Preface

The source of the trip


In summer 2006, I took on a cross-coutry driving trip from Los Angeles, CA to Gainesville, FL. That time, I was transferring from University of Southern California to University of Florida. When I was sure that I would make this move and I needed to travel across the country to a new city, there was a voice speaking silently in my brain, "Go driving." The voice started out low and indistinct, but as time went by it became louder and clearer. By the time I started to make serious plans for the move, the voice had grown so strong that it was hard to neglect it. It seemed that I really wanted to take on this long, uncertain, and potentially advanturous driving trip for some reason that was even unclear to myself.

Some time it just happens. My heart had made the decision for me. It had not much to do with rational, careful thinking. It was just a wishful thinking that took me down this tirp.

People close to me had mixed feeling about me taking on this trip. Some were conerned or worried and they didn't try to hide this feeling, some assured me that it can be a good experience and gave me some suggestions. Some were thrilled, some were shocked, and some just simply couldn't understand the bizarre decision I had made, adding a lot of complexity to the already complex long distance moving.

Someone told me that once I am done with the trip, I will have a lot of boasting and babbling to do to my sons and grandsons in the future. Well I was sure about that from the first place, as I like to tell stories about myself, especially to my close friends. Sometimes I can go on and on without noticing where my audience are. When I am into something it is difficult to stop me. That is some experience my families and close friends know best.

However as the long trip unrolled, it turned out to be a very unique, perhaps even once-a-lifetime, good experience to me. Some point on the road, I felt that it would be selfish if I left such a good experience only shared by few people. As it is said in one classic Taiwaness commercial long ago, "Share the best with the good friends." (If memory serves me correct, it was NesCafe), I thought the experience deserves a better treatment than just a word-of-mouth story. It is so good that it worths every effort to make a detailed record for it.

And hence this blog. I am a novice in blog and I have many other things to do, so it will for sure take some time for me to finish the whole story. My idea is to announce this blog only after I am finished, but if you happen to visit this place early, use a little patience for me. I will try to complete this in a gradual pace.

In short, what I try to present here is more than a moving trip about getting from point A to point B. It is also more than a typical get-away trip that I pick a nice place to visit for a couple of days and get back to the original life. This is about an important trasition period in my life, combined with a decision started with a simple wishful thinking, but followed by careful planning and eventual excution with determination. It is also an eye-widening experience about a lot of enjoyment and some suffering. If you are interested in traveling but do not have a chance to go on this type of a trip, I will try to make the blog as detailed as if you have been with me in the 15 days, and I hope that you will wnjoy this. By doing so, I feel that the time and effort I spent for the trip can be even more justified, in addition to my personal pleasure.


Contents of the Blog

Here is a list of things I wrote about the trip:

Just as in any college textbook, the parts with an asterisk (*) are optional. In this case, it contains more of my personal thoughts or viewpoints, as opposed to other articles describing the places I visited on the trip. So, if you care more about what I did on this trip, you can read just the non-asterisk articles. However, if you want to know more about my personal experience of taking this trip, you can check out the optional articles. In addition to a traveler, I am also an avid baseball fan. There are several articles about watching baseball games along the way, and non-baseball fans should probably skip these to avoid endless stories and jargons that only make sense to some people.

Discalimer

By now (if you are still with me) probably you know my style of writing very well: I write long stories. My appologies, and please bear with me if you can.

In this blog I present my traveling experiences from a Taiwaness student's point of view. And, since I had been studying in Los Angeles for three years, the articles may carry a bit of influence from the West Coast background I had. The things presented here may be different from your viewpoints. However, if you find something you think offensive to you in the blog, please kindly drop a note to let me know exactly which point you feel improper, and how you think I should make it better.

You may also have noticed that I am not a native English speaker. Indeed, my native language is Chinese. So very likely I had made some mistakes here and there in the writing. If you care to do it, feel free to let me know if some parts of the articles do not make sense to you, and how you think it can be better presented. If you speak both Chinese and English, you can read the blog in both languages and let me know if I had done a good just to make one-to-one correspondence in the attempt to a bi-lingual blog. However, if you don't like my writing style in Chinese... Well, that's what I had developed through years, and it is perhaps too late to correct it. :-)

Please feel free to sign the guestbook or reply to my articles in either English or Chinese.

If you like the blog, feel free to link to it, provided that you are not trying to claim ownership of any part of my work (articles, photos, etc.).

Acknowledgements

Before we start, let me spend some space to convey my appreciation to a bunch of people.

Before and during this trip, many people expressed their concern and worry about my safety on the road, including my parents and other relatives, my advisor, and many friends. I felt sorry that so many people were worry about me, and I was grateful to that. Your expressed concern had made me extra-cautious on the road, and it was one key to a successful trip.

Several friends gave me some suggestions about the trip. They made my journey more smooth and enjoyable. It was a great help.

Finally I would thank god for blessing me a safe trip. I don't have a specific religious belief, but I believe in god. Things could have gone very wrong on the road, but luckily nothing major happened to me. I was able to carry out my initial plan almost in full, with minimal deviation. So, thank god, for a safe, enjoyable, and an almost hassle-free long trip.