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This is it. A place of my own. In a town where I’m known. I have not lived alone since I left T or C in 2022. I have been living with roommates which, by very nature, implies conditions. Lower the music: no politics discussed: one or two shelves in the kitchen only: same for the fridge.

Already it seems far in the past. It seems so small to fit the rearview mirror. It seems too small to have ever housed a me who lived there.

It feels to have been contrived & parsimonious, a much smaller way of living than I am permitted. I suddenly feel adult, responsible, allowed. I can make decisions, spend or save, go out or stay in. My door is my own.

This is sacred space. I would take my shoes off, but the goatheads ride in cracks of rubber soles & are sharply painful when encountered. Plus I am rehabilitating my feet which I find to be sore. Arnica, lotion, oil, sneakers for support, all contribute to my little program of self-care.

Already I am able to be social: writing group today, helping at the Health Fair yesterday, working Saturday. This week is working 3 shifts, lunch with a friend Wednesday, maybe writing group tomorrow before work…

I close my eyes & am content to be who & where & how I am. I ask no more of love.

I arrived in T or C last Friday. Universe took one last swipe at me when it closed the north entries to I-25 the minute I had finished lunch & gassed up for that final 75 mile trek. Workers were putting up the orange barrels as I turned onto the ramp. No – this cannot be happening!

The Google GPS and OnStar outclassed themselves directing me from one entry to another, only to find barriers in process at each. Now what? Oh yeah, I seem to remember a two-lane county road somewhere, but I could not recall the route number or where to pick it up from Las Cruces – I’ve been gone over four years from this area.

A vague memory told me it was off 70 West. Except trying to get there caused an insistent chorus of “when possible, make a u-turn.” as the GPS redirected me to I-25.

I was tired & thinking about going fully Cranky. I was thinking about one more night spent in a motel cuz I could not get out of Las Cruces. OnStar was critical in holding the wheel with me to find the road. But it took three calls & three advisors, the only the third taking the time to hold the wheel with me to actually DIRECT me. And the drive thru lovely greening pecan groves was indeed one to remember remove me from the speedway & set me on a more leisurely path.

On arrival, I spent four days unpacking the boxes, stashing items in the apartment which was so spacious in the photos but where the reality was a room I could lie down on the floor of & reach the other wall with my arms raised over my head.

When every box was flattened for recycle, I realized with a sinking heart one was missing: the box holding my critical Important Papers folder – the one with my social security card, my birth certificate, my refrigerator magnets & possibly the other six pairs of undies that could not fit into the suitcase.

I begged Heaven for help. I am rooming with a wayside shrime of St Anthony here in my friend’s house – he’s a top-line contact in situations like this, being the Patron Saint of Lost Things. I talked it over with him & found the lost box under the desk in the living room as I’d sent it on two weeks ahead of departure.

(Oddly enough I brought along wet wipes for use in strange bathrooms & the thought bubbled up that my butt-wipes were safely in hand while my birth certificate had taken a powder.)

I was strangely disturbed at becoming an “undocumented” citizen. I was thinking of the hassle of red tape about to be undergone to replace these items. In the room where I’m staying until the apartment is readied is a wayside shrine with St. Anthony over on the bureau. What else to do? I prayed & was reminded me I had sent two boxes to this same house & they were in the living room under the desk. And, yes, my papers were the first file under the flaps.

Then I realized the point of these teasers from Universe was I am letting go of of being “official.” I was being asked to let go of who I had been in New Jersey, in Delaware, in Maryland, in Florida. Being here is a chance to actually & finally retire! I walked forward in faith & it paid off beautifullly.

This might be called retirement, folks. No schedules, few commitments. I gambed I’d be able to supplement what I have asking for a job at an old workplace & got the job. I’m working some 12-20 hours a week after a lifetime of 40-50 hour weeks!

