Searching for the Ecstatic Light in the Lowlands of Despair

I moved from San Francisco to New York City a month ago and am still not too sure how to talk about it, so I wont. To get from one side of the continent to the other, though, I opted to drive. I rented a mini-van, and stacked my belongings up high enough so that I wouldn’t have to see myself leaving out the rear-view mirror. I took the southern route - I-40 to Oklahoma, where I hooked north into Missouri and beyond. It took 5 days in total, pushing 10 hour of driving 4 of the 5 days. A lot of people thought I was pretty crazy to want to do this alone, but it felt like an important way to process it all, and to remind myself how expansive the United States is.

Oh, also, I stopped doing this diary entries for awhile because I had a cyber-stalker, who has hopefully since forgotten about me. Kind of a long story that I feel like I’ll get to in a different diary entry, where I’ll also share pictures from Fall in San Francisco.

Anyway, below are some thoughts / highlights / observations

• I won $100 on a scratch-off in Ohio

• States I drove through in order from most to least enjoyable: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Arizona, California, Texas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, NYC, New Jersey

  • A few call outs to make sense of this list:

    • This list is only taking into consideration the specific roads I was on

    • The route I was on only had me in West Virginia for 10 minutes, but it was beautiful

    • Big rust belt boy

    • California would be higher on the list, obviously, if I was on a different route. I took the Salinas Valley into the Mojave. Beautiful in its own right, but looking back, I have desert fatigue. This likely also explains why New Mexico was so low on the list

    • Arizona is under-rated (looking at you Flagstaff - why the hell are you so high in elevation. Also takes the cake for most enjoyable nightlife on the trip)

    • Specifically passed through the Texas panhandle. Open ranch land and lots of wind turbines

• I shared a mojito (3 straws, 1 drink) with 2 off-the-clock hotel bartenders at a hotel in Oklahoma

• I listened to roughly 40 hours of Katsy Pline’s radio station, Heartbreak Ahead - Country-Western and Esoterica, which is where the title of the diary entry came from

• I didn’t eat a single vegetable for approximately 4 days. Broke the fast by eating a banh mi at a Vietnamese in Shippensburg, PA. It was not very good, but didn’t get me sick

• The Indiana accent has a southern drawl, which surprised me because it nearly touches Wisconsin

• I unexpectedly visited my grandmother in Missouri, whose house I didn’t realize I would be driving right past. Shout out to Dee, pictured below.

• I thoroughly enjoy driving. I would do it all over again. When I landed in NYC, I didn’t feel right to stop. Let me know if you need a road-trip companion

Yours,
Danny