On the Road

I like to keep a journal when I travel, and this is an excerpt from what I wrote on the flight from Boston to Chicago. I was feeling pretty apprehensive, so I was trying to take my mind off
my nervousness. A girl at the bookstore had recommended Jack Kerouac's On the Road, so I started reading it. There were some great quotes that were especially poignant:

"If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adirondacks, think of all the places it journeys by as it goes out to sea forever."

"High up over my head the great hairy Bear Mountain sent down thunderclaps that put the fear of God in me. All I could see were smoky trees and dismal wilderness rising up to the skies. "What the hell am I doing up here?" I cursed. I cried for Chicago..."

"Sitting in the terminal all alone I felt at once like a grain of sand on a beach and a monolith among men. The whole big, huge, intimidating and welcoming, cold and hospitable, new and familiar world is out there, just waiting for me. Waiting for me to be that one drop of water in its ocean, one among infinity and yet an indelible part of its character and makeup. It's hope and promise and intimidation and foreboding, everything and nothing. Even among the faceless crowd in the airport terminal there are direct ties back to that's familiar--the businessman across the aisle with thumbs like Mom's, the joking family across from me, the Japanese boy with the Washington DC t-shirt. If it's ever possible to feel adrift and anchored, I felt it today."

There's more to it but it's boring me to type it so I figure it must be boring to read. More entertaining posts are to come.