My friend Kenny’s been back from his tours in Afghanistan for a while now. While he was there he sent me photos every now and then and I would post them on this blog. To close that series of posts I wanted to share these photos of Ken from a road trip he took to LA his friend Samimi took. They’re wonderful.
For a taste, compare the photo below to this one he sent me in 2010.
We rolled through 615 miles this first day, from breakfast at the No Sweat Cafe to the less than succinctly named Best Western Plus Ramkota Hotel Bismark here in North Dakota. Sara, Chris and Bannack are heading home to New York City and I’m along for the ride.
This trip seems like an extension of my recent trip to the Italian consulate in San Francisco. When I count it all together my summer road trip miles will have reached over 4500 when I arrive in New York. That’s 77 hours of car time according to Google Maps. As you can imagine, rest stops are precious.
Bannack and I were both in the same kind of stir-crazy mood when we got to Wibaux, Montana. The empty deck at the brewery wasn’t a perfect playground but it meant running, airplane rides, bull fighting, getting thrown in the air, Tootsie Rolls, and donkey kicking. We visited Wibaux’s real playground too, but it was the empty kind with painful spiky grass, swings that pinch, and those metal horses on springs that look like they should be really fun but still aren’t.
Sunday we’ll be in Chicago for a night or two, Wednesday night we’ll arrive in New York, and I’m looking forward to every rest stop along the way.
Sara, Chris, Bannack, and June the Moon arrived safe and sound in Illinois after three days worth of road tripping. We’re happy to have them for the next few days before they continue on their way to the Big Apple.
Their first stop was the Krizek’s out in Downer’s Grove and I couldn’t help but make the quick trip out here to greet them. We had a nice night around the dinner table chatting and anticipating the big pot luck Aunt Col is hosting Wednesday afternoon. We stayed up late with Rosie hearing stories about family, travel and dogs. Including a new one about my Grampa’s mean tempered, liver eating, half mutt Chihuahua, Rusty. I can’t believe I’d never heard that one before!
I’m setting out on a new adventure very soon.
I’ll head east to the second/windy city to audition for a summer actor training program offered by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
My dad left Chicago the year he turned eighteen. He and his two friends—his best friend Pete and their high school English teacher, Brother Noonan—struck out from the south side of Chicago on a mission. Making church-basement theater along the way, they would travel to Carroll College, a small Catholic school here in Helena. I’m sure glad they did.
When I was just a wee lad our family traveled back Chicago every summer. We only stopped when my sister and I got so annoying that my parents could no longer stand the 24 hours of road time. But, in just a few days I’ll pack into my little red car and head down that long stretch of road again to that great American city.
I’m looking forward to catching up with a few friends, my God-parents, and of course the Chicago Casey’s. I’d like to explore the city and scout out neighborhoods, theaters, apartments, and jobs that seem right . I’m not sure what I’ll find but a recent theater review I read called Chicago “a place of risk, rebuilding and reinvention. A town devoted to change.”
That sounds good to me.