I’m happy. I’m writing. I’m making friends with the kids next door. I’m walking. I’m settled in, especially now that I have a second storage shelf in the kitchen. The bank is open, the addresses are changed all over, the Amazon stuff is arriving…

This is Right!

Thanks to All That Is!!

My time is officially my own now. I walk to work, to the Mexican market on the corner, to the coffee house & more. I am no longer a drone in the worker-bee hive, but able to afford a life including time, scenery, to re-acqaint myself with friends & eat green chile with everything. This may seem a set of unusual life goals, but they’re mine to cherish & trust in. My Best Life cozies up & takes my hand.

There is much left to do & I’ll get to it, I promise. But now it includes time taking care of myself & serving others in small ways & with a lot of humor. I have a lot to look forward to & savor each day. How fortunate!

I am faring well. I haven’t had makeup on in two weeks & my face shows more relaxed in the mirror. My little place has filled nicely with what I chose to bring along & is bright, cheerful & breezy.

Today I arrive in Truth or Consequences, an event which has happened more than a few times this life. No one, even a T or C’ean  can really describe what this means.

To me, a kind of resident alien, it means getting to the stop-place. No more cardboard cups in clingy plastic, a struggle to open  with these elderfingers. It means resting my eyes on the same contents around me each day after a week of measuring motel rooms against my soon-to-be-reality. A week of stripping down jungle landscape to mountain rocks.

Former arrivals were more white-eyed & manic: an I’M HOME, I’M HERE, OMG! about them.

I have a feeling in my stomach this one will be more of an, OK, let’s mean it this time. Let’s hold hugs, greet familiarity, marvel at new murals – slide into the pace where the town moves – adjusting to that moving treadmill. Fitting in while standing out. For these are my clear intentions.

This entry is less a splash, than a sliding in, snugging up the snaps. For some while it will be a supernova of confusion – what’s in this box? Even tho I packed them only seven days ago. And wrote letters on them: K for kitchen, etc. Yes, for kitchen, but what’s in the box?

Spatulas? Spoons? Funny, the only souvenir I bought crossing country was a painted spoon from Buc-ees. In case you’re not familiar, Buc-ees is a mecca of the milk the travel-bucks ilk – pitched consumerism with abundant & decent food, good quality junk, overpriced clothes. Gas pumps make it appear a necessity, but I see that phenom of not ENtrance, but EnTRANCE upon entry. I can see that manic beaver logo cropping up on more landscapes even as I retire into the same daily one. (Buc = Buck, get it? Eee’s/ease of spending?) Americans in search of an experience, thinking shopping is so. (Before leaving, I grabbed one remaining soup spoon from the counter for my purse & it  served well along the way.)

Arrivals & Departures are but two sides of the wealth hoarded & spent in the realm of my life. Whether wisely or foolishly cannot be judged as only the purchases remain. I found a burger place last night & while waiting for my first green chile in years, I watched pictures of the gray, frothing ocean reported from the storms in Florida. It already looked impossibly remote & imaginary.

This morning I picture my new room in lifted ambient yellow. In my mind, the curtains are hung, the pictures a little crooked, some oldie/new furniture, a table & chairs tucked up, possessions arranged on shelves or in baskets. It will be my newest memory & well worth all I’ve spent to be so.

I sit in the corner there, with my favorite mug, sipping coffee. I have the rhythm now – I’ve switched from arrivals & departures to departures &  arrivals. I like this A-word better!

Yesterday was both Mom’s birthday & not really so. Mother lived in a more flexible day as a young woman, one where you could live “undocumented” & reinvent inconvenient facts to suit.

We always celebrated her birthday on April 7^th. As children, my brother Joe & I drew pictures, bought cards, sang that song, I’m sure, pulling faces & antics. I don’t remember cakes for her – she would have not admitted to one & we were too kid-dish to know how to get one. At least I was. Joe, now, he knew, but he was too much of a guy to celebrate Mom.

