I’m spending this week in Research Triangle Park (in North Carolina) working at one of Cisco’s labs here. This is an important stage of the project that I’ve been working on for the past year, finally coming to fruition. Things are going well so far and I’m looking forward to the next steps.

Even putting business aside, the trip has been nice. Instead of flying, I decided to travel here by driving over the past weekend. Normally a flight would be the default option, perhaps arriving on Sunday evening and flying home on Friday evening. That’s what my colleagues have done. However I’ve spent the past handful of years with “platinum” frequent-flyer status and I’m outright tired of airports, airplanes, the TSA, and the whole mess of flying. Besides, and perhaps most importantly, I find driving by myself to be cathartic. And in that respect this trip has not let me down.

I started driving from St. Louis late on Friday afternoon with the goal of reaching Paducah, Kentucky early enough to have dinner there. My wife was in Paducah with her mother and two sisters for the AQS Annual Quilt Show & Contest and I arrived just as their day was ending. Saturday I walked around the quilt show with them, which wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. There were some beautiful quilts, and even some neat technology in the form of quilting machines. (I might even try to build one… as if I had free-time.) Saturday evening I left Paducah and drove to Lake Junaluska, NC, arriving around 2AM with my Out-of-Fuel warning light flashing, while listening to Phil Hartnoll’s Unsteady Waltz. Then, after spending a couple hours trouble-shooting the DSL Internet connectivity at the house there, I finished my trip on Sunday with a casual drive down into the piedmont and over to Durham.

The entire drive was done with the windows-down, enjoying the comfortable temperatures and lovely smells of springtime. In Tennessee the smell was of light flowers; North Carolina introduced the smell of pine. Both smells were enjoyable thanks to antihistamines. I listened to music through earphones (sound-isolating to overcome the roar of the wind). My soundtrack was all over the place, including Bill Laswell, Santigold, Muse, NERD, Hybrid, Orbital, Thom Yorke, Speedy J, Jamiroquai, Elliott Smith, Townes Van Zandt, and others. Even the timing was perfect with music, landscape, and the smell of the air working together. Pretty awesome.

Now in addition to looking forward to coming home to Emily, I’m also excited about the drive itself. Springtime is usually my favorite time of year, but this springtime is feeling especially good so far.