What I'm About to Embark On

It's a bit past midnight on Thursday Dec 18, 2008. Tomorrow, I will set out to complete my mission to travel the great U.S. Route 1 in its entirety. I have already driven this route from its northernmost point in Maine, down to north New Jersey where it splits from its brief encounter with U.S. Route 9. On this trip, I will continue from that point and drive all the way down to its southernmost terminus in Key West, FL.

The rules are quite simple:

• Drive on and only on Route 1, with the exception of perhaps veering off a bit for a cheap motel.
  
• Drives will begin each morning a little before sunrise and stop a bit after sunset, as it would not make sense to do this in the dark when I can not see the surroundings.
  
• The days are short this time of year so stops must be kept to a minimum.
  
• There can be no geographic discrimination of where the stopping points will be, only that they will be right around where I'm located at the time when it is too dark to see things around me.
  
• If I'm anywhere even remotely interesting, I will wonder around at night.

The time I have to complete this trip and drive back to Boston (which I will do using the major interstates) is from the 19th to no later than the 28th. I'll have a laptop and will try to update this blog as much as possible through places with a free signal such as Starbucks. I will do my best to take pictures of anything interesting, but I must say that most of my experience with this route so far has been strip malls and suburbia (Maine very much excluded).

A trip of this magnitude requires vast amounts of music, and I am equipped with 30GB of it. I will report on my listenings in subsequent blogs.

Currently, I'm in my native Boston, and will try to set out a bit before sunrise on Friday Dec 19th, taking major highways up to my starting point in NJ. There is a snow/ice storm predicted in the Northeast that morning, so I may not get very far on the first day. (The original plan was to leave around 2am, which would have put me at my starting destination right around sunrise, but I have kindly been offered a free ticket to a game of my beloved Boston Bruins Thursday night. This will then require getting my head down for a little while before beginning).

Lastly, here is a picture of the sign that stands at the southern terminus down in the keys. The goal here is to post another picture of this sign in several days, with myself in the picture as proof of victory! (provided that sign is still there of course)





See you on the road!

Phil