I haven't gotten a chance to write a proper blog post about Westward Invasion, Road Trip 2010, or whatever you want to call this Kerouacian journey I am on. Currently I am in a Starbucks on the Arizona State University campus in Phoenix. There is free WiFi here courtesy of ASU. I have made a dozen coffee shop stops, but mostly to work. (I write how-to articles for Demand Studios and do freelance marketing writing/design.) To date, my travel buddy Katherine and I have slept in Wichita, Kansas; Dallas, Texas; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; and Tempe, Arizona. She found all our hosts through CouchSurfing.org, a unique website that fosters cultural exchange through pay-it-forward couch surfing. CouchSurfing.org is a true, real-life community of networked individuals who enjoy traveling and exchanging cultural DNA. I am astounded by our hosts and how willing they are to share their world with Katherine and me. It has been a wonderful time. Everything is going pretty damn well. I have met so many interesting people, seen so many beautiful things, that I haven't even begun to be able to express it all. I have stories to tell, portraits to paint in words. I have videos and photos to show you. I intend to get it all down eventually. I want to spend some time singing the praises of all our hosts. I want to write that review of Hunter Gatherers, an AWESOME play I saw in Dallas (replete with actor interview footage courtesy of my Flip cam). I need to spend a blog post putting this all in context. I want to share some lessons I have learned, or at least some observations. Travel is nothing new to me. I have been traveling and learning the ways of the world and my vast country for the past decade. This trip is unique, however, in that it encompasses real life and my Internet life and attempts to marry the two. As I said at the beginning of this post, it is difficult to keep up communications and also experience this journey first-hand. It's a balancing act. Thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog. Please pass the URL on to those who want to share my interesting experience in real time. I will keep it up-to-date as much as possible, and when the journey is over, I will have a chance to upload some of the hundreds of videos and images I have gathered since January 18th of this year. Next stop: Flagstaff. Then: Vegas.Then my new home sweet home: North Hollywood, Los Angeles. I got a hunger for that city and I intend to eat the whole thing.
