For all intents and purposes, we have in Toronto what looks like, smells like, and feels like a spring thaw. It’s confused Murphy, no doubt, who likes to jump, more like gallop, in the snow. Now she just gets muddy feet. But it’s put a spring feeling in me. I want a road trip.

Of course I’d need some friends, a tent maybe, and yes, a car. We’d be too close and too smelly in the small space. A road trip would do me some good. I’ve marked one place on the map for so long. I want to go elsewhere. Elsewhere is such a big place. I can eat food I wouldn’t regularly eat. I can sleep in motels or hostels or on the side of the road. I can see some horses and some cows.

I love country roads that suddenly lurch up or dip down and that moment where gravity confuses your stomach. Yes, I love that feeling. I want to shake off this dusty town. Open my curtains and my windows and air this place out. Yes, Murphy would have to come too. I want to do a tour of old fashioned coffee stops and take pictures of homemade pies and the different coffee cups across Canada, across the US. I want to listen to another radio station. I know you can do that with the Internet but I want to do it the authentic way, by being there. I want to collect brochures across the vast country: gator farms, chinchilla farms, the birthplace of various prime ministers, presidents, and beer barons, old mills, quilt museums, haunted houses, old movie houses, local playhouses, small town artisans, swamplands, and caves. I’m not saying that I’d go to these places; I just want a library of brochures.

Of course it’s not really spring and I’d really need a car. Meanwhile, this thingamagig I found in the trash. I think it’s some kind of grinder.

SS