in so many words

Last month Emily and I flew to Texas to buy my father-in-law’s 1998 Honda Accord EX. We had needed a newer car, since both of our Hondas were over 17 years old, and Emily’s dad offered to sell his to us at a good price. So we flew out to West Texas and drove the car back home to California. You might think that the trip across the southwest U.S. via Interstate 40 is not the most scenic drive, and certainly Western Texas/Eastern New Mexico are pretty barren, but there are actually some cool and interesting sights to see along the way… I-40 is the highway built to replace Route 66, and there are still plenty of cool attractions and tourist stops along the way. Emily took photos out the car windows as we drove, and we talked most of the way as we followed long freight trains across New Mexico and Arizona and into Southern California. The drive took us 3 days and we stopped for the night in Gallup, New Mexico and Mojave, California. It was a nice little mini-vacation, a good break from our work schedules and a chance for me to finally stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.

On a highway in North Texas

Being tourists in Vaughn, New Mexico

Arizona

Near Flagstaff, Arizona

Train outside Tehachapi, California

Emily explaining the Tehachapi Train Loop Marker

East of Bakersfield, California

Such a fine sight to see…

This is something I have wanted to do for some time now. Years ago, when I published my first web site, I wanted to simply post some of my writings on my site. But I procrastinated (one of my gifts) and then a few years later blogging became popular. Now even my wife Emily has a blog, so I decided that it was time to start my own.

My friends know me as a musician, but as a young boy long before music affected my life the first occupation I seriously considered was that of an author. I was a voracious reader - I read constantly, first books by authors like Mark Twain, Jack London and Madeleine L’Engle, then later writers like Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Isaac Asimov. I thoroughly enjoyed those books, losing myself in the stories I read, which I’m sure was a way of escaping an uncomfortable home life. In fourth grade, after learning that Mark Twain was Samuel Clemens’ pen name, I invented a pen name for myself and hand-wrote a short story on lined paper, stapled together with a construction paper cover, the title written out with crayons. This blog looks a bit more presentable than that handmade novel, but I think that this is really just a continuation of that desire to create, which I believe is in all of us. And that’s not to say that I have any special talent as a writer - this is just something that I have wanted to do.