This Side of Lost

I've taken a lot of road trips in my time, but this one is the longest:

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That's approximately 2880 miles. It just barely beats out the next longest -- a Minneapolis-Albuquerque round trip to visit friends in the summer of 2004, which clocked in at around 2734 (and yes, I took the time to calculate all of the mileage for all my major road trips, and I'm including the list at the end of this post). But I think the fact that it's one-way gives it the crown easily. The pause marks are our approximate stopping points, so you can see that I'm guessing it'll take about four and a half days. We leave Sunday.

The truck has been rented, and it should be a fairly easy vehicle to maneuver, if not exactly a smooth ride. It also lacks any sort of music device that takes an input other than radio waves. But we will persevere -- either with the use of the GhettoBlaster 3000™ (portable cd player hooked up to chintzy speakers) or we may invest in one of those personal radio broadcaster things that people use to play their iPod over the radio. Has anybody used one of those? What do you think?

If you're somewhere along the way, don't be hurt that we haven't contacted you about passing through -- we're kind of on a mission and don't have much time to dawdle. So unless you're at a possible lunch spot (Las Vegas, NV, Vail, CO, Kansas City, MO, Columbus, OH), we'll just have to settle for waving in your general direction as we pass through.

Samantha's last day of work was last Friday, and she's been very busy moving most of my possessions to my new one-bedroom apartment in Granada Hills. So the place here looks pretty empty. Seems like we just got here. Strange where life leads you.

In other news:

• King Lear was pretty amazing. McKellan was quite the force onstage, as expected. It's a strange and surreal play, but the company pulled it off well. Besides the celebrity on stage, there was also a celebrity in attendance -- Tom Hanks and his family. Our biggest celebrity sighting yet. Though the play was the centerpiece of Ben and Austin's visit, they seemed to have a good time with the rest of the things we did too (beach, Hollywood Blvd, Santa Monica).
• I've done a bit of reading recently: The Game of Thrones, the first novel the George R. R. Martin Song of Ice and Fire series. It's heavy stuff, but I'm mostly enjoying it. Currently: Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Gut-bustingly hilarious -- highly recommended.
• We finally gorged on some new music with the excuse that we'll need it for the trip. I picked up This Is Me (Eddie from Ohio), Little Voice (Sara Bareilles), Blinders On (Sean Watkins), and Combinations (Eisley). Samantha also picked up three discs, but I'm tired of linking now, so you'll just have to live in ignorance.