Dear Catherine,

I'm in an undisclosed location on California. I would tell you where I am, but then I would have to kill you, and I love you too much for that.

The trip has been great so far, so much fun, and I've seen so much of the country already. I told Bernie I was hopeful that this was not the best part of the trip because I only want it to get better. Leg two will be a different kind of fun I think, more social. This part was about me and Bernie and the kid, Isa.

The kid is great, funny and smart and mostly well-behaved. We noticed she had cycles, slept in the morning with the top down, whined a bit when we took the top off in the late morning, giggled and sang to herself all afternoon ("California is my favorite state" over and over again), and then got a little cranky near the end of the driving day.

We all get a little cranky near the end of the driving day though. I told Bernie Isa's whining was no worse than what I was expecting from two urban chicks in their late twenties on the second leg of the trip. Probably it was better in a way because you can bribe a five-year-old to shut up. We've been buying her coloring books and Pez and a plastic yo-yo full of mini sweet tarts that she rattled next to my head for an hour, until I finally took it from her and ate all her candy. She didn't care. She never finishes anything we give her. She just likes the idea of a surprise more than anything else.

Part of the point of doing this first leg with the kid was to see if I wanted to have one. I mean, I know I want a kid, but I wanted to see if I could deal with it. The answer is yes, of course. I'm not ready right now, though. When we stopped to visit my parents, my dad fell in love with the kid, they were all over each other, laughing and playing. My mom whispered to me, "Your father never plays with our friends' grandkids. I think it's because he's sad that he doesn't have one of his own." She gave me a look. And I said, "Mom, I don't even have a job."

So, you know. Someday. Sooner rather than later probably.

Anyway, we started the trip in Erie, PA, where we stayed with Bernie's parents and visited a Wal-mart because that's what you do in Erie. Bernie bought a visor with the word "Nineteen" on it, followed by the numbers "92." There seems to be no significance to the numbers and it made Bernie laugh. That year wasn't even significant in Bernie's life. She had to have it. I've been staring at it for five days and every time I bring it up, the pointlessness of the hat, she laughs. She doesn't have to look at it and she knew it when she bought it.

The next day we drove to Buffalo Grove, Illinois, my hometown. We got stuck in awful traffic coming in on the skyway that borders Indiana and Illinois. We moved maybe a mile in an hour. Bernie and Isa slept in the sun and I was on suicide watch, inching slowly forward, with nothing to look at but the asses of the cars in front of me. That was the last time we hit heavy traffic, though. But man did it suck.

My mom and dad grilled hot dogs and chicken and we all went to the park. I borrowed mom's bike for a bit and rode around the old neighborhood. It rained briefly. It's so quiet there. It was really good to see them, even just for a day. They always want to know what I'm doing, where I'm going, where I've been. Pennsylvania, I wanted to say. Tomorrow, Nebraska.

It felt like everything before the trip was irrelevant. This trip makes me want to start from scratch when I get back, and in a sense I am. I finished a bunch of work before I left, I have nothing pending when I return, and I could become something totally new if I wanted to in the next twelve days. I could come up with a whole new career, a whole new strategy for my life, just by thinking about it really hard while on the road. There are no distractions beyond the natural beauty of the country to prevent me from reinvention.

Because I think you know I was pretty angry before I left town. Beyond PMS and the raging heat, there was a lot going on that wasn't working for me. Some of my relationships were weighing me down, and some of my projects were lame, and there were things that I regretted doing in the past coming back to haunt me. There were no major disasters really, just a lot of little things adding up. I was dissatisfied. I am dissatisfied. I am working to resolve that.

After Buffalo Grove we drove to Nebraska through Iowa. There's not much to say about Iowa except that it looks like a really boring place to live. I kept thinking about that Jane Smiley book "A Thousand Acres" the whole time. I bet people are so bored here they have to fuck with each other just to entertain themselves, I thought. Nothing but farms and blue sky. I never want to drive through Iowa again.

We landed in Lincoln for the night, at a Holiday Inn. That city is so pristine it's weird. It's as if somebody decided to put a city in the middle of nowhere. Here's a bus station, here's the local paper, here are four movie theaters. But there didn't seem like there was much character to it. It kind of felt like a movie set. We didn't see much of it though so maybe I should shut up. For example, we stayed in the "historic" Haymarket district and I never bothered to figure out why it was historic. I was being a bad traveler but it had been a long day of driving.

I went to see "Charlie's Angels II: Full Throttle" that night, by the way. If you don't listen to what they're saying and just look at the pretty colors it's quite entertaining. Everytime anyone in the movie started talking I found myself getting annoyed. No talking, please. Just 80s rock and costume changes. That's all I wanted. And Cameron Diaz' ass. Also: Demi Moore is a marvel of modern technology. Not an ounce of fat on her. She's fucked up looking.

The next day we pushed ourselves for twelve hours, to Rock Springs, WY. It was an insanely long day, probably twelve hours of driving. Isa deserves a medal, I tell you. I don't know many children that could do it. And every day she started over again, singing her songs and making up stories about the world around her and making choo-choo noises everytime we saw a train. It was remarkable.

