Spewing maps

I love maps. I always have. I like seeing what's where, even though I'll never get to most of the places that I now know where they are.

Some of it is, likely enough, sentiment. Me Grandpa Joe and I would look over maps at his kitchen table as I grew up, doing what I just said: seeing what's where. But he would also tell me about the places he'd been and how he got to them. He liked to travel by road, driving himself as much as he could. His son, me Pops, did too (they didn't call him The Road Warrior at Electric Eel for no reason), and I do as well. So it's nice to know what's where.

It was honestly like buying a new novel when I treated myself to a new road atlas a couple years ago. I got to pore over maps and see how places had changed and what new routes there were since I last studied them. I tell you, I can get to the immediate vicinity of any part of the United States just off the top of my head until yet. It's trivial knowledge, but fun for me.

And then there's the shapes and figures a map offers. I was always fascinated with how states and nations looked on a map. I still think, as I first concluded years ago, that Wisconsin appears to have been spewed from the mouth of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Really. Vomited right out, a supreme act of regurgitation. Pull up a map these United States today and study it. You'll agree with me.

No offense, Wisconsin. Okay, maybe a little.

Give me a Hell Yeah

During the course of Mother's Day festivities this past Sunday, someone asked how my daughter in Arizona was doing. I explained that she was doing well, and in fact I was going to drive out there to visit her in July. "You're going to drive?" someone, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name rather than explicitly identify my incredulous brother-in-law, asked.

"Hell yeah, I'm going to drive," I responded in my best Grandpa Joe voice. "It's hardly 2,000 miles." I've driven 900 in a day, with stops, on my job. I can do 2,000 over two days with minimal breaks. Easy peasy.

You see, I come from a long line of Cosgriffs who Love. To. Drive. Me Grandpa Joe drove a lot, all over the country and into Canada and Mexico, as did me Pops. The folks at Electric Eel called Pops the Road Warrior for the amount of driving he did. Hell yeah, I'm going to drive.

What's not to like? It isn't difficult, you have the freedom to move about as you want; there's no pat-downs or full body scans, no insolent questioning by surly TSA agents. You just drive. You just go where you want to go.

I know the advantages of flying. I will even concede that I, after this first visit (where I can see countryside I've never seen before simply by driving), might fly out my second trip. That is, if I take the time to make sure my driver's license is ID compliant for flights within the US. That idea bugs me, especially as my license is already driving compliant through these United States.

Can I get a Hell Yeah for that?

Road Warriors

I made a 600 mile loop on the road today, but that's nothing. My top run is just over 902 miles. Yes, in one day. And my goal is to trip a thousand. But even I'm sure that total has been surpassed by my dad or my grandfather. Likely by both.

We're drivers, we Detroit Cosgriffs anyway. I come by my affliction honestly. Pops and Grandpa Joe loved to be on the road.

Joe liked to go on the road to wherever it led him. He would simply take off, go out west, say, riding the rails in his younger days, or to Mexico by car. Maybe Alaska even, or up the 401 through Ontario with my brother Phil until they ended up in Quebec where neither understood the language and ate boot tongues with cheese sauce. Je ne sais quoi. Joe had many interesting things happen to him that way. Some will certainly be blog fodder as I recall them.

Pops, he traveled mostly for business. But man did he travel. The folks at Electric Eel, the company dad sold for and I do now, called him the Road Warrior. Damn Mad Max. Pops had him beat by many untold miles, traversing these United States and even Canada for the business, for Electric Eel. He loved the road, and the road, him.

I'm retreading many of those miles now. And I'm gaining a deeper understanding every day of my forebears' love of the open road. There's a freedom to it, an openness you rarely find elsewhere. I flatter myself that I'm anywhere near the men they were. Yet every now and then I hear their voices through mine.

After making a delivery this afternoon, after offering tips and answering questions about the unit I had delivered, one young man was astounded that I was returning to Detroit this very afternoon. "You're going back to Detroit today?", he asked incredulously.

"Hell, yeah,' I told him. "You think we still travel by stagecoach?"