In the summer of 1998, I would be a chaperone for the UCC Western Regional Youth Event in Tacoma, Washington.  I flew back to Billings from Chicago and joined a group of adults that accompanied two vans full of teenagers on a 900-mile roadtrip to the event.  I recorded some sweet mix tapes and off we went.  I got pulled over on Lookout Pass in Idaho for driving it like a slalom course.  Well, that’s how I saw it.

    That summer trip led to my next chapter, as part of our delegation from Montana was three members of a sister church in Costa Rica.  We enjoyed each other and our time together, and I helped push for a church trip to Costa Rica the following year, with an admittedly heavy dose of ulterior motives.

    In 1999, I pulled out of Chicago, packed up my things, brought them 1250 miles back to Montana, and was one of four adults to bring 14 kids from Montana to Costa Rica.  When the group returned two weeks later, I stayed behind.

    I ended up finding a job making good money renting cell phones.  Unfortunately, the Costa Rican immigration department showed up one day, asking for work permits.  The boss helped me from being deported by paying a few bribes.  As per the deal, I went to Nicaragua for a long weekend, but I was officially freaked out.  I quit my job, rented a cheesy little 4x4, and spent my last three weeks rambling around luscious Costa Rica.

    I left Costa Rica on June 29, 2000.  Mechanical problems, etc. caused me to miss my flight from Denver to Billings, and as it was 4th of July weekend, there would be no getting out of there for at least a few days.  I was not alone.  There was a couple traveling from Italy, on their way to Yellowstone National Park, who were in the same predicament.  I offered them a ride, but they said it wasn’t in their budget.

    Shortly thereafter, I called Mom to tell her I would be driving home and to get a room ready for a nice Italian couple I had met at the airport.  Claudio and Paola stayed a few nights with us in Billings, where we had barbecue and took them to their first baseball game.  Three years later, 5000 miles away, they would open their home to me in Celle Ligure, Italy, at the tail-end of a 60-day train trip through much of western Europe.  Some of the best people I’ve ever met, and certainly one of my favorite couples ever.

    Mom took a job in Cleveland.  We packed up the house I grew up in and headed out.  She – straight to Cleveland.  Me – to New York City, accepting a friend’s offer to come and check it out.  But I would be taking a more…circuitous route, via Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Tucson, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta, Asheville, Lynchburg, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Boston.  I arrived 45 days and 8000 miles later, during Game 3 of the 2000 World Series.

    There would be a 2000-mile return to Billings a few months after 9-11, and an 1800-mile roadtrip with my father and his wife, who visited me in Barcelona during Christmas 2002.  It would be 12 years until I would see any meaningful road again.

    I would start a photography business, sadly shying away from my writing for this new, shiny, easier thing that proved it could make me some money.  Soon I was renting a studio/art gallery.  Then I acquired some apartments.  Then I stopped paying rent everywhere by putting a proposal together to purchase a building.  The city bought it and helped, along with my parents, and I was anchored to Billings, Montana for the next nine years.

    In 2014, I sold the apartments, paid off the remainder of my father’s loan for the down payment, and my best friend of 40 years and I took a 1300-mile roadtrip from Pau to Lourdes, France; then to Spain, through Jaca, Pamplona, Burgos, León, to Santiago de Compostela.  Then it was north to A Coruña and Porto Do Bares, then east along the northern coast of Spain through Arguero, Santander, Bilbao, and San Sebastián.  We crossed back into France, passing through Bayonne and Bordeaux, finally settling around Bergerac for a week or so with his family.

    The dream that was born in 1997 never died.  It simmered in a pressure cooker of dreams, its lid removed a few times.   Costa Rica helped.  New York City helped.  Living in Spain helped.  Cute little roadtrips helped.  But still there were haunting whispers from way south.  I had a Things Undone list, and this was one of the longest-standing entries.
    
In the summer of 2016, the stars finally aligned.  After 4 ½ years of decorating the storefront window with FOR SALE/LEASE signs when business wasn’t rolling, and taking them down when it was, commercial property tire kickers gave way to a pair of serious and legitimate buyers.  I was unattached and soon to be unencumbered by debt.  The next right thing to do seemed clear.  It was time to go on the big one.  There was no Plan B.

    Over my nearly 46 years, I had amassed some 45,000 miles of roadtrips, only three of which were solo, amounting to 11,000 miles alone.  But they added up, opened me up, and prepared me.  As much as they could.  It was all a logical progression of an arguably illogical endeavor: quit your job, sell your shit, buy a van, and drive, far, far away.

    I did that.

    On December 15, 2016, I headed out of Billings, Montana, on the road that was just then being sprinkled with light snow, as the first storm of winter blew in from the west.

    That road would turn out to be 25,099 miles long.