T -1

Thanks to my friends and family for all the positive thoughts and wishes. Here is a quote that my friend Frank shared with me that I found is quite profound:

“Once a journey is designed, equipped , and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

I didn't realize I am doing what John Steinbeck did in 1960 - a journey through America with his dog Charley. On that note, my travels with Apollo to discover America and more commences tomorrow morning...