if it costs me some time and another $40 for a hotel room? After all, in addition to seeing my country’s beauty and seeing long time friends, one of the primary reasons I did this trip was to explore and learn about the creative process and how to personally improve in it.

About creativity…I discovered that on this trip, I’m typically the most creative at 70 mph, riding in solitude. Alone, in a never-ending expanse of asphalt and beauty, the thoughts come and come, effortlessly. Wonderful, if you can remember those creative thoughts later when you have time to articulate them on paper or into music. Obviously, recording thoughts is not easy, nor safe, to do while riding when all of your faculties are otherwise tasked. Seeing as how the only musical instrument I brought on the trip was a harmonica, which I used once, getting my musical thoughts down has proven difficult. The several songs I composed in my head during rides were forgotten a day later. To correct this, I planned to pick up a microphone for my portable digital recorder. If I could record my thoughts into the recorder and sing my musical ideas while riding, perhaps the ideas would not perish. I have yet to get this mic.

One of the activities that helped me re-learn and re-appreciate the fleeting nature of creativity is the videos I’ve recorded. When video taping, it is not possible to push off the process until later (except the editing and posting processes which I do push off…practically forever). A beautiful scene or a memorable visit needs to be recorded now. There is no later, no going back in time and recording when you have a moment to rest (unless you’re an exceptional and well disciplined artist). In this way, recording on tape is different than writing words or composing music. Making a decision to record or not to record something will have concrete consequences in the outcome of the creative project. I learned from this and began applying it to my writing process. It is not possible to write at length about everything heard, touched, tasted, seen, and smelled. Instead, I began jotting down thoughts and experiences in my little notebook to come back to later. Hopefully, this discipline has helped.

What have I learned about creativity? It’s fleeting. When you have it you need to get it down. Otherwise it will leave you before you snag a thought or a melody with your medium or choice.

What else have I learned about creativity? All too often, creative thoughts are trumped by the stresses of real life. I’ve found that a paradox exists for me in this thinking. Again, one of my goals for this trip was to experience and creatively record “real life” as I saw it around the country. Yet, my own “real life” affects the creative process and therefore this specific goal. Worldly responsibilities intrude and demand first attention. Thoughts about life after the trip consistently creep their way into my mind. Where will I live? What will I do? How long will I have to complete my essays for graduate school applications? When will I run out of money? This thinking often forces creativity to the side. I usually say to myself, “I’ll write about this experience later” or “I’ll take a day or two at this next stop and catch up on all the thoughts and experiences I’ve neglected to record.” Before long, the deficit of creative thoughts that “need to be recorded” is so great that the task of recording all of them becomes overwhelming, another obstacle. Momentum is lost and recording new creative thoughts seems hopelessly inconsequential; there is too much material still in deficit. The value of creativity is incorrectly placed on the subject of the creativity, namely experiences, rather than the joy of being creative and existing in the realm of new ideas; spiritual, philisophical, musical.

A good analogy to the creative process is exercise. Many exercise specialists will emphasize the need for consistency, not duration, in exercise programs. My brother recognized this and promoted consistency in his successful exercise program at his old company. It is more beneficial to work out three to five times a week consistently, as opposed to waiting and “building up” all the workouts for one day out of the week. This very thinking leads many to not maintain exercise programs; the work-out “deficit” is too high and discouraging. Creativity is the same way. Therefore, the process of recording creative thoughts consistently is as important, if not more important, than what topic or subject the creative thoughts are on. To be creative, you must be creative now, not later.

So, I decided to be creative now, in the present. And in time (famous last words), I will go back and fill in the gaps.

Music Medley

What visit to Fonda would be complete without singing music duets after several beers? Just like old times. Heaven help us!

Fonda's Property

Bert took me to see two of his three properties. One is on a lake and only contains a single fishing shack. The other is where he and Karen are building their house. They're trying to finish the house by Christmas. Karen thinks it will more likely be in early spring. They're living in an apartment right now in the same town as Bert's parents, Manton.

Hartwick

I went with Bert's family to Hartwick State Park and learned about lumberjacks. Of course, how can you spend anytime with Bert and not have a political discussion. Autry is so adorable.

To Manton

After leaving Ann Arbor, I swung through Lansing to visit a music store. Then I headed up north on Route 66 towards Manton. Bert, my buddy from the Marines, is as crazy as ever. His callsign from the squadron is Fonda because he's a liberal hippy. He and Karen own three properties and Fonda recently opened a tree removal business. While I was visiting, Fonda loaned one of his employees some money so that he could pay a fine and avoid going to jail. All in all, it was good to see him and Karen and Autry. It was like old times.

Spelunking in Detroit Part III

The third installment...

Spelunking in Detroit Part II

The second installment...

