Drive Thru America

I really haven't had much to blog about lately. I started at my new job on Monday and I thought that would give me a lot to write about, but alas, such is not the case.

Illustrating the funk in which I currently sit, the most noteworthy accomplishment as of late was finally finishing Drive Thru America by Sean Condon last night.

Condon wrote a novel called My 'Dam Life about the three years that he spent living in Amsterdam that I absolutely loved. I was so amused by it that I decided to check out Condon's other travel adventures, one about driving across Australia and this one, about driving across America.

Drive Thru America, the book, was quite representative of America, the country--interesting on each of the edges, but kind of boring in the Middle. Austrialians Condon and his buddy David rent a car in New York, drive down the east coast, through the south, head through the Southwest over to California and then fly up to Seattle.

It is on the coasts where actual story lines occur--the rest of the book is merely a journal of what you see in America with Australian eyes. In New York Condon finds a Bible on a subway seat and decides to track down the person who left it there. After traveling to South Carolina (or somewhere like that) to give it to the owner he finds that the Bible had been put there as a memorial to a deceased ex-girlfriend. When he gives the book to the parents they say, "Every year [the boyfriend] puts one of her belongings in some public place and some nice person contacts us and returns it to us." Weird.

In Los Angeles Condon meets a crazy old blind man in a bar who gives him $800 to deliver a letter to an address in Seattle. He agrees. As Condon walks up to the address he decides to open the letter (against the old man's instructions) and reads that it was just a hoax. He walks into the backyard and the entire lawn is covered with similar letters.

I have just told the two most interessing parts of the book, and thus have saved you the trouble of reading the book yourself. I will be accepting "thank you" cards.