We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to a fork in the last great road trip\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00c2\u00a0 a crossroads between what we see and how we see it. To \u00e2\u20ac\u0153go straight\u00e2\u20ac\u009d onto our charted course would mean barreling ahead on an ambitious and probably somewhat frenetic “buffet” approach to the trip, spending 1-2 days in most places. To \u00e2\u20ac\u0153turn\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would mean we forgo all further travel East of South Dakota, including several cities and family and friends we’re excited to see (aunts & uncles in Minneapolis, Jeff & Jen in Madison, Grandpa Lyle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 80th Birthday in New York, Guillaume, M-J, and baby Logane in Montreal, my brother and many friends in NYC, Chicago, Toronto, among others), in favor of a more relaxed and measured pace through the Southwest, Rockies, and Northwest.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no easy choice.<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still diggin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it, but this trip is certainly no vacation\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 this is travel\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and travel on steroids at that. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been an amazing journey thus far, but a trip like this is not for the faint of heart. To see a city like Nashville or all of Mississippi in two days or Memphis in one (or all three in 5) is, well, exhausting. Not to mention the trivialities like where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to sleep at night or get coffee and wifi and use the facilities in the morning when nothing is routine. Every little thing that you usually do without thinking is a multi-step process that may require driving across a town you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know\u00c2\u00a0 and, more importantly, one or several decisions. Decisions, decisions, decisions, wham, zoom, with the non-stop decisions. And your only way out is to decide to stop making decisions\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 aaaaahh!<\/p>\n
But this is one decision we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put off because we have to fly to Taiwan in late July so I can set up my wearable biofeedback art works<\/a> for an exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Art<\/a> and I have to buy tickets ASAP.<\/p>\n So how do we proceed on this grand journey?<\/p>\n When we came to the crossroads of the blues in Clarksdale, Mississippi, we turned to meander through the Mississippi Delta. And here in Scottsdale, Arizona, we find ourselves turning again. To enjoy the time we have, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recalculated our course and will forgo many great places and familiar faces in the North and East. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t an easy decision to deviate so radically from the course we had so lovingly charted and that had become a piece of our identity. But the alternative was to continue on a course that was no longer ours. For all that we sometimes tire of making decisions, they might be what separate living from mere existence.<\/p>\n So is it still Great? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to a fork in the last great road trip\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00c2 a crossroads between what we see and how we see it. To \u00e2\u20ac\u0153go straight\u00e2\u20ac\u009d onto our charted course would mean barreling ahead on an ambitious and probably somewhat frenetic “buffet” approach to the trip, spending 1-2 days in most places. To \u00e2\u20ac\u0153turn\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365,"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lastgreatroadtrip.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFor sure\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nonly question is whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Last\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"