Just a quick note on the road to KY. After two hard days of driving east, I can safely say:

• It takes a helluva lot of time to drive across our great nation
• There’s a lot of empty space in between here and there. A LOT.
• I’m very grateful for the interstate highway system. It works. If we tried to build it today, it would cost a septillion dollars and take 50 years. In the 60s they spent only a few billion, and the total cost to date is less than $500B. They were real engineers in the 60s – they also sent people to the Moon.
• I’m very grateful for the superb German engineering embodied by my BMW. It truly is the ultimate driving machine.
• We should all realize we live in an age of wonders. Yes, there’s a lot of bad shit happening, but we’ve come to take for granted certain miracles like routine air travel. I’m driving 30 hours to get somewhere that in January I could reach in just over six hours, door to door. I’ll never take that for granted again.
• There are only five main geologic zones between my CA home and my KY destination. It’s really clear when you drive across them.
  • The great America southwest desert.
  • Mountains, either the Rockies or the Lagunas or both.
  • The Kaibab plateau.
  • The Great Plains.
  • The forested green zone starting somewhere in Oklahoma.
• Hotel rooms without a corkscrew should be illegal. Just saying.