I'm sitting in upstate NY - a town called Apalachin, in a part of NY I've never been. It's the southern part, just above the PA border. It's funny, I've driven across the state on RT 90, probably a dozen times or more, but this time, I decided to try something a little different. It's an interesting part of NY state - very wooded and rural, but not touristy/resort rural, more like industrial rural. Binghamton, which I thought of as a college town, looks more like a working town. Of course, that was just passing through. I did get to watch Obama's acceptance speech last night, before I left on this trip. It was interesting, and I expect that I'll have a post or two about Obama sometime after I've settled down - I've been thinking a lot about the significance of his candidacy - as well as the pitfalls. After I said goodbye to Ruth at the airport this early afternoon (she's flying back to CA, so she's ahead of me many miles by now) I was thinking about all of the places I've been in my life, and all of the kinds of journeys I've been on - both inner and outer. This is yet another one, at yet another stage of my life. In some ways, I can feel my age - I can feel myself leaving middle age. Maybe it's the cranky body after days of stressful effort. Maybe it's the familiarity of a ritual that I seem to partake in often: rearranging my life to fit a new internal reality - a new way of being human in the world - and remembering all of the other journeys of this sort I have taken in my  life. I expect tomorrow to be one of my long days - it would be great to make it to Indiana by the end of the day, and I probably will. I'm most excited about my drive through South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho - I want to take my time there. These are areas I haven't been to since I took a trip as a part of a travel camp 34 years ago. I have only snippets of memories of the Badlands and Rapid City. If I feel like it, and have time, I'll be driving through Oregon, to then take the coast road down to the Bay Area. I think that would be a great close to the trip. But, like one of my favorite poems, Ithaca by C.P. Cavafy, it is the journey that is the most important, not the destination. And I hope that I can stay present and open for the riches that this journey will bring me.