EricHiltner.com

2,408 miles, 42 hours

Monday, March 16th, 2009. 6am.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
What about a journey of 2,408 miles? A turn of the key? This is going to be the longest trip of my life.

42 hours, alone. Just me and the road.
Kind of sounds like every man’s dream, and to a point it is mine too.
I have driven long distances many times before.
Frankfurt to Amsterdam. 6 hours.
Chicago to Freeport, MN. 10 hours
Charleston to Miami. almost 24 hours
Charleston to Nashville. 6 hours
Charleston to D.C. 12 hours
Chicago to Atikoken, Ontario. 12 hours.
Baghdad to a port in Kuwait. 27 hours.
All those drives were non-stop, one way. And that is fine because each time I had at least one other person in the vehicle with me. Some one to talk to, or possibly take over driving when I start to nod off and swerve between lanes.
Not this time though. Just me.

In an attempt to ward off complete boredom I have burned a couple audio books.
Paradise Lost, American Gangster and other Tales from New York (or something like that) and Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway. Total audio time: somewhere around 27 hours of audio. Having another human voice in the truck with me should stave off the madness of endless asphalt.
This has lead me to an interesting dilemma: After listening to these books, can I really say that I have “read” them?
****NOTE: I also downloaded War and Peace, but decided not to burn that to CD because it is over 60 hours of audio.****
The dilemma, as I see it, is that sitting down, opening the book, and turning hundreds of pages is much more of a commitment than popping in a CD and letting my ears do the work.
I feel as though it is a cop out.
If I rented 1984 and watched the movie, could I really say that I read the book? No.
How often is it said that “the book was much better”? But it will be the book, but I will not have read it
I guess I am just conflicted about the topic because I have loved reading ever since my mother would sit me down at the dinner table and make me read aloud from whatever book she had picked out as she made dinner.

Oh well, on a pretty cool note …
I think that I am going to buy and download the Burt Reynolds voice for the tomtom GPS my mother is lending me.
I really hope that randomly Burt will pop in with a fun anecdote about his life or working on “Canonball Run” or something. Should be interesting. At least the voice will be a lot more mellow than the shrill UK Janet set now.

2,408 miles….
WTF am I doing?

Wish me luck, and follow me on Twitter (I will be updating constantly)

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.