An update from the road...

Happy Monday, gentle readers.
Today, I have taken the blog on the road. I’m writing this from a hotel room overlooking a field of black asphalt. Just beyond the asphalt lies a primeval forest, trees corralling the small hotel where I’m staying. Beyond the pines, civilization lurks, out of sight and out of mind.
Personally, I find travel to be conducive to writing. You get to experience new things, see old friends, meet new ones and get away from your boring life.
When I lived in Alaska, I hardly traveled anywhere. Maybe once a year I would fly down to Las Vegas, to try my luck at the casinos. Or, in the summer, I might take a day trip to the little town of Seward braving rock slides, drunken Alaskans and stupid tourists. Once, on a road trip to Seward, I nearly ran over a mountain goat.
Since returning to the Lower 48, I’ve gotten in a fair bit of traveling. Not only did I drive from Alaska to South Carolina, but on my last birthday I took a four-week road trip from South Carolina to California and back. Not that long ago I took a much shorter road trip, driving down to Florida to get together with my dear friend, Jeanie.
I’ve enjoyed my road trips. In fact, sometimes I think I’d like to drive for a living. Not as a trucker. The thought of being behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler doesn’t appeal to me at all. However, I wouldn’t mind doing interstate courier work.
I suppose it’s the romance of the road that appeals to me. The open highway, blue skies yawning in front of you, funky little diners and hotels dotting the Interstate like post-modern villages.
And, of course, there are the people.
In the last twenty-four hours I’ve met a septuagenarian trucker, a woman who immigrated to the U.S. from the U.K. and a trio of children who should be doused in holy water to send them back to whatever hell spawned them. Then there’s the friend I met down here, a 6'8" tall cryptozoologist investigating reports of thunderbirds.
Any one of these encounters would provide material for a story. Perhaps that trucker is much older than he appears? Maybe that pleasant British woman is running from someone or something, and has found a hiding spot in the deep South? Maybe those hellish children really are imps, let out of the Inferno on a day pass for being suitably bad? I wouldn’t have to embellish much with my friend, Tuberski. He’s already larger than life!
Like I said, travel is conducive to writing.