It was around this time that the land started getting interesting, at last. The midwest is so flat and boring, but Wyoming has mountains and hills and valleys and trees. Beautiful country. Bernie got excited and said, "Isa look! A new topography!" The U.S. is just so goddamn huge, Catherine. You really must do this trip sometime, even though I know you don't like road trips so much. Just do it once. Promise me you will.

Rock Springs is one of the biggest towns in Wyoming and there was still nothing there. We collapsed into our Holiday Inn, and ate at their restaurant. Our waitress was named Amber. She was new. She had short bleached blonde hair and Bernie complimented her on it so she liked us. There was also a bar called Diamond Jim's at the Holiday Inn and a conference center and a ballroom of some sort. "People get married here," I said. Bernie took Isa swimming at the pool and I stared numbly at "For Love or Money" on the television set. This world is coming to an end maybe. Bernie shook her head at the television set when she came back from swimming. I was catatonic.

But we woke up the next morning and drove another ten hours. I don't know, you just do it. There's so much to see, and it seems like it's better to get there faster. Get to the next town, stop at the next gas station, buckle, unbuckle, buy Isa a treat. We didn't have phone service at this point, lost it for two days mostly. I took pictures with my cellphone and saved them up, then uploaded them whenever we stopped for the night. There were patterns forming. Bernie and I talked about dirty inappropriate things while Isa slept in the morning just to keep ourselves going. Everything was an innuendo. Everything was funny. Isa, look, a cow. Just keep going.

The salt flats outside of Salt Lake City were gorgeous. We stopped twice and let Isa play in the soft salt and taste it. There were empty beer bottles in the salt, and circles of stones. I pictured high school kids driving out into the middle of nowhere and getting drunk and playing in the salt, writing their names in it. Class of 1992 4-Ever.

We pushed on to Reno and I'm so glad we did. I loved Reno. I loved our hotel, the El Dorado, and I loved the casinos, and I loved the huge portions of food they served us at the Brewery , and I loved the crazy people there. We met a woman in the elevator who was bringing a sack of food to her mother who refused to leave the slots.

Another woman walked up to me as I was taking a picture with my phone of the advertisment for the Beatles impersonation show, "Yeah Yeah Yeah!" She was in her fifties and had long red hair that looked like it had been blessed by the crimping iron fairy. She wore glittery blue eyeshadow. She liked to go to the shows and get autographed pictures from the performers though she complained that they never really looked quite like the originals. "I have one from their Elvis here, too," she said. "You can never compare with the original though." I agreed with her.

I played the slots a bit that night and got drunk on cheap wine. I won forty bucks when I sat down and a woman behind me said, "Nice coin." People mumbled to each other all the time. I felt myself sinking into the dirt and I liked it. At the very end a haggard yet handsome man with stubble sat down at the machine next to me and gave me a lascivious look. Not tonight buddy, I thought. I'm on a road trip with a five-year-old. When I came back to the room Isa was asleep and the lights from the city were streaming into the room. Bernie was checking her email. "I lost it all," I told her. "But I love it here."

We slept late the next day. It's strange how sitting in a car can be so exhausting, though I guess it was from the sun and the wind beating us up all day. My bones still don't feel right and I've got twelve more days to go. My right eye is kind of fucked up, too. It's been watering a lot and it's hard to keep it open sometimes. I feel like I've been in a war. A couple of days in California should do me right before I pick up Betsy and Cinde from the airport and head out to the Grand Canyon.

And I guess that's it for now. We left Reno, headed to California, and now I'm finally writing. There's so much more I could tell you but I really want to walk away from this computer right now and go get some breakfast and sunshine. I do have an idea for an essay I want to write, and maybe I'll do that this afternoon. It stems from a conversation Bernie and I had about one of my favorite topics: What My Problem Is.

I told Bernie I have a Cassandra Complex. Cassandra was that mythological character who was given a prophetic power but was cursed because no one would believe her. She couldn't shut it off, though. She would see the future, good or bad, and just had to live with it. I'm not so concerned with the fact that she couldn't persuade anyone about the truth, but more that she couldn't turn off her predictive powers. I feel like that sometimes with my relationships, that I've dated every type of guy, been to every bar, watched every reality tv dating show, read every twentysomething chick lit book, seen every romantic comedy nine million times, met too many people online, read the NY Times Style section religiously for years, and now I'm just ruined, I know what's going to happen before a guy opens his mouth, makes his move, or sends me an email. I can see three weeks or three months down the road and then I'm over it already. There are no surprises left for me and I can't shut it off because I have learned far too much in my life except how to relax and be happy.

"You think too much," said Bernie. "You need to stop thinking."

See, that's what I like about the open road. Everything is a surprise. There's a burnt out tire, there's a bump in the road, there's a rock formation, there's some roadkill, there's a cloud covering the sun, there's a cow. I never know what to expect because it is all new to me. Sometimes I wish I could just keep driving forever.

I don't miss New York right now but I miss you.

xo
j

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