After another forty minutes or so, this crusty old Yankee guy rolled up in his yellow Mass Transit Authority truck and I waved him over. His name was Jack Sweeney. I was pretty sure he was the same guy who had rolled by me without stopping. He had a tri-colored shamrock tattooed on his forearm and he talked in a suspicious growl out of the window of his truck, his engine still running. He was about sixty.

Once we listened to Jack curse the course of humanity, America, and Springfield, he got a lot more comfortable with us. Everything was going to hell but at least there were still some people around (us) who had respect and manners. Listening to people talk shit goes a long way when you're on the road. He drove us 20 miles into Westflield, MA , a non-descript post-industrial mill town on a river. We disembarked at the Econolodge where a circumspect Mr. Patil , an Indian hotel operator, checked us into a room with a king bed. He didn't like the look of us anymore than Jack had at first.

In Chapter II Giles and Kate head to Phoenicia, New York that is, bypassing Woodstock, physically and spiritually, to take their place with history's sexually possessed runaways...

Tuesday, July 5. Westfield, MA to Phoenicia, NY . I woke up about nine. The sun was peeking through the heavy motel curtains. Kate was out cold, lying on her side with her mouth open and her little red lace butt sticking out of the covers. She was lying there in the bed in her underwear looking like an innocent kid who'd fallen asleep in the back of her parents' car, but the swell of her inner thigh, the way her hips jutted, her breasts made her into something far from innocent. The secret of the sexes: men wake up one day wanting something they can't understand so bad it chokes them. Women feel desire first and then grow into the power of being wanted slowly and painfully.

I walked back to the room sipping my ice coffee. My stomach was gassy from a night of trying not to fart and from the anxious possibilities of the day. Kate was still out cold. She rolled over when I came in but didn’t open her eyes or make any kind of show that she wanted to get up. I sat out on our little porch and wrote in my captain’s log, the daily journal I’d decided I needed to keep on the trip. Apart from being a search for love, land, and family, the trip was also going to be a search for the soul of America.

The motorcycle hunched alone in the corner of the lot looking forlorn. I was glad it was still there and kind of surprised. I was still in that space where I was expecting a trip-ending disaster at every moment. It was certainly possible. They say over 75% of accidents occur within a mile of home. In the wilderness the easiest time to get lost is right at the start of the day when you set out, because you don’t have any sense of distance. I knew the start of the trip was crucial and that if we didn’t get clear of it soon Kate and I weren’t going anywhere.