Besides, Mom was a tyrant figure to us – a fiercely organized woman with a penchant for wanting everything back the way it had been before use. Now you tell me, what self-righteous kid wants that? Kids use & have that use show. This was not Mom’s way.

She came in as an Aries, so elemental power & force were 2^nd nature. Dad was a Libra about whom I know next to nothing – maybe the edges of facts, but no whole one to finger & weigh or hug. I don’t know his shoe size, for example. I didn’t know his birthday until seeing his death certificate. To this day, I do not know his middle name tho he had to have a Confirmation Name. Once divorced, Mother never spoke of him: not a reminiscence, not a memory, not a favorite color nor a preference in cars or sports, tho a lack of support checks often went topical.

To remember Dad would be less than a paragraph. Mom is not much more & yet no one held such influence & sway in my life since, albeit unconscious. She preferred Chevrolets. She bought & sold cars & houses in a time when the only approved purchases for women were groceries at the A&P & children’s clothes mail-ordered from Sears Roebuck. She wielded power & independence, which Aries underscores. She was likely a Manifesting Generator: when Dad was caught out cheating with the town’s Loose Woman (already with a love child), she did not hesitate in grabbing the kids & heading for the hills – in this case in the form of sand dunes.

She took a taxi. From Marcus Hook, PA to Wildwood, NJ where she knew the sisters Icanangelo. They put her up, fed her wine & set her to cook in a restaurant on the Boardwalk where the excellence of her meatballs had tourists lined up for a block outside at sundown. She worked her other two daughters – my older sisters – unmercifully. They worked their way back to ‘Hook to their high schools & graduations & our Dad.

I have a fact-free Family Mythology as heritage.

Mom was born April 13, but 13 is an unlucky number, so she adopted the 7^th instead. She was born in 1913, so put out she was born in 1917. We kids all looked askance at her death certificate, muttering, it says WHAT? But that wasn’t… I’m sure Mom was just the other side of the veil, giggling as she never really did in life.

She was a “typical Italian” woman of maybe just under 5’ tall, with red wine in a gallon jar in the kitchen bottom cabinet, red wine vinegar in a quart-size jar & olive oil in one those silvery, glugging cans. She made pasta – using a juice glass to cut the Ricotta ravioli, balancing a collection of scrubbed & flour-rubbed broomsticks from kitchen cabinet to Formica table, draped in noodles. I don’t remember lasagna, but I do remember lots of succulent strings & strands of pasta drifting flour onto the floor. When not making her own, she preferred Buitoni #9.

I remember asking her once in the car, what happened when you hit the brake & the gas at the same time, which piqued her, I guess, as she said, “I don’t know, let’s try it” & I hit the dashboard  hard, catching myself with both hands, screeching. MOOOOmmmm!!

She had a mischievous sense of humor,  wore black-rimmed glasses, dated a farmer from named Domenic from
Cape May Court House, who brought us fresh eggs. She eschewed the beach & boardwalk tho her restaurant “The Blue Room” was somewhere on it. She always wore an apron in the kitchen. She once sneaked into Doctor Zhivago when picking me up from the late-running movie – that was such a long one. I was properly scandalized, but she reasoned it had been hot outside waiting for me & the doors weren’t locked & she liked seeing the snow. I do not recall her every attending a movie, tho I think there were drive-ins involved…

I’ve written elsewhere of her fire & ire as a woman alone, sneered upon by the church she pushed us into every Sunday morning; ripped from any supportive Sacraments or churchly approval because of The Divorce. (But they sure liked the tuition money!)

She had brothers, but I have no name list there, except Uncle Tony. She had sisters who died before her, Elvira (our Aunt Tiny) & Viola (whom we called 5by5). It was Aunt Vi & who bought me my first bra. Mom wasn’t one for explanations & perhaps was easily embarrassed, but I remember no birds/bees conversations, so my life as a developing female was a series of on-my-own-what’s happening whispers in the back of the cloakroom at school. I recall long-sleeved undershirts & Buster Brown shoes, a Christmas dress featuring brocade & she had the most eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head sense of surveillance over all us kids. No wonder my sisters went back to Dad!

