Starting out....

This should be fairly interesting. This is my first blog, created to chronicle a goal of mine that I've been working towards for almost three years. In late April, I'm going to get behind the wheel of my little black car and back out of my driveway. What happens from there is up to whimsy.

My name is Jessica. I'm 24. I live in a suburb in between Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC, called Laurel. It's a nice enough town, with a Main Street, some churches, two town newspapers, a horsetrack and a gaggle of village idiots. It has parks and history and a few good dive bars. But since I was seventeen it's felt like a mortal coil that needs shuffling off. That's what I did that year, trading Riverfront Park for Central Park and getting a Bachelor's from a tiny school in New York City. I was content there. I thought I would never leave.

Then on my 22nd birthday, in 2002, waking up realizing my wallet had been stolen, I got some even worse news. I had no place to live. (One of those long, arduous New York City real estate dramas that starts with someone you've never met signing a lease and ends with you getting evicted.) Suddenly New York seemed a harsh and unwelcoming place, the first it had ever felt like that to me. I realized I had a choice: take my earnings as a waitress and rent another apartment - and have just the apartment, no furniture, no phone, no food, no clean clothes - or cut my losses and stay on the streets for a while, thereby saving money and eventually moving on to another town. I went for the latter, and decided San Francisco would be my new home.

I had never been to California. Hell, I had never been west of Pennsylvania. But I didn't care. For whatever reason, San Francisco became my Mecca, and everything I did in those two months of living in Union Square park were all leading up to making it there.

I never did. I still haven't. I got as far as Los Angeles before I ran out of money and stayed there until February of 2004, when I moved back to Laurel. But I didn't move back because I hated it or wanted to come home. Rather, I got this crazy idea one day and needed money to make it happen. I want to drive cross-country again, this time for longer than 11 days. Those 11 days between Laurel and Los Angeles were such a tease. This time I'm shooting for 8 months.

I don't want to plot a route. I don't want to make reservations. The only things I want to make are canned ravioli on a propane stove and friends out of strangers. And a book. I'm writing a book about the trip - not about what restaurants are good or what hotels are worth the nightly price. It's going to be mostly about the people I meet along the way. I'm convinced that this country is populated by a lot of people who are a lot more interesting than Paris Hilton, and I want their stories to be told, for once.

Basically, I'm tired of the idea that the only stories worth telling are those which are sexy, skinny, shiny, and scandalous. What about a single father in rural Nebraska who works hard every day to put his children through college? What about a couple in Waycross, GA celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary? What about a young volunteer in New Mexico who helps alcoholic Navajo Indians kick the habit? I would much rather share a beer and a meal with those people than most of the so-called "interesting" people on the cover of UsWeekly.

Call me crazy. Call me idealistic. But call me before April, because I may run out of money to keep my cellphone on the road.

So this will be the blog of before, during, and after my big adventure. Hopefully anyone who wants to will be able to follow me across the country this way, since I still haven't convinced the local Laurel paper to give me a weekly freelance column yet... and anyone who knows of any hot-spots in other parts of the country - literally, anywhere, I don't care where I have to go to get wi-fi - can respond to the blog or email me. I think I'm going to need all the help I can get.

Let's do this.