As I sit in this peculiar tin can of a dead bird flying backwards, contemplating all sorts of logistics, The Fugs, “CIA Man” blares loudly as fuck through my AirPods. The kids call it loud AF, but an affinity for four-letter words and grammar apparently precludes from such indulging in such hipness.

“Fuckin A, man…”

With my passport-stampability surgically neutered, this is the first flight I’ve been on since last February – the longest personal stretch in well over a decade. To be completely honest, that shit felt like a jail sentence. Having survived contracting the covid 19 virus back in November – as well as being a humane human who accepts science – I’m sensitive that for many it was a death sentence. But if I’m being honest, I feel sort of liberated from my first-world-problem rendition of solitary confinement. 11 months of binging Netflix and my somehow first flight since the pandemic is to Chicago. Manhunting to go anywhere got me at cruising altitude and feeling like some sort of travel Unabomber. But instead of bombs, my well-publicized kink is this renewed adventure travel. Wait, can I even type bomb – or Unabomber – on an airplane? Meh, we live in public.

“Who can kill a general in his bed? Overthrow dictators if they’re red.”

Almost in spite of the books I’ve read in college, paranoia bubbles up like George Clooney after he shot Brad Pitt in a Coen closet. Or was Billy Bob more nervous? Now I’m convinced that the flight attendant is either going to offer me a drink or put me on a no-fly list (or both). There’s no passport stamp and no unpronounceable foreign street food coming my way at the end of this carbon footprint heavy rainbow. Nonetheless, traveling somewhere – anywhere – has already exorcised a good half dozen pandemic demons. Shoutout to Linda Hamilton. I trust that my offsetting an aforementioned footprint via Pacific to Atlantic pedal will unleash the rest of the kraken from my quarantined soul. Mountains tend to do that.

“Who can get a budget that’s so great? Who will be the fifty first state?”

An estimated 3,200 mile ride – I’m no longer including metric since being trapped in the land of the King’s foot and yard over something or other – it would be my first time crossing the continent west to east in a decade. I am concerned about the security of my shit. My age and my weight are at all times highs, in a direct relationship to the ignorance oozing out of every gaping American orifice, especially mine. My mind drifts away from similes and metaphors and hyperbole, focusing on the challenge that awaits, like frickin’ Jewish space lasers.