We would regularly visit my father’s parents two hours west, chanting “I seeEEE BOZEMAN!  I seeEEE BOZEMAN!” at the first signs of the few lights of the then small town.  Not quite as regularly, we would visit my mother’s father along the Montana “highline,” five hours north, in Glasgow.  But my first great roadtrip came in 1980 or so, as the Overturf family piled in a wood-paneled Caprice Classic station wagon and met up with the Jockers family at Lake Minnewaska, Minnesota (1450 miles roundtrip).  I remember James Taylor’s Flag album, as well as Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.  The place itself was straight out of Dirty Dancing, but more perms, disco, and synthesizer.  And there was an extra scene where I locked my brother out of the cabin and we got in trouble because he screamed, pounded on the door, and threatened to kill me with a golf club.  He was mad.

    Mom and I drove 1300 miles to the United Church of Christ Western Regional Youth Event in Colorado Springs in 1986, and I was one of a group of kids and two chaperons who took the Rocky Mountain College ski team’s van 2000 miles to the UCC National Youth Event in Grinnell, Iowa in 1988.  My buddy Pat lapsed into a sort of corn-induced delirium, his mouth dropping open, mumbling “So…much…corn…” over and over, and Ken and I raided the local church’s nursery before the group headed to McDonald’s.  I stared wildly and clutched a Big Bird stuffed animal too tightly by the neck and Ken played it cool, ordering with a jockstrap draped around his neck.

    My buddy Kevin and I drove 1250 miles from Bozeman to Hollywood in a straight shot in 1989, a bleary-eyed rage fueled by the adrenaline of a dream pent up for two years.  I would flee L.A. just 7 months later.

    I have verrry vague memories of a 400-mile roadtrip with the telemarketing crew from West Palm Beach to Marathon in the Florida Keys in 1990.  Convertible.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Smoking a joint in a truck with a guy from New Jersey.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Honestly, perhaps my best memory of Florida.

    There was the 1500-mile grunge-filled haze of a Spring Break roadtrip during University of Montana days, in 1993.  Maybe 1994.   None of the four of us drew many sober breaths, but there are moments clear, emblazoned by drama and by what some might consider fairly heavy drugs.

    In late 1996, I accepted a role in a brand-new play with a local theatre company.  Two actors would come out from our sister theatre in Chicago, we would premiere the play in Billings, then take it back to Chicago, where we would recast, rehearse, and perform the play there for a few weeks.  The timing was right: I had just finished my student teaching (Spanish) after which I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to pursue teaching.  I had learned from a master teacher in a very tight and effective language department.  Too much work.  Good teachers are underappreciated and underpaid.

    I fell in love with Chicago.  My sister and three nephews lived a half hour west.  Michael Jordan was leading the Bulls in their quest for a second 3-peat.  Chicago was the home of the poetry slam, and there were great spoken word open mics all over town.  There were the Cubs at Wrigley Field.  And there was jazz.  A straight-razor shave at a joint beneath the elevated train sealed the deal.  Hardly anyone came to the play, and the cast would regularly just end up watching the Bull’s game on the small TV in the box office.  I decided to stay in Chicago, remaining there for 2 ½ years - ironically, largely teaching.

    I was nine months into a substitute teaching gig, which paid my bills and offered me job flexibility.  It also offered the most terrifying front seat view of the daily dysfunctions, injustices, and horrors being perpetrated within the Chicago Public School System.  That’s a whole other 1000 words.  At least.  But the result was me being burned out, disillusioned, itchy.

    So, in 1997, before any semblance of the internet as we know it today, I began to assemble a notebook of vehicle and visa requirements for driving a vehicle from the U.S. southwards.  The dream was born.  The work had begun.  It would be 19 years before that dream came true.

    In the meantime, I needed to get out of Chicago.  I visited my dear friend and college roommate in Quechee, Vermont.  It was my first great solo roadtrip, and my first life-changing dose of the northeast United States in the fall.  It was about 1900 miles roundtrip, and became the first of many visits to that area at that time of year, where the latitudes and seasons cast some sort of gorgeous spell over the land, the air, the sky, the leaves on the trees and those on the ground.  This roadtrip would help, release some pressure from the cooker, but it also well might have awakened a beast in me that has an impressive appetite for the road.

    I returned to Chicago focused on a trip far, far south.  But the universe had different plans, as a westside school on its third year of probation called me about a permanent teaching position.  Surprise!  When I had taken the Illinois State Teacher’s Examination months earlier only to make more as a substitute teacher, my name was placed on a list.  When I took the job in December, I was the third Spanish teacher.  I finished that schoolyear and came back for another full year after that.

    One day, I was correcting papers in my classroom.  I heard crackling.  Then I smelled smoke.  Then I saw the flames.

    It was the third fire set in the school that day.