EUGENE TO KC

This little grasshopper rode with me for about four hundred miles today--good company.  More photos here.   Two six hundred mile days in a row--all I can say is I'm glad to be at Little America in Cheyenne enjoying some room service food.  It's gonna be a couple days before my molecules stop vibrating at a weird frequency.  This french onion soup is helping, but not the Royals game on the laptop.  Aaron Crow just served up a double cheddar cheeseburger with turkey bacon to Kendrys Moralez, who took full advantage.  Totally disgusting.  Game effing over. 

Ten days or so of goodbye gatherings were intense and great, and got me primed for some drive time.  But not this much drive time.  This is enough to get me to sign up to Audible.com, drop some peyote, and listen to Joe Pesci read Moby Dick.  I've listened to Joe Pettit's new Wave Generator cd, a series of mix CD's from Dave Snider, some Minus 5, and the new Son Volt album Honky Tonk (three times back to back.  It's really country/folky and perfect for driving.) 

On behalf of my brother Neal, I looked for Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear in Wyoming today, but they may be in Montana helping Robicheaux and Clete sort things out.  I'm at that point in James Lee Burke's Light of The World where things do not appear sort-out-able.  That's another way of saying, it's getting good.

BE CALM GRASSHOPPER

SAM BOND'S FAREWELL FOR NOW SHOW

One of the questions I've been getting goes like this: "what's the main reason you guys are moving?"  I'll see if this frames the answer right:

For a couple of years now, I've noticed that when the plane begins its descent into Eugene, I'm not feeling glad to be home.  It used to be I'd feel that comfortable, good-to-be-home feeling as the fields passed by below, typically under cover of clouds.  It was OK; it was, well, home.  But that changed.  My better half has her unique and personal reasons and I won't speak for her here, except to say that she's backing the play big-time, and that gave me courage.

Plus, I started getting that good-to-be-home feeling as the plane descended into Kansas City over the course of a few recent visits.  A few days of stealing time would keep me going. Just the feeling of running my hand over a limestone wall at the edge of vacant lot on a sunny day would stay with me for weeks.  We started kicking the tires on a move, talking about our love of the city, and new developments and energy there, plus cost of living, weather, culture, restaurants, great music and art, plus the stages and transitions of young and old in our families--all the stuff you kick  around when you talk about moving.  That conversation took maybe 18 months; the action part took far less time.  And here we are, not quite jumping the Snake River on a rocket bike like Evil Knievel.