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Natchez, Mississippi: 4,380 miles



The whole quote is: "The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed." and it's from Moby Dick, which I am currently rereading.



A good road trip is something like that. You point your car here or there, pretty much at random but with an abiding sense of where you're headed, and soone or later you've made something of it. What? I'm not sure yet. But something.



And so far something very… Continue

Merriam, KS - 2,186 miles

It's a good thing that my doctor isn't along for this ride. America's heartland hasn't confronted me with much traffic on its highways, but it's clogging my arteries.



Lunch yesterday was at Al's Chickenette in Hays, Kansas. It's famous for its fried chicken. So of course, that's what I had. The place looks great, old neon, been there forever, but alas, the chicken was pretty bland. Nicely cooked but without much flavor.



Dinner was a big salad… Continue

Denver, CO: 1,576 miles

Luckily, the two grazing elk I saw along Interstate 25 last night - fleetingly,

they flitted by at about 82 miles per hour - didn't leap out in front

of my car. It might have been a mercy killing though. Of them, not me.

It's hunting season in south Colorado and I couldn't find a motel room

in Raton, New Mexico or Trinidad, CO. All the rooms were filled with

people looking to bag their quota of elk. I… Continue

Merriam, KS - 2,186 miles

It's a good thing that my doctor isn't along for this ride. America's

heartland hasn't confronted me with much traffic on its highways, but

it's clogging my arteries.



Lunch yesterday was at Al's Chickenette in Hays, Kansas. It's famous for its fried chicken. So of

course, that's what I had. The place looks great, old neon, been there

forever, but alas, the chicken was pretty bland. Nicely cooked… Continue

Scottsdale, AZ: 569 miles

Gila Bend, Arizona, where highways 8 and 85 meet, is a place that doesn't

seem to have many surprises in store. There's gas stations, motels,

convenience stores, plenty of fast food chain outlets. Get off the main

street and there's cacti and rattlesnakes, probably some gila monsters

(how else was the town named?), plenty of sand and rocks. The Space Age

Restaurant is impressive - it has a very large… Continue

Bed bugs, that is. A significant infestation of them. Eva is bit to

within an inch of her life. They liked her better than me. Which is

good for me, but I still didn't escape. For however long this lasts - I

keep hearing different stories - I am going to be on tour as the

itchy-scratchy author.



The Gershwin is, by New York standards (which are lower in these matters than standards in the real world), a

very nice inexpensive hotel. A standard room runs a "mere"… Continue

I will never kill a cab driver in one of my books. I promised Preston.

He was my hack yesterday, here in New York City. He was one of those

taxi drivers who really make you feel good about being here: bright,

funny, opinionated, knowledgeable, an excellent conversationalist. So

when he asked what I do and I told him, and then he asked if I'd ever

killed a cabbie in one of my books and I told him I haven't, he asked

me to promise I never would. And I… Continue

Yet another Eric Stone Drive-By Book Tour is getting underway. I've

been warming up with events on home ground and am headed for New York

tomorrow.



My last book tour, the Disoriented Express with Colin Cotterill, we added up the estimated weight of our assembled

crowds. I don't think I'll bother with that this time. For one, I don't

have Colin along to help me with the estimates. And unless something

truly untoward or special occurs along the way, I'm not sure… Continue

I take it back. Alaskans were not simply having fun with outsiders by

claiming that there's such a thing as a moose. Unless this is a guy in

a really good moose suit. Which, considering how remarkable everything

else has been in Alaska, could be the case. Still, I'm willing to

accept that this is some sort of enormous, ungainly, clumsy, hulking

overgrown relation to a… Continue

Talking to the locals you might get the impression that moose are as

thick on the ground in Alaska as rats in Rome.

They aren’t. Not that I can see.

Alaska has lived up to most of the superlatives. But it has been something of a let down in the charismatic mega-fauna sighting

department.

Three eagles, some white dots in the distance that seemed to be dall sheep, a couple of swans, otters – plenty of otters,

both ocean going and river otters (you can tell the… Continue

Attempting to beat the heat - 107 (41.666 celsius) in our neighborhood

yesterday - Eva and I and a couple of friends took to the water. We

drove down to Long Beach, boarded a large catamaran and motored out to

the channel between the mainland and Catalina Island. It was a whole

lot cooler on the water. In spite of which - and a liberal slather of

sunscreen - I got viciously sunburnt.



We did see whales. Blue whales, the biggest animals on Earth. We saw five of… Continue

I

wonder what a book tour is like in Africa? Take a look at this picture. It's

from the current issue of The Economist. It's a satellite view of Europe

and Africa at night. The Africans are certainly doing more than their fair

share of the work to combat global warming.

I don't know how many inches of glacier I've… Continue

Commitment issues. It's as simple as that. I can't come up with any

particular image, word or symbol that I want permanently on my body. I

know myself. I'd change my mind sooner or later and getting tattoos

removed is painful and not all that effective.



The closest I ever came was when I was in college in Olympia, Washington. I used to

hang out on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma and I had befriended a tattoo

artist named Painless Brenda. One night I was drunk. I… Continue