The predawn morning is quiet and still but for a few early fishing boats setting out. So much of this journey is simple bliss, what do I write about? The sun and the open road cajole me into extemporaneous song.

Beautiful World,
Give me your open road,
How can I ever know,
Your light or sorrow?
Beautiful World,
Love rains down in a flood,
I see the wind, the blood,
And I want to be awash in you.

Before I know it I’m in Oxford. The perfect coffeeshop presents itself for breakfast. The light seems so bright, I feel I’m seeing people’s secrets when I look at them. The boys on the sidewalk are shy under their afros and dredlocks, the girl at the counter likes me and is sad, the man in the ice cream shop faces hard times.

In the library I find Lisa has answered my email. I’m set! We arrange to meet at 5:30. Nothing to do but enjoy the road and the day till then. I ride a side road looop, where a trailer flies the confederate flag across from a tranquil field. The road is mine.

Falls Lake gives me my first sign of the flooding caused in this state by hurricane Floyd. Areas are closed and water levels are high.

Good to see Lis again! The old friendship is easily rekindled. She has news that hits me in the gut though – Andy Miller, who I talked with just before leaving Laramie, has been in a car wreck. He has serious pelvis, back, and head injuries, and is incommunicado at the hospital. I can almost feel the impact, my interaction with traffic has become so ingrained in my life.

I have fun with Lis. She still loves to be the center of attention like I remember but has certainly grown in her ability to be attentive. We talk a lot about our developing perspectives on God. She seems to have gone through many New Age revisions to the idealist Christian view she once expressed to me, developing a belief system based partly on experience and partly on pure appeal. It seems to do well for her. For myself, I seem to always go back to my experience as the entire basis for my religion. I trust it, and there appears to be enough wealth there to last a lifetime, if not more.