Some of you are either planning or already on sojourns of your own.  Last spring and summer, as I was gathering supplies and ideas for this long, slow roll over the continent, I asked friends to give me advice for keeping things together on the road.  This list includes their ideas and a couple of marks I’ve set for my own sanity and satisfaction:

• Wash the windshield. My brother in birthdays offered this immediate answer to my question, with no deliberation.   Another comrade has asked me to track the level of bug death on my windowglass as a highly subjective and poetic measure of the degree to which insects are disappearing from our lives.  So far, Kentucky and Wisconsin have hit me hardest.
• Keep a rhythm. Stretch, walk, eat, sleep.  I find that having a dog as your companion and pacesetter helps.
• Develop a solid show before you leave; this will help you book gigs when you travel. This advice originally came from the context of booking circus shows nationwide, but the idea holds for any work to be done while on the move.  For me, developing a solid show has been more about developing a menu of clearly defined topics that I can teach.
• Book gigs before you go. Friends and new friends have exceeded the limit of what I could have expected.  As the truck’s systems achieve some approximation of reliability,  I’m looking forward to scheming with nationwide operatives [you!] to cook up talks, classes, constructions.
• Get oil from restaurants where you could imagine yourself eating. Add to that:  leave the cruddy oil and its sediment at the bottom of the dumpster.  Really.
• Write down how you want to feel and what your main goals are.  Put them on your dashboard and stick to ‘em. Part of re-orienting this tour after technical setbacks has left me with a quieter, more private, and [I think] more muscular approach to both communing with allies and pursuing new options.
• You will be the recipient of hospitality that will humble you.  Accept it as unearned grace and a good education.
• Offer something, Do work. To balance the experience of receiving so much from the people and places that welcome me, I’m committing to leaving scarves, hats, sewing kits, books, canned vegetables, trenches, bathroom ceilings, healthcare, and washed dishes behind wherever I can.  If you need something done when I visit, then that’s what I want to talk about.
• Offer possibility. A friend suggested that one of the chiefest gifts any traveler can bear is an intangible one–in his own words  “a whiff of raw freedom or a taste of distant places.”  He encourages all travelers to give these freely.