What is it about changing my life during a memory season bringing this on? The veils thin more around anniversaries, I have heard. Does Mother check on me from the Other Side? Perhaps she wants to see if my life is in order.

Mom, you said all the time, “Don’t grow up to be a Gypsy!” and here I am on my 5^th jaunt across America to find myself once again. Thanks, Mom, for everything! I just wish you had written down the recipe for your Italian Wedding Soup.

I have twice now said “excuse me” to this bull in the elevator when the door opened. I was very glad to have the heavy luggage carrier between me & him the first time! I’ve been seeing cattle in the fields all day while driving, so I was less surprised than alarmed. I did not know they were permitted in the Baymont elevator!

What a day, what a day. I did get that hour of extra sleep & it made all the difference! I am grateful to have had a good day driving, tho made longer by traffic extremism in Houston. I had to ask Google what day it was, tho.

Okay, here’s how it unfolded:

Had scrambled eggs at the hotel & an excuse for a biscuit. (I was determined not to do Waffle House again.)

Getting out of Louisiana took too long. Give me Delaware anytime! On & on I drove, passing parishes, bayous & crossing gray-stone arched bridges built by Revolutionary War soldiers. I kept pinching the map on the car display in hopes of shortening the journey.

I wished for chicken for lunch & voila! A Bojangles appeared.

I stopped at like 7 rest stops. My bladder is fine (thank you for not asking) but I need the road breaks, especially in bright sun & heat pouring in despite a/c. One had a black cat walking around. O my. Of course my first reaction is “he escaped from a car!” Second: I simpy canNOT bring along a cat, escapee or not. I’m serious when I say there’s no room, let alone I’ve told the new landlord I have no pets. I resolutely drove away when the cat took off as I opened my door near it. But I will wonder for the rest of my life.

GPS kindly warned me about the tie-up from an accident before it shunted me onto local road 1111, where potholes passed for pavement. The whole line of traffic taking this impromptu detour was bobbing alongside the peaceful water meadows at 25 mph, thousands of horsepower doing 4.5 mph.

About the most unexpected sight was a road sign complete with a huge Jesus, berobed & light-rayed, declaring “God Bless Trump, his Team & Charlie Kirk!”

Louisiana?

I made it to Houston. I-10 is under episodic construction with a hope of finishing just about the time air cars come into the dealerships. Cattle in the fields give Texas a sleepy look, but the traffic is absolutely crazy.

Houston involved a quick downtown tour when Google told me stay left for I-10 but did a quick “gotcha” when the interstate jagged right. Downtown Houston is just beautiful. So many trees! I could see tall men in top hats & tailcoats striding thru time.

Back on 10 into the biggest traffic jam ever. Google said soothingly, “there’s traffic ahead” but I never pictured the reality. After a quick shunt in the HOV lane, Flyer & I inched along in the Texas sun. I even ran out of podcasts & turned on a new Pandora station just downloaded. Of cowboy music. Yee ha for synchronicity!

I tipped the tiny cylinder of Hyland’s Calm down my throat more than once. After all, this was what I had to do to Get Here.

Finally the traffic opened, about 3 miles past where GPS said to turn left for 10 West (again? is there a place to beard the Goog-Monster?) We continued on, the cowboys, the sunshine & me… 52 miles to go. I almost missed the exit cuz there was no big green sign, only a pink cardboard-y thing tacked to a stanchion. At that point the GPS stopped speaking entirely so I had to ask someone where’s the Baymont? Then I tried to check into the LaQuinta next door.

Fortunately, there’s a steakhouse across the street, which is the Last Irony for the day, I hope. I may have waved at dinner on the hoof earlier on, yeh?

Oh say can you see, the water bottles waitin’ for me?

