A copy of 'Travels with Charley' in hand - thanks classmates!

POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - My wife Sylvia and I arrived safely here in California a little over a week ago, after driving our Toyota Tundra pickup, heavily ladened with boxes of precious cargo, (ok, a lot of it was junk) from the home we sold in Watkins Glen. 

That was Part I of the trip.

Part II starts in early September when I fly back to New York and grab my other pickup truck - a 1990 Nissan that I will drive slowly across the U.S. back here to California.

Which brings us to John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. I purchased a copy at a local Barnes & Noble bookstore (an hour ago) using a portion of the gift card you all gave me recently. Perhaps I'll use the balance of that gift card at some Barnes & Noble in some other state.

My driving/camping trip will not be a zip and zoom, cross-country sojourn. Instead, I plan to take a largely blue-highway tour, stopping whenever I feel like it, checking the pulse of communities in several states - a la Travels with Charley.

I won't be retracing Steinbeck's trip. Instead, I will retrace (more or less) my own Travels taken in 1970 in a battered VW bus I bought in Jamestown. That bus would only go 45 mph. My Nissan can do 65 in a pinch. 

In 1970, I followed Interstate 80 from New York, diverting often from the four-lane highway once west of Chicago. 

And I'll do that again, I hope.

Thanks again for the gift card, classmates. I'm putting it to good use.