Spelunking in Detroit Part I

These are some crazy adventures in Detroit. We felt a little like archeologists and spelunkers. It's three parts long and about 6 to 8 minutes each. Hope you like.

To Toledo

....a few clips from my trip to Toledo. It rained for three hours on the road. Luckily, my rainsuit and waterproofing paid off. The only things that got soaked were my feet.

Day 11

This is what I did yesterday. For the first time in my travels, it rained...a lot. Luckily, my rainsuit and gear stayed relatively dry. Riding in the rain is not the most fun and can be quite dangerous so this leg took me much longer than I anticipated. I'm currently visiting an old high school and college buddy, Josh Kobrin, in Toledo, OH. He's here for a year clerking for a district judge. I haven't seen him in eight years.

Maps

Day 1- Topsfield to Portland



Day 2- Portland to Lake Champlain



Day 3- Lake Champlain to Saranac Lake



Day 4- Saranac Lake to University at Buffalo



Day 5-10- Bouncing back and forth between Amherst in Buffalo and Pittsford in Rochester

Okay...I figured out a way to post maps on the blog. I initially tried to create a link to Google maps but that didn't work. So I just copied the images off Google Earth with the routes and some Power Point drawlrings and then uploaded the pictures. There's probably an easier way. Anyway, here's the first week and a half worth of maps. Sorry, they're kind of hard to see. I'll try to continue posting them as I go along so you can see the progress. Hope you like it.

White Face Mountain

Two days after leaving Maine, my brother and I rode to the top of White Face Mountain in the middle of the Adirondack Park. This mountain was where the winter olympics took place in both 1932 and 1980. To the east we could see Lake Champlain, where we stayed the night prior. To the west, we could see Lake Placid. New York is beautiful this time of year.

Accordian

This is me playing an accordian that my father bought at a swap meet for $40. It was fun messing around with it.

The Beginning

In 2005, my parents began building a retirement home in Topsfield, Maine, up in Washington County, right next to the vacation spot of my youth. Every summer growing up, from the time I was around nine years old to the time I left for college, my family would head up to The Birches, a house keeping cabin vacation spot on East Musquash Lake in Topsfield. The road trip up there each summer left indelible memories. My father typically stayed up until 2 am the night prior to beginning the vacation packing every nook and cranny of our 14 foot Lund which we hauled up with us. We’d pack so much gear that an outside observer might think we were moving. But it was only the pack-rat nature of my parents, who to this day haven’t really thrown anything away, that made the job of packing that much more challenging and time consuming. One year, my father had packed our poor boat so full that the weight caused the trailer springs to break half way to Maine. None of us were really surprised. We spent two days trying to get the trailer fixed before finishing the trip.
Those childhood trips were so much fun. My father, a rabid antique collector, had to make his traditional stops at most antique stores we passed doubling the time it took us to reach our destinations. He would make bold statements like, “I’ll only be twenty minutes,” only to return 2 hours later thoroughly frustrating my mother and us boys. But my father loved the hunt of the bargain, finding unique antiques that sold for under their value. The hunt for antiques was part of his vacation. The stops that my brothers and I always loved were the sporting goods/outdoorsman shop stops. There were two such stops on the way to Maine, one at the Kittery Trading Post in Kittery, Maine and one at L.L. Bean in Freeport. At one of these two stores, I got my first knife, first backpacking pack, first B.B. Gun, first fishing rod, and countless other boyhood treasures.
I always looked forward to these stops. My father and the three of us brothers were like kids in a candy store, wide eyed and full of imagination at all the gear. There was no adventure that we couldn’t handle in our minds with what we saw. My poor mother, the sole female in a family of five would typically stay with our dog, Thistle, in the car. Staying in the car turned out to make these stops more miserable for my mother as we would make statements like, “We’ll only be an hour,” and then be gone for half the day. Even more to her chagrin, L.L. Bean stayed open for 24 hours so it didn’t matter what time of day or night we pulled into Freeport each summer.
It had been over 11 years since I was last in Topsfield and during that trip, I flew into Bangor and only made the return road trip back to Rochester with my family. The last time I actually drove up to Topsfield was perhaps in 1994. I greatly looked forward to the opportunity of retracing that childhood trip with my parents. This was also to be the first time I saw my parents’ retirement house. The major construction had been completed and the outside was finished including the roof, siding and deck. Most of what remained was interior finishing work. My parents decided to take a week off in early September to work on the interior. This provided me a unique opportunity to begin my cross country odyssey in Maine during my terminal leave. So, on Thursday, August 30th, I dropped my motorcycle off in San Diego to be shipped to Topsfield. I bought a one-way ticket to Rochester, NY for $122. After arriving in Rochester, I helped my parents pack and the three of us left for Topsfield on September 8th.
After finishing a week of working on my parents house in Topsfield, Maine, I prepared to depart for my two month adventure. My brother was to accompany me for the first week.