The coffee tastes of cardboard, but it’s coffee. At 4 a.m., who can ask for more?

Time zones pass by & the auto-adjust on tech does not always keep up. It is disconcerting to be without a time, as much so as to be without a place. Fortunately HeyGoogle knows the time.

The motel room starts out so tidy. I open suitcase & toiletries & immediately it looks like a Broadway dressing room, only not quite so colorful. I definitely do not recall putting my sweater on the rail in the bathroom, but there it drapes.

A blurry tv noise sounds from upstairs – it has been on all night at the edges of aural life. The 3 a.m. revelers in search of an ice  machine have come & gone. There is no volume control on such.

I open one blackout curtain, but only darkness reflects back.

I am finding the free-fall of travel different now. Not quite the adventure it was, since nothing is new. Maybe the cities in America are vibrant & keen, but the outskirts still crumble until the next Home Depot appears on cue, on the horizon.

When the topper on the car sings, I know I’m going faster & sure enough, the big round numbers in front of me read 80. I pass whomever I’m passing & cut back over to the right lane, with an eye out for when my route continues to the left…Fortunately, the car tells me true…

My feet feel cold a lot more than ever before? Is this some neurological deficit? Where do those words fit into the vocabulary of a Days Inn?’

The check in clerk was scrubbing at her shoe, holding one finger up before buzzing me in. She tells me how much she LOVES Florida upon taking my license. I vaguely smile as she says “say hi for me when you go back!” I cannot process that thought in the moment.

It is too early to ready up & drive on. Too late to re-sleep, tho my eyes are tired. I know breakfast will energize me enough to fold into the car, belt up & tune in all devices… but I wish I could sleep a bit more.

I have to put up one leg & climb into the king-size bed. I am a bit less than Princess-size myself. The world has grown tall for 5’ (no longer 2) femmes like moi. I have to take a kind of rocking jump for stools in restaurants. I keep affirming, “I am condensing!” rather than shrinking. (Yes, I’ve used that one before, but the chances of your having read it, or retained it give me leave to use it again here.)

I clutch my stretched-out sweater around  me. I wear it in the car. I sleep in it. I’m using it like Linus’s blanket this trip since the usual one is somewhere in the back of the car. I’ll look for it before I go.

I am going to lie down again now & close my eyes. The phone is charging on the bedside, playing “Sleep” channel on Pandora. Too many lights are on, so I’ll have to climb out of bed & back in, but there’ll be this warm spot waiting.

Glad to be here & off the road, the only car in the back parking lot. I pulled into the huge shopping center next door & it took longer to get out of there than many other road trips I’ve taken. I don’t want to look at stores. I had to think about where to put the nifty McDonalds heavy-duty straw, my car is so loaded up. I have a jacket in there somewhere I could have used in Alabama earlier, & my make-up bag is still MIA.

Another Days Inn by Wyndham. Soon Wyndham will own all these wayside places, I think. Reasonable & clean, I am impressed. The equipment is worn, but furniture is decent. The a/c sounds like a rocket launcher when the compressor kicks, the bathroom fan sounds like it belongs in a large warehouse 50′ up in a small ceiling opening.

I am barefoot: challenging the gods once again. The WIFI just sent up a banner it no longer exists in my room. Whatev.

I have arrived. Another 400 miles, ten road stops, one nap in a McD’s parking lot with the car windows open 2″, like my mouth probably was.

The room has an iron. Definitely takes the scenery out of the vacation. I thought traveling was about being wrinkled. I’m wearing my ugliest shirt; I need a haircut, & my teeth are in the car.

America’s roads are not in great shape. Construction seems half-hearted, with yellow-vested, hard-hatted men smoking next to a bulldozer. There was a break in the traffic in one zone & a cluster ran from mid-road to the shoulder. Looked like a bobble of beachballs with legs. They ran for their lives but it was just granny me bearing down on ’em, one foot on the brake.

