“OK. Guys. Look at this,” Tom’s eyes are almost stern behind his glasses. “We’re going through every state in the contiguous U.S except Michigan” his expression is screaming do you see what I’m getting at??

Should we write them an apology, I think, fleetingly.

“Yeah,” Joey says, hands across his stomach, comfortably sunken into the couch, “add it, what the hell?”

“OK.” Tom’s fingers fly across the key board and I turn to my own computer to let my eyes trace the blue line maze that will be our route in a few months.

Oh, yeah, I think, just add it.

This trip is unstoppable. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill, and Joey, Tom and I are the three little kids who run behind it breathless and giggling to kick it when it gets stuck.

At first- in the early planning days of last year- this trip was a playful thirty day jaunt out to Portland in the summer months. Once there we would regain our grip on adulthood and get back to real life. Shortly, however, after the original conception of this trip, someone said: why not make it 100 days?

Oh no, I had said to myself, my parents voices coming through my own, we can’t do that. That would be too much. How would we get jobs? What would we do about money? Isn’t that a bit irresponsible? A thirty day trip is plenty, isn’t it?

But no! Skepticism is for the weak minded and the unadventurous! Rapidly through our planning sessions and over emails we have expanded this trip from a mere thirty days and a few key states, to a larger and still larger route including more and more space across the nation. Our tires will be nipping the corners of some states but as Tom said, “we can stop at a rest area; that counts.”

Just three days ago, Joey sat in our main room toiling away at a new version of the map so we could update the website with our newest route. The very next day as I sat in my cubicle ticking away at my work an email popped up from him:

“So, anyone think we should close out highway one by going north through Washington and then coming back south to Portland.  Seattle is supposed to be nice.”

You just finished that map though, I had thought. I clicked ‘reply’ and begin thoughtfully composing an email asking how many days we have allotted to what and saying that I’m in if we can fit Seattle without compromising anything else, and so on.

Tom replied before I finished my response so I opened his email.

“Fine;” nonchalant and direct, typical Tom.

I look over my wordy response. Yeah, that sums it up, I let my fingers float above the backspace button, but decide whatever, and hit send.

We may seem blaze over our additions, but believe me when I say the passion behind this trip is unquenchable. Now, with our final decision to stop in every single U.S state on the North American continent, I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine any further additions.

But, then again, what are boys good for if not for keeping a girl on her toes?

-Sarah Lovelace





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