The Road is not for sissies. Especially when the Radio Flyer is chock-full of a life to the point where a bobby pin would take mammoth labors to fit into it.

No, I didn’t bring the kitchen sink, but only cuz I didn’t have the tools to prise it from the counter.

I have energy balls in the side pocket with my distance glasses, clear & dark. I have my toiletries kit with the make-up bag separate from it somewhere, so my crooked smile will have to serve for beauty. I reached the point where if there was a space, I held something over it & dropped that item into it. The last thing to go in was the hair dryer which took help from my roommate. And still stuff will trail me from the USPS, by gar!

No matter. It will all get there, get unpacked, get distributed, get used, get me a life.

I’m sitting in a super-clean motel room in Marianna, FL after a day of driving. Easter Sunday is a good day to take Route 19 in Florida, a sleepy little go-road with a thicket of speed limit signs. No sooner can one reach 65 then these count down to 35 to go through Scrub Creek legally. And all the po-lice sit in driveways awaiting the poor drivers without warning systems whispering “Police reported ahead!” Reported? A nice way of saying “lurking.”

The only places with cars parked in front of them, oddly enough, were Dollar General stores & churches. One for the necessary Easter plastic everything & the other for the messages which should cancel out the need for same.

I listen to Dark Journalist podcasts when I travel, catching up on the history of Edgar Cayce & the Secret Space Program. These last 3 hours, & are chock-full of data I may quote at some future date in a discussion with other space nerds. Amazingly, my online minister out of Sedona also quotes Cayce extensively tho on entirely different topics. Go Figure.

The traffic was relatively light. I departed before dawn & was at a Waffle House in New Port Richey by sunup. I did take an unwanted turnoff at Tampa Airport for the once-around & get-the-hell-outta here. For some reason, the Tampa Airport is a black hole for me & I got sucked into it for an hour one day when everytime the GPS said turn left I was in the rightmost lane. Nightmare. That was my only sweatpoint this morning. And anyone who has used the Tampa Airport will line up behind me on that one with a resounding ‘Amen!’

The roads now have gateless toll booths in the form of bright camera lights that take photos of license plates & then bill you. I miss the friendly interaction of toll booth guys & gals making change in fingerless gloves.

It is good to be back on the road, comfortably still, in a clean room after a cool shower, in nice PJ’s. I plan to leave in daylight tomorrow, I think. Lightless driving was not ever very comfortable for me. I need to see the signs lilted from my mapping program.

Pray for me on the road, one & all. I’ve assigned my entire Road Crew to different vantage points around the car. So far, they’re all keeping up. I didn’t lose a one in Tampa!