400 miles closer & farther at the same time. I am recalled of the Peter Paul & Mary song “100 Miles.” I have missed the train I was on. I know I am gone. I have heard no whistles blow…100 miles.

I broke down & hit the lobby for a sputtering pump of coffee “Dakota Blend.” For a glance, I thought it said “Sarasota Blend.” Irony Alert! If it were from there, it would have been made from palm trees.

The WIFI has drifted back into the room.

I had to tell the AAA girl about four times how to pronounce Baton Rouge. Her tongue just stopped at the Ba part… Are they teaching any geography these days? What about those cute songs when one sang all the presidents in a row, or all the capital cities in the states?

There are two rooms occupied in the hotel. The other one is above me & someone is bouncing a bowling ball on the floor. Or maybe they’re ironing with gusto on the downstroke?

I bring my own clock these days. I use it as a flashlight if I get up during the night. Speaking of time, the day grew even longer when I crossed into Central Time. The growling breakfast chef at the Days Inn in Marianna informed me loftily they opened at 7 a.m. Central Time before telling me to get out of the breakfast area so he could work. I decided I didn’t want anything he was cooking, & besides, Central Time begins in Alabama. So I thinked him prettily for allowing me to take a coffee, went back to my room & threw it down the sink. I think the brand was a robust Scalding-Tasteless.

There are still too many Waffle Houses around – I want a Friendly’s or an IHOP at some roadside exit, damnit!

My Canary Cave awaits.

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!

How many goodbyes are there in a life? A few can be teary, but all should be shouted from the rooftops at the edge of town: Good-bye! Good-bye! Hands should wave, dogs bark, cats meow & dash away…

I am ready for such a farewelling – a movement toward is always also a movement away, but the balance is kept by the love brought forward to forge the way, the prow cutting thru waves.

The rain tonight is a cleansing & I am clearing with it, surfacing from it. The dross washes away, the chalk marks wash away the children’s hopscotch blocks so the adults can scribe a circle to dance. I see a movie fade where the background opens to absorb the character, who turns to emerge on the other side, polished & pin-neat, smiling & shy.

There are no more pictures on the walls now,  yet the room will be refilled. There will be peace & silence after disorder is boxed away, packed in the car or brought to the post office.

I will be gone from the places where I most recently have been – the vibrance of my energy pulsing to stillness. The song playing is O’Hearn’s “Where Once We Stood.” It all fits so neatly together, so nearly apart.

Once again, I return a life into the packaging. “Hmm,” I say, “this doesn’t seem to fit me anymore.” I drop it on the counter & exit through the revolving door which continues moving even past my passage. My name will ring for some while in some ears & fade.

There are gas cards in my travel purse, an Amazon card for the landing when I’m where I am going. This morning I got in the car & upon turning it on, found the four places where I am planning to stay each night glowing on its mapscreen. Everyone says, “You must’ve talked about it on  your phone.” Or, “You must have looked them up in the car.” I will tell you Truth: I checked mileage between them on the computer in the living room. I spoke no names in the car. I think it was just a Confirmation Miracle: an evidential grace that my wishes are known to Universe glowing in reassurance: I am heard.

The cards have told me stay until invited, but I invite my own self. Work goes nowhere, the same bumps & humps, the same curses invoked every day, the same people underlining dissatisfactions instead of successes. What I would once have given to be a homeowner that now I quickly retreat back three steps from? Ah, there was a time made merry by sharing a life lost to a good-bye many years ago. Surrendered to driving away in a red car.

My stomach talks to me – a kind of scowl at all remaining to be done, but this is only because I have not started the finishing. By Saturday afternoon, the car will be full & I will be folding the last to go into a supple bag for stuffing into the one remaining opening.

Sunday I will mount up, call in the Road Crew (who were really the ones priming the maps for departure) & ask for blessing. I will dial up a destination & drive.

Good-bye & good-bye & good-bye!