I slept in today and so didn't get an early start. It's okay, because I didn't really have big plans for today anyway; I was just gonna drive.

It's odd returning to the Northeast; I'm so near NYC, relatively speaking, and yet so far. Life in upstate New York is far removed from life in NYC; I've traveled so little up here that it could be just as far away from the city as, say, Utah.

It's also a little funny to be in a region where my license tag doesn't stand out. Down south, people notice your license plate before you're ever out of your car. I never got any negative feedback for being from New York, but most people knew where I was from before I ever spoke to them. Out west, the reaction was more like, "Man, you're a long way from home!" I suppose the average person from the East Coast who heads way out west takes a flight and then rents a car, so they have Arizona, Nevada or California plates, not New York or Connecticut.

So here I was, just two hundred miles away from Manhattan, with no intentions of heading homeward. I'm skirting the city, knowing full well that it lurks nearby but not giving in to its lure for another week or so.

Continue on the American Odyssey.
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